Pacifist Pressure

ARMY & NAVY

For more than a month, churchmen and pacifist organizations have been rat-tat-tatting the White House with protests against the forthcoming naval maneuvers in the Pacific (TIME, April 8). Out of this fleet operation involving 177 ships, 447 planes and covering 5,000,000 sq. mi. of seaways, pious people feared, might come the incident which would plunge the U. S. into war with Japan. By last week pacifist pressure had grown so great that the Navy Department for the first time in many a year was obliged to say something, do something.

Scene of the operations, Secretary Swanson told newshawks, would be the Puget Sound-Alaska-Hawaii "triangle." Contrary to pacifists' beliefs, the fleet would at no time approach within 2,000 mi. of Japanese territory or the Japanese fleet. Furthermore, on May 3, simultaneously with the beginning of the maneuvers. Admiral Frank Brooks Upham, commander-in-chief of the Asiatic Fleet, would steam into Yokohama harbor on his flagship Augusta for a "good will" visit. While this year's Pacific maneuvers involve the greatest tonnage since the War, the Secretary pointed out that the Navy has more tonnage available than it has had in a decade.

In spite of the fact that the Asiatic Fleet makes an annual courtesy call on some Japanese city every year, U. S. pacifists still retained their gloomy forebodings, recalled that the Maine's ill-fated "courtesy call" at Havana in 1898 precipitated the Spanish War.

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