. . .in the same position as before, with this advantage—that they at once obtained an enormous reduction in expenditure on armaments.

That opened up a new line of approach for the attack on this problem from the military and air standpoint. And the next development took place in February this year at the meeting of the Temporary Mixed Commission on armaments, when the Esher proposals were presented. There has been a great deal of talk about the Esher proposals, and I am glad of it, because the one thing wanted in this question is public interest. The Esher proposals were an endeavour to apply to land armaments this principle of reduction on a great ratio. And the line taken was this. It was necessary to find some unit in land armaments which corresponded with the battleships, and the unit selected by Lord Esher was the 300,000 regular soldiers of the peace armies in France, England, and Spain. It was selected because it happened to be the number to which. . . Read More