Sea Race; Eye Rest

Though the words must have all but stuck in the throat of such a life-long pacifist, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald announced last week in his official residence at snug No. 10 Downing Street a new big-navy policy for the British Empire. The announcement was a shining victory for that doughty seadog Admiral Earl Beatty who has clamored for the last four years that "Britain must free herself from the strangle hold of the London Naval Treaty" with the U. S. and Japan.

For audience last week the Prime Minister chose that most tactful and sympathetic of men, President Roosevelt's grey and graceful little "Disarmament Ambassador," Norman H. Davis. The chat at No. 10 between Scot MacDonald and Tennesseean Davis made clear that if the scheduled 1935 Naval Conference is held at all, it will be not a Disarmament but an Armament Conference. Somewhat pathetically the Prime Minister uttered Earl Beatty's arguments which are, in a nutshell, that Japan's new truculence and her seizure of Manchukuo make it imperative to strengthen the Royal Navy.

As matters stand now Great Britain will have built up to the full Treaty limit by 1936 and Japan will have exceeded her proportion of the famed 5-5-3 naval ratio. Despite President Roosevelt's fervid interest in naval shipbuilding as a counterirritant to unemployment, the U. S. will not be up to Treaty par before 1939.

Meanwhile France and Italy, which refused to sign the London Naval Treaty, are indulging in a naval race of their own. It started when France laid down the 26,500-ton battleship Dunkerque with a sister ship to follow, ostensibly as an "answer" to Germany's 10,000-ton pocket battleships. This spring Italy "answered" with an appropriation for two 35,000-ton battleships. Last week there appeared to be no force which could stop a world naval race.

In London worried Ambassador Davis went around to ask bland, poker-faced Japanese Ambassador Tsune Matsudaira just what Japan now wants. She is known to want naval parity with Britain and the U. S. but her want thus far has been made known by Tokyo statesmen in statements provokingly unofficial. To provoke Mr. Davis is impossible. He smiled understanding as Ambassador Matsudaira professed total, official ignorance.

Upon Scot MacDonald the impending wreckage of his disarmament hopes threw a strain as severe as that which he, a life-long champion of free trade, faced when his National Government decided to gird up the Empire's loins with a high tariff (TIME, May 2, 1932 et ante). That crisis was got over by a spell of "eye strain" which enabled Ramsay MacDonald to absent himself from London during most of the time that free trade was being butchered. Last week, on the day after he broke Britain's big navy news, the Prime Minister's eyes began to weaken. His fashionable Physician Thomas Jeeves Horder, Baron Horder of Ashford. first attended to a minor ailment, a hard, pusfilled whitlow on the Prime Minister's finger. When this had been lanced and half a fingernail removed, Lord Horder insisted on going thoroughly over his patient. The eyes were indeed weak; general condition, rundown. Meekly James Ramsay MacDonald assented when Lord Horder told him he must positively quit London at once without waiting for Parliament to rise in August.

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