Dreadnoughts and Dollars: Navy League Sounds the Alarm Over Naval Disarmament
By DAVID VERGUN, Production Editor
Since its inception in 1902, the Navy League has advocated maintaining strong sea services as essential pillars of U.S. national security. However, events beginning in 1921, just three years after the end of World War I, would test the Navy League's resolve and its raison d'être.
In early 1921, Congress passed a joint resolution favoring disarmament talks between the United States and its erstwhile World War I allies: Great Britain, Japan, Italy, and France. Disarmament was viewed both as a cost-savings measure and as a means to avert an arms race that might lead to another war. The United States was concerned in particular about Japan, which had a strong and growing military presence in the Far East and in its recently acquired Central Pacific islands that had been under German mandate before the war. The U.S. Navy's War Plan Orange, later played out in a series of war games, depicted Japan as a growing threat to the U.S. Pacific territories--including Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii--as well as to British, Dutch, and French holdings in the Far East.
Shortly after passage of the joint resolution, Charles E. Hughes, President Harding's secretary of state, called for a disarmament conference among the leading world powers. The conference, also known as the Washington Conference, convened in the nation's capital on 12 November 1921. Among the agreements reached by the five former allies were: (a) the scrapping of older ships; (b) a 10-year cessation of capital ship construction--which became known as the "naval holiday"; (c) various restrictions on fortifying possessions in the western Pacific; and, of greatest importance, (d) limitations on the aggregate displacement of capital ships. The new limits--later described as the 5-5-3 ratio--were 500,000 tons each for the United States and Great Britain, 300,000 tons for Japan, and 175,000 tons each for France and Italy.
Opponents of naval disarmament noted that the treaty lacked provisions for verification and enforcement. It later was learned that Japan had secretly flouted the disarmament agreements. Severe restrictions also were placed on the growth of U.S. naval power at a time when many believed that the United States should be expanding its fleet to safeguard the nation's greatly increased, and still growing, global interests.
To the Navy League, which advocated the continued strengthening of all of the nation's sea services, the disarmament talks were particularly distressing, but the tide of U.S. public opinion generally favored reducing military expenditures. Moreover, the Navy League was then operating in the red, and membership was declining. From 1921 to 1935, Sea Power, the official monthly publication of the Navy League, was discontinued as a cost-savings measure. Minutes of a 1921 Board of Directors meeting of the Navy League gloomily state: "Since [U.S.] 'sea power' has ceased to exist, there isn't much reason for keeping one [Sea Power magazine]." There was even serious discussion of disbanding the Navy League itself.
But in the midst of all of the bad news, the Navy League rallied--stepping out smartly, so it seemed, to the tune of Jerome Kern's 1920 song hit, "Look for the Silver Lining." That silver lining came in the form of a Navy League publicity event sponsored by the New York City Council that was so unusual at the time that it would grab newspaper headlines nationwide, lead to renewed public attention on the need for strong sea services, and reinvigorate the Navy League itself. The event was Navy Day, celebrated for the first time on 27 October 1922, the birthday of Theodore Roosevelt, the president who had played such an instrumental role 20 years earlier not only in modernizing the U.S. Navy but also in founding the Navy League.
Within a few short years, Navy Day had evolved into an annual event and included such other well-publicized activities around the country as paying tribute to the sea services' many contributions to national defense; educating political and business leaders, and the public, about the importance of correcting deficiencies in shipbuilding and manpower; and hosting celebrations in cities throughout the United States and overseas. Guest speakers for Navy Day celebrations included prominent national political figures and leaders of the sea services.
Public tours of sea-service ships and bases also were organized as part of the League's Navy Day activities. In 1924, nearly one million people, including many thousands of school children, visited ships and port facilities nationwide. Radio stations offered generous air time, and newspapers everywhere published entire sections devoted to educating the public about the importance of sea power. In 1924, the four major motion picture newsreel "weeklies" produced films portraying Navy life.
An estimated 48 million persons saw the news weeklies, according to Navy League records. Students in universities across the country, including those in Ivy League colleges, participated in Navy League-organized essay contests. The essay theme was the importance of the sea services to national security.
The Navy League received assistance in organizing Navy Day events from the Navy, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Military Order of the World War, the Grand Army of the Republic, Lions Clubs, chambers of commerce, and even the U.S. Army, to name just a few. Colleges and high schools incorporated into their curricula study courses on the history and contributions of the sea services. Nearly every state governor, and hundreds of mayors, signed proclamations designating 27 October as Navy Day.
President Coolidge, who had succeeded Harding, added his own ringing endorsement. In a letter to the Navy League, he wrote: "The Navy is the first line of defense. Our national situation makes it peculiarly important to us, for we have never been committed to the policy of a large army, relying to a greater extent than less favored countries might, on the advantage of our location and our confidence in an adequate navy. The traditional devotion of the Navy to the highest usefulness and efficiency makes it especially fitting that Navy Day be so observed as to show the country's appreciation of this splendid service."
In 1930, another disarmament conference was held in London. The Navy League led the opposition to further disarmament, but what became known as the London Treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate. One of the treaty agreements provided for parity between the submarine fleets of the United States and Japan. It was generally believed that America lacked the will to modernize its navy and, with the onset of the Great Depression, most citizens seemed more concerned with the economy and other domestic issues.
Also, oceans separated Europe and Asia from the United States, and problems overseas seemed remote. The Navy League's warnings were not heed- ed. In a few short years, though, Americans would learn the hard way that robust sea services are essential for defending the country far from its coastlines.
Navy Day continues to be celebrated by the Navy League and the sea services, and other Navy supporters. However, in 1972, Navy Day was changed to 13 October, the anniversary of the Navy's founding. The Navy League also continues to advocate strong sea services for the security of the nation, as it has since its inception a century ago--and for the same reason:
"As to dollars and dreadnoughts, a navy cannot be improvised overnight, nor in a month or a year," Hendryck Hudson wrote in a November 1920 Sea Power article titled "Dreadnoughts and Dollars." The Navy is "the one arm," he continued, "that must be kept in the ... [prime] of condition at all times in order to be worth its salt when needed. Whatever power has the upper hand must depend on its strength at sea."
The dreadnoughts have long since been decommissioned and scrapped, but Hudson's message is as valid today as it was then. *
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