Nevertheless, it is significant that this Big Navy scheme has
been published. The Washington correspondent of the Morning Post says that it will " stagger " the United States, and we can well believe it. It provides for twenty-six 10,000-ton cruisers, three aircraft carriers, five fleet submarines and eighteen flotilla leaders. All this means an expenditure of more than £200,000,000. There is, moreover, a provisional proposal of four new battleships, designed, of course, within the limitations of the Washington Treaty. The United States is already building eight large cruisers, .and has ten in commission. The twenty-sit. cruisers now proposed would, therefore, bring up the total fleet of large 'cruisers to forty-four. Such a scheme would incite co- mpetition with a vengeance. It would give the United States a superiority, not over Great Britain alone, but over all the Navies of the world in combination.
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