Why the County class was not the only treaty-cruiser answer

A successful ship is not necessarily the most weight-efficient design available. The all-forward G3 studies and Nelson-class battleships show that the Royal Navy already knew how to concentrate weapons and protection when infrastructure or treaty limits demanded it. The County class instead retained a traditional balanced layout. The Washington treaty's 10,000-ton ceiling also made smaller cruisers unattractive when rival navies could build to the full allowance. Using full-load displacement near 14,000 to 15,000 tons shows why treaty standard displacement alone can obscure the practical size of a cruiser at war. The closing review returns to the County class's balanced silhouette and argues that elegance alone did not justify abandoning the all-forward alternative.