After a long discussion, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has officially replied to the United States that it is willing to participate in the Washington meeting. In appointing the members of the delegation, the Government of Japan also laid down the following principles for negotiations: it fully supports the limitation of armaments, and has no objection to general principle slogans such as "open doors", but must resolutely maintain its "vested interests" in the Far East, especially in Siberia, and to that end it can raise the question of the status of the Philippines and Hawaii, the neutralization of the Panama Canal Zone, and the abolition of tariff barriers in India, French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, and the issue of racial equality, which Japan raised at the Paris Peace Conference, as a countermeasure against adverse circumstances.

Unable to sleep, Hirohito sat up from his bed, put on his clothes, and began pacing back and forth around the room.

The shadow of the sinking of the Kaga and Tosa and the destruction of the Amagi hit Hirohito again.

Although the news of the loss of these capital ships had been tightly sealed, and the details of the negotiations at the Washington Conference had been finalized, Hirohito's mind could not be settled.

The thought of the twelve terrible Chinese ships made Hirohito feel restless.

In fact, after the news of the defeat in the Battle of Busan, Hirohito was not as calm as the warlords and politicians in the country, and his real feeling was that a catastrophe was coming.

He could even imagine the annihilation of the Japanese fleet in a battle similar to the Battle of the Celtic Sea.

Because, it is not impossible to have such a possibility.

The six "Republican" class battleships of the Chinese fleet could send almost all the main forces of the German High Seas Fleet, which was far stronger than the Japanese Navy, to the bottom of the sea, and with the addition of six "Glorious" class battlecruisers, it was not too difficult to destroy the Japanese Navy.

The reason why such a tragic scene did not happen was that Britain, which was Japan's ally at the time, did not want the Japanese navy to be too weakened and the Chinese navy became dominant, so it managed to keep the six "Republican" class battleships of the Chinese navy for a period of time, and because he and Yuan Kei made a timely and decisive decision to negotiate a truce with China.

Although peace with China was reached on rather humiliating terms (abandoning Manchuria, Taiwan, the Ryukyus, and northern Korea), it gave Japan a precious respite.

But now Japan is in a dilemma.

In order to deal with the threat posed by China and the United States behind China, Japan must develop a large navy, but Japan's current economic situation simply cannot afford it.

Therefore, the Washington Conference was actually a good opportunity for Japan to use international treaties to bind its opponents.

Although the Washington meeting has not yet begun, the United States has already announced the agenda for the Washington meeting. The agenda of the Washington meeting is as follows: 1. The issue of arms limitation, including naval arms limitation, control of new war forces, and arms control of the army; 2. The Far East of the Pacific, including the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Sino-Japanese Question, the Siberian Question, and the Pacific Mandate Islands. Among them, the Sino-Japanese issue only deals with the territorial preservation of the two countries, the opening of the door, the equal industrial and commercial opportunities of each country, the development of railways, and the price of the currency, and excludes the Korean issue and the Ryukyu issue.

In terms of limiting naval armaments, as long as it succeeds in forcing China to join in, it will be a victory for Japan

"As long as Japan can absorb the resources of the eastern Siberian region that it has already acquired, it will not be a problem to defeat China, and Japan will need time."

A voice shouted in Hirohito's heart, as if it was his grandfather, Emperor Meiji, reminding him and cheering up.

Hirohito involuntarily knelt on the floor, clasped his hands together, closed his eyes, and continued to listen to his inner voice.

Jiangnan Shipyard, slipway.

By this time, the hull of a large battleship on the slipway was almost complete.

Designer Dr. Fu Jing looked at the hull on the slipway and nodded with satisfaction.

