Evening star., 1929-12-15
NAVY is HELD INSURANCE
FOR AMERICAN SHIPPING
Naval Captain Explains Treaty Provisions
as 1t Is Applied to Protection
for United States.
BY CAPT. HERBERT S. HOWARD,
,-ors,,,,.,ta. r,o-nc r1nItnd Ststas Navv

cruisers. GENEVA
ences have argued about them, and very
lately the prime minister of Great Brit
ain has proposed a further discussion
OF their building. with the result that
the President of the United States has
considered holding up the construction
of three of our own new cruisers, au-
thorized by the last Congress, until a
new international conference can be
held. Following this suggestion came
the visit of Mr. Macdonald to the United
States with the definite plans for a
naval conference in London in January,
1880.
Into this discussion have come vari-
Gus technical arguments about cruisers
of long radius or short radius. with
peculiar terms about ''yardsticks," un-
til the ordinarily intelligent man in the
street must Wonier what 1t is all about,
II he has not given the whole thing up
as too involved and technical for any
one not trained in naval and inter-
national naval matters.
This attitude was brought forcibly to
my attention some days ago by a man
of high intelligence, who, when he
found 1 was in the Navy, asked me If I
could please explain to him not only
why there was all this discussion Of
cruisers, but just what cruiser" might
be; whether 1t was capital ship, g
battle cruiser, a warship or any one OF
THESE, ana WIldb was IL
these are the typical Speculations OF an
individual interested in the discussions
of cruisers and trying to find out what
1t is all about, it seems to me that an
explanation which may throw some
light on the subject is due the thinking
people of the country.
Cruisers Are Distance Ships.
Since our Navy was first created We
have always had cruisers, for no matter
whether navy be of steel or of wood,
a cruiser has always been a vessel in
tended to cruise at distances from the
fighting feet to hunt for and bring back
information, to guard fleets of merchant
vessels or attack the merchant fleets OF
the enemy. and to act in the light, fast
wings of the formation in time OF battle.
To fulfill these duties cruiser must
always be a ship of higher speed than
the heavy ship built to stand up in the
line of battle. and to gain this higher
speed the cruiser must be smaller and
lighter with smaller guns than the
heavy line-of- battle ships
In the old days of the wooden Navy
such cruisers we're called frigateS, and
1t was in cruisers such as the Ranger,
Constitution and Constellation that the
foundations of our naval history and
@ tradition we're laid.
Times have changed. and ships of
wood and canvas have become ships of
steel and steam. but the cruiser, now
eS then, is the high-Speed scout.
Until the treaty limiting naval arm
aments between Great Britain Japan,
France, Italy and the United States
went into effect, in 1921. the cruiser
was content to be described in approx
mate terms such as have been outlined
above. In that treaty, however, were
given definitions which fixed closely
when a cruiser was a cruiser and when
1t became something else.
Warships Are Described.
Basically, cruisers, capital ships and
other types referred to in the treaty
and discussed so glibly in the daily
papers are all "warshipS"; that is,
ships equipped with guns, gun or bomb
carrying airplanes or any other fight
ing weapon. They may range from the
42,000-ton battle cruiser Hood of the
British Navy to small gunboat of 1000
TONS but they are all Warships. The
treaty defined a capital ship" as
vessel larger than 10000 tons and car
rying larger than 8-inch guns, but linn
tied the vessels OF this class to an tndi-
vidual size of 35 900 tons, under certain
given conditions of measurement and
specified that such ships might not be
armed with guns larger than Is inches
in caliber.
Aside from the treaty limitations, q
capital Slip is the modern prototype of
the OLD wooden line-of- battle ship-a
ship with guns large enough and armor
heavy enough to stand in the line of
battle and give and take the heaviest
blows in direct combat Within this
category there are grouped two classes
battleships and battle cruisers. Battle
ships have generally the accepted speed
of the battle line, 81 to % knots, with
1t Har4 nv,I
the heaviest armor, while battle cruisers
are generally armed with the same
heavy guns, but numbers of guns and
thickness of armor have been sacrificed
to high speed. In passing, 1t might be
mentioned that in our own Navy we
have no battle cruisers, our heavy ship
building having been concentrated in
battleships. It was in this class of
capital ships" that the nations sig
natory to the treaty agreed to the now
famous 5-5-3 ratio, and in this class no
controversy as to building has arisen.
AS another special class the treaty
defined an aircraft carrier" as q ship
so built that airplanes can be launched
from or alight upon her decks, and
limitations were placed upon the dis
placement and gun power of an tnd1-
vidual aircraft carrier and upon the
total displacement of such war vessels
which each nation might possess.
Treaty Establishes Deadline.
Thus by these requirements of the
treaty a deadline was made, marked by
a displacement of 10000 tons and a
gun inches in caliber, above which
ships were carefully defined and limits
set as to total numbers and individual
sizes in which these ships could be
built, but below this deadline the field
was left wide open. In this wide-open
field nations were free to build any and
all kinds of warships which they
pleased. and it is in this field that the
modern cruiser appeared which led to
the discussion now confronting the
world.
Before the time of the treaty modern
cruisers, whether designed particularly
for use with the battle fleets or for the
protection or destruction of commerce,
were generally ships of 5000 to 5000
tons armed with or inch guns. and
with speeds around 29 knots, although
the British did have one class armed
with guns of 7.5-inch caliber and OF
displacement approaching 10000 tons
OF the smaller type were the famous
German raider Emden and the British
Sydney which destroyed her. With
the new upper limit of 10000 tons and
5-inch guns, the natural result was that
each naval nation decided at once that
its needs would only be met by ships
of the largest size and of the greatest
power which could be built. So Eng
land, Japan, France, Italy and our
selves set to work to design and tC
build, in limited numbers at least, ships
of this type. Such program was prob
ably natural. If one navy has ship
of a certain type which another navy
may conceivably have TO meet, ships tC
meet this type must be built.
In our own Navy the case was ir