Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The conference broke up in a recriminatory atmosphere, to the great joy of the lobbyists of shipbuilding companies and “patriotic” societies. These had harassed the delegates throughout the conference. Three American shipbuilding companies stood to lost contracts worth almost $54 million if the conference had been a success, and they did not hesitate to spend part of that sum to ensure that it would not be a success. Later they were sued for more money by their chief lobbyist at the conference, Mr. William B. Shearer. As a sequel to the conference, Britain signed a secret agreement with France by which France promised to support Britain against the United States on the cruiser and other issues, and Britain promised to support France in preventing limitation of trained infantry reserves at the approaching World Disarmament Conference. This agreement, signed in July 1928, was revealed by pro-American employees of the French Foreign Ministry to William Randolph Hearst and published in his newspapers within two months of its signature. France deported the Hearst reporter in Paris at once, deported Hearst himself on his next visit to France in 1930, and published the text of the agreement with Britain (October 1928).

The London Naval Conference of 1930 was able to reach the agreement which Geneva had failed to achieve. The publicity about Shearer’s activities and about the Anglo-French agreement, as well as the arrival of the world depression and the advent of a more pacifist Labour government to office in London, contributed to this success. Cruisers, destroyers, and submarines were defined and limited for the three greatest naval Powers, and certain further limitations were set in the categories fixed at Washington. The agreements were as follows (in tons):

Types

U.S.

Britain

Japan

Heavy cruisers with guns over 6.1 inches

180,000

146,800

108,400

Light cruisers with guns below 6.1 inches

143,500

192,200

100,450

Destroyers

150,000

150,000

105,500

Submarines

52,700

52,700

52,700

This allowed the United States to have 18 heavy cruisers, Britain 15, and Japan 12, while in light cruisers the three figures would allow about 25, 35, and 18. Destroyers were limited at 1,850 tons each with 5.1-inch guns, and submarines to 2,000 tons each with 5.1-inch guns. This settlement kept the Japanese fleet where it was, forced Britain to reduce, and allowed the United States to build (except in regard to submarines). Such a result could, probably, have been possible only at a time when Japan was in financial stringency and Britain was under a Labour government.

This treaty left unsolved the rivalry in the Mediterranean between Italy and France. Mussolini demanded that Italy have naval equality with France, although his financial straits made it necessary to limit the Italian navy. The claim to equality on such a small basis could not be accepted by France in view of the fact that it had two seacoasts, a worldwide empire, and Germany’s new 10,000-ton “pocket battleships” to consider. The Italian demands were purely theoretical, as both Powers, for motives of economy, were under treaty limits and making no effort to catch up. France was willing to concede Italian equality in the Mediterranean only if it could get some kind of British support against the German Navy in the North Sea or could get a general nonaggression agreement in the Mediterranean. These were rejected by Britain. However, Britain succeeded in getting a French-Italian naval agreement as a supplement to the London agreement (March 1931). By this agreement Italy accepted a total strength of 428,000 tons, while France had a strength of 585,000 tons, the French fleet being less modern than the Italian. This agreement broke down, at the last moment, because of the Austro-German customs union and Germany’s appropriation for a second pocket battleship (March 1931). No evil effects emerged from the breakdown, for both sides continued to act as if it were in force.

The London Naval Conference of 1936 was of no significance. In 1931 the Japanese invasion of Manchuria violated the Nine-Power Pacific Treaty of 1922. In 1933 the United States, which had fallen considerably below the level provided in the Washington agreement of 1922, authorized the construction of 132 vessels to bring its navy to treaty level by 1942. In 1934 Mussolini decided to abandon orthodox financial policies, and announced a building program to carry the Italian fleet to treaty level by 1939. This decision was justified by a recent French decision to build two battle cruisers to cope with Germany’s three pocket battleships.

All these actions were within treaty limitations. In December 1934, however, Japan announced its refusal to renew the existing treaties when they expired in 1936. The Naval Conference called for that date met in a most unfavorable atmosphere. On June 18, 1935, Britain had signed a bilateral agreement with Hitler which allowed Germany to build a navy up to 35 percent of Britain’s naval strength in each class and up to 100 percent in submarines. This was a terrible blow to France, which was limited to 33 percent of the British Navy in capital ships and carriers and had to distribute this lesser fleet on two coasts (to deal with Italy as well as Germany) as well as around the world (to protect the French colonial empire). This blow to France was probably the British answer to the French alliance with the Soviet Union (May 2, 1935), the increased German threat on the French northwest coast being intended to deter France from honoring the alliance with the Soviet Union, if Germany struck eastward. Thus France was once again reduced to dependence on Britain. Germany took advantage of this situation to launch twenty-one submarines by October 1935, and two battleships in 1936.

Under these conditions the Naval Conference at London in 1936 achieved nothing of importance. Japan and Italy refused to sign. As a result, the three signers soon were compelled to use the various escape clauses designed to deal with any extensive building by non-signatory Powers. The maximum size of capital ships was raised to 45,000 tons in 1938, and the whole treaty was renounced in 1939.

The success achieved in naval disarmaments, limited as it was, was much greater than the success achieved in respect to other types of armaments, because these required that nations which felt politically insecure must be included in the negotiations. We have already indicated the controversy between the proponents of the “direct method” and the advocates of the “indirect method” in disarmament. This distinction was so important that the history of the disarmament of land and air forces can be divided into four periods: (a) a period of direct action, 1919-1922; (b) a period of indirect action, 1922-1926; (c) a new period of direct action, 1926-1934; and (d) a period of rearmament, 1934-1939.

The first period of direct action was based on the belief that the victories of 1918 and the ensuing peace treaties provided security for the victorious Powers. Accordingly, the task of reaching a disarmament agreement was turned over to a purely technical group, the Permanent Advisory Commission on Disarmament of the League of Nations. This group, which consisted exclusively of officers of the various armed services, was unable to reach agreement on any important issues: it could not find any method of measuring armaments or even of defining them; it could not distinguish actual from potential armaments or defensive from offensive. It gave answers to some of these questions, but they did not win general assent. For example, it decided that rifles in the possession of troops were war materials and so, also, were wood or steel capable of being used to make such rifles, but rifles already made and in storage were not war materials but “inoffensive objects of peace.”