re: #167 William Lewis

Hague Conventions.

Washington Naval Treaties

We talk fine. Doing what is agreed upon? That’s more difficult unless you have an example like the WWI generation did from Mustard, Chlorine and Phosgene. Of course that didn’t stop the Imperial Japanese Army… Did stop the German Chancellor though…

Though we also were prepared to break out the gas at about any time. Churchill thought about it and ruled it out. And then there was a load of mustard gas on a Liberty ship that was sunk during an air raid in 1943 (Link). That was covered up at the time.

The naval treaties were sort of interesting looking back. They did slow/end a battleship race between the major powers, probably to the benefit of the US and UK - and also pushed the development of naval aviation since everyone then converted a few hulls under construction into large (for that time) aircraft carriers. The secondary treaties led to naval design challenges in ship design in the 1930s (35,000 ton BB and 10,000 ton cruisers.) Though essentially there was cheating there. And one of the latter treaties let Germany back into the game regarding the building of submarines.