Treaty Navy

ARMY & NAVY

Japan's ratification of the London Naval Treaty was still on the high seas and the Treaty therefore still ineffective (see p. 15) when the General Board of the U. S. Navy last week sent up to Secretary Adams its recommendations for a Treaty building program. As anticipated (TIME, Oct. 20), Admiral Pratt's shelving and scrapping of 49 ships three weeks ago was but a preamble to large building proposals by the Navy. Construction recommended included:

P: Improvement of the battleships New Mexico, Mississippi and Idaho so as to give the U. S. 14 modern battleships.

P: Four more 8-in.-gun cruisers, bringing the total to the much-disparaged 18, the limit under the Treaty.

P: Several experimental 6-in.-gun cruisers, to find out with what type to fill the 73,000 extra tons authorized.

P: Four other airplane carriers besides the two in commission and one authorized.

P: Remodelling of the three new V-type submarines, and building of three more, after an unstated number of other types have been scrapped, to fit the Treaty tonnage.

P: The second Goodyear dirigible, the ZRS-5, to give the Navy a fleet of three.

In all, the new program calls for expenditure of from $750,000,000 to $1,000,000,000. But the building is to be parcelled out over a 15-year period. Proposed annual appropriations run between $50,000,000 and $65,000,000. The Navy's average annual building appropriation since 1922 has been $29,000,000.

Big Navy? Because the admirals and experts of the General Board are predominantly Big-Navy men, observers last week scrutinized with interest the Board's astonishingly prompt recommendation. Rear Admiral Mark Lambert Bristol, heavy and stooped new head of the Board, had testified before the Senate committee on ratification: "We do not get parity with Great Britain. . . . We should have maintained the ratio of vessels [with Japan]. ... I do not believe in any 6-in.-gun cruisers." Admiral Bristol is a seadog trained to do diplomatic tricks. Many a time has he maintained U. S. relations with foreign statesmen--as commander of the U. S. Navy base in Wartime England, as U. S. high commissioner in post-War Turkey, as chief of the Asiatic Fleet. He has not only been decorated by the Navy Department but commended by the State Department. Nevertheless he seemed last week to have been ruled by his Chief of Operations, Treaty-defending Admiral William Veazie Pratt. In the protestations of intended economy which went up with the program there were detected no diplomatic wiles. This was apparent when the present recommendations were compared with the 20-year program proposed by the Board in 1927. The first five years of that program involved an expenditure of $725,000,000 (almost as much as this one's entire 15-year budget), and a total expenditure of $2,900,000.000. It proposed building 25 cruisers, nine destroyer-leaders, 32 submarines, five aircraft carriers. Congress whittled it down to the terms of the 15-cruiser bill.

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