Soon after that came the Washington Conference--a great landmark in the
history of this problem. For reasons I need not go into in detail, the
naval problem is very much easier than the military or air problem. You
have as the nucleus of naval forces something quite definite and
precise--the battleship--and it also happens that that particular unit
is extremely costly, and takes a long time to build, and no man has yet
ever succeeded in concealing the existence of a battleship. There you
had three important points--a large and important unit in the possession
of everybody concerned, very costly, so that by reducing it you make
great reductions in expenditure. There was no possibility of avoiding an
agreement about the construction of battleships, and it is to these
facts mainly that the happy results of the Washington Conference were
due.
But for the furtherance of the problem the point is this. The Washington
Conference definitely established the principle of reduction of
armaments on a great ratio. The ratio for battleships between Great
Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy, was settled as to
5, 5, 3, and 1.75. They all agreed on a definite ratio. All agreed to
scrap a certain number of ships, to bring their tonnage down to a
certain figure, and by doing that relatively they were left in the same
position as before, with this advantage--that they at once obtained an
enormous reduction in expenditure on armaments.
That opened up a new line of approach for the attack on this problem
from the military and air standpoint. And the next development took
place in February this year at the meeting of the Temporary Mixed
Commission on armaments, when the Esher proposals were presented. There
has been a great deal of talk about the Esher proposals, and I am glad
of it, because the one thing wanted in this question is public interest.
The Esher proposals were an endeavour to apply to land armaments this
principle of reduction on a great ratio. And the line taken was this. It
was necessary to find some unit in land armaments which corresponded
with the battleships, and the unit selected by Lord Esher was the
300,000 regular soldiers of the peace armies in France, England, and
Spain. It was selected because it happened to be the number to which the
Austrian army was reduced by treaty, and with that unit he proposed a
ratio for the armies of Europe, which would leave everybody relatively
in much the same position as before, but would obtain an immediate
reduction in numbers of standing armies and a great reduction of
expenditure.
This proposal was subjected to a great deal of criticism, and I am sorry
to say nine-tenths of the criticism appears to emanate from persons who
have never read the proposal at all. It is a proposal which lends itself
to a great deal of criticism, and the most effective criticism which
could have been applied at the time it was presented was that it put the
cart before the horse, and approached the problem from the wrong
direction, for, as Lord Robert Cecil has said here this morning, what
nations require is security. Some of them have clear ideas as to the way
of obtaining it, but they all want it, and before you can expect people
to reduce their armaments, which are, after all, maintained mainly for
the purpose of providing security, you must give them something that
will take the place of armaments.