Why postwar governments had reasons to limit naval spending

The political foundation missing in 1909 becomes clearer beside the pressures that favored restraint after the First World War. In the United States, Congress had a strong appetite for cutting naval expenditure. Britain wanted resources for a 'land fit for heroes' and the beginnings of a welfare state. France needed to rebuild after the destruction and human cost of the war, while Germany faced its own reconstruction burden outside the later Washington settlement. Those converging fiscal and social demands made arms limitation useful in the postwar world, whereas governments in 1909 still associated naval expansion with security, status, and national development.