The purpose of the Navy is more than merely to defend the coasts of the United States from attack. The chief purpose of the Navy is to support and maintain the policies of the United States. These policies are chiefly economic. Mankind has always lived in a state of economic struggle, man against man, and nation against nation, for the means of livelihood. The effort to earn must be accompanied by an effort to retain what we earn. For this country, as for Great Britain, the Navy is the first line of defense. If you look at a map of the world, the United States reaches out across the sea to all countries except Canada and Mexico. To other nations than those two, we are virtually an island. Our relations with all other countries, friendly or hostile as they may be, depend on sea-power. Therefore it is that our Navy is as important to us as hers is to England, and therefore our policy is to maintain a navy second to none.
Now a few words to define sea-power and tell what it does for this country. Sea- power is the combination of a merchant fleet for transportation of goods and passengers, with a naval fleet to protect those merchantmen from-attack. This country needs sea-power of her own and should not borrow sea-power from another because the world is an economic unit in which the industries of the United States play a great part. Although we have a great store of raw materials and mineral wealth within the territory of the United States, yet there are raw products essential to our factories which we do not have and which must be procured front abroad. Further, we must send much overseas to pay for our imports.
We should no longer rely on other nations—on England and Germany—to do our carrying for us, as they like to advise us to do. Like us, they are manufacturing nations whose export and import trade reaches into every sea and every comer of the earth. They are in the most intense economic rivalry with each other and with us; jealous of our business success which has become so marked within the past thirty years. If we allow them to do our ocean transportation for us, we shall pay too heavily for it. You cannot imagine one of the department stores down town permitting a rival to handle all deliveries and telephone calls for both firms. Errors and delays would be all one way.
Similarly, we must not permit our rivals in manufacturing to have exclusive sea- power and then expect them to let it work for our advantage instead of that of the possessors. This is the reason that Congress maintains a shipping board to run a merchant fleet which, as our foreign friends like to point out, is run at a loss. But the loss is apparent only, as an advertisement seems an expense. Congress makes up a deficit each year on the operations of the Fleet Corporation, but nevertheless the advantage to the general business of the country which we derive from carrying our own merchandise with our own carriers at reasonable rates is so great that it amply repays us by making a great volume of foreign business for our factories.
As an example of what the people gain by a very moderate measure of sea-power we may refer to our South American trade. There is an agricultural and mineral region. It furnishes its surplus of these articles to the rest of the world and is repaid in manufactured goods—cloth, pianos, machinery, what you like. Before the late war this country did little business with South America. We ran no ships there, and it was convenient and profitable for England, France, and Germany to carry their own manufactured goods in their own ships and sell them there. But none of these countries with shipping cared to give the United States good fast lines to South America for that would have helped rival industries and taken work from their own laborers. They would not do it. But since the war the Shipping Board has run lines to South America from this country offering reasonable rates, and a profitable business for American factories has developed. The result has been that foreign steamship lines are now anxious to get their share of this business and are furnishing good service at rates which are controlled by those of the Shipping Board. They are very willing to put the American lines out of business if they can, because, as they say, it is not right that the treasury should lose money as it is doing to make up the Shipping Board deficit. We must not believe in the wolf’s regard for the lamb. There can be no doubt that were our lines to cease, the foreign lines would raise their rates to favor their own industries. American trade has grown by leaps and bounds as a result of American lines to South America. So much for the merchant fleet as the first element of sea-power.
Let us now turn to the Navy as the other element of sea-power. The navies of the world are built to guard the merchant fleets of their own countries and to attack those of an enemy. The idea comes as a matter of surprise to those whose attention has not been attracted by the daily unobtrusive police work of the Navy, both in peace and war, and remember only Byron’s list of important and spectacular events in naval warfare, “Actium, Lepanto, fatal Trafalgar.” But these renowned actions were all fought to control the supply ships which nations and armies needed, and upon which the destinies of nations turned. In the last war, every day the submarines fought to starve England and every day the English fleet blockaded Germany to starve her, until at last the English effort won, and the Germans lost the spirit to continue. But these daily tasks are comparatively forgotten and we remember the great Battle of Jutland which was no more than a dramatic episode and a spectacular effort to break the deadlock at sea so that the victor could deal more effectively with hostile commerce, which would be the real prize or victory.
