One proposal for treaty cruisers would have limited them to no more than half the displacement of a battleship. A 35,000-ton capital-ship ceiling would therefore have produced a 17,500-ton cruiser allowance. The exceptionally small España-class dreadnoughts show how close that figure already stood to true battleship scale. A simple proportional rule was much less conservative than it first appeared. Britain could have built very powerful cruisers within such an allowance.
Chapter · 1:02:27-1:03:17
España and the 10,000-ton cruiser limit
The smallest dreadnoughts introduce a theory about why treaty negotiators rejected a cruiser limit tied mechanically to battleship displacement.