The End

Down on all fours in London last week went Japan's chief delegate to the Naval Conference, Mr. Reijiro Wakatsuki (pronounced "Wakatsky"). With a little brush he deftly painted on a long white scroll his report to the Son of Heaven, the Sublime Emperor Hirohito of Japan, 124th lineal descendant of Sun Goddess Amaterasu.

Mr. Wakatsuki had to report that, whereas he went to London to win for the duration of the Treaty (it expires Dec. 31, 1935) a total tonnage for Japan in capital ships, cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers and submarines 70% as great as that allotted to the U. S., and whereas the Anglo-Saxons tried to keep him down to 60%, he had in the end won 71.3%.

But for the fact that Japan's Emperor is regarded as divine, Champion Wakatsuki might well have painted himself in proud, self-puffing terms. Instead the little brush humbly painted that Japan's chief delegate "due to my inadequate abilities" obtained at London "regrettably insufficient results."

Rearing up on his knees for a moment to survey the general artistic effect of his scroll, Mr. Wakatsuki found it good, went down on all fours again to paint, "I am ashamed," and finally his signature. An obsequious Japanese clerk then took the Great Man's scroll, translated it into something which an English cable office could handle, flashed it off to Prime Minister Yuko "Shishi" (i. e. "The Lion") Hamaguchi in Tokyo.

"Contribution to the League." James Ramsay MacDonald was also modest in his estimate of the Naval Treaty signed and published fortnight ago. A British radio audience heard the Prime Minister say last week: "I am under no delusions as to how far we have gone. We have just made a beginning." Next day he sent a certified copy of the Treaty to Geneva with this covering letter:

"It is our earnest hope that the [League of Nations] Preparatory Commission [for disarmament] will find in the results of our work a contribution which will have effect in facilitating its future labors."

Victory, Pen, Gardenia. Chief U. S. Delegate Henry Lewis Stimson, who fought and won a last-minute victory to keep the League of Nations from being mentioned in the Treaty (all the other delegations wished to mention it), said to correspondents after he had deposited his certified copy* in the S. S. Leviathan's safe: "I am not interested in warships any more. My chief trouble now is that I have left one of my suitcases in London."

After he signed the Kellogg Pact, a crashing French salute boomed for Mr. Stimson's predecessor as Secretary of State, Mr. Kellogg; but last week the Leviathan cleared from Cherbourg amid silence, a reminder that although France and Italy signed the more nebulous portions of the Treaty they did not sign its more vital, binding clauses. More than making up for French silence, President Herbert Hoover sent the battleship Texas and four destroyers to blaze a 19-gun salute as the Leviathan neared Manhattan where Police Commissioner Aloysius ("Gardenia") Whalen greeted the delegates, sped them to Washington.

* The original of the Treaty remains with the British Government. Mr. MacDonald received the gold pen with which all the signatories were announced to have signed. But photographs radioed from London show that Mr. Stimson signed with his own black rubber fountain pen, possesses that original at least.

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