President Roosevelt Gives Further Indication of Needs as Guarantee for Peace Washington, Jan. 19.
R. Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, sid to-day he was uninformed about the report which arose from the statement. of a French spokesman: that Britain, France and the United States were studying the possibility of removing treaty limitations on the size of capital warships to meet the challenge of New Japanese construction, The Navy Department declined to comment.
In a letter to Rear Admiral Re ald B, Belknap, retired, Commander in Chief of the Military Order of the World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt to-day expressed the hope that troubled world conditions "will serve to focus the attention of our people on their own national defences."
"The American nation Is committed to peace," the President wrote, "and the principle reason for the existence of our armed forees is as a guaran lee for our peace...... The Army of the United States is one of the small remote as to be unworthy of consideration. the second place, opinion throughout the country as a whole believed to be siding increasingly with est in the world, however I am glad to note that its eMiciency is steadily Improving?
Washington circles regarded the lotter's publication as a prelude to the President's coming national defence message to Congress, for which he desires unified national support.
President Roosevelt in the conviction that the United States must prepare herself for any eventuality. which a troubled world may bring forth, and that the Navy, as the first line of defence, must be strengthened to a point where absolute security is assured—United Press, Naval Conference Wanted Representative Hamilton Fish, Re-Dublican of New York, announced in the House to-day that he would offer an amendment to the Navy Department Appropriation Bill authorizing and requesting President Roosevelt to convoke a world naval limitation conference
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.