Hood” became familiar in the streets and on the waterfronts of the Mediterranean. At Toulon, which was the northernmost point of that spring cruise, the French matelots thought, perhaps, that there were far too many of them in the town. (Today it is the American fleet that they complain about.)

It was in the August of this year 1921, shortly after the Hood’s cruise had finished, that Sir Eric Geddes was appointed chairman of a committee which was to affect the lives of many of the officers and men then serving aboard her. A businessman whom Lloyd George had enlisted under his banner in 1915, Geddes was an able administrator and an efficient organizer. He had streamlined British communication and supply lines in France during the war and, as Controller of the Admiralty in the spring of 1917, he had co-ordinated and centralized the shipbuilding resources of the country—much as Lord Beaverbrook was to do for aircraft production during World War II. Subsequently Geddes had been First Lord of the Admiralty for a short time, and then President of the newly formed Ministry of Transport. This was the man whose name would be immortalized as the wielder of the “Geddes Ax,” that system of economies in public expenditure from which the Navy, more than almost any other service, was to suffer.

When the Hood completed her first Mediterranean cruise the harsh edge of the Geddes Ax was still concealed. So was the Washington Treaty. After them, nothing would ever be quite the same again. The decks might still shine white under the sun, the gunnery control be more efficient, the communications system be improved—a hundred and one other things. But, Great Britain would no longer be the first naval power.

 

 

 

 

Politicians and Others

 

In July 1921 President Harding invited Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan to a conference at Washington on the limitation of national armaments. Secretary of State Hughes, Elihu Root, and Senators Lodge and Underwood represented the United States. Mr. Balfour (as he then was), together with Lord Lee of Fare- ham, Sir Auckland Geddes, and Sir Robert Borden, represented Great Britain. The importance of the Washington Conference to this history is that if the Hood during her long life represented in many ways the last sunset glow of the Pax Britannica throughout the world, this conference was one of the many signs that that long-lasting supremacy upon the seas no longer obtained. The reasons why Britain had for so long been able to maintain this peace (until shattered by World War I) have been succinctly put by F. H. Hinsley:*

*Hinsley, Command of the Sea.

 

It was the combined power o£ geography, fleets, and finance which enabled her statesmen to wield for so long an influence which approached, if it did not quite attain, the dimensions of world sovereignty and world order.

We shall see nothing like it again until such a time as a world state may be established.

 

 

The conference opened on November 12, 1921. The American Secretary of State immediately proposed that “for a period of not less than ten years there shall be no further construction of capital ships.” Admirals Beatty and Chatfield, who were representing Britain’s naval interests at the conference, were not so much concerned about capital ships as about the potential limitation of cruisers. On cruisers, more than anything else, the life lines of the Empire depended. Britain accepted the limitation on capital ships, therefore, with the proviso that the quality of her ships should not be allowed to fall behind that of other nations.

At this period the capital ship was fiercely criticized, many maintaining that its day was over and done with. This school of thought completely overlooked the fact that the capital ship was no more than the largest unit of a fleet, and that so long as other countries possessed them a country like Britain, dependent on its overseas communications, must have them as well. In World War II the activities of German pocket battleships, or full-sized battlships, would have gone completely unhampered if the Admiralty had succumbed to the idea that the capital ship was obsolete. As it was, we entered the war gravely handicapped with respect to capital ships, and with a high proportion of those which we possessed almost obsolete, or certainly obsolescent.

On December 20 agreement was reached between the contracting parties that the United States and Great Britain should maintain naval parity with 525,000 tons of capital ships each; Japan should have 315,000 tons, and Italy and France 175,000 tons each. The Japanese had fought hard to secure their additional tonnage, which was accepted only on the condition that Britain should be allowed to build two new vessels (of not more than 35,000 tons each) while the United States should complete two ships already in process of construction. The two new ships built by Britain were the famous Nelson and Rodney, sometimes known as the "Washington ships” because their truncated appearance was dictated by the tonnage limitations imposed by the treaty. The Washington Treaty was thus indirectly responsible for the fact that the Hood, with her 42,000 tons, remained throughout her life the largest capital ship afloat.

Mr. Balfour proposed the complete abolition of submarines. It was very natural that he should, seeing that the submarine had already proved itself the greatest menace to England’s security. It is part of the whole curiously unreal world of the Washington Conference, however, that he should have bothered to make the proposal.