The Wilson times. [volume] (Wilson, N.C.) 1896-19??, 1921-11-25
SHIPS WHICH
! ARE OVER $4,000
| TONS BURDEN
CANNOT PASS CANAL
China Threatens to Withdraw
! From the Conference. The
Proposition To Take Over
Her Affairs, and Arrange
Her Finances Amounts to
Naturalization She Says.
(By David Lawrence
Copyright, 1921, by the Daily

| (By David Lawrence.)
Copyright, 1921, by the Daily
Times.)
Washington, Nov. 24.-The real
reason, for the proposal of Secretary
Hughes and the American navy that
hereafter no battleships shall be
built by any nation larger than 35,-
900 tons is just coming to the sur
face. The United States does not wish
to have any battleships too large tc
go through the Panama Canal. Before
the present conference was convened
and the armament race was at its
height, there was talk of $4,000 and
10000 ton battleships to be built by
Japan. This would have been met by
the construction of American battle
ships of equal size but these vessels
would have been valuable to the Uni
ted States only in the Pacific where
they would have had to be kept most
of the time.
American naval policy, at least for
the present. contemplates a fleet di-
vided between the Atlantic and the
Pacific and one of the chief values
of the Canal is that strategically it
gives the United States great defen-
sive strength. The disadvantage of
having vessels in the Pacific which
must round Cape Horn was conspicu-
ously illustrated in the Spanish Amer
ican war when "Fighting Bob" Evans
made his memorable trip from Pacific
to Atlantic waters to assist the squad
rons of the Cuban coast.
The Panama Canal is able at pres
ent to accommodate vessels with a
displacement of over 10000 tons
comfortably but the engineers who
built the ditch did not contemplate
ships greater than 110 feet width.
There are now no vessels afloat as
wide as this so the Hughes proposal
affects only the future. 1t reads as
follows:
THAT no capital ship shall be built
in replacement with tonnage dis
placement of more than $4,000 tons" :"
Mr.. Hughes gave no reasons or ar
gument for the foregoing suggestion
but naval experts now realize what
was back of it. OF course there were
other reasons for this Limitation such
as stabilizing the value of existing
battleships and armament.
When the Panama Canal was built,
there was considerable discussion
about the future size of. battleships
and some engineers advocated a
width of at least 100 or 1870 feet and
now experts are inclined to agree
that the ditch should have been wider
than 10. AS for length, the newest
type of battle cruisers are approxi-
mately 900 feet long while the locks
are not much more than 1000 feet
in length.
There are those who believe that
good fighting craft of as much as Co.
900 tons displacement could be built
with width of los feet which would
enable them to pass through the
Canal but while American ships
would have to meet that handicap
this would not be the case with Japa-
nese battleships which have no spe-
|cial reason for wanting to get into
the Atlantic quickly. The limitation
to $4,000 tons will have the effect
therefore of placing the United
States on parity with Japan with
respect to all new battleships built
to replace those which may become
obsolete during the ten year naval
holiday.
Under the Hughes proposals, the
United States would scrap vessels of
the Indiana, Iowa, Montana and
North Carolina type with an estihat-
ed displacement of $4,000 tons the
building of which has been authoriz-
ed. OF course the larger the ship, the
greater the size of guns and arma-
ment and therefore the more costly
the whole vessel becomes. Just as
soon as one nation builds vessel of
larger type than any other afloat, i'm
mediately all ships Of preceding
classes which do not carry as big