"Washington, Feb. 12.
The State Department here today expressed the it and dissatisfaction of the United States with the Japanese reply made earlier today to American demands that Japan reveal her naval construction plans.
The State Department's comment was made in a curt four line statement, reading: "This Government is seeking constantly to ce-operate in maj One of the focal points of world shipping, Singapore commands the western gateway of the Pacific, and ships travelling between the Suez and ihe Far East must pass within a mile of the city. It has been computed that the daily average value of shipping in the seas commanded by the base is in excess of £150,000,000.
Since Britain decided in 1921 to make Singapore her principal base in the Far East, the importance of the base has steadily grown and the original estimate of the cost, £10,500,000, has been nearly doubled.
From the time the work was begun in 1923 until the main contract was finished two years ago—with the exception of a year's break in 1994, when the work was suspended by the Labour Government—a daily average of 3000 coolies, mainly Chinese and Tamils, worked under the blazing tropical sun digging out the dock and filling in the swamps which surrounded it.
From the graving dock, 3,284,000 Cubic yards of soil" were excavated, while more than 8,000,000 cubic yards were dumped in the swamps.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.