Cruiser Bill

Off Panama Canal, last week, the U. S. Battle Fleet held its Winter maneuvers. The grey, lowering ships formed precise patterns on the rolling waters. Blue-coated, brass-buttoned tacticians directed and studied these patterns. Now the vessels drove ahead in files, now they spread out in phalanges. Twenty airplanes were catapulted from the decks, droned ahead to find the "enemy." They returned to report; the patterns were changed. Certain formations meant probable success, others probable disaster. Smoke billowed from funnels, gigantic guns stirred in their turrets, officers peered through their binoculars, made marks on charts, hoisted shining flags and sent curious wireless messages. But always the heaving ships cut new furrows, new foamy patterns. This was the mathematics of conflict, the grim, immediate study of warfare by men trained to stand on vibrating decks, coolly directing sea-born Waterloos amid a holocaust of explosions.

Knowledge of strategy and physical bravery are already possessed by these men, but it is the function of their government to provide them with ships, their instruments of war. In the Senate, last week, this function began to be discussed, relative to the Cruiser Bill, relict of the last Congress. Did the U. S. need more light cruisers? In view of the passage of the Kellogg Peace Treaty, should the U. S. feel that appropriating money for more naval armament would be a belligerent act? The issues were complex and contested. The question seemed likely to absorb the Senate for a good part of the present session.

Issues. All U. S. naval questions tend to revert to a comparison of U. S. naval power with that of Great Britain, whose far-flung navies are by no means melting away, and of Japan, whose late-acquired modernity is no better exemplified than in its mighty war fleet. The Washington Conference of 1921 set the proper ratio of capital ship tonnage for Great Britain, the U. S. and Japan at 5-5-3. The Geneva Conference of 1927 was called to determine whether this ratio could be applied to smaller ships. No results were obtained. Since 1921 the U. S. has fallen behind the ratio; Japan, with regard to cruisers, has passed it. The U. S. delinquency falls also in the cruiser category, so that the consideration of these swift, flexible ships becomes paramount. When all cruisers authorized and appropriated for have been built, Great Britain will show a cruiser tonnage of 385,790; the U. S. of 155,000; Japan of 215,155. Thus the British-U. S. cruiser ratio will be 13 to 5, the Japan-U. S. ratio will be 1.3 to 1.

The principal cruiser-wishers are Senator Frederick Hale of Maine, sponsor of the bill and chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, and Senator Claude A. Swanson of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the Committee. A large part of the Senate agrees with them that the cruiser is essential for the protection of U. S. commerce, that the Navy's lack of cruisers should be rectified. Extremists in this group, making a fetish of navies, are rankled by British and Japanese cruiser preponderance. They demand a navy equal to any in the world, consider possible wars with England or Japan.

The opposition or "small navy" group is small in number, robust in spirit. A possible filibuster from this source is conceived to be the only obstacle to the bill's passage.

The Bill calls for the appropriation of $274,000,000 to build fifteen 10,000 ton cruisers, one 13,000-ton aircraft carrier. Five cruisers would be started in each of the next three years. President Coolidge is understood to object to the three year clause, preferring that the cruisers be built at the discretion of the President, depending on budget conditions. Barring a "small navy" filibuster, this question should cause the most argument, cruiser adherents holding that without the three year clause the cruisers would constitute only a "paper navy."

Discussion. Senator Swanson, opening the discussion, presented the problem, stated the pro-cruiser case, evoked baleful images of British and Japanese sea power. "The British Navy," he said, "is superior to all the navies of the world combined, excluding the Navy of the U. S. We cannot understand why Great Britain should add to her navy so many cruisers except for the purpose of establishing naval supremacy against us. . . . The cruiser strength of the British navy is 3 1/2 times [that] of the American Navy. This . . . leaves American commerce, which can only be protected by cruisers, completely at the mercy of the British Navy."

Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland continued in the same vein, fervently introduced tangential resolutions that the U. S. make no loans to any nation which in time of peace maintains a navy "in any respect superior" to that of the U. S., or which maintains an army "in excess of reasonable peace time requirements."

Following these speeches the discussion was shunted to a Prohibition debate relative to the deficiency bill. "Small navy" men were glad, welcomed every interruption.