if not from the American side. As the programmes now stand, the United States will have eighteen post-Jutland capital ships in 1925, against Japan's eleven. It will be a fair numerical preponderance, and not more than Great Britain had over Germany at the beginning of the war. But whereas England had, by reason of her geographical position, lying as she does like a huge breakwater between the German ports and the seas outside, the strategic advantage in the Atlantic, the strategic advantage in the Pacific is with Japan rather than with the United States. The United States has two sea-fronts to defend a strategical embarrassment with which we can sympathize; for, in the days when the old Dual Alliance of France and Russia was supposed to be the enemy, the writers on naval policy were always worrying about the danger of naval defeat, with half the British fleet in the Channel and half in the Mediterranean, should its enemies succeed in concentrating their whole force against either. It is not to be supposed that Japan, in the event of war, would try to invade the American continent; but her fleets, if victorious, would sweep American commerce off the seas. And there is the danger, too, of a sudden attack on the Philippines, which, if it were successful, would leave the United States without a naval base in Eastern waters, unless Japan, by attacking China, were to give the United States an opportunity to use Chinese ports.

And where, in the event of war in these Eastern waters, would American ships refit? The disadvantages of fighting thousands of miles away from home ports are hardly to be measured. No one who has given serious thought to the problems of a naval war between the United States and Japan would maintain that the superiority of eighteen ships to eleven gives an extrava

gant margin; and one can readily understand those who are responsible for American defense at sea insisting that this margin is the minimum.

Unfortunately, this increase of American shipbuilding has an automatic effect on the British programme. Great Britain ceased building capital ships in 1917, and has only one ship, the Hood, which can be said to embody the lessons of Jutland whatever these may be. In this year's programme four such ships are sanctioned; but they will not be begun till next year, and not finished, in all probability, till 1924. It follows that, in order to attain an equality with Japan in these new ships in 1925, Great Britain will have to lay down six ships next year; and equality with the United States will demand an even greater effort next year than ever was made in one year during the competition with Germany.

Thus, with the best good-will in the world and many protestations of mutual regard, we are drifting helplessly into a meaningless rivalry, which could not be worse in its effects on the welfare of the people if our two countries were enemies. And worse even than its effects on material prosperity would be the by-products of this rivalry in political discord, and even, it might be, in active enmity. The government, in introducing its naval estimates, had to face a great deal of criticism because its shipbuilding estimate was so small; and this came, not from political mischief-makers, but from many moderate men. Take the following passage from the speech on this year's estimates of Mr. Prettyman, a former Secretary of the Admiralty, and a man who speaks with care and exactness:

'Everyone will agree that agreement and international arrangement are far better than building one against another. The practical question that we have to consider on this estimate

is, can we afford, even when that is our opinion, even when the world knows it is our opinion, even when we wish the world to know it is our opinion, can we afford to allow any single power however friendly, however much we desire to maintain its friendship and even affection, even if it is of our own blood, -can we afford to be in a position where another nation in the world will have a navy definitely more powerful than our own navy? Is there any honorable member who will accept that position? That drives us to the one-power standard, not in the sense of desiring to build against any other power, or to select any single navy and to say we are building to maintain one equal or greater than that, but simply from the purely defensive point of view. . . . If the United States and the government of this country can come to any arrangement by which competition can be avoided, it will be not only unopposed but most heartily welcomed in every quarter of this House. But if such an arrangement is impossible, it is impossible for us to say, simply because we trust and believe in the continued friendship of the United States or any other country, that we can allow them to have a navy to which our navy would be manifestly inferior.'

All sorts of holes can be picked in this passage, but no honest man would deny that it represents the views of ninetynine Englishmen out of a hundred; and it may be taken as representing the permanent mind of the country. It is the basis of the 'one-power standard' now formally adopted by the British Government. Mr. Long, ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, on March 16, declared that equality with any other power at sea is a claim that England never would accept 'save in connection with a great English-speaking nation that sprang from our loins and must ever hold a special place in our regard and confi

dence.' And Mr. Long is a friend both of the United States and of a reduction of armaments. "If there is to be emulation between, for instance, the United States of America and ourselves,' he said in March, 1920, 'let it be in the direction of reducing the ample margin of strength which we each possess over all other nations.' If he had said 'which we together possess,' his remarks would apply, not only now, but in 1925, when the balance of naval power will be rather different.

