Mr. Hughes, the Secretary of State, then put before the
Conference his definite proposal for reducing naval armaments all round. We give the details elsewhere. The main features of the scheme are : (1) a " naval holiday" for ten years, during which Great Britain, America and Japan are not to build any capital ships ; (2) the abandonment of existing programmes and the scrapping of older capital ships, to the number in all of 66, so that Great Britain will retain only 22, America 18 and Japan 10 ; (3) the replacement of capital ships after ten years to be restricted—no ship is to exceed a tonnage of 35,000, which is less than that of tho Hood.' The maximum tonnage of the capital ships in the British and American Navies would be 500,000, and in the Japanese Navy 300,000. The numbers of Auxiliary craft would be proportionately limited. The case of France and. Italy would have to be considered .later.
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