Neurologist's Jane's

In the wardrooms of His Majesty's ships last week after the barges brought out the Christmas mail was a heavy oblong new book for officers to look at--the 1933 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships. This compendium of the world's war boats is as useful in the Royal Navy as Who's Who is in a newspaper office. Not for many a year has any Jane edited Jane's. Since 1918 the man who has compiled photographs, diagrams, measurements of all the world's battleships has been Dr. Oscar Parkes, a London physician who pursues his studies of men's mightiest engines of death in conjunction with a practice among the jumpy as a neurologist. What interested him most among the year's naval novelties were Japan's new 8,500-ton cruisers of the Mo garni class. Looking over the specifications--15 6.1-inch guns, length of 625 feet, speed of 33 knots--he decided that it was almost impossible for that speed and armament to be kept within the 8,500-ton limit. Dr. Parkes hints that they will turn out to be 10,000-ton cruisers. "This battery," said he, referring to their 6.1-inch guns, "reduces our own 7,000-ton Leanders to impotence." Editor Parkes decided that the fairest match for the 8,500-ton Mogamis will be the U. S. 10,000-ton cruisers of the Brooklyn class, described them as "the most interesting cruisers yet built." Gravely twitting Japanese naval architects for their penchant for piling heavier & heavier masts and fire control gear into existing war craft. Dr. Parkes notes that battleships of the Mutsii class have now been equipped with foremasts so thick that they accommodate an electric elevator running clear up to the masthead. "This mast is claimed to be almost indestructible by shell fire," notes Dr. Parkes, slyly adding, "but its weight and the target offered must be enormous."

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