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There were three possibilities. The first was
the lines of communication between a country and
its Oversea Possessions. A calculation on this
basis would place the principal Naval Powers in
the following order:- The British Empire, France,
the United States of America (with communications
about half the length of the British Empire),
Italy (whose comunications would be less than
half those of France), and Japan.
Germany, having
no Oversea Possessions, would be entitled to no
cruisers under this formula. Second, the meaning
might be the length of the lines of communication
of the whole of the oversea trade of the count ry.
That would place the British Empire, the United
States of America, France, Italy and Japan about
equal, with a slight preponderance to the British
Empire. A third possible interpretation of the
formula was that suggested by Lord Jellicoe at
the Three-Power Conference at Geneva, namely,
to take the total number of ships engaged in
oversea trade on a particular day and multiply it
by miles. This formula would put the British
Empire first, the United States of America second,
Japan third, France and Italy being about equal.
It seemed very probable that France intended
the first of these three methods as a besis of
calculation, since her object was to obtain a
greater cruiser tomage than Italy. On the other
hand, it was extremely unlikely that the Americans
or the Italians would look at such a formula.
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