Belligerent Rights in 1927–1929: Foreign Policy versus Naval Policy in the Second Baldwin Government

Abstract

A peacetime dichotomy existed between foreign and naval policy in Britain during Stanley Baldwin's second government, when the foreign office, led by Austen Chamberlain, and the Admiralty, presided over by William Bridgeman, participated in a bitter dispute over coordinating diplomatic requirements with naval necessity. The roots of disagreement lay with the Coolidge naval conference ofJune-August I927, an adjunct of the disarmament preparatory commission meeting under the auspices of the League of Nations and designed to extend the Washington treaty building-ratios for capital ships to lesser craft.' This conference failed through an inability to limit cruisers, at once the chief weapon for defending and attacking seaborne lines of communication. With an extensive network of global sea-routes necessary for trade and imperial defence, the British sought a large number of cruisers both to defend those routes and enforce blockade against the enemy. The Admiralty argued that British requirements could best be met with a fleet of light cruisers 6,ooo tons with six inch guns. The Americans also possessed maritime trade routes and links with their colonies in the Philippines and China. Aithough their sea-lines were not as long in aggregate as the British ones, nor as important to their economic life as were those of Britain,2 the Americans possessed few coaling stations. The Americans used this as an excuse to seek heavy cruisers IO,OOO tons, the displacement of which permitted eight inch guns arguing this would provide greater cruising radii to fulfil the dual role of protection and attack. The Americans really wanted a navy as large as the Royal Navy, a policy of prestige as much as strategic necessity. As equality was measured in total tonnage, the United States wanted a smaller cruiser fleet in numbers than did Britain. But the proposed American fleet would individually have greater displacement and fire-power than that of Britain. Acceptance of the American proposition by the Baldwin government would put Britain at a strategic disadvantage. The two powers' strategic requirements seemed irreconcilable though, if the matter had been left to the two governments after August I927, the chance existed that further negotiations might have led to a solution. The diplomats at Geneva and their superiors at London and Washington made conscious efforts to exit from the conference as