Words of Warning

For a onetime Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has kept amazingly mum on that subject since he became President. News queries at Washington on naval policy are commonly referred to grey and graceful little Norman Hezekiah Davis, who served President Hoover as disarmament Ambassador-at-Large, continues so to serve President Roosevelt. In London at the deadlocked Naval Parley (TIME, Dec. 3), it was Ambassador Davis' privilege last week to tell the world just where, in the President's opinion, Japan gets off.

With easy, informal Rooseveltian technique, Mr. Davis dropped his naval depth bomb at a luncheon tendered him by U. S. correspondents. The situation was simple enough. In Tokyo, as everyone knew, the Son of Heaven had pored through his owlish tortoise-shell glasses over the draft text of Japan's denunciation of the Washington Naval Treaty last week and, finding this denunciation good, had sent it to the Privy Council. Only a miracle could stop Japan from scrapping the 5-5-3 ratio and starting a naval race. No miracle man, Ambassador Davis contented himself with a speech well calculated to make everyone who read it remember and reflect upon certain homely facts.

At the close of the War, the U. S. had enough fighting boats, built or building, swiftly to become undisputed master of the seas, the greatest naval power of all time. Japan, in that contingency, was glad to sign a body of treaties in which: the U. S. renounced future naval primacy and scrapped enormous quantities of war boats; Britain renounced her actual primacy, accepting equality with the U. S. for the first time; and Japan was granted a proud third place (ahead of France and Italy) upon binding herself to respect the territorial, integrity of China and the "Open Door." Today Japan, having successfully despoiled China of the whole of Manchukuo without outside interference, quite logically expects to force naval equality from Britain and the U. S.

Ambassador Davis could not achieve last week the only simplicity that would work an instant miracle in Japan, the simplicity of announcing that, unless she contents herself with 5-5-3 and lives up to her treaty obligations regarding China, somebody will instantly declare against her either economic sanctions or war. Hog-tied by what seems to Japanese the incredible stupidity and cowardice of the English-speaking peoples, Mr. Davis could only say for President Roosevelt that Japan is on the verge of what may turn out, years hence, to be her greatest mistake. ''The fundamental issue in the naval conversations now," declared Ambassador Davis, "is essentially as follows: Is the equilibrium that was established by the system worked out in the Washington treaties to be continued or is it to be upset? The American Government stands for continuance. ... I have proposed a substantial all-around reduction in naval armaments to be effected in such a way as not to alter the relative strengths or jeopardize the security of the participating nations as established by these treaties. . . . We believe that . . . the system established has been of advantage to all concerned, and that abandonment now of the principles involved would lead to conditions of insecurity, of international suspicion, and of costly competition, with no real advantage to any nation."

Such words from the spokesman of an English-speaking power were considered bold. Into that comparatively strong phrase "costly competition" U. S. correspondents read that President Roosevelt is threatening to outstrip Japan in building .warships. To Japanese the Davis speech was a laugh. Sneered Mr. Eiji Amau, famed Japanese Foreign Office Spokesman: ''We already knew that Mr. Davis advocated maintenance of the present treaties and his speech contains nothing new. No Japanese government could last one day that compromised with the established decision to terminate the Washington Treaty. On that the Government's decision is fixed completely and is supported by Japanese public opinion!"

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