It is well known that the deadlock at Geneva was
caused chiefly by the French contention that each nation should be allowed a total naval tonnage which it might use up as it pleased.. For instanee, a weak naval Power would be free to use up its whole tonnage in building submarines. The British view (which afterwards became familiar .at the Geneva Naval Conference between the United States, Japan and Great Britain) was that the different classes of ships should be considered separately and that the ships of each class should be limited iri number, size and gun-power. , This proposal rests on the obvious fact that each country has its own peculiar needs and that a formula covering all is impossible. Another cause of the deadlock in the Preparatory Disarmament . Commission was the French contention that a nation ought to be entitled to call up all its recruits for training every year. This claim was naturally not favoured by the British delegates, who said that if the whole manhood of a nation was to be subject to yearly military training there would be no real hope of disarmament.
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