FRANK B. DILNOT - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 01/26/1922 - HFSID 78487

FRANK DILNOT
The journalist expresses high hopes that the Washington Naval Conference will "reshape life on the globe."
Autograph Letter signed: "Frank Dilnot", 3 pages (integral leaf), 5½x7. The City Club of New York, 1922 January 26. To "Dear Mrs. Wainwright", in full: "Thank you for your kind letter. I am looking forward very much to seeing you and Dr. Wainwright and the family again. I suggest my new lecture Transforming the World at Washington - which demonstrates how the Washington gathering is the beginning of a series of conferences which will almost automatically though perhaps with delays reshape life on the globe. During the three months I was home I had the opportunity of not only gleaning the mind of Lloyd George but also of having private conversations with many leaders such as Bonar Law, Worthington Evans Secretary for War and now the Head of the Admiralty, General Hamilton and others. I know the mind of Britain pretty thoroughly and my talk, though it will have a world-wide setting, will be largely concerned with America and Britain. I trust this may prove acceptable. You may be interested to know that when I said goodbye to Lloyd George a few weeks ago he told me how anxiously he wished he could come to America. With all good wishes. Yours very sincerely". Accompanied by original mailing envelope addressed in Dilnot's hand to Mrs. Wainwright, Scranton, Pennsylvania. English journalistFrank Buckland Dilnot (1875-1946) edited a labor publication, The Daily Citizen, before moving to The Globe and then the London Daily Express. He was President of the Association of Foreign Correspondents in America (1918-1919) and of the London Press Club (1928-1929). Dilnot wrote several books on society and politics in Britain and the United States, including a biography of Lloyd-George and a memoir, The Adventures of a Newspaper Man. As this letter was written, the Washington Naval Conference (November 1921- February 1922) was nearing what seemed a satisfactory conclusion. The incoming Republican administration of President Harding, having campaigned against US membership in the League of Nations, proposed arms limitation as an alternative method of preserving world peace. The Washington Conference, presided over by Secretary of State Hughes, committed the major naval powers to limits on battleship tonnage. A ratio of 5-5-3 for the United States, Britain and Japan was accepted, resulting - since Japan only had to operate in one ocean - effective naval parity for Japan. (The US and Britain had to destroy some existing ships; Japan did not.) The set of treaties did restrain military spending for a decade, but hardly fulfilled Dilnot's prediction that they would "reshape life on the globe." The arms race resumed in the 1930s. Normal mailing folds. Fine condition.