Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 11 (June 1, 1930)

Island Empire's Problem

Island Empire's Problem.

During the month that has intervened since last these notes were penned, the London conference to reduce navies has marked time, while French Ministers have come and gone. Of the Great Powers, France and Italy are still pictured as the stumbling block. Report suggests that Britain, the United States and Japan might agree on a substantial measure of naval limitation, but the unknown factor of France-Italian requirements obtrudes. This factor may not materially affect the United States and Japan, but it does affect Britain. Japan and the United States have no English Channel, Mediterranean Sea, or Suez Canal. Japan's narrow seas separate her from countries not at present high in the naval scale, China and the Soviet. If Japan and the United States were as much part and parcel of the European system as is Britain, their naval outlook would be powerfully affected. That fact is perhaps more clearly recognised in Japan than in the United States. The Japanese is an islander, the American a continental. And an islander—even in the peaceful isles of New Zealand—recognises intuitively the dangers of insularity. An American school geography once facetiously described Britain as a small island off the coast of Europe. If that simple geographical fact were borne in mind, the public of the great American Continent might see more clearly the complexities of Britain's naval policy and the courage shown by the British people in already committing themselves to a high degree of voluntary disarmament.

* * *