The Naval Conference The Japanese delegates to the Naval Conference
have spent four days in Washington discussing naval questions. It is known that in reply to the American suggestion that cruiser strength for Great Britain, America and Japan should be respectively 5 : 5 : 8, the Japanese suggest that the ratio should be 10 : 10 : 7. Japan agrees with the British in wanting a considerable reduction in the size of battleships, but she insists that submarines are indispensable to her. Possibly if capital ships were abolished altogether, as we hope they may be, Japan would yield about submarines ; but it must frankly be acknowledged that American seamen are attached to large ships for the natural reason that they have corn, paratively few naval bases, and therefore prefer ships which can keep the sea for long periods. The preliminary negotiations between France and Italy have reproduced in an intenser form the difficulty, discovered by Great Britain and America, of inventing any plausible formula of parity. The Mediterranean seaboard is only one of the French coasts, whereas Italy is confined to the Mediter- ranean. The French therefore say, " Equality really means a hopeless inferiority for us because we could only place a third of our tonnage in the Mediterranean." A new encouraging fact, however, is that while France clings to her submarines Italy seems to be coming round to the opinion that she can dispense with them.
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