Interwar Royal Navy preparation and threat assumptions

The first quotations from Moretz's study concern the timing and assumptions behind interwar naval preparation. Bertram Watson warns that waiting for Japan to display hostile intent would give it time to prevent Britain from completing its preparations. A. C. Bell expects Britain to control German overseas communications as it had in the First World War, but that expectation depends on Norway and France remaining secure. A familiar operational method could fail if bases, coastlines, or allied territory changed hands. The passage presents war planning as a chain of political, geographic, and logistical assumptions rather than a prediction about fleets alone.