500.A15 a 1/402
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Memorandum
His Majesty’s Ambassador has been desired by His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to make the following communication to the Secretary of State in explanation of the attitude adopted by His Majesty’s Government at the Three Power Naval Conference now proceeding at Geneva. This communication is practically identical with that which was made two days ago at Geneva by Mr. Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty, to the American Delegation.56
His Majesty’s Government in Great Britain has always sympathized with President Coolidge’s desire to carry out yet further work of naval disarmament which was begun at Washington in 1921–1922 with such happy results. Geneva Conference was therefore begun under fortunate auspices and has, so far as His Majesty’s Government are able to judge, been doing much valuable work. But they note with regret that in certain quarters their policy has been misunderstood and in consequence misrepresented.
The essential principles accepted at the Washington Conference referred only to capital ships and aircraft carriers: and with regard to these it was agreed between three leading naval Powers that they would accept for a period of at least ten years certain limitations as to numbers, armament, tonnage and replacement.
If the Washington policy is now to be extended it can only be in one or both of two ways. The cost of capital ships may be still further reduced and limitations may be devised in respect of vessels other than capital ships—i. e., vessels about which the Treaty of Washington is silent. On both of these possible lines of advance the British delegation was instructed to lay suggestions before the Conference.
In regard to the first of them, however, they desire to say nothing at the present moment. In deference to what they understand to be the desire of the Conference they reserve their proposals until a later stage. His Majesty’s Government do not think these proposals [Page 87] are likely to occasion any serious difficulty, but it is clear it is under this head that the most important economies may be anticipated. The questions raised by any proposal to limit the number of cruisers are of a more complex character. The suggestions of His Majesty’s Government are broadly as follows:
They propose to divide cruisers into two classes—heavy and light; and to adopt for heavy class the same principles as those adopted at Washington in the case of capital ships. They think, in other words, that their size and armament might with advantage be limited and that the numbers permitted to each treaty power should be in the Washington ratio.
This seems to His Majesty’s Government to be a reasonable application of an accepted principle to the case of heavy cruisers. But when light cruisers come to be considered wholly different conditions must be taken into account.
It is of course true that a fleet of a given size requires auxiliary vessels of a given number whatever may be the position of the country to which the fleet belongs or seas in which it is required to operate. On this point there need be no dispute. But in addition to these auxiliary vessels cruisers are required by all maritime countries to perform duties quite unconnected with organized fleets and by no country so much as by the British Empire.
Special position is of course due to a geographical subdivision which has no parallel in history. In times of peace small difficulties and disorders wholly without international significance which in states differently situated would be dealt with by police or a frontier guard may often make it necessary to send cruisers. In times of war the insular position of Great Britain and the seas which divide it from its colonies and from self-governing communities with which it is associated within the Empire present even greater difficulties—difficulties not always present to the imagination of those who live and think in terms of great continents. During the Washington Conference this point was dealt with by Mr. Balfour in words which it may be worth while to recall.57 “Most of my audience (he said) are citizens of the United States. The United States stands solid, impregnable, self-sufficient, all its essential lines of communication completely protected from any conceivable hostile attack.
“It is not merely that you are a hundred and ten million population; it is not merely that you are the wealthiest country in the world; it is that configuration of your country is such that you are wholly immune from particular perils to which from nature of the case the British Empire is subject.
[Page 88]“Suppose for example that your Western States were suddenly removed ten thousand miles across the sea. Suppose that the very heart of your Empire was a small and crowded island depending upon overseas trade, not merely for its luxuries, but for the raw material of those manufacturers [sic] by which its superabundant population lives and for the food upon which they subsist. Suppose that it was a familiar thought that there was never a moment of the year when within the limits of your state there was more than seven week’s food for its population and that food could only be replenished by overseas communication. If you will draw this picture and if you will realize all that it implies you will understand why it is that no citizen of the British Empire, whether he be drawn from the far Dominions of the Pacific or lives in a small island in the North Sea, can ever forget that it is by sea communication that he lives and that without the sea communication he and the Empire to which he belongs would perish together.”
How can an Empire thus situated voluntarily surrender its right to live? How can it abandon by formal treaty the possibility of cooperation in mutual defence between communities which owe a common allegiance though divided from each other by all oceans.
These are considerations which may surely appeal to all. Yet it has been stated that the objection felt to surrender of the liberty to construct a fleet required by the special conditions of the British Empire is due, not to inevitable necessities of self-defence, but to an arrogant desire for maritime superiority. Great Britain, it has been said, refuses “parity” to the United States. The statement has already been formally contradicted. It is wholly without foundation. What are the facts? The President of the United States has invited the British Government to take part in a conference summoned to diminish the burden of naval armaments. They gladly responded to the call. They accept the principle announced by Mr. Gibson (who presides over the Conference) the principle “that the navies should be maintained at the lowest level compatible with national security”. They do not dispute the right of the United States to build cruisers in numbers sufficient to secure this object, but they cannot surrender a similar right for themselves. It is their manifest interest to build no more than they must; it is not less their duty and their intention to promote the world’s desire for a diminution of armaments. They do not for a moment suppose the United States, which has summoned the Conference to further this great ideal, will ever be influenced in their naval policy by any motive but desire for national security or that in their estimate of naval requirements of different states the geographical considerations will be ignored.
- Presumably the conversations reported by Mr. Gibson in telegram No. 63, July 6, 6 p.m., p. 64.↩
- For text of Mr. Balfour’s address at the second plenary session of the Washington Conference, see Conference on the Limitation of Armament, Washington, November 12, 1921–February 6, 1922 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1922), pp. 96 ff.↩