Curtailment & Limitation

Upon the instruments of War last week President Hoover bent a mind primed for Peace. Logic and economy were his inspirations: logic, to make U. S. national defense congruous with the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War; economy, to make a tax cut possible.

Army. Military appropriations added to naval have reached totals which made President Hoover blink in astonishment. For this year he found that estimated national defense expenditures of the U. S. would be $741,000,000. Great Britain was spending only $547,000,000, France $523,000,000. What concerned him more was the prospect of increases next year and the next and the next, mounting to a total of $803,000,000 in 1933. Looking back he found that an average of $266.000.000 yearly had kept the Army & Navy going before the War. Announced the President:

"Current expenditures . . . of the Army and Navy constitute the largest military budget in the world and at a time when there is less real danger of extensive disturbance to peace than at any time in more than half a century."

To discover why the Army cost so much President Hoover instructed Secretary of War Good to appoint a special commission for the General Staff. Specifically this commission was to "see what services and other outlays have become obsolete through advancement of science and war methods; and what development programs can well be spread over longer periods in view of the general world outlook." To his Shenandoah camp President Hoover took as week-end guests to ponder this problem Secretary Good, Assistant Secretaries Hurley and Davison, Chief of Staff Summerall. It was decided to let the General Staff instead of a commission thereof handle the problem.

Not against the size of the Army (118,750 men, 12,000 officers) but against its overhead was the President's complaint leveled. Army officers were ready with explanations: the U. S. soldier is better paid, better fed, better housed, better equipped than the soldier of any other nation. Surplus war supplies are running low, necessitating fresh purchases. Continuing programs for aviation and housing add to Army cost.

Navy. The General Treaty for the Renunciation of War was hardly four hours old before the Navy began to feel its influence. Responsive (by prearrangement) to Premier MacDonald's announcement of a reduction in the British naval building program, of British acceptance of thoroughgoing naval parity with the U. S., President Hoover moved to retard the construction of three 10,000-ton cruisers. He publicly explained: cruisers henceforth are not to compete in armament as potential opponents but to cooperate as friends in the reduction of it. . . . Generally speaking the British cruiser strength considerably exceeds the American strength* and the actual construction of these three cruisers would not be likely in itself to produce inequality in the final result.

"We do not wish, however, to have any misunderstanding of our actions and therefore we shall not lay these keels until there has been opportunity for a full consideration of their effect upon the final agreement for parity, although our hopes of relief from construction lie more largely in the latter years of the program. . . ."

The three cruisers thus delayed were part of the first batch of five under the 15 cruiser bill of 1929. Still in the blue-print stage they had been allotted to three Navy yards for construction. Contracts with private yards for the other two the President did not disturb.

The President's action led to an immediate controversy: Had he the power under the law to delay cruiser construction once started? The cruiser bill authorized him to suspend any or all construction in the event of a new international limitation agreement, but no such agreement had been reached. The White House explained that President Hoover had acted under another clause of the bill which provided that if construction on any vessel was not undertaken in a specific year, "such construction may be undertaken in the next succeeding fiscal year."

Senator Frederick Hale of Maine, Chairman of the Senate's Naval Affairs Committee, declared, however, that the President was legally powerless to interpose an undue delay in carrying out the will of Congress. The altercation harked back to the last administration, when President Coolidge vainly sought to induce Congress to eliminate the mandatory time-clause from the building bill to meet just such an emergency. (TIME, Feb. 18).

* First-line cruisers built, building, about to be built: U. S. 255,000 tons; Britain 400,300.