Tardieu's Week-end

In a flurry of nervous excitement diplomats gathered at Victoria station last week. Prime Minister Tardieu, absent a month, was returning to the Naval Conference for the weekend. Every member of the French delegation was on the platform ; Britain's first Lord of the Admiralty Albert Victor Alexander rushed away from a football game at the Oval to extend felicitations. Ramsay MacDonald sent a messenger to remind M. Tardieu to be sure to motor out to Chequers for Sunday lunch. U. S. and Japanese assistant secretaries beamed a welcome. At the Carlton Hotel, headquarters of the French delegation, doors banged frantically for hours as technicians and diplomats rushed in and out. About 10:30 p.m. Prime Minister Tardieu went to bed to prepare for his fateful Chequers luncheon. Warned astute James Louis Garvin in the Sunday Observer:

"The last chance of any effective agreement at the London Naval Conference as distinguished from face-saving formulas largely depends on the outcome of conversations at Chequers today between Prime Minister MacDonald, Prime Minister Tardieu and Secretary Stimson. If today's discussions promise no change in the French thesis there will be no hope of adjustment."

Japan Agreement. For days statesmen had conferred nervously while the conference trembled on the brink of disaster. Then came two important moves. London papers published, U. S. delegates refused to deny, what purported to be a complete U. S.-Japanese naval agreement, only needing the approval of the Emperor of Japan and the U. S. Congress to become effective, by which Japan accepts an approximate 67% of the British -U.S. naval strength instead of the 70% she had been demanding before Japan's recent election confirmed Prime Minister Hamaguchi in office (TIME, March 3). In detail:

U.S.

Battleships: 15

8-in.-gun cruisers: 180,000 tons, the U. S. to promise not to put more than 15 in commission before 1936.

Small cruisers: 143,000 tons

Destroyers: 150,000 tons

Submarines: 60,000 tons

Japan

Battleships 9-Japan to scrap the Kongo

Small gun cruisers 108,000 tons

Destroyers 100,000 tons

Submarines: 60,000 tons

Frenchmen were worried. It was already admitted that Britain and the U.S. had a tentative agreement establishing parity The Japanese agreement made a sure foundation for a three-power-pact from which France might be omitted unless she adopted a more conciliatory attitude.

Prestige Parity. Meanwhile Italian delegation, silent for weeks, made conciliatory gestures toward the French. In an expansive moment the bearded suave Dino Grandi admitted that Italy did not really need as big a navy as the French, but she had to demand it in order to maintain Fascist prestige. Delicately he hinted that France had a colonial empire in North Africa as large as the U. S. If France would cede a little bit of that to Italy, it would maintain Fascist prestige quite as well as a large navy. The notion was greeted with frigid silence. France replied that if Italy demanded parity in the Mediterranean, by all means let her have parity in the Mediterranean. France would keep her surplus warships in the Atlantic and the Far East.

Fatal Luncheon. Exactly what was said over the chops at Chequers remained a mystery last week, but correspondents observing the gravity with which Prime Minister Tardieu motored out to lunch, the comparative optimism with which he returned, made shrewd guesses which embarrassed statesmen refused to deny: frightened at the thought of being left out of a naval treaty, M. Tardieu had apparently insisted that France had no intention of wrecking the conference, pleaded for more time to adjust international differences. Prime Minister Macdonald retorted that Franco-Italian differences were all that are holding up a five-power pact. Conversation then centred on a collateral Franco-British-Italian treaty whereby each power guaranteed each other's possessions in the Mediterranean.

Briand. Avoiding the Tardieu-MacDonald-Stimson tangle for a while, reporters found the veteran Aristide Briand who has sat at more conference tables than any man at the parley, in a contemplative mood last week.

"There has been some misunderstanding about what I have tried to do here," said he puffing a rank Maryland cigaret. has been said that I sought protection for France. Yes, but that was not all. We have sought to reinforce the machinery for peace in a way to benefit all nations. . . .

"Now we have the Kellogg pact which may be called the penal code of the nations. . . . So far so good. But when the communities of a nation fix their penal code they do not leave it to their officials simply to reprimand the breaker of that code. No sir, they want something more done about it.

"So we must get around to that phase of enforcing our international penal code. Don't tell me that such plans are promoting war in the name of peace. C'est idiot! Do you call the hangman's noose the promotion for murder? Of course not, it is the deterrent for murder. What we want is a sure deterrent for war. . .

"I would rather plan to prevent wars than to humanize them. It does not do .any harm, but how much good does it do? It is like saying that in the next war soldiers may stick their bayonets in two inches but no further."

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