"We'll be in the water in a few days." Lin Yuqing, the ship-building superintendent, said to Fu Jing with a smile, "The main thing is to get ahead of the United States meeting, hehe." ”

"That's nature." Fu Jing nodded, of course he knew what Lin Yujing meant by "the United States", "Actually, this meeting is really not at the right time, and I don't know how many frames will be set for us at that time." ”,

"Yes, I'm afraid we won't be able to build big ships in the future." Lin Yuqing wanted to comfort him, but he sighed first, "If we are forced to dismantle the twelve big boats, Lao Tzu will not do it." ”

Fu Jing listened to Lin Yuqing's words, smiled confidently, patted Lin Yuqing's shoulder, pointed to the hull on the slipway meaningfully, and said: "The development of the navy must not stop, so no matter what the frame is, there are still loopholes to exploit." ”

At this time, what was being built on the slipway was the "Zodiac" class large cruiser designed by Fu Jing.

"This is our last armored cruiser in China, isn't it?". Lin Yuqing asked.

"Yes." Fu Jing nodded, "For our Chinese shipbuilding industry, this is the largest armored cruiser, and it should also be the last class." ”

The large cruiser of the "Zodiac" class is the last armored cruiser of the first class built by China itself. The standard displacement of the design is 20,350 tons, and the main dimensions are: total length 234.7 meters, waterline length 227.8 meters, mold width 27 meters, draft 9.29 meters. Power: GE steam turbine - "Pratt & Whitney" motor, four-shaft push, power 168,000 horsepower, design speed 36 knots, cruising range 15,000 nautical miles / 18 knots. The armament system of the "Zodiac" class large cruiser is 9 American-made MK4 280-mm 55-diameter naval guns, with three triple main turrets, two in the front and one in the rear, and 6 American-made MK15 twin-mounted 127-mm 51-fold high-diameter dual-purpose guns, 3 seaplanes, and a catapult. In terms of protection, its main armor belt is designed with 200 + 50 mm and camber 19 degrees, the armored deck 140 + 80 mm, the armored compartment 50 mm turret 180-300 mm, the gun mount 250 mm, the command tower 220-350 mm. The observation and sighting optical equipment adopts two "Zeiss" optical 10-meter baseline shooting commanders and two "Nord" unified shooting commanders.

Since China has never been a naval power, in the eyes of the great powers and the Chinese themselves, it is not qualified to participate in the naval armaments conference, and the European powers that have just fought have no intention of arguing with China, so with almost no restrictions (except for money), the most powerful large cruiser in the current world navy has appeared

Like the "Republican" class battleships and the "Glorious" class battlecruisers, after the completion of the design work, due to the limited capacity of China to build large ships at present, the eight "Zi Rat", "Ugly Cow", "Yin Hu", "Mao Rabbit", "Chen Long", "Si Snake", "Wu Ma", and "Wei Yang" of the "Zodiac" class cruisers were handed over to the Fore River Shipyard and the Philadelphia Navy Yard under the "Bethlehem Iron and Steel Heavy Industry" of the United States for joint construction, and construction began on May 21, 1920. The "Shen Monkey", "Youji", "Hu Dog" and "Hai Pig" were imported from the United States by the Jiangnan Shipyard under the "Jiangnan Heavy Industry", and the construction began in China on April 5, 1921.

"Did you hear that? Many words of the Great Kanto earthquake in Japan, two newly built battleships that had not been in service for a short time sank. Fu Jing said to Lin Yuqing.

"In the Japanese way, they don't just admit it." Lin Yuqing said, "I will definitely spare no effort to build bigger and stronger things." He looked at the hull on the slipway with some melancholy, "Maybe it's bigger than our current 'Republic' class, and we're building these small ships instead." ”

"A 20,000-ton ship, you say it's a small boat?" Fu Jing looked at Lin Yuqing with some surprise.

"Compared with the ships we built in China before, of course they are big ships." Lin Yuqing said, "But if the Japanese build a giant ship of 70,000 or 80,000 tons, isn't it a small boat?" ”

Fu Jing understood why Lin Yuqing said this, but he didn't argue with him anymore on this topic.

In the Battle of Jutland and the Battle of Celtic in World War I, the performance of the battleships of the sea supremacy in the battles attracted the attention of the whole world and left an indelible impression on naval observers around the world. Therefore, after the end of the war, the development of the world's navies focused on battleships, and the construction of larger and stronger battleships was not only still the goal of the navies of the great powers, but also the outstanding ship designers of all countries in the world racked their brains to focus on strengthening the performance of battleships, and China was no exception. Designers like Lin Yuqing also focused their design ideas on building bigger and stronger battleships.

