Submarines & Innuendoes

"I christen thee v-5!"

Delicately cracking a bottle of grape juice over its Gloucester fisherman's bow. Mrs. Charles Francis Adams, wife of the Secretary of the Navy, solemnly pronounced these words at Portsmouth, N. H., last week as the Navy's largest submarine slid down the stocks and out upon the Piscataqua River. Beside her stood her son, Charles Francis Adams Jr. and Admiral Charles F. Hughes, Chief of Naval Operations. Snow was falling on her fur coat, on her bouquet of roses. Navy men pressed about her solicitously, to shield her from the storm.

Navy Yard workmen who had built the V-5 gave Mrs. Adams a silver platter on which was an engraved likeness of their handiwork. The V-5 is a long-range cruising vessel, 371 feet long, with a surface displacement of 2,760 tons.* She will be commissioned next May. Plans were hastened for starting construction on her twin, the V-7.

On the day the V-5 took the water, 42 naval officers were graduated from the Navy's special submarine school at New London, Conn., to help man this growing arm of national defense.

These naval activities, of course, in no wise reduced the determination of Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson and other U. S. delegates to the London Naval Conference to talk Japan's delegates out of their demands for large submarine tonnage. With nice new bags and trunks ceremoniously packed by his wife who remained behind in Tokyo, onetime Japanese Premier Reijiro Wakatsuki had brought his delegation to Washington for a brief diplomatic visit on the way to London. To his suburban home, Woodley, Statesman Stimson invited Delegates Wakatsuki and Takarabe, there with U. S. Delegate Morrow, discussed naval matters with them for 150 minutes. Not to embarrass the Japanese with a preponderance of U. S. delegates, Secretary of the Navy Adams did not attend.

The Japanese naval demands: 1) 70% of the largest auxiliary fleet allowed the U. S. or Britain; 2) a flexible interchange of auxiliary tonnage between categories; 3) retention of their full submarine strength of 71 ships (78,497 tons). Like good diplomats, they were ready to give in on demands No. 1 and 2 but on demand No. 3 all the persuasiveness of Statesman Stimson could not bridge them to compromise. Vainly Mr. Stimson tried to show them that submarines were useless against battleships, that they served only as weapons of uncivilized warfare against unarmed merchantmen. Possibly the Japanese interpreter failed to translate the full vigor of the Secretary's arguments; perhaps the Japanese delegates were really intent on holding their position on submarines. In any event no agreement was reached.

The evening the Japanese delegates were dining in state with President Hoover at the White House, the presses of the Washington Post were reeling off a sly editorial which next morning rudely jarred the polite placidity of the Washington conversations.

"There was much speculation in Japanese . . . circles as to the reason for his [Adams'] absence. . . . A second conference is to be held, but the name of the Secretary of the Navy is not on the list. . . The public would be vastly reassured if the Secretary of the Navy should take part in conferences which may shape the future of the Navy. There is full confidence in Charles Francis Adams. . . . He is possessed of more knowledge regarding the Navy than any other delegate. When Mr. Stimson and Mr. Morrow enter into an exchange of naval views with such an expert as Admiral Takarabe it is not to be expected that the Americans could hold their own."

Wrathful indeed was Statesman Stimson at the Post. Turning to the resounding publicity board of his own department, he issued a formal statement in which he explained that Secretary Adams' absence was due to a courteous limitation of the size of the Woodley meeting, that Secretary Adams had voluntarily abstained from that meeting, and had actually suggested its participants. Continued Statesman Stimson:

"It is quite clear that it is the deliberate intention of that editorial to attempt to make trouble among the American delegates, to discredit our Government before the Japanese delegation and thus to try to cause a breakdown of the London conference. . . . The Washington Post has a full right to oppose a limitation in arms, but I do not believe the American people approve of attempts to humiliate and cause dissension in their Government before representatives of foreign governments."

As the Japanese delegates journeyed to New York, there embarking on the Olympic for London, the Post blatted back at Statesman Stimson that it was "sorry if its high praise of Secretary Adams had caused acute pain and humiliation to the Secretary of State."

* World's largest submarine: France's Le Surcourf, with a displacement of 3,256 tons. Largest British submarine: Xl, with a displacement of 2,700 tons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.