The London Conference

...Small as this disparity may seem to American eyes, the cruiser tonnage of these two powers is of moment to Britain, who may be called upon at any time to embark in the Mediterranean a naval strength greater than that of any other power, by reason of the significance of her trade routes through this sea...

...Ambassador Houghton declared that the United States "would gladly, in conjunction with all the nations of the world, abolish the submarine altogether," but that, if it must be continued as an instrument of naval warfare, it was the belief of the American government that it "should be limited to a reasonable tonnage or number," along with all other classes of combatant vessels...

...It represents a defensive arm to be had without such a large outlay as would be requisite to build an adequate fleet of battle-ships and heavily armed fast cruisers...

...Social, economic and financial considerations all impel her to peace...

...must be an agreement in London...

...Meanwhile, both look with misgivings on what is generally interpreted in continental Europe from the conversations a deux between the British Labor Prime Minister and the American President as an attempt by the former to effect a rapprochement with the United States...

...France will oppose accepting the same strength in all categories as Italy, stressing her colonies and her three coasts at home to protect...

...and, fifth, that the construction of battle-ships be put forward until 1936...

...She now has fifty-seven submarines in commission the same as England and she is building forty more to England's fifteen...

...The submarine did not sink the Washington Conference, because the American and the French delegates sighted it and steered the ship away...

...The abrogation of this treaty caused no happiness in Nippon and meant a drawing together of England and Japan's racial opponent, America...

...Indeed, this question of, the submarine will prove one of the grave problems of the conference, and unless an accord can be reached in pourparlers, it is just the kind of weapon to torpedo the parley...

...In the preliminary conversations, the United States and Great Britain have opposed this...

...fourth, that limits adopted for Italy be not surpassed by other continental powers...

...This should not be construed to mean that France and Italy will form an opposition bloc in London to the scrapping by the United States and Great Britain of as many big ships as they want the more the happier for these Latin powers with their limited navies...

...It is further clearly apparent that limitation of this type only would add enormously to the comparative offensive power of a nation possessing a large merchant tonnage on which preparation may be made in times of peace for mounting 6-inch guns...

...What they did was localized, therefore, on the Rhine and in the Danzig Corridor...

...No British government could last a day were it to agree to less than control of the seas, unless it were proved to the British nation that it got a quid pro quo...

...And so would a Locarno of the seas, to which the five great powers were signatory, be an advance over what these statesmen did, carrying the same spirit of conciliation into the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Mediterranean...

...France, whose naval weakness has been to her a source of sorrow and mortification during the whole history of European wars, has today the most powerful army in the world...

...At that time only Britain favored the abolition of the under-seas raider...

...Out of the knowledge thus acquired, they sought on the shores of the Lake to safeguard each his respective nation against another such shambles as the years from 1914 to 1918 at most to protect it, each in his own way and according to national fears, against what seemed the most dangerous trouble spots...

...One need go back no further than 1921 to discover some of these...

...France was strongly for the submarine, and the United States was unwilling to outlaw it...

...Bound by no word to support any Anglo-American premise, she has only her own needs to guard, and no one knows them as she does...

...There has been much water under the bridge since Geneva, the Senate Lobby Investigating Committee and the American and English press having served to uncover forces of opposition that were actively at work when Hugh Gibson and Lord Lee of Fareham and their respective delegations met by the Lake...

...It might, therefore, be to her interest that the submarine, which is chiefly effective against sea-borne commerce, be forbidden...

...A possible cause for a change in the Italian attitude may be found in the long Italian coast line and in the fact that Italy is not self-supporting in food...

...She has not forgotten her impotence in 1914, when the very life of the nation depended upon help from a superior maritime power...

...Candid and resourceful as the modern diplomatist is reputed to be, real reasons why particular states are opposed to certain restrictions or limitations are still apt to remain masked behind specious ones...

...This leaves them only Japan to consider...

...Mussolini argues that Mediterranean parity is no real parity, since France, by bringing in her fleets from the Atlantic and the Pacific, could establish a great superiority over Italy...

...It is only necessary to recall the efforts that have been made through diplomatic channels to cause Britain to withdraw from these positions to appreciate what British dominance in this theatre of naval warfare since the days of antiquity means to these two Mediterranean powers...

...Hoover came into the White House, but that of France remains practically the same...

...When one recalls the proverbial mistrust among the nations of Europe, these Franco-Italian misgivings are not incredible...

...Before anything effectual can be done in this direction, however, there must be an agreement in London...

