NAVAL PROPAGANDIST

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 6, 2 October 1929, Page 11

NAVAL PROPAGANDIST

UNITED STATES SENATE INQUIRY

SHEARER’S VERSION OF GENEVA CONFERENCE

Australian Press Assn.—United Service. Washington, September 80.

William B. Shearer, testifying before the Senate Committee on Monday, said that no member of the American delegation at Geneva had wdshed to see the parley end in failure, and he did not claim that he had broken up the gathering.

“Do you know of any one of our representatives who worked against arriving at any agreement?” asked the chairman, Senator Shortridge. “Only one, and he Introduced a political clause which was for another naval building holiday.” Shearer answered without giving the person’s name.

Shearer said that he himself was for the American programme for parity with the British Navy, and that if he had not been he would have been with the British, who wanted 750,000 tons of cruisers.

Agreeing with Senator Shortridge that he used his brains and ability to get out the facts, Shearer said that he also used one other thing, and that was naval intelligence data, giving the proposed plans of the British to Japan as to what they would attempt to, do at the conference and did do. '

Shearer told how his contract with the shipbuilders ended abruptly. He said: “Clinton L. Bardo came down here and reported that Secretary Kellogg had called the Bethlehem Company on the carpet and told them to get rid of me or the Department of Justice would open the Government’s fifteen million dollars’ suit of 1910 against the Bethlehem Steel Company.”

Shearer added that Bardo had once said: “Wakeman has told us about the Kellogg incident, and has said that you are a German spy and England has enough on you to hang you.”

Mr. Clinton Lloyd Bardo is president of the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, and Mr. S. W. Wakeman is vicepresident of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. Mr. F. B. Kellogg was Seccretary of State in the Coolidge Cabinet.