FRANCE’S BID

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1929, Page 5

FRANCE’S BID

FOR NAVAL POWER. NOT TIER BY ANGLOAMERICANS! [United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.] LONDON, Dec. 10. “Tho Times’s’’ Paris correspondent states: A memorandum accompanies the French 1930 naval estimates. The estimates total £21,464,000. This is an increase of £1,584,090 compared with last year’s estimates. The memorandum anticipates that there will be a failure of the London Naval Conference if Britain and the United States attempt to impose their own wishes on the other Powers whose needs, it says, must be studied independently. Any ■ Anglo-American agreement will be only another stumbling block in the way of Italy’s claim for parity with France.

It is also stated that if Italy persists in her parity demand, the success of the London conference will 'be endangered. France’s own naval requirements are unofficially estimated at a figure in the neighbourhood of eight hundred thousand tons, to be distributed as the Government . chooses, among various classes of ships. If this tonnage is conceded, France may be content to leave the question of parity open, in a belief that Italy will not build up to her level.