Excerpts of the President's News Conference

It isn't possible to say whether, now that the English and French naval suggestions have been published, it would be probable that any further naval limitation agreements can be reached before 1931. I think it is fair to say that so far as we have been advised concerning the agreement made between France and England it didn't seem to advance the probability of further agreements about naval armaments. The only advance it could be said to have made was a certain change of attitude on the part of the French and English relative to limita-tion, but it was a change of attitude with which we were unable to agree. I do not understand that either Italy or Japan agreed to it. But they did not set out their position with the fullness of detail that we did. I think their attitude in relation to it, so far as it has been disclosed, is very similar to our attitude. Not exactly like it, but along the same lines. That means two countries have indicated that they might agree to something, if others would agree, but it is apparent that other countries do not agree to it, and so there hasn't been much of any progress made. The encouraging part of it is that France, which didn't attend the naval conference I called in 1927, and the English have indicated that they were willing to change their attitude and they might be willing to change it further.