In formulating its Third Replenish ment Programme, the Minister said, {the Navy has given this theory a wide forth but efforts will be made to strengthen the alr branch of the Navy 5 auxiliary arm.
It is possible, he said, that the next session of the League of Nation's Naval Disarmament Conference, meeting in Geneva in May, may propose new limitation of armaments and Japan is always ready to respond to reposals for disarmament but would "never initiate such a move until she was confident of the success of such 8 proposal."
Great Britain, the United States and Japan are not in the throes "wholesale naval building race" but only carrying out. construction planned earlier, Vice-Admiral Soemu Toyoda, director of the Naval Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of the Navy, said in answer to Dr. Hirosi Asida, publisher of "The Japan Times" and 'a Seiyukai representative, at a mect-Jing of the Fourth Sub-committee of the Lower House Budgetary Committee.
Japan's third replenishment programme, which will be. begun soon as the naval estimates now before the Diet are approved, Vico-'Admiral Toyoda said, was drawn up with the idea that the London and the Washington treaties would still be in force, The American building of auxiliaries was not extraordinary because America has always lacked vessels that type while the British retention of 70 cruisers in active service meant that she had put into effect a plan evolved at the time of the abortive General Naval Disarmament Conference in 1927, Vice-Admiral Toyoda said.
Britain's " £1,500,000,000 five-year' programme for the strengthening of her army, navy and alr force, Vice-'Admiral 'Toyoda added, was' inter-[preted "by some experts as a ges~ ture designed to place herself in. advantageous position at a possible disarmament conference but the time is not yet ripe to decide what the Teal British alms are."
The Japanese Navy, he continued, does not feel "uneasy at present" and 1s not contemplating modifica tion of its, third replenishment programme, which is designed to main-fain "the necessary minimum. strength" in. keeping with the nation's productive capacity, her price and Ananelal policles—Domel,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.