ARMY & NAVY: Epic Lobby

In Leningrad, U. S. S. R., nine directors and engineers of the Soviet shipbuilding trust were arrested last week, charged with treason in trying to obstruct the government’s shipbuilding program.

In Washington, D.C., on the following day a Senate committee summoned four U. S. shipbuilders to discover whether they had not been conducting propaganda to make the government build more ships than it wished to.

Cynics suggested that Russia and the U. S. might be satisfied by exchanging the higher-ups in their ship industries.

Affairs in Washington came to a head when the Senate, on resolution of Senator Borah, directed its Naval Affairs Committee to spend $10.000 investigating the activities of William B. Shearer at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1927 (TIME, Sept. 16). The Naval Committee pondered a little and then appointed a sub committee of three to conduct the actual hearing. Members of the subcommittee:

1) Senator Samuel Morgan Shortridge of California, tall Shakespearian scholar, onetime actor, chairman. Said Mr. Shortridge: “We shall treat everybody alike— the tramp and the millionaire. We care not whether he be clothed in rags or purple and fine linen!”

2) Senator Henry Justin Allen of Kansas, who took a prominent part in the Kansas Hoover campaign, outspoken, never at a loss for words.

3) Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, Democratic leader in the Senate, onetime (1928) candidate for Vice President, downright, not too bright, given to thunderous wrath.

Together the three consulted, then drew up the list of their first four witnesses, William B. Shearer not included. The four were officials of two of three shipbuilding companies suspected of having hired Shearer to induce failure of the Geneva Disarmament Conference so that they might have more battleships to build.

First of the shipbuilders summoned was Clinton Lloyd Bardo, president of New York Shipbuilding Co. (subsidiary of American Brown Boveri) ; next Norman R. Parker, secretary and treasurer of American Brown Boveri Co.; then Charles M. Schwab, chairman of Bethlehem Steel Corp.; then S. W. Wakeman, vice president of Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. No “tramps in purple and fine linen” are these, no “millionaires in rags.”

With the finger of suspicion pointed at the shipbuilders by the President’s remarks, Mr. Bardo last week made answer:

“In 1927 the uncertainty of the American shipbuilding industry was such as to make it of the utmost importance that the company be advised of the trend of the shipbuilding as indicated by the Geneva Conference and not shown in the press reports.

“There were many serious questions then as to whether or not the company could continue its shipbuilding activities. Accordingly, Mr. Shearer was commissioned by New York Shipbuilding Co. and others to act as an observer only at the Geneva Conference.

“Such observation was the sole question of Mr. Shearer’s appointment. If Mr. Shearer, while in Geneva, twisted such limited employment into a broad commission to indulge in other activities, he did so without the knowledge of the New York Shipbuilding Co.”

Mr. Schwab made no answer. Eugene Gifford Grace, president of Bethlehem, made answer for the company:

“To the best of our recollection Mr. Schwab and I were not conscious of the existence of William B. Shearer prior to December 1927, when we were asked to comment on the rumor that American shipbuilding interests had maintained at Geneva during the Naval Disarmament Conference of the previous summer a propagandist in the person of one William B. Shearer.

“Mr. Schwab and I soon ascertained that Mr. Shearer was and had been for years an active propagandist regarding the naval policies of the U. S. We felt that the employment of such a man as an observer was in conflict with the policy to which the Bethlehem interests have strictly adhered, of refraining from participation in propaganda intended to influence the naval and military policies of the U.S. Government.

“I therefore directed Mr. Wakeman to arrange for the termination of Mr. Shearer’s employment, which he promptly did. . . .”

Senator Borah was moved to exclamation: ”The idea, that they sent that man over as an observer and not as a propagandist! Are they living in an intellectual cave?”

Meantime many others were moved to speak. Lobbyist Shearer, after saying that he had been helped by receiving confidential information from Naval officials alone, grew suddenly silent, counseled by Daniel Florence Cohalan, able Manhattan attorney.

Rear Admiral Hilary Pollard Jones, U. S. N. retired. U. S. naval expert at Geneva, accused of having close connections with Shearer, declared that he had never spoken to Shearer, had seen him only once. President Hoover himself denied the rumor of any such connection.

