Fleet Dispositions Nothing could have been better calculated to emphasise
the importance of President Roosevelt's Note to Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini than the simultaneous announcement by the Navy Department of the United States that the whole of the American Fleet, apart from an Atlantic Squadron of no great strength, would immediately be concentrated in the Pacific. That is, in the first place, an unprovocadve reminder to Japan (referred to in the Note as a State occupying a vast extent of a neighbour's territory) of the existence of the United States. Japan is a signatory of the anti-Comintern Pact, and if Britain and France, in the event of a European war with Japan's anti-Comintern associates, found it necessary to draw on their naval forces in Far Eastern waters it would be a reassurance to them, and a matter for sober reflection for Japan, to know that the great bulk of the American fleet was somewhere between Hawaii and Yokohama. Meanwhile, the appearance of a considerable French squadron at Gibral- tar is a welcome evidence of Anglo-French co-operation, par- ticularly when some thirty or forty German vessels are about to conduct exercises in that vicinity. That particular opera- tion is susceptible of two opposite interpretations. It may be true, as a German spokesman averred, that if Herr Hitler were contemplating war the last thing he would do would be to disperse his fleet. It may be equally true that that is pre- cisely what he would do, for pocket-battleships based on Spanish ports on the Atlantic would be ideally placed for commerce-raiding.
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