Word: naval
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...pleasant homely face, with its wide humorous mouth succeeded in diplomatically concealing his feelings. He has been attending arms conferences for the last four years. First it was the 1925 "Traffic-in-Arms" conference, then the 1926-27 preparatory arms commission and finally the ill-starred 1927 conference on naval armaments, of which he was chairman. He has heard all the polite haggling of open and closed diplomacy. He has seen admirals and generals mix a sour brew of national honor, strategy and armament statistics. And he sums his observations thus...
...failure to bring about an agreement on naval arms with Great Britain at Geneva in 1927 may or may not be laid at Mr. Gibson's door. In Foreign Affairs, for April, John William Davis, onetime (1918-1921) Ambassador to the Court of St. James's undertook to explain this diplomatic breakdown, to minimize Anglo-American differences, to suggest a policy under which naval limitations could be accomplished. Attracting wide attention in Washington, Mr. Davis wrote...
...three-power disarmament conference failed because the ground had not been prepared. . . . The cardinal weakness of that conference was that questions of naval strategy were always to the fore and emphasis on strategy always deflects policy. ... It is policy which ought first to be determined. ... If indications are given from responsible sources that in the event of constabulary action against a [Kellogg-Briand] covenant-breaking state, the navies of the two countries will act together, one area of possible conflict is greatly reduced...
That, he thought, "would shrink the whole naval controversy to its true proportions" and "would reduce the probability of a collision between the navies of the U.S. and Great Britain to the vanishing point...
...mood for making such declarations is waiting for Great Britain to move next on the naval question...