ARMY & NAVY: Pocket Change

ARMY & NAVY

Secretary of the Navy Swanson, just back from a two-month trip to the Pacific Coast, emerged from a Cabinet meeting one day last week and, narrowing his sharp old eyes, summoned the Press. The President, said he, was thinking of moving the Battle Force from the Pacific to the Atlantic next year. Why? “Well, the fleet ought to know both oceans and both coasts.”

Later that day President Roosevelt formally authorized the maneuver. Beginning early next spring the Battle Force, which has been in the Pacific, its normal base, since 1930, and the Scouting Force which went there during the Sino-Japanese crisis, will return to eastern ports until autumn, then go back to the Pacific. Meanwhile only a skeleton fleet of 15 destroyers, four battleships, half a dozen cruisers and submarines will guard the Pacific. The cruise will bring many of the 50,000 enlisted men and 4,500 officers home for the first time in three years, will cost the Navy Department $1,000,000.

White House spokesmen were careful to explain that the maneuver has no international significance, is being done chiefly for the benefit of the officers and enlisted men. Washington observers agreed, however, that putting the country’s mailed fist into its eastern pocket might soften the blow to Japan of U. S. recognition of Russia. Said a Japanese Foreign Office official in Tokyo: “It will make a happy impression on the Japanese people!”