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Turning to the matter of Sea Power, the President recalled that Britain possesses, apart from her navy, certain "advantages" not possessed by the U. S., namely a large merchant fleet capable of being armed. He concluded: We are entitled to a larger number of warships than a nation having these advantages.
Briefly, the old and often successful British method of repeating in a tone of horror, what someone else has frankly said, 'was applied, last week, to President Coolidge, very much as it was once applied to Wilhelm II. Only British Labor's Daily Herald went the whole hog and bluntly said:
"German statesmen similarly declared that their naval programs, before the War, were based on needs and were not competitive with our navy. . . . All the elements of an Anglo-American conflict are now present."
To Washington correspondents the President observed, last week, that he would willingly consider any proposals for the limitation of armaments which might emanate from the British Government. Proposals of this nature were made in the House of Lords, last week, by Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, winner of the Wood-row Wilson Peace Prize, who was forced to resign as British representative on the League of Nations because his advocacy of pacifism and disarmament was in advance of the British Government's position. That position was such that absolutely nothing was achieved when the Naval Limitations Parley (TIME, June 27 to Aug. 15, 1927) was convoked in Geneva.
Patriotic U. S. citizens rejoiced that the President had so well summed the entire situation in five words of one syllable each: "If they had our chance. . . ."