REAL, IF TECHNICAL

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 37, 13 February 1930, Page 10

REAL, IF TECHNICAL

PROGRESS OF CONFERENCE ITALY AND THE BIG SHIPS Uulted Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received 13th February, 2.30 p.m.) LONDON, 12 th February. To-day's progress at the Naval Conference was real, but severely technical. The outstanding fact is that the experts have at last reached the stage of a printed report of a compromise between the global and categorical methods, including as a schedule a table of categories favoured by Britain in a form acceptable to France and Italy and available to all other naval Powers willing to adopt it, if and when it becomes part of the League of Nations' Disarmament Convention. As some committeemen have insisted, the value of the table is difficult to make plain until the blanks for total tonnage aro filled in, but tho table seems to offer a compromise solution of .a problem that has hitherto proved insoluble. The Italian Press Bureau foreshadows an early. Italian statement proposing that the great Powers scrap capital ships and also a number of heavy cruisers, holding the view that if that is done, there will be no need for the smaller Powers to have submarines. Conference circles consider that there is little hope of such a sweeping plan being adopted, though it is suggested that any reduction in big tonnage strengthens tho case for whittling down submarines. Thus Italy's plan is directly related to the British and American scrapping discussions.