"This meeting on limiting naval armaments will definitely limit the tonnage of capital ships." Lin Yuqing continued, "But the treaty has a time limit, and once the deadline expires, we must go back to the old way." ”,

"Not bad." Fu Jing remembered the valuable new ship design materials and data that Yang Shuoming gave him in his safe, and nodded thoughtfully, "That's why we have to run in small steps, and we can't delay a little longer." ”

On October 1, 1923, the Washington Conference opened at the Continental Memorial Hall, which belonged to the palatial American ** Daughters Association, and the agenda of the meeting included three major items: the limitation of naval armaments; the abolition of the Anglo-Japanese alliance; The Siberian question and the Pacific Mandate Islands. Present at the meeting were the United States, Britain, China, Japan, France, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands, with US representatives including Secretary of State Hughes, former Secretary of State Rutte, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Lodge, and Underwood, Democratic Party chief member of the Foreign Relations Committee. China's plenipotentiary representatives included Foreign Minister Gu Weijun, Vice Premier Zeng Qi, Minister to the United States Shi Zhaoji, and Attorney General Dr. Wang Chonghui, accompanied by a large number of senior advisers, including Zhou Ziqi, former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister, Lu Zhengxiang, former Foreign Minister, Admiral Cheng Biguang, and Vice Admiral Cai Tinggan, with a total of 130 Chinese delegations, four times the size of the Chinese delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. The Japanese representatives included Minister of the Navy Biao Caibe, former Minister of the Navy Yuzaburo Kato, Ambassador to the United States Kishigero Bihara, and Vice Foreign Minister Masanaka Uehara. The British Imperial delegation was headed by Lord Balfour, former Foreign Secretary and Speaker of the House of Lords, and included Lord Lee, Secretary of State for the Navy, Ambassador to the United States, Geddes, and representatives of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and India; France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and other countries have sent such figures as ministers of colonial ministers, members of Congress, ambassadors and ministers to the United States, most of whom are diplomatic experts familiar with the Far East.

At the first meeting of the Washington Conference held on the same day, Secretary of State Hughes did not deliver a traditional, elegant, and empty opening speech, as the delegates at the meeting had expected, but bluntly threw out the first card of the United States at the beginning: stop the naval arms race, and the six major naval powers, the United States, Britain, China, Japan, France, and the United States. It intends to reduce naval armaments in a ratio of 5:5:4:3:1.75:1.75, to abandon or sink all capital ships and auxiliary ships in excess of this ratio, and to completely stop building new capital ships in the next 10 years. "The whole world is watching this meeting to ease the heavy burden that comes with the arms race," Hughes said. The Government of the United States believes that we should honour that desire without delay. Hughes's speech won "thunderous applause" in the hall of the venue.

The reduction of naval armaments was the direct cause of the Washington Conference, and although Britain, China, Japan, and other countries had previously decided to abandon their shipbuilding plans because they could not afford huge naval military expenditures, they still had to fight over what conditions and proportions they could accept.

At the time of the Washington Conference, the ratio of the total tonnage of the navies of the United States, Britain, China and Japan was 7.5:5:7:4.9, and the tonnage ratio of the active capital ships was 10:6:7.2:6.8. If the part that has already started construction is counted, the ratio of capital ships becomes 10:7:9:8.7, and Britain no longer has much advantage, especially since the British capital ships are more aging than the United States. The United States wants the limited four-nation navy to have a ratio of 10:10:7:6, and China wants the four-nation navy to have a 10:10:5:5 ratio of strength, expressing its desire to reduce its navy and develop its economy, but Japan wants to maintain at least a 10:10:6:7 ratio.

Because of Japan's stubborn insistence on maintaining a "70 percent" ratio to the United States, the atmosphere at the beginning of the Washington meeting was very tense.