...But with China "a burning house next door" and the Manchurian, the Russian, the Korean and the whole far eastern situations what they are, she wants her naval ratio fixed by the Washington Conference raised...

...Meanwhile, if the London Conference succeeds in effecting an accord between the five participating powers, it will have achieved something that men and women everywhere, and none more than the ratepayers, may commend with a will...

...They see in them a diplomatic answer to the efforts in continental Europe to set up another balance of power which, in the polite phraseology of diplomacy, is called the United States of Europe...

...Ambassador Houghton held that cruisers and destroyers maintaining 6-inch guns and submarines of 600 tons or less were highly efficient and "constitute the largest number of fighting ships now existing...

...Sir Austen Chamberlain, Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann had, when they foregathered at Locarno, eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Expediency and, like their first parents, found themselves naked in a world of war...

...It would be hard to convince II Duce that Italy, too, has not a position to maintain...

...Therefore, she has been reluctant to enter into mutual exchanges regarding naval problems with Italy...

...This does not compensate for the fact that Italy has fifteen more destroyers than France...

...One of these identified the submarine, which is today an immensely more powerful weapon than when Lord Balfour denounced it so roundly...

...Had she wanted war, she would have taken advantage of any one of innumerable opportunities that came to her in China...

...Though less valuable than the French holdings, Italy none the less regards them as essential to her and is determined to keep open her sea lanes, not only to communication with them, but to bring in provision and raw materials...

...Everyone who knows Japan knows that she is not prepared to engage in a first-class war, and she admits she is for peace, believing that therein lies her further development...

...The position of Italy regarding the submarine has been analogous to that of France, but there now are indications that the Italian attitude in connection with the underseas fighter may change and that Italy may associate herself with the United States and British governments in advocating its abolition, irrespective of the stand taken by France and Japan...

...She holds she must have, instead of the present ratio of 3, 3 or .7 of American and British tonnage in capital ships, and a 10-10-7 8-inch gun cruiser ratio, to apply also, perhaps, to submarines...

...Only the United States could give this...

...Nevertheless the world applauded, for it was an advance from the blood-filled trenches and contentious centuries of the old order...

...Benito Mussolini regards the forthcoming conference as destined to have far-reaching effects on the future of the Mediterranean...

...She wants parity with France and is prepared to insist on it...

...THE LONDON CONFERENCE By ADAM DAY TO THE practical, to the student of history, to those across the Atlantic who are old in the tortuous ways of diplomacy, the day of ringing in "the thousand years of peace" still seems remote...

...Even had she possessed the wealth to build up her naval strength, any efforts in this direction would have been opposed by all the might of Britain, who, in 200 years as the great commercial nation of the world, has never permitted a European rival of her naval power...

...Therefore, neither of them has justifiable cause for maintaining expensive naval armament against the others...

...The pact of Locarno that the representatives of Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany initialed in 1925 may forever guard the peace of western Europe and it may be just another plowing of the sands...

...To be sure, the future of sea law remains indeterminate, and world affairs still reveal no greater problem than that commonly known as the "freedom of the seas...

...This would give her fifteen 10,000-ton cruisers, the equal of British strength in this category...

...third, that it reduce arms by total tonnage rather than by classes of ships, as did the Washington Conference with battle-ships...

...It has long come to be realized that the yellow peril, so-called, was a figment evolved by an abnormal mentality while going through his daily dozen with his shining sword...

...The understanding between the two former may be said to preclude any probability of war between them, and it is impossible to imagine any crisis between them that could not be settled by methods of conciliation...

...Upon such subjects will the outcome in London hinge, and that they should be highly controversial subjects is consistent with the text of that narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence, which is the history of,sea power...

...The position of the United States in regard to the submarine has changed since Mr...

...On the eve of the assembling of the London Conference, substantial reasons offer for saying without undue optimism that, in so far as capital ships are concerned, the delegates will come together with a better augury of success than was the case prior to the holding of the Geneva parley...

...He maintains that the needs of the Italian population are the same as those of France...

...She is thoroughly convinced that submarines and light cruisers to supplement such a fleet of battle-ships as she can support are essential to her security...

...An indication of what the American reply will be to the French, Italian and Japanese demands regarding auxiliary craft is found in a note from Ambassador Alanson B. Houghton to Lord Cushenden on September 28, 1928, when the Anglo-French naval accord was submitted to the Washington government...

...It would be well within diplomatic practice were she to support France or Italy or both, in order to gain them...

...Too, the British Labor government foresees that the peculiar combination of circumstances which made the British command of the surface seas a decisive factor in the world war probably will not be reproduced...