In our own history our Navy was begun in 1794 for the protection of our shipping against the Barbary pirates. But it took time to build ships and while waiting we had to pay tribute to the rulers of Barbary to reward them for refraining from depredations. Again, in the Napoleonic wars of Europe we were not visibly able to protect our trade against belligerent interference, and our diplomatic efforts were therefore entirely ineffectual because we were weak. At last, in 1812, we declared war with England on account of her obstruction of American trade. In the late war the principal effort of our Navy was similar to that of the British. It was to protect the movements of the carrier fleet taking men and supplies to Europe.
But we need a navy not only when we are at war. We need it when other nations are at war and we are neutral. Nations at war will do with impunity anything which they are allowed to do. A great thing in war is to cut off the hostile country’s overseas supplies. Such supplies come very largely from neutral countries, and trade is very important to the latter. Our professed policy (which we do not follow when we are at war ourselves) has been for the freedom of neutral trade. We clamored for it at the beginning of the Great War, addressing both England and Germany. The British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey, said, in his memoirs, that his policy had been never to annoy this country enough to alienate our sympathy, hut short of.Umt to stop enemy supplies. That was an excellent policy, for it was worth England’s while to maintain friendly relations. She could not win the war otherwise. The German policy was changeable, but at the last, the Germans decided that American enmity was not worth dreading and they pressed the submarine warfare until we entered the war, to their undoing. Had our naval strength been greater, it is possible we should not have had to enter the war, for Germany would not have provoked us so seriously. We know that in negotiating a bargain with another man it is the strength of his position which induces us to make him concessions. Among nations it is the same. In the next war, wherever it may be, with this country neutral, it will be the size of the American Navy which will determine the degree of respect which the belligerents will pay to our neutrality and to the security of American commerce. Trade is essential to us even when other nations are at war. Look at what happened to Holland’s shipping and commerce during the World War. It was known that almost nothing short of invasion would drive her to hostilities. Consequently, when we declared war, we did not hesitate to seize Dutch ships and use them. We paid for them, but Holland was not allowed to refuse to yield them.
I shall now speak of the growth and present status of our Navy. After our Civil War was over, we found that English competition had driven our merchant ships off the seas while we were engaged in the war. Having no great maritime interests, we allowed the Navy to run down, until the early eighties. Then a revival started and by 1898, when we became engaged in the Spanish War, we had a sufficient Navy to defeat that of Spain, free Cuba, and occupy the Philippines. But this was not accomplished without arousing much ill-will in continental Europe, where the German emperor tried to form a coalition against us to prevent our victory over Spain. This came to nothing because England remembered that Germany had annoyed her in South Africa a short while before and took pleasure in telling Germany that the idea of the coalition was disagreeable to her. Russia also was our friend. Thus our success in the Spanish War was owing to the diplomatic support which England gave to our Spanish policy. When it began to be realized in this country that the Spanish War had thrown us into world politics, it became clear that it would be wise to depend on our own naval strength, as we could not always hope to have England’s navy actively backing us. By 1904 the Navy Department building policy, not publicly announced, was to match the German battleship fleet by 1915. Congress did not give enough money to accomplish this, and when we entered the World War in 1917 our task was to supplement the deficiencies of the British navy. Accordingly, the large shipbuilding program of 1916 was laid aside to build destroyers and cargo-carriers and transports to get our troops to Europe and protect them from submarines on the way. The close of the war found us with a large merchant fleet of not very suitable ships, and a greatly altered economic condition. We were no longer a debtor, but a creditor nation. We had stimulated our manufactures and our trade was pushing into the four quarters of the earth. In this situation, it appeared to the administration that a powerful navy would be the country’s first line of defense, necessary to give security to the new external policies of the country in regard to commerce and free intercourse with the rest of the world. It was also whispered at this time that Mr. Wilson desired a large army and navy in order that the United States, under his guidance, might be able to give effect to the decisions of the League of Nations. However this may be, after the armistice the United States undoubtedly committed herself to a great shipbuilding program which was not at all consonant with England’s new post-war policy in diplomacy and world economics. The British post-war policy was a subject of concern to the British government even before the armistice. The great British debt and the general economic situation caused the cabinet to decide on a policy of reduction of expenses at home and one of external tranquility for England and the rest of the world in so far as it could be controlled by London. During 1919 the English leaders were forced to recognize that supremacy in manufactures as well as in coal and iron had passed to the United States. There was one field, however, in which England might be able to retain her supremacy of the nineteenth century. It was on the sea. The German sea-power had gone. If American sea-power could be stopped from developing as it promised to do, both in merchantmen and men-of-war, England could transport and distribute the products of the world and continue to thrive as the world’s middleman, making discriminations as desirable for her. We may feel the deepest sympathy for England’s position before the growth of this country, but we can not be expected to yield our own requirements for her advantage. In the face of Mr. Wilson’s great building program, England’s policy of retrenchment was incompatible with the two-power naval standard of a few years earlier. Here we meet England’s policy of naval limitation to check United States development of sea power. At the budget session of Parliament in the spring of 1920, the first lord of the Admiralty announced that his government would be guided by a one-power standard; meaning that Great Britain would not permit herself to fall below any other power in naval strength. During the rest
of the year it became increasingly apparent that this parliamentary announcement was without any effect on the American building program. So at the November session of Parliament (1920), the first lord made public the desire of his government that the United States might be induced to call for a reduction of naval armaments by agreement. The British hope was that America could be induced to sacrifice her naval superiority in the belief that she was making an economic saving for herself at the same time that she was promoting the peace of the world. Thus England would retain supremacy of sea-power. The suggestion was favorably received by the public of this country. I recollect that during the winter of 1920-21 my attention was called to the British effort to manipulate American public opinion to accept the British policy. By March, 1921, the British first lord, in introducing his budget for the year, felt sufficiently sure to announce the entire list of battleships which the Admiralty proposed to scrap, in order to carry out his retrenchments. By this time, the American press was unanimous in its call for a conference to limit naval armaments as an American contribution to world goodwill and the new administration yielded to the apparent popular demand, fomented by England.
