Rare London Naval Conference Document, 1930 (H.L. Mencken's copy)

JF Ptak Science Books  

Summary of Memoranda Setting Forth Policy of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom at the Naval Conference. No publisher or place of publication indicated, and not dated, though printed in 1930. 13x8 inches, 6 leaves. WorldCat/OCLC locates 0 copies.  Two old horizontal folds; the cover has a chip missing in the upper left making it detached from the brass and twine paper-gatherer.  Good copy. $150

This was the fifth in a series of naval conferences of global concern (1921-1937) involving Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy, the representatives gathering in London for January/February to work out revisions and extensions of the Five Power Treaty adopted in 1922. Although billed as a peace/disarmament conference, it really didn't work out that way, or so it seems—much of what was discussed was on the limiting of tonnage production of ships and subs, but it seems that the upper limits were designed above the actual production capacity of some nations.

This was H.L. Mencken's copy, with a small penciled note to that effect in a librarian's hand on the back of the title page, along with a date. Mencken covered the proceedings, and evidently, soon afterwards (March 19^th) gave this copy of the outline memoranda to the Library of Congress.

Provenance: H.L. Mencken, then to the Library of Congress, de-accessioned in 1998. There are no internal L.C. Or Mencken markings; there is a L.C. surplus/duplicate rubber stamp on the rear cover of the document.