or made appropriations to build ninety-one new seagoing combatant vessels and the British twenty-one whereas the United States has followed with only seven. Yet this demonstration of the continuance of naval competition gives us a criterion by which to measure the naval understanding and prophetic ability of the chairman of the American delegates. For one of the closing paragraphs of the panegyric with which he presented his Naval Treaty to the final plenary session of the Conference reads in the official record and without qualifying clause of any kind:

This Treaty ends, absolutely ends, the race in competitive naval armament. (Applause) At the same time it leaves the relative security of the great naval Powers unimpaired.

The Washington Conference evidently was such an extremely complex politico-naval undertaking that success required the closest mutual understanding, planning and coöperation between our diplomatic officials and their naval advisers. But apparently our then Secretary of State at first gave such little heed to its naval aspect that he did not even advise the policy officers of the navy of his intention to call such a conference before he announced it to the world-nor were they informed of the naval proposal made before he announced it in public. Thus he committed the country to an undertaking with vital factors of which he was not really familiar and yet which he had to carry through at least to a temporary semblance of partial success—an end achieved by suppressing and disregarding the counsels of his civilian and naval advisers. The result is that an unnecessarily great handicap has been put on our first line of defense and on our ability to maintain our foreign policies and to safeguard our overseas interests. This should be borne in mind in considering conditions across the Atlantic and the Pacific that control whatever may be done in the world-continent—and in its two flanking archipelagoes-with respect to any further reduction of arma

ments.

VI

Some seem to think of the affairs of Western Europe and of those of Eastern Asia as in entirely different and unrelated categories. But just as oceanic matters should be considered col

lectively, so should the affairs of the world-continent. And somewhat as insular America is at the center of the oceanic world, so Eurasian Russia occupies the central position in the worldcontinent and in its affairs.

Since the fiasco of the League over the Locarno treaties, European dispatches have been pointing out that whereas France supposedly had built up the Little Entente to encircle Germany, now she is obliged to support her allies in it, and their armaments, vis-a-vis Russia. But those who have borne in mind Foch's insistence in 1919 on the ultimate importance of drawing a cordon sanitaire from the Baltic to the Black Sea, realize that there is nothing new in this so-called reorientation. Undoubtedly, the defense of Europe proper against an apparently impotent Russia has not seemed necessary to some. But others with sufficient historical background and contemporary detachment to think in terms of decades foresaw in 1917 that Russia was bound to go through a series of years similar to those of the French Revolution, Terror and Directorate. And although the analogy has held true so far, we need not premise the present prospect on the thesis that, from time immemorial, one of the most effective means whereby old or new rulers have strengthened their domestic control have been successful foreign wars; for Russia's present rulers have explicitly avowed their intent to overthrow and bring within their own orbit other governments by inciting civil strife and by war again as was the case with revolutionary France that led into the Napoleonic wars. Even though we discount reports that Russia now has a million men under arms and that they are much better trained and equipped than were the forces of the Romanoffs, yet there are grounds for pause if it be admitted that Germany might find her greatest advantage in alliance with Russia, or that some of the Balkans, Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan or vast China might become active elements of the Soviet régime. For it is not Russia alone but Russia and her possible associates that we must consider.

It may be difficult for some, even after the disillusionment at Geneva, to realize that the beatitudes broadcasted from Locarno cloaked the fact that its brood of tentative treaties were the offspring of a common fear rather than of mutual affection. Yet if

we look at the situation in a larger and deeper way-as Foch did in 1919-it should be apparent that ever since the armistice, and more especially since Rapallo, the principal problem of Europe proper has not been Germany per se but Russia and Germany's possible association with her. It was but natural, therefore, that the Locarno treaties should have been advanced as a way of detaching Germany from Russia and bringing her into the none too stable League coalition of Western Europe, the price offered Germany being a seat on the Council of the League where the requirement of unanimity would enable her to hold up other actions until her own broad aims respecting radical modifications of the Treaty of Versailles had been satisfied. Concern over this Spring's Russo-German rapprochement need not be characterized. And in addition, Mussolini's imperialism and attitude toward Germany, France, Turkey and the League, and Russia's refusal to attend the conference of the Preparatory Commission on the reduction of armaments all proclaim the prospect envisaged by Europe.