Senator King of Utah, formerly on the Naval Affairs Committee and much in touch with Shearer said: “He was plausible. He told me he had once been in the Navy and never had lost his interest in it. He said he had fine connections with certain Naval officers and could furnish me information that would help me in my fight for a stronger Navy.— He told me of several inventions of his, and I replied that I would be glad of any aid he could give, I did not find him to be a Naval expert in any particular sense.”

Linley V. Gordon, secretary of the Church Peace Union, made public a letter written to him by Shearer from the Geneva Conference. Excerpts:

“As to myself, anyone familiar with the Congressional records knows that I do not represent any company of any kind, the National Security League or any other society. I have received many indorsements from patriotic organizations, however. I am well known and well disliked. I fight internationalism, pacifism, and communism. I make many enemies and many friends.

“I hate pink, red and yellow; I think Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt were great Americans; I try to emulate the British in an American way. I like our flag as it is—I am a nationalist. I am referred to as a Naval expert, Naval authority, Naval critic, writer and lecturer— and other things that won’t bear repeating. Enthusiasts claim I am the best posted man in the U. S. on national defense. I claim nothing and expect less; but whatever I represent, it is all American—which seems to arouse suspicion as well as curiosity.”

Correspondent Robert Barry of the New York Evening World wrote of Shearer:

“He has been everywhere. He seems to know nearly everyone worth while in the capitals of the world. He is no mere pretender. Pin him down and you find he is not a cheap drawing-room boaster. He knows the people he calls acquaintances or friends. He proves it.

“He knows too many after-dinner stories even to count. He knows his company for any particular one. He is no vulgarian. His manners would be called excellent except for his penchant to monopolize the conversation. On first acquaintance he seems a truly remarkable man. He does not wear well. That he has the talent and the information to make the mess a lot worse than it is, bad as it is, is not questioned.

“That Shearer is not going to be made a scapegoat while some of his pious critics go scot free is beyond reasonable doubt.”

Floyd Gibbons, another correspondent, wrote:

“I met Shearer in Paris after the Geneva Conference and again in Washington. I found him highly patriotic and interested in seeing that the U. S. established actual naval parity with Great Britain.”

Another correspondent, Wythe Williams of the New York Times, had this to say about the activities of Mr. Shearer:

“Many of the correspondents suspected Mr. Shearer of being exactly what he was. Some felt that his game was to wreck the Conference at any cost. A few, but not many, disliked him, although disliking such a genial person was difficult. But scarcely one of them felt able to refuse to look over the daily Shearer ‘hand-out.’ Even the British correspondents often consulted the tabled figures supplied by Mr. Shearer and were forced to admit they were correct.

“To my personal knowledge, Mr. Shearer was on good terms with every member of the American delegation, with the exception of two chief delegates, Ambassador Gibson and Rear Admiral Hilary P. Jones.

“A year after the Geneva meeting. Ambassador Gibson, at Brussels, speaking to a friend about Mr. Shearer, said: ‘Whatever criticism may have been leveled against the press of America on his account, all I can say is that the information he handed out was correct.’

“If, as he says, he was employed to help wreck the Conference, the opinion at Geneva would be that he earned his money.”

Richard Washburn Child, former U. S. ambassador to Italy, wrote to Senator Borah about the Senate investigation:

“It should be sweeping, i.e., should include not only the shipbuilding companies and their activities which have shocked the President, but should extend also to lobbies, carried on by employes of church organizations and of fanatic pacifists’ machines which do not make plain the sources of their funds or prove their freedom from relationship with radical alien internationals or with foreign inspired propaganda intended to keep the U. S. in various states of coma in its various relations and defenses.

“As between a lobby in favor of ship building companies and one carried on indirectly by some foreign power against the upbuilding of our merchant marine, I see no moral difference and condemn each.”

John Tinney McCutcheon, cartoonist for the patrioteering Chicago Tribune, drew a cartoon in which Uncle Sam, irate, directed the Senate investigation to haul a Big Navy Propagandist from under neath a table, where crouched another figure labelled Peace Propagandist. The caption said: “Drag ’em all out.”

* The files of the Navy, and all other departments, are at all times accessible to Senators.