The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1928. THE AMERICAN NAVY.

Evening Star, Issue 19791, 15 February 1928, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1928. THE AMERICAN NAVY.

The speech of Mr Wilbur, Secretary of the American Navy, in defence of his new naval programme cannot be said to throw any new light on the need for it. It is small use at this stage dismissing why Great Britain and America failed to agree at the Naval Disarmament Conference. So far as can be judged Ironi the official statements on both sides, there was only one point on which they were in agreement: that each wanted a navy, not for competition with the other, but to serve its own needs. The difficulty was that the needs were not the same; the kind of navy that would have suited one Power would not suit the other, and so the discussions were barren.' Something might have been gained from them if there had been more preparation for the conference beforehand, to show just what the difficulties were which would have to bo got round; but the conference was

called by the United States, and for the absence of any preparations in advance it would be absurd to blame Great Britain. Neglect to feel the way beforehand meant that the British and American delegations went to Geneva with two independent and irreconcilable programmes for reduction. Britain wanted small cruisers, without too sharp a limitation upon numbers, and America wanted largo ones. Britain needed numbers'to defend her extensive trade routes, and America needed size because of her fewness of fuelling stations. The two needs could not be harmonised by agreement. America is not now, according to Mr Wilbur, planning to build a fleet superior to Great Britain. Whether that will be the effect of the new naval programme or not must depend on the extent to which tho new programme gets beyond paper and the extent to which new ships, when they are built, will take the place of others. A great number of them, it is explained by the official statement, will bo replacements. It has been made amply clear that the British programme will not in any case bo altered. Mr Wilbur evidently would not admit tho interpretation which has been put on his proposals by some American papers, expressed by one of them as follows: “ if the Coolidgo programme is carried out, we shall have 405,000 tons of great cruisers. What does this figure signify? It signifies nothing less than an open race for supremacy with Great Britain. She has now 358,420 tons of cruisers—built, building, and appropriated for. if the Conlidge plan is carried out Great Britain will he outclassed in tonnage.” On the face of it it is a huge programme which tho American Navy’s General Board has put forward —tho largest peace-time building programme in the history of the United States. It calls for the construction of twenty-five 10,000-ton cruisers, nine destroyers, thirty-two submarines, and five aircraft carriers—-seventy-one vessels of war in all—to be begun within the next five years. Opposition to it has been widespread in America, causing the Naval Committee of the House to adopt tho unusual course of holding a special session, which will begin to-day, to hear hostile views on it.

But the piograuunc may be largely appearance. Congress, it has been pointed out in America by those who refuse to take it seriously, is not asked to appropriate tho 740 million dollars required for the construction of tho seventy-one new ships; it is merely requested to “authorise” them. And since tho naval programme is still to be acted upon by the House and Senate, and contains a clause permitting the President to suspend building in tho event of an international conference on disarmament, there has been a disposition in some quarters to look upon tho proposed additions as paper ships. Influential Senators, on the other hand, predict that the programme will be carried out. Mr Wickham Steed, the cx-cditor of 1 The Times,’ discusses the outlook with his usual shrewdness following his recent trip to America :

As a result of tho failure of the Geneva Conference there will be a big American programme of naval shipbuilding. How much of it will actually be carried out may depend upon our wisdom and vision. If wo are so foolish as to argue that, for America, a oig fleet is a luxury and for us a necessity, she may tell us to go to the devil, and may set herself to build a supreme navy. The people of the United States are certainly not now thinking of naval supremacy or of an aggressive naval policy against u& or anybody else. But, in any foreign attempt to determine what is a necessity and what is a luxury for them, they will see an impertinent denial of their sovereignty and will resent it. Then they may build a supreme fleet—and, as a shrewd American recently put it, they will never forgive us for having (as they will think) goaded them into doing it.

The prospect could not well be more acutely expressed.