Old Ships and New

The Navy and its needs commanded both decks of Congress last week. While the House was 'Considering the present requirements of the Navy Department in a $352,000,000 appropriation bill, the Senate wrestled with itself as to whether to give this branch of national defense 15 swift new cruisers and, if so, when.

The bill on which the Senate was trying to act was, on its face, quite simple. As passed by the House it authorized the Navy Department to build five cruisers each year for the next three years, and one small aircraft carrier. The total cost of this program was estimated at $274,000,000. The cruisers would have a displacement of 10,000 tons each, as permitted in unlimited numbers by the disarmament treaty of 1922. Each cruiser, armed and ready for battle, would represent an investment of $17,000,000. The Navy has argued that it needs this new auxiliary fleet to replace obsolete vessels still in service, some of them 30 years old.

President Coolidge favored the authorization of the new cruisers, but objected to the three-year "time-limit" for construction. His objections, he said, were budgetary. He wanted the President to be allowed discretion in executing the program, dependent upon the condition of the Treasury. To persuade Congress to drop the time-limit, The last week offered to recommend a special preliminary cruiser-building appropriation so soon as the bill should be passed.

According to Senate debaters, the time-limit would mean ships of steel; its removal, ships of paper. Complaint was made that if the three-year provision were dropped the new fleet would remain at the blue-print stage indefinitely. To bolster this argument it was recalled that in 1924 Congress authorized eight cruisers, none of which is yet completed, due to slow White House action.

President-Elect Hoover was involved last week in the time-limit phase of the cruiser question. Chairman Fred Britten (Ill.) of the House Naval Affairs Committee, biggest of the big-navy group, issued a statement, presumably with intent to influence the Senate's action on the time-limit provision:

"When I talked with President-Elect Hoover the other day, he certainly gave me the impression of desiring a navy second to none in power and efficiency; a navy commensurate with our world commercial and political position.

"I am sure the time limit would be pleasing to Mr. Hoover."

This put the President and Mr. Hoover at apparent odds on a legislative issue. Quick from Miami to the White House flashed an ambiguous denial:

"My attention has been called to a statement respecting pending cruiser legislation. I have made no public or private statement upon this question, further than appeared during the campaign. I have stated universally to various callers that it would be improper for me to express any views on current matters of the administration. I regret if this reticence should result in misapprehension. As you know, I warmly support your own views and you may so inform others if you wish to do so."

HERBERT HOOVER."

It was all very courteous, but what did it mean--that Mr. Hoover specifically opposed the time-limit provision? Or was he taking refuge in his blanket indorsement of all Coolidge views? Nobody explained, but Mr. Britten felt thoroughly squelched and sent Mr. Hoover an apologetic note assuring him that he had "expressed opinions of my own and certainly have not quoted you or the President."

The Senate debate on the cruiser measure was repetitious. Those in favor of cruisers-at-once made these general points:

The cruisers are for replacements. Great Britain has many more than the U. S., despite .theoretical fleet parity. American Commerce demands the protection of an adequate Navy. The cruisers would prove a good bargaining point in the event of another disarmament conference.

Against the cruisers were piled these arguments:

A competitive armament race with Great Britain would lead to war. A new era of peace is upon the world--witness the Kellogg-Briand Peace Treaty. American imperialism, U. S. "bluff and bluster," are out of date. Parity with Great Britain* should come by Britain's scaling down, not by the U. S. building up.

Missouri's white-crested Reed, in what may be his Senate valedictory, delivered an impassioned appeal for the cruisers. He was lyric :

"Would you hear the voice of the world, oh, you dreamers of dreams? Listen, and your ears will be greeted by the roar of furnaces which are forging the plates of ships of war. Listen, and you can hear the chorus of mighty hammers shaping the keels of great battleships. There will come to you the hum of countless lathes shaping rifles and machine guns. You can hear the whir of the wings of innumerable airplanes. . . . Look again, and millions of men are marching and countermarching in com mand of skilled officers. . . . The war councils of every great nation have pre pared plans for the sinking of the American fleet, the bombardment of American cities, and they have laid out the roads over which the armies are to travel in case of war with the United States."

Personal valor in combat was gone, he said, with superior machinery winning wars. He dredged history from the phalanxes of Alexander and the elephants of Hannibal to the battle of Trafalgar, to prove the worth of the newest fighting devices. When Iowa's rumbling Brookhart crossed his logic with the statement that military experts may be wrong, Reed flared up:

"The military and naval experts of Japan, Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, of America, unite in the declaration that cruisers are a necessary part of any great Navy. Against them we have the opinion of a remarkable multiple personality, namely, Rear Admiral BROOKHART, Major General BROOKHART, Chief of Staff BROOKHART, Chief of the Air Service BROOKHART, General Opinion of Mankind BROOKHART, General Voice of the World BROOKHART, Custodian of Farmers and Laborers BROOKHART, Custodian of the Universal Conscience BROOKHART, Custodian of the Wisdom of the Past and Prophet of the Future BROOKHART."

To this Brookhart retorted:

"We have just listened to the greatest speech that will ever be made by the school . . . that starts with cannibalism and still thinks we must defend against cannibalism."

Senator Brookhart cited his own War record, denounced war, professed he is a pacifist and concluded:

"I believe big warships are absolutely useless except for fishing schooners.-- I believe a little destroyer is worth more today than a big battleship, and a battleship is not worth much. The submarines are the most efficient arm of the Navy left. Airplanes and submarines together can put out of action all the big ships ever produced."

The House's naval problem last week was much more concrete. The Navy had asked for $417,000,000 to maintain its present men, ships, yards. The House Appropriations Committee pondered and recommended $352,000,000. Secretary of the Navy Wilbur complained that the Navy is not prepared for war, that many ships are inactive due to lack of repair funds.

The talk (TIME, Nov. 26) about Germany's new super-cruisers, has failed to agitate the Navy Department. Hobbled by the Versailles Treaty on naval construction, Germany has evolved a special type of small hard-hitting battle-cruiser, which may or may not cause revolutionary changes among naval architects. The vessel 9,000-ton displacement, is driven at 26 knots by 50,000 h. p. Diesel motors. (U. S. cruisers are to speed at 33 knots.) It mounts eleven-inch guns (U. S. cruisers eight-inch). Solid-hulled, without rivets, it costs $20,000,000.

This vessel, say the U. S. admirals, is built for a special purpose--defense of the Baltic. It is no threat to the U. S. fleet.

*In London Peppery Rt. Hon. William Clive Bridgeman, First Lord of the Admiralty, die-hard Conservative, exclaimed last week:

"There exists the fallacy that we have started a race in building 10,000 ton cruisers. It is tolerably plain that we have started a race in building. It is tolerably plain that the limit [10,000 tons] was put too high for real economy. Other countries set about designing and authorizing the building of a number of these large cruisers, with the result that instead of the maximum [in size] they become standard. We naturally had to do the same thing. But it was not until 1924, two or three years after the Washington Conference, that any of these cruisers were laid down in this country. That was done by the Socialist [British Labor] Government, and was the only creditable performance of an otherwise objectionable Government."

*An oblique reference, apparently, to the Hoover cruise on the U. S. S. Maryland, from which Mr. Hoover went fishing off Mexico.