Asks All To Stop Building Warships.

New York Times 100 years ago today, March 27, 1913:
Churchill Suggests General Cessation of Construction Work for a Year.
SPECIAL OFFER TO GERMANY
Proposal That She and England Cancel 1914 Programmes — Present Rivalry "Futile Folly."
    LONDON, March 26.— A naval holiday for a year, as far as new construction is concerned, was the offer made to the world to-day by Winston Spencer Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, when he submitted the naval estimates to the House of Commons.
    In this way, he said, the peoples of the world would obtain almost instantaneous mitigation of the thralldom in which they had been involved by the evil and insensate folly of the present acute rivalry in armaments. Scores of millions, he declared, were being squandered year after year without making any real difference in the relative naval strength of the nations. His proposal, he argued, would involve no alteration in the relative strength of the world's navies, and he added:
    "We address this proposal to all nations, and to no nation with more profound sincerity than to our great neighbor over the North Sea."
    Mr. Churchill concluded with a graceful recognition of the sensible improvement that had taken place in Anglo-German relations.
    In a speech delivered later in the House of Commons Mr. Churchill definitely proposed that Germany and Great Britain should agree to cancel their programmes of construction for the year 1914. He suggested that the influence of such an agreement would be priceless and measureless in giving wider international scope to an arrangement for the prevention of "wasteful, purposeless, and futile folly."
    The First Lord of the Admiralty said he was convinced that this treatment of the subject was the only way to terminate one of the most stupid and unnatural chapters in the history of European civilization.
    Mr. Churchill announced that the Admiralty had arranged to lend to first-class British liners guns, munitions, and trained gunners to enable these vessels to protect commerce in time of war against armed foreign merchantmen.