News of the Week
APLENARY session of the Naval Limitation Confer- ence is to be held on Thdrsday, too late for us to be able to report the result.. Ilia leading article we try to deal with the general situation. Here we can only record that the British delegates reached Geneva again on Thursday, July 28th, and Mr. Bridgeman_ at once saw the Japanese and United States delegates.. A plenary session was arranged for Monday, but was . postponed at the request of the United States delegateS. Mr. Bridgeman' lost no time in issuing the new British proposals that he was able to put forward.. after the meetings of the Cabinet held while he and Lord Cecil were in London. The chief - items in these- proposals were briefly :— - • - -
1. Total tonnage Of 'cruisers, destroyers i and submarines to be for Great Britain .iind_.the -United States, 590,000 tons, and for Japan 385,000 tons. - - —
2. Each Power May keep- 25 per cent. of that tonnage "over age." Apart from- that centlitien,:- 3. The age, limit for replacement:should be eighteen years for 10,000-ton cruisers and sixteen- years for other . cruisers. For destroyers sixteen years and for -submarines thirteen years.
4. This section aims at allowing the retention of seven British cruisers, ten 'U.S.A. and four Japankse cruisers • efficient vessels that come neither into the 10,000-toreclass nor below-the-6,000 ton limit of smaller cruisers. The U.S.A. might construct other vessels in this class to produce -parity with the British Empire subject to the approval of the Naval advisers of the three delega- tions, if this proposal works out unfavourably to the U.S.A.
5. Subject to the exceptions in " 4 " all cruisers to be of two classes, either 10,000 tons, or 6,000 tons or less and mounting no bigger gun than six inches.
6. The British Empire and the U.S.A. to have twelve of these 10,000-ton cruisers and Japan eight.
7. Maximum tonnage for destroyer flotilla-leaders to be 1,850 tons and for other destroyers 1,500 tons. No gun is to be carried 209 bigger than five inches. 210 8. For destroyers not more than 16 per cent. of the total tonnage 211 may be used for vessels of over 1,500 tons.
212 9. Submarines to be of two classes :— 213 (a) of 1,000 tons up to 1,800 tons, and 215 (b) not exceeding 600 tons. None to carry a bigger gun than five inches. 216 10 Maximum tonnage. for submarines to be for the British Empire and U.S.A. 90,000, fcr Japan 60,000 tons, of which no more than two-thirds may be for the bigger class.
11. Except for restrictions in earlier clauses each Power may allocate the total tonnage as it thinks best.
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