"It's going to be the devil's own job," he said to Karsten, as they were smoking their pipes after dinner. "If there's one thing the Japanese keep quiet about, it's their submarines; and, of course, nothing in the Conference agreement prevents them from building as many as they like. And, besides, they are the obvious weapon of defense against America. Japan has an ideal situation with a long barrier of islands running from Saghalien as far as the Equator, if you include the Mandate Islands. Yes, I know that under the Mandate terms, she can't fortify them, but the Germans showed that any little place with a few barrels of oil on it can make a submarine base. They can place the oil there in a jiffy, if they expect trouble. Maybe it is already there; oil can be used for lots of things besides war. There's nothing to prevent it. With a chain of island supply stations and a great fleet of submarines Japan can put up a wonderful defense and commerce destruction. That's all self-evident. The job is going to be to find out what they are doing in that line and what they intend to do. It's a regular Oppenheim job. What do you think of it?"
"You know I don't take much interest in that sort of thing," Karsten rubbed his chin thoughtfully, stood up and began pacing the floor. "Still, of course, one hears a lot of talk, and I think that most foreigners here have about the same idea on the matter. The submarine is Japan's natural weapon to-day. A few years ago, before America entered the war, Japan thought she could lick the United States and her strategy was based on offensive lines. When she found to her bitter disappointment that America really could fight, she began to revise her opinion, and when America's program of bigger fortifications in Hawaii and elsewhere was brewing, she felt that she had no choice but to continue feverishly with the Eight-and-Eight battle fleet program which she had originated when the idea was to lick America. But she could never have kept it up. She couldn't have afforded it. Of course, the militarists are professionals who don't care about anything but the army and navy. They would have insisted, even if the country had been bled white. But even then, even if she had managed to build the fleet, she couldn't have kept it up. Her war savings are decreasing at an alarming rate, her national wealth, commerce, industry, the whole thing is decreasing. The Washington Conference was the biggest bit of luck that ever happened to Japan. It enabled her to save her face, and to make a big play to gain international confidence--which I'm glad she got--and at the same time to save her from the necessity of building a vast fleet of battleships, which she couldn't afford, and do it with the assurance that America wouldn't outstrip her in a naval race either.