THREE YEAR NAVAL PROGRAM

...This is in addiMon to the 156 naval vessels comprising the first three-year program which was authorized in 1916 as well as a large (and unknown) number of new destroyers and other special types contracted for sinc,e the United States entered the war...

...It certainly is interesting if true...

...THROUGH a slip on the part of the Committee of Public Information, Secretary ; Daniels was prematurely quoted the other day as announcing that the administration had another three year program to present to (Congress covering a huge increase in the Navy...

...Both Great Britain and Japan are believed to be willing to see the great powers agree upon the abolition of compulsory military training and service, with Germany taking the lead in this, but to regard as more or less "•Utopian" attempts to limit naval construction...

...Daniel's wrongly timed interview, the Navy Department is planning fo ask Congress for a second three-year naval program which will provide ten additional super-dreadnoughts, six battle cruisers and 140 smaller vessels at a cost of $600,000,000...

...For that reason there are some men in Congress who feel that the administration ought, as evidence of its good faith in putting forth the disarmament proposals either to cut the three-year program to one year or else to include in it a provision, like the well-known Hensley provision, advertising to the world our villingness to abandon sach part of the proposed three-year .program as would make it conform to any general agreement reached by the great powers at the peace conference...

...It may be that the appropriation bill when it finally comes out of the house Committee on Naval Affairs may contain, at the instance of the administration, such a provision as will make clear to the world our pa« eific intentions...

...No sooner had the announcement appear ed than the news division of the Committee issued an unsuccessful appeal to tffe newspapers to "kill" the etory on the grounds that it should have been held back for the Secretary's annual report in December...

...According to Mr...

...Daniels on the subject...

...But so many of the papers had printed the article before the "kill" order was received that the various navy service journals which come out weekly decided that there was no use in ignoring the item with the result that everybody has now printed the statement and accepted it as true...

...There are some people here who say that the President himself may have had a hand in recalling the story on the grounds that he did not wish the United States to appear on the very eve of a peace conference which will consider disarmament, to be getting ready to "set the pace" in an armament race...

...There is considerable speculation here as to the effect of/this announcement upon public opinion in Great Britain and Japan, the two nations most inclined to balk at any attempts to limit naval programs as a part of general disarmament...

...Such a theory, at any "rate, is plausible, especially in view of the subsequent silence of Mr...

...Secretary Daniels himself has always said frankly that all the nations were reaching the point w-here disarmament had to be seriously considered if international bankruptcy was.to be avoided...