The League of Nations
The Fate of the Battleship
WHILE the discussions that have preceded next month's naval conference have turned mainly on cruisers, the most important decision to be taken may well be on battleships. At present capital ships are limited, so far as Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy are concerned, by the Washington agreements of 1922. The maximum total tonnage allotted to the respective nations is fixed. So is the maximum size of an individual vessel-35,000 tons. So is the maximum gun calibre-16 inches. Failing any new arrangement to the contrary, new vessels of this type will be built from 1931 onwards by all the five States, or such of them as think it worth while, to replace the old ones, which become obsolete at the end of twenty years—for, while the ' Mauretania ' can break records after reaching her majority, the "riger ' or ' Queen Elizabeth' or ' Rodney' is reckoned fit for the scrap-heap at twenty.
That process of replacement begins, according to the treaty, itt 1931, but a conference was to be held in that year to consider whether any variation of the Washington decisions was desirable. The fusion of this conference with the meeting summoned mainly to deal with the cruiser and submarine question brings the capital ship question forcibly before the public here and now. It is a question on which the public has essentially a right to be heard, for while eminent naval constructors design these great vessels, and eminent captains command them, it is the individual citizen, or rather citizens in the aggregate, who pays for them. And since the last capital ships constructed in this country cost well over £7,000,000, and the next ones, if the present maximum of displacement and gun-power stands, will cost considerably more, it can hardly be denied that the taxpayer has a legitimate interest in the matter.
This need not mean that provision essential to the national defence is to be neglected because it costs rather more than we like. Throughout our history we have been in the habit of taking larger views of national necessities than that. But at least the question of whether battleships are national necessities or not may properly be asked. And when it is asked, we are more likely to get the answer No than Yes from those in a position to speak with most authority. Battleships unquestionably have their uses, at any rate one use—to fight other battleships. On the positive side of that statement, that if other countries have battleships Great Britain must have them too, there is no serious difference of opinion. The negative implication, that if other countries are willing to jettison their capital ships we have no reason to retain ours, commands a weight of support, falling short indeed of unanimity, but distinctly impressive none the less. No one could give intelligent attention to Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond's recent articles in the Times on " Smaller Navies " -without having his faith in the big ship as an essential feature in a modern fleet gravely shaken if not dispelled. The great merit of such articles is that they bring the battleship to the bar and throw on its defenders the onus of establishing their case. It is for them to demonstrate that the vast expense involved in the construction of these greatest of all floating engines of war is not merely defensible but imperative. And it is more than doubtful whether that can be demonstrated at all.
The capital ship, which means simply the biggest ship, is in its present form the creation of the last twenty years (that is to say, of the fifteen years preceding the Washington Conference, when the capital ship as it then existed was stereotyped) and the outcome of a competition which promised in the end to beggar the nations engaging in it, while leaving their strategic relationship to one another substantially what it was before the disastrous race began. Each nation had not only to have battleships because other nations had them, but had to have bigger battleships to defeat the other nations' battleships—till the other nations produced types bigger still. They conferred no lasting advantage on anyone concerned. Rival fleets of 18,000-ton Dreadnoughts when Dreadnoughts are the biggeit ships afloat are as valuable tolliose who possess
them as rival fleets of 42,000 ton Hoods. And if the Washington Conference had not been held when it was, the ' Hood' would have been far from the last word in displacement er armament.
The opportunity has come now to face the capital ship issue squarely. As things stand, it practically concerns three nations only—ourselves, the United States, and Japan. No other country at present possesses capital ships worth bringing into the argument. Great Britain has them primarily because the United States has, and the United States because we have. Japan maintains them because she will not fall short of the standard of the Anglo-Saxon Powers. Each nation keeps its capital ships not because A has any thought of fighting either of the other two—as between ourselves and the United States that contingency is definitely ruled out—but because it feels it necessary to look as if it might. But something, at any rate, is to be done about the capital ship at the coining Conference. France and Italy will, of course, have a voice in the matter, though their opinion is clearly enough shown by the fact that neither of them has exercised the right given it under the Washington Treaty to begin building replacement battleships in 1927.
But the real decision will lie with Great Britain,. the United States, and Japan, and the starting-point of discussion will apparently be a virtual repetition of the proposal put forward by the British Delegation at the Coolidge Conference of 1927 for an extension of the life of capital ships, with a reduction of their size and gun calibres. That principle is likely to be accepted, and it will then be necessary to decide on figures. The British Admiralty is credited with the view that the battleship might come down from 35,000 tons to 25,000. There may be some special virtue which has not yet been disclosed in that particular figure, but if the necessary parity, secured in 1922 through the stereotyping of rival fleets of 35,000-ton vessels, can be maintained in 1930 by fleets of 25,000-ton ships, it does not appear why the same object should not equally be attained by a substitution of 15,000 for either of the other figures, or, indeed, by the abolition of the battleship altogether. For a slow halting return along the path that has led to the expansion from Dreadnoughts to Hoods there is, on the face of it, nothing to be said. If the purpose of our battleships is simply to fight one another, then the obvious course of wisdom is not to leave them balanced against each other still on a rather lower level, but to cancel them out altogether.
It is encouraging to find that so sound an authority as Sir Herbert Richmond advances precisely that conclusion in its most uncompromising form. All the battleship, he submits, is required to do is to fight similar ships to itself. But destroyers can do that just as well, provided there are no larger vessels than destroyers on the seas. As it happens, there are. Quite apart from the larger types of naval units there are, in war time, liners mounting six-inch guns. That sets the limit for the moment to the reduction of vessels of war. It does not, as Sir Herbert Richmond points out, necessitate the existence of the 10,000-ton cruiser which is standard since Washington, though it may be held to justify something of about 8,000 tons with eight-inch guns. Least of all does it necessitate the survival of the capital ship whose function is to lie in line and fight its counterpart in the opposing navy.
On those grounds, which could be fu--'-'ler developed if necessary, the one sound British policy at the coming Conference would be to propose not the reduction but the abolition of the capital ship as at present understood. To-day we have parity with America on the basis of 525,000 tons of capital
ships apiece. We should have parity equally on the basis of
not a single ton apiece, and Japan would take her place in the picture then as now. The proposal might be rejected
by the other two Powers, but there is much more reason to think that it would not be than that it would. In any case, it would be an attempt at real disarnaament abundantly worth
making, even if ultimately it failed, _
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