In a flurry of nervous excitement diplomats gathered at Victoria station last week. Prime Minister Tardieu, absent a month, was returning to the Naval Conference for the weekend. Every member of the French delegation was on the platform ; Britain's first Lord of the Admiralty Albert Victor Alexander rushed away from a football game at the Oval to extend felicitations. Ramsay MacDonald sent a messenger to remind M. Tardieu to be sure to motor out to Chequers for Sunday lunch. U. S. and Japanese assistant secretaries beamed a welcome. At the Carlton Hotel, headquarters of the French delegation, doors banged frantically for hours as technicians and diplomats rushed in and out. About 10:30 p.m. Prime Minister Tardieu went to bed to prepare for his fateful Chequers luncheon. Warned astute James Louis Garvin in the Sunday Observer:
"The last chance of any effective agreement at the London Naval Conference as distinguished from face-saving formulas largely depends on the outcome of conversations at Chequers today between Prime Minister MacDonald, Prime Minister Tardieu and Secretary Stimson. If today's discussions promise no change in the French thesis there will be no hope of adjustment."
Japan Agreement. For days statesmen had conferred nervously while the conference trembled on the brink of disaster. Then came two important moves. London papers published, U. S. delegates refused to deny, what purported to be a complete U. S.-Japanese naval agreement, only needing the approval of the Emperor of Japan and the U. S. Congress to become effective, by which Japan accepts an approximate 67% of the British -U.S. naval strength instead of the 70% she had been demanding before Japan's recent election confirmed Prime Minister Hamaguchi in office (TIME, March 3). In detail:
U.S.
Battleships: 15
8-in.-gun cruisers: 180,000 tons, the U. S. to promise not to put more than 15 in commission before 1936.
Small cruisers: 143,000 tons
Destroyers: 150,000 tons
Submarines: 60,000 tons
Japan
Battleships 9-Japan to scrap the Kongo
Small gun cruisers 108,000 tons
Destroyers 100,000 tons
Submarines: 60,000 tons
Frenchmen were worried. It was already admitted that Britain and the U.S. had a tentative agreement establishing parity The Japanese agreement made a sure foundation for a three-power-pact from which France might be omitted unless she adopted a more conciliatory attitude.
Prestige Parity. Meanwhile Italian delegation, silent for weeks, made conciliatory gestures toward the French. In an expansive moment the bearded suave Dino Grandi admitted that Italy did not really need as big a navy as the French, but she had to demand it in order to maintain Fascist prestige. Delicately he hinted that France had a colonial empire in North Africa as large as the U. S. If France would cede a little bit of that to Italy, it would maintain Fascist prestige quite as well as a large navy. The notion was greeted with frigid silence. France replied that if Italy demanded parity in the Mediterranean, by all means let her have parity in the Mediterranean. France would keep her surplus warships in the Atlantic and the Far East.