JAPAN: Flying Rattlesnakes

Premier Reijiro Wakatsuki smothered last week the loud jingoist demands of his Minister of Marine (TIME, Nov. 8). As a result of compromise, the Navy's demand for an additional budgetary outlay of 122,400,000 yen ($60,000,000) was clipped, and a five-year building program substituted during which the following ships will glide down the ways: four 10,000-ton cruisers; sixteen 1,700-ton destroyers, one 2,000-ton submarine; four 1,700-ton submarines; and three river gunboats.

This partial curtailment of the navy's building plans was made largely in the interest of Japan's annually more formidable air program.

While the...

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