In view of the notorious martial inefficiency of heterogeneous coalitions vis-a-vis a unit command, Europe proper may therefore have to maintain land forces perhaps merely twice those of Russia-provided that the self-interests of all constituents of the coalition of Europe proper lead them to adhere to it loyally and without stint. But if the adhesion of members such as Germany or Italy were problematical because their self-interests might be better satisfied otherwise, then that would throw on the remaining members the necessity of maintaining such additional forces themselves as to hold within the coalition any unreliable constituents. So the prospect for the reduction of land armaments in Europe does not seem bright—unless Russia can be involved elsewhere so as to minimize any likelihood of her acting aggressively in Europe.

VII

As is well known, the Soviets have continued the pressures long exerted under the Czars toward the warm waters of the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, and toward India. But although these activities cause serious concern, they can hardly be expected to

become an imminent menace to Europe's route to the Orient or to the British raj in India if Russia be confronted by greater problems in the West or East. It is noteworthy, however, that none of the Continental Powers of Western Europe have any interests in Eastern Asia remotely comparable with the importance to them of preventing Russian aggression in Europe. And similarly, great as are England's interests in Eastern China, they are of much less moment to her than are India and the security of the Suez route. Consequently both the Continentals and English have common cause in supporting activities in Eastern Asia that would, as the phrase is, hold the Russian bear by the tail and prevent him from striking westward in Europe or southward in Asia. So whatever the prospect may be in the East, it has direct bearing on the future in Europe.

For a year and more we have been receiving unusually detailed dispatches of the kaleidoscopic changes in the Orient. But they have conveyed no adequate picture of the able initiative and almost desperate efforts of the representatives of the United States in Peking to help toward the reconstitution of China in spite of partisan opposition among some of the Chinese and from more than one of the Powers. Nor have they given much insight into the underlying reason for the urgency of Chinese solidarity although it has been evident for many months. For the present prospect in Eastern Asia is quite similar to that of about 1902, excepting in that the prize, instead of being little more than Korea, is much more than Manchuria. Indeed it is reported that while there is perhaps less than an even chance of another Russo-Japanese war within two years, there is very much more than an even chance of one within four; and this not only for regional reasons but because such a war, or the prospect of it, would contribute to the safety of Europe proper and of Southern Asia. This does not mean that such a war is inevitable. But it does mean that the record of the past, the constancy of human nature, and present conditions throughout the world-continent all make such a war very likely unless practical steps, based on experience rather than on highfalutin hopes, be taken in time to prevent it. We have seen that the ultimate security of the Powers of Western Europe depends primarily on their maintaining suffi

cient land forces to prevent Russia, and any possible ally of hers, from aggression there and, secondarily, on Russia's being so engaged in the East that she will be innocuous in the West. Inevitably, such serious trouble in Europe would present the United States with a fresh and more or less pressing problem in the exercise of the balance of power transatlantically. On the other hand, a war that would injure the prosperity of China and endanger her integrity would be a matter of particular concern to us. For while our transpacific trade as yet is only a quarter of our overseas traffic, the fact that our commerce with China has increased about fourfold in the last decade indicates the trend. But the Orient is a region of realities, based on force above all else. And as the tense situation in Western Europe and its remoteness from Eastern Asia minimize whatever stabilizing influences the European Powers could exert if they would, the maintenance of peace in the East seems to rest primarily on the United States being so manifestly able to exercise the balance of power determinatively there that neither Russia nor Japan will risk the issue of war and matters in dispute will be settled peacefully in accordance with the determining voice.

In other words, somewhat as we might have been the arbiters of peace in the late European war without having to fight, had our navy been manifestly in such shape as to be thrown with conclusive weight on either side, so the maintenance of peace in the Orient depends largely on our navy's being similarly potent across the Pacific. And as the inadequacy of our navy in 1917 entrained our actual entry into the war then, so the present inadequacy of our navy, thanks primarily to the Washington Conference, is likely to permit an Asian war into which we may ultimately be drawn.

Many important European and Asian factors, as well as some conflicting subtleties in Eurasian and American relations, of necessity have been omitted from this discussion of affairs underlying the reduction of armaments. For in it the principal purpose has been, first, to point to the futility of attempts to reduce land armaments in Europe without Russia's being a sincere party to the effort and, second, to draw attention to the transatlantic and transpacific problems in the peaceful maintenance of the