Cruiser tonnage might have bought battleships or torpedo swarms

The cruiser allowance might have served Italy better as two more battleships or as many destroyers and torpedo boats. This is not an endorsement of the Jeune École as a universal answer. In Italy's Mediterranean position, either heavily protected ships or a swarm of fast, expendable craft mapped more cleanly onto likely wars than intermediate cruisers. Against the larger Royal Navy, the first option sought local fighting power and the second sought numbers and torpedo attacks. The comparison turns treaty tonnage into a force-structure choice rather than a simple count of hulls.