THE NAVAL OUTLOOK
SPEAKING at the opening of Portsmouth Navy Week last Saturday, Lord Beatty declared that the best method of preventing war was for this country to have a navy strong enough to preserve peace, as it had done in the past. The statement calls for some examination, particularly at the moment when the prospects of next year's naval limitation Confeienee are being anxiously canvassed in this country and the United States, Japan and France and Italy. What is a navy strong enough to preserve peace ? A navy, it nay be assumed, capable of 'defeating any possible aggressor, and calculated in. consequence to deter the potential aggressor from ever attacking at all. But on that point the potential aggressor may have opinions of his own. He too, accepting Lord Beatty's principle, may, hold that for him equally the best .method of pre- venting war is a navy strong enough to preserve peace— a, navy strong enough, that is to say, to deal with any, possible opponent. A principle admirable as . long as we alone hold it opens the door to unlimited competition as. soon as other nations decide that it fits their case as , well as ours. We are back then to the old naval race which, as between ourselves and Germany, -did more than anything else to prepare the tempers of both countries for the cataclysm that threatened in 1911 and became a reality in 1914.
It is imperative that statesmanship in every country should bend all its efforts to avert a return to such disas- trous rivalry. It was checked by the agreements reached at Washington in 1921, and the accord was extended at the London Conference in 1930. Both agreements expire in 1936. And now, when a further advance might reasonably be looked for, the grim prospect has to be faced of a reversion to the unfettered competition of the pre-Washington era. For the principal naval States that would be a disaster comparable with the continued failure of the Disarmament Conference at Geneva to effect any limitation on armies or air forces anywhere. That, nevertheless, as an article • by Sir Archibald Hurd on a later page convincingly demonstrates, is the prospect to' which all the omens point.. Washington linked the destinies of the principal naval States together. by imposing on them a common limitation—a limitation which does not run counter to Lord Beatty's principle in so far as it leaves this country and the United States so nearly equal in strength that either .would incur .grave risk in attacking the other, but does run counter to it when it leaves Japan and France and Italy, each of whom might reasonably ask to have " a navy strong . - enough to preserve peace," considerably weaker than either of the two English-speaking countries. Now that fixed relationship, which has endured, to the great relief of the taxpayers of the countries concerned, for snore than twelve years, is threatened, by Japan's announcement that she will no longer be content some her Washington ratio, and the hope of covering some of the loss through a reduction: in the maximum size of certain vessels is dispelled by .Italy's declared intention to lay down two battleships of 35,000 tons each.
But discouraging as the outlook is, the negotiations are only in a preliminarY stage. Some of the declara tions of national intentions may be mere manoeuvring for position. And it must not be forgotten that Senator Swanson, the Secretary of the Navy in the United States; hits announced his country's desire for .an nli-round cut of 20 per cent. in existing figures. There is time for the ferment in the world to settle down and sanity fit the matter of armaments to assert itself before the naval conference of 1935 assembles. The conversations that have taken place in Loudon in the last few weeks between this country, the United States and France are said to have been satisfactory so far as they went, but no one has suggested that they went any notable distance. The most difficult probleins in store will be raised when an accredited Japanese representative arrives in London in October, though it appears that he will be authorized to deal only with technical, not with politieal; questions. More than that, Japan is announcing, without any visible warrant, that Great Britain and America have agreed that political questions shall be excluded from next year's conference. Since that meeting issues directly from the Washington Naval Conference of 1Q21, and the technical agreements reached then were only possible because ancillary political agreements were concluded simultaneously, it is impossible to imagine.that political considerations will be ruled out in 1935. They ought, on the contrary, to govern the whole discussion. For everything hangs, in the first place, on whether reliance can be placed on the collective system of security, or whether each nation must rely on its own fleet alone for its defence. Any naval decision, moreover, must depend on whether the United States, holding to the Stimson doctrine of what her duty should be in the event of a breach by some other State of the Kellogg Pact, will at the least give such pledges of non-intervention as would avoid all possibility of a clash between her and this country over the so-called Freedom of the Seas. If agreement can be reached on that then actual parity between Britain and America can be a matter of indifference, except in so far as it has value in setting a standard for other nations. We need have no objection to the United States Navy exceeding our own in total tonnage, or heavy cruisers, or any other particular type. Our relations are such, and we do well to assume they will remain such, that no question of the comparative strength of the two fleets need trouble anyone's head.
It is in other spheres than this that political issues may prove fatally decisive. Japan has all too good reason for desiring their exclusion, for it is uncertainty about her political intentions that more than any other single factor dictates the reluctance of this country and America to reduce the margin of superiority fixed for the fleets over the Japanese at Washington. The failure of the collective system to restrain Japan from her coup in Manchuria is, in its ultimate repercussions, the most damaging blow dealt at the fabric of the post- War world. By any reasonable measure of needs Japan, complete mistress of the Eastern. seas, can make no good claim to an increase of her ratio in relation to the United States, with its double coastline, or the British Empire, with Dominions and trade-routes over both the hemispheres to defend. The more she presses for an increase the more will uneasiness regarding her political and territorial ambitions grow. Difficulties need not be gratuitously anticipated, but they cannot be ignored. In the technical field they will arise in abundance. Is the hope of rational persons for an escape from the incubus of monster vessels and the adoption of something like a 10,000-ton maximum for battleships and 6,000 tons for cruisers to be dispelled ? Are the defenders of the submirine once more to carry the day ? On these and cognate subjects" there will doubtless be longargument. But the political issues, . whether dominint 'in the background or brought frankly into the open, must predominate. And on the political side one principle—the closest of all possible under- standings with the United States—must for us be fundamental. There can be no question of anything like a formal alliance. There can be no question of a common front against Japan. What there must be a question of is not merely a resuscitation but an intensifica- tion of that mutual confidence which enabled British and American squadrons to operate harmoniously under• a common command in the last twe years of the War, which made the naval limitation agreements at Washing- ton possible, and which today may be capable, when nothing else is, of shoring up the tottering fabric of civilization.
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