The diplomatic preliminaries became public about the middle of the year when the British prime minister admitted in Parliament that the matter was under discussion. He said that if suitable political treaties settling points of friction in affairs of the Pacific could be arranged, he would consent to reduce armaments, by agreement. He insisted that the political settlement must take precedence of the naval
In July, 1921, the American Secretary of State issued a preliminary announcement of the intentions of his government and a month later the President issued a formal summons to the conference. France and Italy were willing enough to sit in it. They cared only to see that neither was able to outmatch the other. As for Japan, she was ready with her policy in September and it came out unofficially in the press. Japan seems to have reasoned that in the United States the Democratic party in its foreign policy had failed to win the country to the League of Nations, and that now the Republican party was seeking a foreign dip
lomatic success and that an agreement on almost any terms was essential to the American Administration. Accordingly, the Japanese seem to have said to themselves, “We may accept the probable American proposal for reducing our navy, for that will suit our present budget difficulties. Moreover, we may add whatever further conditions seem desirable to us and the Americans will not be able to refuse, for they intend to sign a treaty.” Such was probably the line of thought which led the Japanese in September to indicate clearly through the press that as the price of their concurrence, this country would be expected to forego a strong naval base in the Far East. Since the Americans called the conference it was proper for them to make a proposal as a basis of discussion. It was possible to set a rather high figure based on the status quo of the American fleet, built and building, and agree not to exceed those figures, or else to accept the much lower figures which the British were intending to maintain for their battleships as already announced in Parliament. When the Secretary of State made his proposal on November 12, 1921, it was apparent that he accepted the British policy. He offered to wipe out our great fleet under construction. He proposed the ratio 5-5-3 of total tonnage for Americans, English, and Japanese. This offer was accompanied by the proposal to limit all other classes of combatant ships. The British delegate, Mr. Balfour, hastened to commend the American proposal in principle and said our suggestion of 450,000 tons for cruisers and destroyers was not objectionable for service with the battle fleet, but they had to think also of commerce protection. The Japanese followed and accepted the principle. But when detailed terms came to be settled, the English refused to limit the auxiliary classes in which they were already superior. That part of the American proposal was stricken out and a substitute was inserted merely limiting the size of individual cruisers and their guns. The size of individual battleships was limited too, to 35,000 tons. On the Japanese side, the proposals were accepted for battleships but the balance of force embodied in the proposed 5-5-3 ratio was much disturbed by the added Japanese conditions limiting British and American fortifications in the Western Pacific. The British and French had a contest over the abolition of submarines, which the French insisted on retaining as their maritime threat against England, and the British yielded rather than fail to secure a treaty in which the principal item to them was the sacrifice of the new American battleships. The naval result of the conference was that in order to arrive at an agreement this country scrapped her superiority of battleships and obtained nothing in limitation of numbers or total tonnage of cruisers in which the British were superior, and if I recollect rightly, the Japanese also. Certainly they were superior in cruisers to the 5-5-3 ratio. In return for this naval sacrifice, the United States was able to show a political treaty about China and the Anglo-Japanese treaty was superseded by the Four-Power Treaty between America, England, France, and Japan. The English policy of restraining the United States sea-power was successful. Thereupon both British and Japanese started to build heavily in the unlimited classes of ships and we did nothing, hoping that they might be restrained from excessive building by our example.
