$1,000,000 Worth of Confidence

INTERNATIONAL

$1,000,000 Worth of Confidence

As the second month of the Naval Conference drew toward a close, last week, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald announced that it had safely passed through what he called the "first stage," the stage in which "confidence" must be established among the delegations and was now entering the second stage "when on account of the established confidence we can discuss actual program." So well pleased with such progress was Mr. MacDonald that he cried: "If I talk with a feeling of buoyancy, I have very good reasons for it!"

Though newsmen could not get the canny Scot to unpurse his "reasons" they passed over the cables his token coins of optimism. Meanwhile the U.S. Congress voted $150,000 to sustain the U.S. delegation at London's Ritz Hotel, when advised by the President that their original appropriation of $200,000 has been spent. Conservative estimates placed the cost to the five powers of achieving what Mr. MacDonald called "Confidence" at roughly $1,000,000, or a trifle over $14 per minute night and day since the conference assembled (TIME, Jan. 27).

Briand Back. One reason for feeling '"buoyant" was that France had at last established her new cabinet with a sound majority of 53 votes in the Chamber of Deputies.

But M. Briand made exactly the same demand for a navy of 725,000 tons by 1936, and offered the same alternative M. Tardieu had proposed, namely that France will scale down if, and only if, the U.S. and Britain will give an assurance (any form will do: a treaty, an agreement, even proclamation by President Hoover and George V) that in the event France should be attacked she can at least count on the benevolent cooperation of London and Washington in restoring peace.

For the first time the U.S. delegation let newsmen know that this French demand for "security" may be met, if a way can possibly be found to do so without dragging the U.S. into an "entangling alliance." Even two weeks ago the U.S. attitude was, on the contrary, that France must yield. Mr. MacDonald told U.S. radio listeners last week that "some of us will strive to secure as an essential part of the [London] agreement a pledge of goodwill and pacific intentions."

Petition, Tragedy, Advice. Moved by a petition in which 1,200 U.S. citizens, many of them clerics, urged him not to abandon the goal of reducing armaments, chief U.S. delegate Henry Lewis Stimson announced that a minimum 200,000 ton reduction of the U.S. fleet, and an even larger reduction of the British fleet is possible insofar as these nations by themselves are concerned, but basically the announcement was a left-handed reminder that everything depended on the attitude of "other powers."

A major shock of the week for U.S. Delegate Stimson was the death of his personal secretary, Mrs. Pearl Demaret. Mrs. Stimson had just sent a goodbye bouquet to Mrs. Demaret who was about to sail for the U.S. because homesick for her husband and child. After arranging Mrs. Stimson's box of flowers on the window sill, Mrs. Demaret quite accidentally fell out of her Mayfair Hotel window.

To send a dead body across the Atlantic costs even more than a living person's second or third class fare. When it was ascertained that Mrs. Demaret's husband wished to have her body cremated and the ashes sent home, this was done.

Another incident-of-the-week for the U.S. Delegation: A visit from Ambassador Walter E. Edge, who ran over from his Paris Embassy and conferred at great length with Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow. Press rumors that their conversations had something to do with the Naval Conference were quickly and thoroughly spiked by an announcement that Mr. Edge, formerly senator from New Jersey, was advising Mr. Morrow, who will soon run for that office, about "private political matters."

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