The issues, therefore, are plain. With an agreement between us, the formula of equality on the seas a great thing, as Mr. Long said, for Britain to concede- might develop into a naval consortium and a drastic reduction of armaments. Without an agreement, this formula will lead to competitive building, and that, in its turn, to political friction, and, it may be, even to rupture. It is well to speak quite plainly. If we rely on the unmobilized mass of friendship between the two countries, we shall drift into serious trouble; and the first object of those who believe with the writer, that the future of the world depends on the free coöperation of both countries to further our common ideals, must be to mobilize that friendship in the cadres of definite and concrete proposals. To that end it is the object of this article to contribute.

II

The writer is among those who believe that capital ships are no longer the chief repositories of naval power; and this belief at one time seemed to offer a means of escape from the more costly forms of naval competition. Supposing that it could be established that, for the defense of shores from invasion, mines and submarines were sufficient, there would be little left to build for but the defense of commerce on the

high seas. That being so, would it not be possible to internationalize the high seas outside territorial waters, which for this purpose might be extended from the three-mile limit to one of ten, or even twenty miles, except in straits that are too narrow to admit of this extension? And might not all the Great Powers agree to police the international sea-common thus created, in accordance with a code of law mutually agreed upon?

If such a plan had been practicable, it is obvious that the immediate result would have been a great reduction of naval armaments and the removal of three fourths of the earth's surface from the clash of national rivalries and jealousies. But there were two great difficulties in the way of such a scheme. In the first place, the majority of expert opinion, both in Great Britain and in America, still believes in the capital ship. And, secondly, the United States is not a member of the League of Nations, under whose authority and flag the new international naval police would have to administer the laws of the sea-common. Clearly, in existing conditions, it is necessary to approach the problem from a different angle.

Both in Great Britain and in America official spokesmen have indicated their willingness to enter an international conference on disarmament; and if the project has got no further, it is because of the frightful difficulty of arranging a basis for general discussion. Quot gentes, tot sententiæ. All similar attempts in the past have failed, and before making another attempt, the nation that makes a move wants to be assured of a better prospect of success, and in the absence of such assurance the habitual procrastination of all governments gets its way. The theory of reduction has, in the past, usually been that of simple division. You start on the assumption that the relative power

must not be altered, and you begin the search for a common divisor. Supposing that the ratios of naval power possessed by the leaders are as 18 to 12 and 6 you can divide by 2 or by 3 or by 6 and still leave the relative power unchanged. It all sounds so simple. But in fact, the common denominator has always eluded definition; for it is not only the number of capital and other ships that constitutes naval power, but a host of naval imponderabilia, which defy expression in numbers that can be divided.

A still more important reason for past failures is that the causes of the unstable equilibrium that make for naval rivalry are political, and cannot be discussed in any general conference with the remotest chance of coming to an agreement within a reasonable time. This has been the unvarying history of all previous attempts to legislate for a reduction of armaments by a general international agreement. The indispensable conditions of success, which have never yet been fulfilled, are these. First, two powers should hold a preliminary conference and submit their agreement to a general conference; they should be two powers whose views are sufficiently close to promise agreement, and who together exercise a preponderant influence in the world's councils on the subject under discussion. Secondly, these two powers should not confine their discussion to the purely technical aspects of disarmament, but should be authorized to take into consideration the political questions that may be relevant.

The only two powers that could possibly satisfy these conditions are the United States and Great Britain; and it is therefore suggested, as the preliminary which alone promises any chance of success, that there should first be a conference between representatives of Britain and America,

empowered to discuss all the questions bearing on disarmament, to make a report to their governments, and, if it is approved, to submit that, as a draft basis for discussion, to any further conference for which invitations might be issued to other powers. If Britain and America cannot agree, neither can any larger conference; if, on the other hand, we can and do agree, we can play a tune to which all the rest of the world will dance.

It may be that the Anglo-American conference, when it meets, might think it desirable to limit its discussions to what is called the problem of the Pacific; and that the general conference, which should be summoned later to discuss its draft proposals and probably to ratify them, should be restricted to the powers that border on the Pacific - the United States, England, Canada, and Australia, Japan, China, and Siam, Russia, France, and the Pacific States of South America. If so restricted, the problem would be more manageable and the ratification of any agreement that Great Britain and America might reach would be much easier. This, at any rate, one is convinced, should be the first step to disarmament.

