AMERICAN SHIPBUILDERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20832, 26 September 1929, Page 9

AMERICAN SHIPBUILDERS

PROPAGANDA AT GENEVA. SENATE’S INVESTIGATION. A LETTER PROM SHEARER. (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) WASHINGTON, September 24. A letter by William Shearer, observer for the American shipbuilders at the 1927 Geneva Conference, claiming that a secret British document which he obtained had influenced the legislative course of the Fifteen Cruiser Construction Bill in the Senate last session,' was read into the record to-day of the Senate’s investigating committee, ' ' The letter was addressed to Mr Homer L. Ferguson (president of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Corporation) last March, shortly after the Cruiser Bill was passed. Shearer wrote that he realised that serious opposition confronted the programme, and that the funds might not be appropriated, and that the clause requiring a start of construction by a given time might be eliminated, and the number of cripsers might be reduced. He said this opposition caipe from the highest authorities in the land* including the Secretary of State, all of the internationalists, and the socalled pacifist bodies. “As you are aware, I was the possessor of a secret British document so vital and amazing in its construction that I took it to the Navy Department, ..where, under the highest authorities, the document was 'photographed. On that same evening a photostat copy was handed to me. I immediately placed it in the hands of a United States senator, and the press of this nation reflected the power of his voice when if referred to his speech for cruisers as the' greatest speech ever made in the United States for national defence, nor did that senator hesitate to brand the opposition as traitors.” —Australian Press Association —United Service.