THE CONGRESS: Mr. Speers’s Navy

A friend and confidant of Big-Navy menin Washington is the New York Times’s Correspondent Leland C. (“Lem”) Speers. One morning last week the Times headlined adispatch from Mr. Speers: VAST SECRET FLEET IN JA PAN REPORTED. The story reported whathas long been on public record: that Japan is building three to fourbig battleships, somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000 tons heavier thanthe biggest (33,400 tons) in the U. S. Navy. The news in Lem Speers’syarn was that Japan had speeded up construction of its giants, that”the Japanese battleship program may include eight and possiblytwelve such craft.” Trusting the British to police the Atlanticfor them, the U. S. Navy plans and builds to be ready for Japan in thePacific. Since Japan, with eight to twelve new 45,000 tonners added to itspresent ten modern battleships, could beat the U. S. Navy’s 14, LemSpeers’s story was a shock. Some wiseacres tried to explain it all onthe grounds that: 1) the U. S. Senate was about to take up a $963,799,478 Naval Appropriation Bill, afurther authorization for $655,000,000 in future appropriations; 2)that Mr. Speers’s story did Navy friends’ cause no harm in Congress.Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Stark knocked this comfortingbelief to smithereens. He solemnly announced that the U. S. has”practically no reliable information” about secretive Japan’snaval program, then informed a Senate committee that Japan reportedlyis building not four but eight new battleships. His moral: the U. S.had best hurry along its eight battleships now under construction,including two 45,000 tonners, boost pending naval appropriations.