U.S.A ADMIRAL

Hokitika Guardian, 17 May 1930, Page 5

U.S.A ADMIRAL

CONDEMNS THE TREATY. (United Press Association.—By Eiectrn Telegraph.—Copyrigt j. ) WASHINGTON, May 75. Admiral Hilary Jones, giving evidence before the Senate Committee, bitterly condemned the London Naval Treaty. lie criticised the limitation put on the eight-inch cruisers and also the division of cruisers into six-inch gun and eight-inch gun vessels. With this typo, he argued, the Treaty would not only 1 give Britain an advantage over the United States, but it would enable Japan’s seventy per cent, ratio actually to mean one hundred per cent under present conditions, and it would handicap the United States in the event of a ■ tain the Pacific.

Admiral Jones criticised the Treaty’s “escalator” clause, intimating that circumstances might cause Britain to take advantage of it and build ibevond the Treaty limits.

Admiral Pratt, giving evidence before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, defended division of cruisers. He declared his satisfaction with the Treaty.

MR CHURCHILL. WANTS STRONGER BRITISH FLEET. LONDON, May 15. In the House of Commons, Mr Winston Churchill, following Mr Ramsay MacDonald in the naval debate, said that the London Treaty differed fundamentally from the Washington Treaty. 'The London Treaty was not a parity treaty, but it was a formal acceptance of definitely inferior sea power. The Washington Conference had confined itself to the battle sphere, and had left us free to make our own .arrangements for the protection of British commerce and food supplies iby means of cruisers and other craft.

Reviewing the Anglo-American naval strengths as they would be in 1936, Mr Churchill stated that, undoubtedly the American Fleet would be superior to ours. We were no longer to have a Navy—even for battle purposes, to say nothing of trade protection, equal to other leading navies. Thus the Treaty meant that the British Empire was solemnly accepting permanently. a secondary position in sea power. The. Government had thus gone beyond what was wise and right. The Opposition, he 'said, had been powerless to avert such a position. They could not accept the slightest responsibility for the present position., nor could they invest the Government’s act with a national sanction. Air Churchill remarked:—“We hold ourselves free to review the whole situation.” vDlmposition cheers.) Mr Churchill added that Japan had increased her ratio and she came within thirty per cent of the strength of the British Empire, which was scattered all over the surface of the globe. France and Italy had gone off; perhaps, to embark in serious naval rivalry. America was making the greatest naval expansion ever seen. The only Power which was actually disarming is the one which had "already don- the most disarming. Air MacDonald ' and Air Lloyd George stionglv objected _to Mr Churchill, in the course of his speech, quoting a telegram that was sent to Lord Balfour at the WaDun-ton Conference which, they claimed, should be a secret document.