"Faith, Hope and Parity!"

(See drawing p. 25)

Millions of U. S. citizens had ears at the opening of the London Naval Conference, but barely twoscore had eyes. Radio voices can leap the Atlantic, but not yet radio vision. Last week the flying brush of an intently listening artist was still the swiftest means of bridging the ocean with the glow and glamor of the conference, the rich stained glass lights and solemn shadows of the fusty Royal Gallery of the House of Lords. There, in the simple garb of a gentleman, His Majesty George V, King and Emperor, Defender of the Faith, stood up with his Prime Minister at his elbow and solemnly pronounced open the Naval Conference of the Five greatest powers.

On the right hand of His Majesty sat the new Prime Minister of France, spruce, go-getting Andre Pierre Gabriel Amedee Tardieu, and next to him the shaggy, great old man who started the idea of the Briand-Kellogg peace pact, Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, dozing with a deceptive air of inattention next to Minister of Marine Georges Leygues.

At the king's left sat the British delegates, and beyond them, past the turn of the table, could be seen Signor Benito Mussolini's closest friend, spade-bearded Foreign Minister Dino Grandi.

Beyond the Italians were the Japanese, with onetime Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki, perfectly alert and cold sober, despite his potions the night before of Scotch whiskey and Japanese sake. Of the latter beverage his excellency brought from Japan precisely 20 casks.

The four British dominions were paired and spaced. Canada & Australia on His Majesty's right beyond the French, New Zealand & South Africa at his left beyond the Japanese. India still in tutelage, and the Irish Free State, were sandwiched tight between firm Mother Britain and grim Italy.

The delegation of the U. S. was at the tail of the table on the King's right--or at least that was one way of looking at it, the wrong way. The right way was to understand that the delegations were seated in strict, English alphabetical order, beginning with "America" on the near side of the U-shaped table ,and continuing straight around to "Union of South Africa."

The little man with twinkling eyeglasses and the ill-fitting coat who sat at the alphabetical beginning of the table was, of course, Dwight Whitney Morrow.

With eyes that never left the sheaf of notes in his hand, His Majesty King George V faced a gold-plated microphone* and spoke with the pleasant sing-song voice of a benevolent clergyman. Said he:

"Every nation represented here is proud of its navy; proud of that navy's past achievements and its traditions. . . . [But] it is the competition in naval construction due to necessity of protection for ourselves that has led to a feeling of insecurity between nations and even to the continuance of war. . . . A great success was achieved in the conclusion of the Washington treaty in 1922 . . . but hitherto all efforts to advance beyond that point have failed.

"I believe that you to whom the governments have intrusted the high mission of continuing what was commenced at Washington are . . . animated with a noble inspiration and resolve to remove once and for all this particular obstacle [naval armaments] from the path of order and civilized progress. . . .

"I earnestly trust that the deliberations of this Conference . . . by facilitating the work of the preparatory commissions on disarmament will hasten the time when a general disarmament conference can deal with this problem in an even more comprehensive manner."

Pre-Conference. Firm seemed the massive throne of George V last week, but it had toppled over and fallen ignominiously upon its side, while being carried over from the House of Lords proper to the Royal Gallery.

Another, earlier touch of levity was the insistence by Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson that the U. S. delegation should land from their steamer in top hats, though two of them had started down the gangplank in soft headgear. "I feel rather like a Pilgrim father coming back to England," said Statesman Stimson, adding when correspondents did not seem to get his point, "My wife had two ancestors on the Mayflower." Another Stimson mot: "I have brought along my golf clubs, but I am no Bobby Jones." He laughed noncommittally when a British correspondent asked, "May we say that the motto of the American delegation is Faith, Hope and Parity?" As the top-hatted, frock-coated delegation was met by Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes in a grey fedora and lounge suit, the inevitable cockney voice that seems to exist in every English crowd boomed, "Ow! Pipe th' disarmin' blokes!"

Of the five principal U. S. delegates--Stimson, Adams, Reed, Robinson, Morrow--and their wives the Star said, "The men seem to be fatherly, homely folk and their wives motherly and even more homely." Lest it should be misunderstood, the Star added, for the benefit of visitors weak in the King's English, that "The connotation of 'homely' changes in crossing the Atlantic, and in England has of course no reference to facial appearance."

Signs and Omens. The general situation prior to the conference (TIME, Jan. 20), was modified last week in only one important category--Battleships.

While the U. S. delegation were tossing and pitching in a heavy sea, they were visibly startled and angered by a garbled radio bulletin from London. It quoted Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald as saying that he wanted the conference to abolish capital ships or "dreadnoughts."

The instant reaction of Statesman Stimson and his colleagues was strongly in the negative, since capital ships have always been "the backbone of the U. S. Navy." They seemed to fear that Mr. MacDonald was trying to put them in the highly awkward position of being forced to defend the right of the U. S. to build the very biggest, most costly, most palpably menacing type of ship.

Pious Hope. The situation cleared up within 48 hours when the full text of the Prime Minister's remarks showed that he had merely been uttering a pious hope, and had been forced to do so by a petition signed by 77 prominent Labor M. P.'s, asking total abolition of the dreadnought.

It appeared that all Scot MacDonald seriously contemplated was that there should be a continuation of the Washington Treaty halt in capital ship building for six years more, the whole subject to be reviewed at another conference in 1936.

Statesman Stimson seemed relieved by this turn of affairs; but meanwhile in Washington, President Herbert Hoover let the White House correspondents announce that he stood ready to go as far as Ramsay MacDonald or anyone else, that the U. S. would gladly join the Great Powers in any armament slash, however deep. This same position has been taken by Dictator Benito Mussolini for many years. Despite his saber-rattling, the representative of Italy has declared, time after time, that she would join the rest of the world in reducing armaments: "To any common minimum, even the lowest."

Il Duce's attitude is often said to be based on a profound cynicism, on the absolute conviction that the Powers will never unanimously agree to naval limitation. But as the conference sat down, last week, Foreign Minister Dino Grandi of Italy said: "I foresee the closest cooperation between Italy and America. . . . I feel sure that our two countries will find themselves on the same side throughout the conference. . . ."

These fair words did not alter in the least the fact that Italy and France were furiously at odds, last week, because each wants a bigger navy than the other; that Japan was sulky because the U. S. and Britain have thus far refused her the 10-10-7 ratio she demands instead of 5-5-3; and that the U. S. and Britain faced each other as friends but by no means in complete agreement on any of the conference issues.

Delegate Rogers. The Fox studios in Hollywood were scheduled to start last week filming a $500,000 production starring Funnyman Will Rogers, when suddenly he disappeared. Frantic Fox telegrams caught the renegade in Manhattan, did not stop him from sailing for the conference on the S. S. Bremen, world's fastest liner. "Tomorrow I lunch at the Embassy with Mr. Dawes," radioed Clown Rogers on reaching London. Another Rogersgram: "The American delegation arrived this afternoon and went into conference at the American bar and sunk a fleet of schooners without warning."

*His Majesty's speech was broadcast, in addition to the U. S., to: France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia.

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