Americans do not understand that the "seventy percent theory against the United States" has always been the basis of Japan's naval policy, and this view originated in the last years of the Meiji era, when Japanese naval strategists Yoshida Kiyokaze and Akiyama Shinyuki proposed that in a war with Britain and the United States, the Japanese navy must maintain at least 70 troops of the other side in order to have a 50 chance of victory; Sato Tetsutaro's credo is that the attacking fleet must maintain a strength advantage of more than 50, that is, 3:2, over the defending fleet, so the strength of the defending fleet must exceed 2/3 of the opponent's strength, reaching 70, in order to have a minimum basis for a draw.

The Japanese Navy concluded from the above proposition that, on the premise of the strategic assumption of the United States attacking and defending Japan, if the Japanese fleet could not maintain the strength of the American fleet of more than 70 percent, the result would be that it would not be able to prevent the outbreak of war in peacetime, and it would not be able to prevent the US fleet from rushing to the coastal waters and mainland of Japan and landing in Japan in wartime. The 1907 "Imperial Defense Policy" decided to maintain 70 percent of its naval strength with the United States as the main hypothetical enemy, and the 1918 revised version of the "Imperial Defense Policy" reaffirmed this idea, and on the eve of the Washington Conference, Japan's "Arms Limitation Countermeasures Committee" proposed that "it is absolutely necessary to have more than 70 percent of the naval forces against the United States, and there is absolutely no room for compromise below this ratio." ,

The U.S. side has similar views on the comparison of U.S. and Japanese naval forces. In the materials submitted for the Washington Conference by the expert committee composed of Roosevelt and Admiral Koontz, Secretary of Naval Operations, it was necessary for the United States to maintain a 3:2 superiority in forces over Japan in order to make up for the shortage of naval bases in the Pacific region. Secretary of the Navy Dunby's final approval of allowing the United States, Britain, China, and Japan to maintain a ratio of 10:10:6:6 naval forces.

In accordance with the established guidelines before the trip, the Japanese delegation proposed a revision of Hughes's plan, and the ratio of the Japanese-US navy to at least 7:10, and the Japanese representative who participated in the negotiations Kato Kanji said: "The Japanese and US navies will inevitably compete for dominance in the Pacific Ocean and the competition between Japan and the United States over China will inevitably lead to a war for hegemony between the Japanese and US navies, and Japan is not conducive to a protracted war." …… The United States has a strong industrial strength, and there is no need to maintain a large armament in peacetime, even if it uses a standing force equal or inferior to Japan, it can still expand its fleet in time after the outbreak of war and maintain security. However, a country like Japan, which is absolutely inferior in terms of resources and industry, does not possess a strong standing army in peacetime, and has nothing to rely on in case of crisis. Kato also claimed that Japan, as a sovereign country, should have the same armaments as the United States, and that maintaining 70 percent is the biggest concession. Japan's chief representative, Biao Finance, also believes that Japan should maintain a 70 percent ratio to Britain and the United States.

Due to the stalemate between the two sides, the Japanese delegation repeatedly asked for instructions from the country, and the Japanese Foreign Affairs Advisory Committee instructed the Japanese delegation to insist on the 70 percentage, but the United States did not budge, because the U.S. Navy was not satisfied with the 10:6 ratio, believing that even according to this ratio, the U.S. Navy would not be able to establish its absolute superiority in the Pacific Ocean (the reason for agreeing to such a ratio is based on the idea of joint operations between the Chinese Navy and the U.S. Navy), and Britain also supported the U.S. position, It even put forward a 10:5.5 demand, on the grounds that the US navy is spread across the two oceans, and the British navy should be scattered all over the world, and Japan's 55 ratio of the two navies is enough to establish absolute superiority in the western Pacific.

The debate between the United States and Japan over "60 percent or 70 percent" has become the biggest obstacle to reaching an arms limitation agreement, and in the face of joint pressure from the United States, Britain, and China, both Biao Tsukasa and Yuzaburo Kato recognize that a decision must be made......

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