BIG NAVY PROPAGANDA

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 764, 10 September 1929, Page 9

BIG NAVY PROPAGANDA

“PATRIOT” SUES BUILDERS j FOR £60,000 HIS SERVICES AT GENEVA (Australian and N.Z. Press Association! WASHINGTON, Sunday. (W interview has been secured with William B. Schearer, who sued the American Brown Boverie Electric Corporation, the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation and the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company for commission amounting to more than £60,000 for his efforts at Geneva to discourage naval disarmament. He is alleged to have been at the time in the secret employ of the corporations, which are interested in naval contracts. In this interview Schearer divulged some aspects of his work. He has shown great Interest in naval affairs for many years and once attempted to secure an order from the courts to prevent the sinking of certain vessels under the Washington Schearer declared he was not a propagandist, but a patriot. He was a private observer at the Geneva Conference of 1927, and the data he used against a limitation of naval armaments there were supplied by naval officers whose names, he said, he will reveal at the impending investigation by a committee of the Senate. However, Schearer mentioned four admirals who, he said, had urged him in 1924 to spread information against a reduction of naval armaments. He also said shipbuilding companies were enthusiastic over his work.