...Upon an agreement between Great Britain and the United States to a revision in maritime law the solution primarily hinges, and it is believed that such an agreement, acceptable and honorable to both, is possible if approached in the spirit of mutual give and take...

...When the high sea fleet was surrendered, there remained but three first-class navies those of Great Britain, the United States and Japan...

...Circumstances have caused the Mediterranean Sea to play a greater part in the history of the world with regard to commerce and war than any other sheet of water of the same size, and France and Italy are running true to form in each striving to maintain supremacy on it...

...The economic position of this island power is not unlike that of England...

...In their stand they may find in Japan a real help in time of trouble...

...Italy, with her extensive seacoast and good ports, is well placed for exerting a decisive influence on the trade route to the Levant and by Suez, but there is England again in Malta...

...He continued: The United States cannot accept as a distinct class surface combatant vessels of or below 10,000 tons armed with guns of more than 6-inch and up to 8-inch calibre...

...The position of the Japanese in the Pacific is in some ways analogous to that of France and Italy in the Mediterranean, out of profound changes that have occurred since the scrapping of the Anglo-Japanese alliance...

...The conferees tampered with it only to the extent of inviting the adherence of all civilized powers to a resolution, which has never been ratified, that the rules of international law relating to visit and search on the high seas apply to the submarine, and that its use as a commerce destroyer be regarded as a violation of these rules...

...It should be remembered, however, that, even should Italy subscribe to the Anglo-American thesis for outlawing the submarine, and that even though this meant three of the powers in the five-power London parley were for banning it, effectively to abolish the underseas craft would require nothing less than universal consent...

...These powers are closer together on the question of freedom of the seas than they ever were than it was ever expected they would be, for no one thought that, when the United States first advocated "free trade and sailors' rights" early in the last century, the same reason would impel England in this day to assume our early stand...

...A tremendous change has come over Japan since she prodded the Russian bear out of Manchuria...

...Then Lord Balfour, Charles Evans Hughes, Aristide Briand and Prince Tokugawa charted a way and left certain signs to warn future voyagers...

...They know they are not in a position to enter into naval rivalry with the great English-speaking powers, and hold that they defend interests peculiar to themselves and requiring different weapons...

...Should political accord be effected between certain of the principal maritime powers who lack it today, obstacles apparently insuperable might loom less large...

...Simultaneously, the most powerful figure in the evolutionary movement that put Japan in the category of the great powers the old emperor went to his ancestors in the House of the Sun, removing the strongest hand at a time when those remaining of the elder statesmen were in their dotage...

...It is true each has four modern cruisers under construction, but France has nine capital ships in commission to Italy's four...

...With no thought, therefore, of attempting to embark on a ship-building program in competition with her powerful neighbor across the Channel, France looks on the submarine as particularly suited to her needs on her Atlantic and Channel coasts and in the Mediterranean...

...The reason is not hard to find...

...second, that it extend to the smaller states...

...The position of France touching the Mediterranean and the Atlantic is, on the whole, one of military weakness at sea, for England sits high and solid on the Rock between the eastern and western French fleets...

...Settle this and peace will stand at last upon a practical basis, solid enough to insure the real progress of disarmament...

...The fact that Italy has only fourteen cruisers to France's fifteen is very distressing to Signor Mussolini, and, on top of this, France today has 65,000 tons of cruisers, whereas Italy has only 50,000 tons...

...He will stress that Italy, as well as France, has colonies in northern Africa...

...She knows that the old order, before the days of Admiral Peary, is very dead, and that, as she must live by trade or perish for the want of it, a navy is necessary to her life...

...That is what Fascismo is doing above all things, he declares maintaining Italy's position as a world power...

...Today France is superior to Italy in naval strength...

...II Duce demands first, therefore, that limitation of armament extend not only to ships, but to armies and airplanes...

...She holds that she must resist any effort to apply to submarines the ratio which governs her capital ships and is the same as that which governs Italy's...

...With the Anglo-Japanese alliance set aside, and in the face of a good understanding between England and America, Japan is for peace and will not disturb the Pacific...

...Nevertheless, even these see in the forthcoming London Conference a genuine augury for world peace and prosperity, for it is a commonplace today that the greatest need of the time is a clear understanding between Britain and America...

...In support of his stand for parity with France, he can cite the case of the United States which, although it has no far-flung colonies, demands parity with Great Britain because of its position...

...It is too early to declare that this is impossible of achievement, but it is opportune to assert that the immediate course is strewn with reefs, hard as coral...