Navies on the Mat

Excitedly jostling each other last week, foreign correspondents in Tokyo elbowed in to their first interview with the Empire's new Premier, old-fashioned Admiral Keisuke Okada, who has put away his predecessor's swivel chair and insists on squatting on the mat-covered floor.

Quick-witted and self-possessed, Premier Okada let the newshawks peck him with impromptu questions about the issue closest to his heart as a Japanese Navy man. This issue all Japanese quarterdeckers passionately call "The 1935 Crisis." The Empire's life and honor are at stake, they insist, because in 1935 the U. S., Britain and Japan must, by treaty, hold a Naval Conference to alter or prolong the 5-5-3 ratio between their navies beyond 1936.

Pecked a newshawk: "Your Excellency, will Japan ask for naval parity or reduction by the most powerfully armed nations down to the Japanese level?"

"It is not in my mind to expect such a radical change so suddenly," flashed the Premier, and his hearers bowed forward eagerly. Did this mean that he was going to buck the Navy's demand for Japanese equality? Suavely Admiral Okada covered himself, "I repeat that it is not in my mind to expect such radical changes so suddenly but I do not favor the present ratio principle. It hurts the self-respect of nations."

Answering other questions Premier Okada took a stiffer line. He said that his Government is "considering" whether to abrogate the present 5-5-3 Washington Treaty in advance of the Conference. Japan, though she has" left the League of Nations, will not give up the South Sea Islands she received as "mandates" from the League, but means to keep them as integral parts of her Empire. By the time Premier Okada was through, most correspondents present were convinced that in failing to demand parity now, he was merely pulling for the present a punch which Japan will deliver as soon as she dares. But the Okada answers, when cabled to Washington, gave Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson a fine chance to proclaim loudly and publicly for the Roosevelt Administration the U. S. naval policy laid down by President Hoover when he called for a 33 1/2% cut in the navies of the Great Powers.

"I am willing to have a reduction of 20%," said Secretary Swanson. "I believe in adhering to the ratios. I believe if you abandoned the ratios there is no telling where we would go in this Conference. I am willing to have a reduction of 20%, 25%, 30% or 33 1/2%, applicable to all signatories of the London Treaty in every category of war boats, but 20% is what we state now."

Asked why he had come down from Herbert Hoover's 33 1/2%, Secretary Swanson snapped, "Well, we will see if they accept 20% before we go any further."

In Tokyo the Swanson proposal was received by Premier Okada with glacial silence, but Navy officers who are his friends roasted it scorchingly in the Japanese Press. They declared that some reduction in naval armaments is desirable but that "obviously" the U.S. and Britain should make greater sacrifices than Japan. According to Asahi ("Today"), a news-organ close to the Premier. "The main [Japanese] complaint is over the Secretary of the Navy's assertion that the 5-5-3 ratio must continue, which seemingly indicates that all Japan's efforts to enlighten the United States have not made the slightest impression."

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