"Peace in Peril"

President Herbert Clark Hoover's contribution to the League of Nations' disarmament parley in Geneva was the new method which he personally devised to make possible an exact comparison between the fighting strengths of naval ships of different nations according to an algebraic formula (TIME, May 6). Last week the Preparatory Disarmament Commission adjourned without having so much as debated or considered the merits of the Hoover Formula. From the first the President's representative--Hugh Simons Gibson, U. S. Ambassador to Belgium--had been ready to divulge details of the formula in confidence to those nations which asked for it.

Up to the moment of adjournment last week, neither Britain nor Japan had requested so much as a peek. Therefore dapper Mr. Gibson put the Hoover Formula back into his brief case and returned to his diplomatic post--Brussels. Four days later, Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty Rt. Hon. William Clive Bridgeman, resolute opponent of any reduction in John Bull's navy, received a copy of the Hoover plan, not from Ambassador Gibson but from the U. S. naval experts in Geneva. Eventually he must submit an opinion on it to the Committee of Imperial Defense, which will pass the report on to the Cabinet. Meanwhile the formula is conveniently shelved and thus kept out of the political campaigns that are swaying English public opinion in preparation for the coming General Parliamentary Election.

At Geneva, suave U. S. Delegate Gibson --a close friend and co-worker with Herbert Hoover since Belgian War relief days --had laid down, in addition to the Hoover Formula which he could not present, two major principles:

First, the U. S. urges and well-nigh demands not mere limitation but actual and prompt reduction of naval armaments.

Second, The question of reducing land armaments is considered more or less extraneous to U. S. interests and easily postponable--since the U. S. is primarily (in peace time) a naval power.

Seemingly President Hoover is well pleased that Ambassador Gibson has contented himself with stating these principles' broadly and keeping the Hoover Formula in his pocket. For, last week, Secretary of State Stimson cabled to Mr. Gibson:

"The President desires me to express to you his satisfaction with the efficient manner in which you and the other members of the delegation have fulfilled your instructions during the sixth meeting of the preparatory commission for a disarmament conference.

"I wish to add my own appreciation of your excellent presentation of the views of the U. S. and the able manner in which you have contributed to the progress of the work of the commission and awakened new hopes of a practical means for the effective reduction of armaments."

Two days later the U. S. Ambassador at Berlin, dignified, popular Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, sat discreetly silent at a banquet while famed German Foreign Minister and Peace Prizer Dr. Gustav Stresemann flayed the Hoover-Gibson attitude by implication thus:

"Progress toward a reduction of naval establishments when made in such a way as to leave the huge standing armies of Europe intact is no step at all toward true disarmament and leaves the peace of Europe in as great peril as ever."