tion of peace produced no
immediate results of any importance. American troops continued on the
Rhine, and there was no apparent increase in trade, which had been
carried on before the signing of the treaty by special licenses.

If mankind is capable of learning any lessons from history, the events
leading up to the World War should have exploded the fallacy that the
way to preserve peace is to prepare for war. Competition in armament,
whether on land or sea, inevitably leads to war, and it can lead to
nothing else. And yet, after the terrible lessons of the recent war,
the race for armaments continued with increased momentum. France,
Russia, and Poland maintained huge armies, while the United States and
Japan entered upon the most extensive naval construction programs in
the history of the world. Great Britain, burdened with debt, was
making every effort to keep pace with the United States.

This naval rivalry between powers which had so lately been united in
the war against Germany, led thoughtful people to consider the probable
outcome and to ask against whom these powers were arming. We had no
quarrel with England, but England was the ally of Japan, and relations
between Japan and the United States in the Pacific and in Eastern Asia
were far from reassuring. The question of the continuance of the
Anglo-Japanese Alliance was discussed at the British Imperial
Conference, which met at London in the early summer of 1921. The
original purpose of this compact was to check the Russian advance in
Manchuria. It was renewed in revised form in 1905 against Germany, and
again renewed in 1911 against Germany for a period of ten years. With
the removal of the German menace, what reasons were there for Great
Britain to continue the alliance? It bore too much the aspect of a
combination against the United States, and was of course the main
reason for the naval program which we had adopted. So long as there
were only three navies of importance in the world and two of them
united in a defensive alliance, it behooved us to safeguard our
position as a sea power.

One of the main objects of the formation of the League of Nations was
to bring about a limitation of armaments on land and sea, and a
commission was organized under the League to consider this question,
but this commission could not take any steps toward the limitation of
navies so long as a great naval power like the United States refused to
cooeperate with the