INTERNATIONAL: Point Blank

The text of the secret naval agreement between Great Britain and France (TIME, Aug. 13) was partially exposed and its principles were vigorously denounced, last week, in a point blank note from the U. S. State Department to the British Foreign Office.

Seldom or never before have President Coolidge and Secretary of State Kellogg collaborated on an epistle of such scathing vigor. What they said, in the necessarily polite “language of diplomacy,” may be impolitely but exactly paraphrased:

“John Bull, you refused to swallow our sort of disarmament pill at the Coolidge Naval Limitations Parley in Geneva (TIME, June 27 to Aug. 15. 1927). We offered to limit all classes of ships. You offered, instead, another sort of pill, suggesting that we limit only the larger naval craft and leave unlimited small cruisers and small submarines.

“Now, John, you know that your naval bases in all parts of the world enable you to use small ships of short cruising radius with deadly effect. We are not so well provided with bases, and so we must have larger ships of longer cruising radius. When you propose to limit large ships and leave small ones unlimited, you are proposing to limit only the ships we chiefly need, while leaving unlimited the ships you chiefly need.

“Our answer to your proposal at Geneva was NO. Now your new secret agreement with France lines her up behind you in presenting to us once more this same proposal. Our answer is still NO.”

“Even More Objectionable.” Specific, technical points made in the Coolidge-Kellogg note, and of vital importance, are set forth in the following excerpts from the note:

“The government of the United States has received from His Majesty’s Government a communication summarizing the understanding reached between the British and French governments as to a basis of naval limitation. . . . Unfortunately the Franco-British agreement appears to fulfill none of the conditions which, to the American government, seem vital.

“. . . The Franco-British agreement provides no limitation whatsoever on six-inch gun cruisers, or destroyers, or submarines of 600 tons or less. . . . Such cruisers constitute the largest number of fighting ships now existing in the world.

“The American Government seeks no special advantage . . . but clearly cannot permit itself to be placed in a position of manifest disadvantage. … At the Three Power Conference in Geneva in 1927 . . . the limitation proposed by the British delegation on this smaller class of cruisers was so high that the American delegation considered it, in effect, no limitation at all. This same proposal is now presented in a new and even more objectionable form which still limits large cruisers which are suitable to American needs, but frankly places no limitation whatever on cruisers carrying guns of six inches or less in calibre. . . .

“The American Government feels, furthermore, that the terms of the Franco-British draft agreement, in leaving unlimited so large a tonnage and so many types of vessels, would actually tend to defeat the primary objective of any disarmament conference for the reduction or the limitation of armament in that it would not eliminate competition in naval armament and would not effect economy. For all these reasons the Government of the United States feels that no useful purpose would be served by accepting as a basis of discussion the Franco-British proposal.”

European Reaction. Italian correspondents cabled from London to Rome that popular indignation was rising among Britons against the Baldwin Cabinet for having stupidly and wantonly baited President Calvin Coolidge.

The British Foreign Office strove to counteract any such impression by welcoming U. S. correspondents to a charming little tea. Urbane Foreign Office officials pointed out at this function that the Coolidge-Kellogg note contains the following conciliatory passage: “The Government of the United States remains willing to use its best efforts to obtain a basis of further naval limitation . . . and is willing to take into consideration in any conference the special needs of France, Italy or any other naval power for the particular class of vessels deemed by them most suitable for their defense. … It expects on the part of others, however, similar consideration for its own needs.”

So soothingly was this passage dwelt upon by bland British undersecretaries that the New York Herald Tribune’s responsive Harold E. Scarborough cabled: “America’s reply to the Franco-British naval compromise delivered to the Foreign Office at noon today, was greeted with relief by British officialdom. . . . So confused had British public opinion become over the whole question of the compromise, that alarmist reports from the United States that Washington in the note would bang and bolt the door on further efforts at naval disarmament were more than half believed. . . . London agrees that this note is the most happily constructed and phrased diplomatic document that has come from Washington for a long time, and that it deserves rank as a masterpiece.”

The true middle ground of British opinion was perhaps taken by the Daily Chronicle, a newspaper directed by Rufus Daniel Isaacs, Marquess of Reading, and other Liberals of the vanishing Gladstonian-Asquithian stamp. “We can assure our American friends,” pontificated the Chronicle, “that they ought not attribute this faux pas to wickedness, but only to the stupidity of our Ministers.”

Of course, British Labor organs flayed the Conservative Government far more shrilly than this, and Conservative newspapers sounded sonorous defensive notes. But Lord Reading’s Chronicle seemed to have pitched its editorial authentically in the middle register.