So things went on for several years, and in the meantime the League of Nations took up the general subject of reduction of armaments both ashore and afloat, in accordance with the purpose for which it was created. This was necessary because the treaty which compelled Germany’s disarmament also pledged the Allies to reduce, and Germany from her new place on the Council of the League was intimating that if the Allies did not reduce she might feel at liberty to say the treaty was broken and therefore void. Early in 1926 there was an assembly at Geneva for the object of making a preliminary examination of on what bases a reduction of armaments might be made that would be so reasonable that it would be accepted generally. The United States sent representatives to this conference of the League. There was great divergence of views. Some countries held that land, air, and sea armaments must be discussed together. Others that they might be taken up singly. As for navies, it was suggested that they might be regulated according to many different rules in proportion to total tonnage of ships, by the resources of each country, by population, etc., etc., and what motives were behind its armaments. Then it was considered whether it was possible to decide whether the motive behind a country’s armament was offensive or defensive, whether a scale of armaments could be drawn up for each country taking account of its population, resources, and geographical position, its railways and maritime communications, the vulnerability of its frontiers, and the time necessary for it to mobilize for war. In noting the names of the countries for and against each proposal it was clear that everybody wanted to get a big handicap on his neighbor’s special superiority, and the smaller countries wanted to arrange it so that the big countries could not shake their fingers at the little ones. The result of a long session was that the difficulties of arriving at a definite recommendation were so great that postponement was necessary.
However, it was thought in some quarters that regional or other limited agreements might be reached by a few powers as to their own forces. Among the governments believing that on a smaller scale some reduction of armament could be accomplished was that of this country. Accordingly, early in 1927 President Coolidge sent an invitation to France, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan as the principal naval powers to join with the United States in sending delegates to Geneva, there to discuss a further limitation of naval armaments only as between those powers. As inducements leading him to issue this invitation the President referred to his desire to preserve the peace of the world by doing away with competitive armaments. He said that in 1922 we denied ourselves superiority in battleships but could not get a limitation covering all classes of ships as we had proposed. This country had therefore been awaiting an opportunity favorable to renewing the uncompleted effort of 1922. Other nations were building heavily, and although their program had not yet become really competitive, he was desirous of taking a step to prevent a danger which seemed approaching. The discussions at Geneva by the League had shown general limitation to be hard to reach, but he hoped for better success with only five participants and considering navies only. France replied saying that she preferred to work through the League and believed that navies could be limited only when considered in connection with other arms. Italy said that owing to her favorable geographic position the United States could reduce armaments with advantage as the President urged, but Italy was not able to do so owing to her less fortunate geographic situation. Great Britain and Japan only accepted the invitation but the other two countries sent observers who were admitted to the meetings but took no part therein. The conference assembled at Geneva, on June 20, 1927, and organized under the chairmanship of the senior American delegate, Mr. Gibson, ambassador to Belgium. At the first plenary session he announced that in 1922, Washington did not insist on cruiser limitation but he was now to urge it. The United States was now much behind the others because we were reluctant to build. America was guided only by desire for defense and he proposed that they should now discuss tonnages. Thereupon he offered modification of the rejected portion of the American proposal at Washington five years earlier, based on the approval at Washington by Mr. Balfour and Admiral Kato of the principles of the whole American proposal. He suggested four categories of ship&: cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and an unrestricted class of ships of only nominal combatant strength, aggregating for cruisers and destroyers about 480,000 tons as a maximum for the Americans and British, with the Japanese ratio at six to ten. The American delegate hoped that the other powers might find it possible to accept even lower figures than his proposed minimum of 400,000 tons. Mr. Bridgeman, speaking for Great Britain, alluded to her insular position and her great dependence on sea routes for absolute necessaries and said the outlying parts of the Empire were also concerned. He agreed in large measure, he said, with the principle announced by the chairman, and said that the American proposal for a conference had forestalled a British call by a very brief time—he had long been engaged in a study of what might be hoped for, and had already informed the cabinet of what the Admiralty was prepared to suggest as suitable British terms. Thereupon he did not offer to accept the American proposal to complete the work of the Washington Conference by limiting cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, but asked the conference instead to modify the completed work of the Washington Conference in various ways, the effect of which would be to increase the superiority of the
