Jane's Fighting Ships, 1922. Edited by Oscar Parker. (Sampson Low.
42s. net.) This well-known naval encyclopaedia, now in its twenty- fifth year, has been revised with care. The new alphabetical arrangement is to be commended. The editor speaks plainly of " the non-ratification of the Naval Treaty " of Washington.
We alone of the signatory Powers have proceeded with the scrapping of those ships which were in excess of the establish- ment permitted by the Treaty, although in both the U.S.A. and Japan a number of the pre-Dreadnoughts which had become obsolete have been dismantled." The statement inspires grave reflections. The particulars regarding the new British aircraft carriers are interesting. Two of them, ' Hermes ' and ' Eagle,' have their funnels and conning towers close to the starboard bulwarks ; seen bow on, they look lopsided, but nearly the whole of the decks, two hundred yards long, are left free for the planes. In Argus,' on the other hand, the funnels are kept below the flying deck, and the smoke and gases are expelled through horizontal tubes over the stern ; the mastless hull, seen from a distance, looks strangely incomplete and one wonders how it moves. Some information, but not much, is given regarding the new Japanese and French cruisers which are under construction. The four Japanese ships, it is thought, are modelled on the ' Hawkins,' which is very fast and heavily armed.
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