The question then arises, what the programme of this preliminary AngloAmerican conference should be. Neither of these powers would wish to be advised how to defend its own coasts against invasion, and therefore the principal subject that suggests itself for discussion is, how they should protect their communications overseas. Now, on this question there is a long history of controversy between Great Britain and the United States. Where as the former has always stood out for the exercise of extreme belligerent rights on the high seas, the United States, in theory if not in practice, has always argued for the milder practice of respecting the rights of neutrals and

the private trading of the belligerent nations with neutrals. This controversy goes back to the very foundations of the American Republic, for Benjamin Franklin was one of the first champions of the exemption of private property at sea from the operations of war; and it will not have been forgotten that one of the arguments that Count Bernstorff was fondest of, in the troubled months before America came into the war, was that she and Prussia had once concluded a treaty embodying this principle against what he called the 'navalism' (a word formed on the analogy of 'militarism') of Great Britain.

The suggestion of the writer is that this old controversy should be resolved in a sense favorable to the American view, and that the conference should, as its first business, draft a resolution declaring that in the event of war the non-contraband commerce of neutrals and of belligerents, and, generally, all private property on the high seas, should be exempt from capture or destruction. That would prohibit, not only a submarine war on commerce, but also a cruiser guerre à la course on the high seas. It would deprive belligerents of the excuse that great fleets are necessary for the protection of their sea-borne commerce and of their shipping in war-time.

Those who know the long history of the controversy between England and America on this subject will appreciate how great the sentimental significance of a concession by Britain on this question would be. Its effect would be that American commerce would continue free from molestation even in the event of war - a tremendous relief from the anxieties of the American Admiralty. The losses of the German submarine campaign have gone some way toward convincing Great Britain that a reform in the law of capture, which she has always resisted, is in

her interest; but if the operation of the rule were, at any rate in the first instance, confined to war in the Pacific, her acquiescence in the change of the law would be certain. For a country like America, separated by the width of the Pacific from the attacks of enemies (how different from the position of Great Britain, with her thin silver streak alone separating her from the cockpit of Europe!), such a reform would rob war at sea of the greater part of its perils.

But we should be disposed to go further, and here would be the great advantage of associating in our preliminary conference men of politics with the naval technicians. If Great Britain and America agreed to such a reform, they should also agree that, in the event of its validity being disputed in war, they would make common cause in order to enforce it, and in any general conference of Pacific powers they would command a majority of adherents, and would be strong enough to enunciate it as a law that they meant to enforce against any malignant. It would follow, as a matter of course, almost, that in any war in which this principle was involved, and in which America was concerned to maintain it, we should play the part of a good ally. One condition of that would be that we should relieve America of all responsibility for her communications from the Atlantic sea-board, and so enable her to concentrate her navy in the Pacific, thereby (apart from any closer return that we could make to her for her naval help in the late war) increasing her effective naval strength by perhaps a third.

III

Two objections are always raised to the reform that we have in mind. In the event of some such declaration as

this being reached at the preliminary conference between Great Britain and America, that every neutral ship and belligerent merchantman engaged in lawful commerce shall have the free use of the high seas without molestation, - who is to decide what is lawful commerce and what is not? In other words, what is contraband? That question we should leave to be determined either by the legal council of the League of Nations or by some analogue of the League drawn from the border states of the Pacific.

A second and more awkward question is, what would become of blockade. It is difficult to imagine how two powers separated by the whole width of the Pacific could institute anything approaching an effective blockade of each other; but, that difficulty surmounted, one would reply unhesitatingly that commercial blockade should be prohibited under our proposed rules, and only military blockade—that is, blockade of naval bases and places d'armes — recognized, if it could be made effective.

A final difficulty arises as to the transport of troops across the Pacific; but this, one imagines, would in any case be subject to the full force of the operations of war.

It is probable that this naval agreement would have to be supplemented by one of a political character. For example, it might be necessary for Great Britain and the United States, after discussing all the aspects of the Pacific problem, to agree to guarantee the political status quo of the border states of the Pacific, and to make common cause against anyone who attacked it. But this is no more than the Anglo-Japanese alliance does, so far as China is concerned; and it is understood that whatever was decided at the preliminary conference between Great Britain and the United States would be submitted for ratification at