British navy to ours. Particularly the British asked to put a low limit on the size of individual cruisers permitted, lower than by the Washington agreement. Destroyers were to be limited to 1,400 tons and leaders to 1,750 tons. Submarines the British did not want at all, but if they could not be abolished, then there might be two sizes not exceeding 1,600 and 600 tons respectively. The Japanese representative, Admiral Saito, said he had listened with sympathy to the previous speakers and that Japan wanted no change in the Washington Treaty and desired now to prevent any increase in the present naval strength of any of the three nations. The hands of all the players were now on the table and it was quite apparent that the British Empire wanted a still further reduction of American strength in battleships. Having just completed two new ones under the terms of the Washington Treaty, she wished to alter it so as to increase the advantage she already held under it. This was at no time regarded with any favor by the Americans, nor by the Japanese. The Japanese suggestion that no nation should increase her tonnage beyond that then existing fell most severely on the United States, which had authorized no new vessels for several years, while the others had been building on a considerable scale. Thereupon, the conference turned to committee work for several weeks in the endeavor to reach some agreement in the matter of cruisers. We wanted big ships because our lack of bases throughout the world made larger ships more necessary to the United States than to England with ports of her own scattered over the earth, for the extra fuel we needed required bigger ships to carry it. The English insisted on a much larger tonnage than we proposed. We felt the need of cruisers to defend our merchant shipping in all parts of the world just as England did, but the English wanted supremacy while seeming to ask equality. We wanted big ships; the English wanted big numbers of smaller ships; and the Japanese wanted to increase their end of the 5- 5-3 ratio. Every day the secretariat issued a report of progress. The press of all countries was much interested. The American papers supported their delegates strongly, apparently much to the surprise of the British, who thought they could have their own way in America as they had had five years before. Thereupon the British papers asserted frequently and forcibly, without denial by the British government, that the conference was likely to fail because the American delegates were very ill- prepared for their work. The fact was that only on one point were the American delegates unprepared. They were not ready to accept the British proposals as soon as they heard them. I take it that this charge of the British press was made more to affect American opinion than British. For if our people could be persuaded, it might be that they would say, “Since our representatives do not know their business, we might as well take the British offer.” But our press reported the conference extremely well and the British views made no headway in this country. As the American delegates showed no signs of yielding to the British stand, Mr. Bridgeman called for a second plenary session on July 14, and said he had called for it on account of gross misrepresentations of the British case in certain quarters (meaning that the American people had not been guided by the British press). He proceeded to say that the British program had been fully considered long before the call was issued. The British did not want big cruisers, neither did they want limitation of total tonnage, but limitation by classes and numbers, and they must have a cruiser tonnage of far greater than 400,000 tons. They had been accused of arrogant superiority in having refused parity to the United States, but they wanted to have the least possible force necessary for their own safety without any thought of competition. They needed numbers to cover the seas. He pointed out that in 1904 the British navy had 157 cruisers and now only asked for seventy under the agreement he suggested. The Japanese delegate said that the American proposal was for from 450,000 to 550,000 tons for cruisers and destroyers together. He proposed that of this allowance there should be ten 10,000 ton cruisers for America and Great Britain and seven for Japan. After those public statements the conference then reverted to committee work and the British heads of delegation returned to London, presumably to receive new instructions from the cabinet. By the end of July it was apparent that no agreement was to be reached. By the time of the final session the British offered to come down to a figure still far above the maximum American proposal, which Mr. Gibson said could not possibly go above 400,000 tons of cruisers. The Americans said they could not consent to agree to a proposal so far above what they suggested. This would not be limitation. And so, with mutual expressions of regard the conference broke up.
It seems that the call was made by us in the belief that the English would be willing to accept a figure for the total that was near the original American proposal of 300,000 tons of cruisers and that the difference in regard to the size of individual ships could be compromised. The English were on the point of calling the conference and accepted our call because they thought that they would be able to direct public opinion in this country, and thus oblige our administration to accede to English wishes. The recent budget proposal sent to Congress was for twenty-five 10,000 ton cruisers, and the British are offering to omit one ship from this year’s program, presumably for effect on American opinion.
In conclusion, I may venture my own opinion that any call from the United States to limit armaments will be successful only under the condition that made the call of 1921 successful, namely, that the United States is outbuilding the others, and a conference would be the means of checking her.
The result of the conference seems to show that England will not care to limit her navy by treaty unless the United States gives indication of intending to outbuild her. Second, the United States is turning definitely to maintain a sea-power in proportion to her great commercial needs and industrial activities, and, lastly, that in the future she will form her opinions for herself and that as Mr. Coolidge said in his message the other day, the country will go its way to establish a navy adequate to its own idea of its own necessities without any thought of competition with any other country, just as the British delegate desired at Geneva, for his country, and this is undoubtedly the right course for both countries.