DISARMAMENT IN ITS RELATION TO THE NAVAL POLICY AND THE NAVAL [EDITOR'S NOTE: This document includes correspondence between ex-Senator Henry White, member of the American Mission to Negotiate Peace, the Honorable Thomas S. Butler, Chairman of the Naval Committee of the House of Representatives, and Mr. Arthur H. Pollen, an eminent Englishman, together with a series of articles written by Mr. Pollen and published in the New York Evening Post from February 21 to 25, 1921. It is reprinted from the "Hearings before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the House of Representatives, Sixty-sixth Congress, Third Session. Document No. 11".] 2 WEST FIFTY-SECOND STREET, New York, February 27, 1921. DEAR MR. BUTLER: I am sending you herewith an interesting letter which Mr. Arthur Pollen, the well-known British writer on naval affairs, has prepared for the information of the Naval Committee of the House of Representatives, in accordance with the request to that effect which I received from you through Mr. Hicks of that committee, and which I lost no time in conveying to Mr. Pollen, who was good enough to say that he would be happy to comply therewith. I think you will find Mr. Pollen's letter and the articles which he has written recently for the New York Evening Post not only interesting and pertinent to the hearings which the Naval Committee has been holding on the question of the reduction of armaments, but also a valuable addition to the congressional document embodying the result of those hearings, which is shortly to be published. Yours, very sincerely, Hon. THOMAS S. BUTLER, M. C., HENRY WHITE Chairman of the Naval Committee of the House of Representa tives New York City, February 26, 1921. DEAR MR. WHITE: Following up my previous letter to you, and our conversations on this subject, I am sending you, herewith, copies of the five articles that I have just written for the Evening Post, the last of which appeared yesterday. They include practically all that I have thought it is proper for me to say on this matter. But, in the very complimentary letter from the Hon. Frederick C. Hicks, which you allowed me to read, it was suggested that I might, perhaps, deal with one or two topics which, though I have not ignored them I have touched on only very lightly. To these points, therefore, I take this opportunity of adding a few words. Further, as the five articles are somewhat long, it might, perhaps, be convenient if I summarized my argument. Finally, it has been freely stated, I notice, in this country, that the British Government has organized a brisk propaganda to create a sentiment unfavorable to the completion of the American naval program. It is right, therefore, that I should make it quite clear that I have not now, and never have had, any such relations with my Government as would bring me into the category of one speaking to an official brief. It will, perhaps, be convenient if I take the last point first. I. I came to this country in 1917, not as an official propagandist, but as an avowedly hostile critic of Admiralty policy. I came at my own expense, wrote and spoke on my own responsibility, and the only article that, while I was in America, I wrote for publication in Great Britain was refused publication when it reached England. I am in America now upon private commercial business. I have had no previous consultation with the British Admiralty, have no direct knowledge of the Admiralty's present policy, and what I have written in the Evening Post has been written without consultation with any British official, and I have no direct means of knowing whether it meets with my Government's approval. All the opinions that I have ever published are therefore mine only and are dictated by such knowledge of naval science as I possess and by the conclusions to which |