NAVAL DISARMAMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 76, 21 June 1927, Page 13

NAVAL DISARMAMENT

BRITAIN’S COMPLEX PROBLEM TRADE ROUTES MUST BE OPEN CEritish Official Wireless.) RUGBY. Saturday. The three Powers’ conference on naval limitation opens at Geneva tomorrow and its proceedings are awaited here with great interest. Mr. W. C. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty, is the chief British delegate and he will be attended by the naval experts of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe represents the latter Dominion. Mr. Hugh Gibson and Admiral Saio head respectively the American and the Japanese delegations. France and Italy, who took part in the Washing ton conference of 1921, will be represented at this conference only by an informateur and observer respectively. While the Washington Conference dealt only with capital ships the present conference will discuss every class of naval craft. The newspapers here generally reiterate the opinions which were expressed when President Coolidge proposed this new naval conference. These may be summed up in the statement that with a scattered Empire which cannot be supplied even with bare subsistence unless the trade routes are kept open, the problem confronting Great Britain is infinitely more complex than that of any other member of the conference.