Word: tardieu
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Grandi v. Tardieu. So young is Signor Dino Grandi, 35, that he has grown a beard like an Egyptian mummy's to achieve dignity as Italian Foreign Minister. Last week the beard waggled angrily. Against the will of France, Italy sought to impose on the conference this procedure: agreement should first be reached on the ratios of naval strength in which the powers would stand; secondly, each power should announce its total tonnage needs...
...Signor Grandi's positive demands, Prime Minister Andre Tardieu of France was not afraid to shout "No!" ten times more positively. He was also able to convince Italy that he had the silent backing of Britain and the U. S. Defeated in the first round, Signor Grandi withdrew his demand that ratios and total tonnages come first on the agenda, but saved the face of Signor Mussolini by a voluble oration to the effect that Italy "reserves" these points and will not join in any agreement reached by the conference until they have been settled...
Flushed by his first victory, driving, kinetic M. Tardieu then presented the conference with his plan of procedure. When this had been haggled over and slightly modified, James Ramsay MacDonald said poetically to reporters: "The partition between our position and the French is now so thin that if you should place a candle on one side you could see it from the other...
...Labeled Proposition Transactionelle Francaise (French basis for bargaining) the Tardieu proposal was handed out to all delegates at a meeting of the "committee of the whole." French expert Rene Massigli, who helped Tardieu draft the P. T. F. (as Tardieu helped Clemenceau draft the Treaty of Versailles), explained that its major points are: 1) The conference should set a maximum total of "global" tonnage of "floating material," up to which each nation would have a theoretical right to build; 2) In striving for agreement as to actual building and ratios the method should be to consider war boats...
...presenting the P. T. P., jaunty, positive M. Tardieu said that in 1942 France proposes to have a navy of 804.000 tons, of which 175.000 tons of battleships and 60,000 tons of aircraft carriers are already covered by the Washington Treaty. The other 569,000 tons, France would divide thus: large cruisers 120,000 tons; light cruisers and destroyers 200,000; submarines 124,000; miscellaneous 55,000. These figures, unsensational, were the only real cards laid on the conference table last week...