This seems to us to be as bad a mistake
as the British handling of Parity. The Admiralty said, in effect, " We "quite agree to equality of strength with the United States. We must point out, however, that the United States policy, of insisting -'upoil parity by means of a total perrnitted tonnage has implications very serious for Britain. Our special needs - would require us to use up Most of mir. total tonnage in small ships—which inciden- tally could never 'threaten America. This would leave us_ over So -Small an amount of tonnage for building large Cruisers that in real fighting strength the United States would be free to become not merely our equal but very appreciably our superior." On that the Conference broke. down. We had hoped that after- the British Government's recent decision to hold up the building of two out of the three Cruisers due to he laid down this year, Mr. Coolidge would recognize that the British people. are really in earnest about disarmament, but our hope is dashed for the present. There has been a great deal of propaganda by the Big Navy party in America, and Mr. Coolidge has either been impressed by it or has not felt himself able to ignore it.
