NAVAL ARMAMENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 234, 2 October 1929, Page 9

NAVAL ARMAMENTS

(SHEARER BEFORE THE SENATE [ Australian Press Assn. ] WASHINGTON, Sept. 30. Shearer, before the Senate Committee to-day, said that no member of the American delegation had wished to see the parley end in failure and he did not claim that he had broken up the gathering. “Do you know of anyone of our representatives who worked against arriving at any agreement?” asked the chairman, Mr Shortridge. “Only one. He introduced a political clause which was for another naval building holiday,” Shearer answered without giving the person’s name. Shbarer 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. He agreed with Air 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 Britain and Japan, what they would attempt to do at the conference, and what they did do. Shearer related how his contract with the shipbuilders ended abruptly, saying: “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 15.000,000 dollar suit of 1910 against the Bethlehem Steel Company. Bardo once declared that Wakeman had told us about the Kellogg incident and said: ‘You are a German spy, and England has enough on you to hang you.* ”