50 ways at Hog Island, 28 at Newark Bay, and 12 at Bristol, will, when they are in full operation, produce in a single year more ships than England, the greatest maritime nation of the world, has ever been able to turn out in the same length of time. Already at the yards of the Submarine Boat Company at Newark Bay, 15 keels have been laid, and 13 more will be put down as soon as the remaining ways, now in course of construction, are completed. By the time the last way is finished the vessel on the first way will be well on towards completion; and as soon as it is slipped into the water another keel will be laid in its place, and we will thus have a continuous series of vessels dropping into the water from this yard at the rate of two a week. Even greater tonnage will be produced at Hog Island, with its larger number of ways and the bigger type of vessels which are being constructed there. When the high point in the curve of production finally is reached, and the magnitude of America's shipbuilding program is realized it will be a continuous performance of production and launching.

If you will take a glance at the map of the world you will see that three-fourths of it is covered with water. Great Britain long ago made it her policy to maintain control of this greater part of the world's surface.

But we

also have taken first rank among the powers, and our first need now is for a great merchant marine. Our gigantic program for ship construction will place us in a position where we can rely on native resources, rather than be dependent on the fleets of our competitors, as it has been very largely in the past. No nation can be great commercially unless it has its own manufacturing and its own shipping, and this is the goal which will be passed in peace if we can reach it in war.

There is no doubt but that we are destined to be one of the leading shipbuilding nations in the world.

We will have the largest number of shipyards, the materials and the labor and when our shipbuilding plants are completed and are well organized on sound business lines so as to produce ships cheaply and rapidly, we will not only produce sufficient ships to become the

leader in the commerce of the world by furnishing transportation at reasonable rates, thereby performing a service to the rest of the world, but we will build ships in such large numbers and at such fair prices that we will become the mecca of the shipbuilding trade of the world.

General Wood before the Military Affairs Committee of the Senate yesterday said that the great need of the Allies is for men, ships, artillery, in order named. I would change the order to put ships first, because without ships we cannot maintain the American line of communication necessary in sending men, artillery, food and aeroplanes to our forces and to the Allies. There is now and there has been complete military harmony between the Allies and the United States. The Allies recognize the unprecedented task of this country, a task of maintaining a line of communication more than three thousand miles long. In addition the Allies know that, while we are providing ships to carry our troops, we are also providing ships to transport supplies to British, French and Italian armies.

If we had served our own army alone, American troops would be much more numerous in France than they are today, but we must continue the services we are rendering to the Allied nations, regardless of where the glory goes without diminishing their services. Our individual force is gaining in size and power, and it is because the Germans know that we are pushing aside all obstacles and are building up an army and the means of transporting it that will be in proportion to our manpower and our resources, that they have chosen the present as the most opportune time to strike their supreme blow. It's a blow struck in desperation and it will fail.

I have outlined the entire situation-in utmost frankness-concealing nothing, for we have nothing to conceal. Shipping is the essence of the struggle in which the world is now engaged-the central beam in the whole. war structure. If that fails, all else fails. We are engaged in a race with the submarine. We, of the Shipping Board, are alive to the needs of the situation. The whole Government in (Continued on page 114)

of prey.

Germany has set up as a dogma the superiority of the Teuton race, of the "nation of lords" over all the other peoples of the world. Passing from the idea to the action, she has, in this war, made the violent application of it to Belgium. Has she not in the first place shamefully outraged that little country by invading it? Does she not continue to stamp her under a regime of inhuman and barbarous occupation, and is she not preparing, on the day of the conclusion of German peace, if not to annex the Kingdom of Albert I, at least to ruin her independence through a political, military, financial and commercial control?

But if Germany has employed such proceedings against a little country which she attacked with arms in hand, she was inspired with the same idea in the time of peace, and she is ready to act consequently against any other small powers which fortune until the present time has preserved from war. All those who have observed in Germany the working of the minds have been able to verify how much opinion demanded, with a spirit of imperturbable consistency, with an ever increasing energy and ardor, the, affirmation of the

superiority of the Empire and the establishment of its direct domination or of its influence over all the countries which the Germans coveted or of which they were jealous. It sufficed that the economic flight of a country had made a competitor of it, not redoubtable, but simply troublesome, or indeed that Germany had clashed with a political independence. which countercarried her projects. Sometimes the simple geographical situation of a little State, a place more sunny than that which the Empire occupied, brought umbrage to it and excited the envy of the votaries of the greater Germany.

Now, the three reasons which I have just indicated are united in the case of Holland. The privileged site which she occupies at the mouths of the Rhine, the flourishing commerce which the activity and energy of her inhabitants had known how to assure in Europe and beyond the sea, finally her refusal to submit to the directions which Berlin wished to impose on her Government, marked that country for the covetousness and the threats of Germany. And that was taking place at the very moment when, among the civilized peoples, pacifist minds had difficulty in believing the egoistical motives of interest, of economic jealousy and of political imperialism which inspired the public mind of the Outer Rhine.

THE RIVALRY BETWEEN ROTTERDAM AND HAMBURG

Holland, situate at the mouth of the Rhine, has received from nature the advantage of furnishing the maritime ports for regions which count among the most populous and the most industrious in Europe. All the mer

chandise which comes down the valley of the Rhine, whether by fluvial navigation, or on the railroads which run along the river, is assembled at Rotterdam or at Amsterdam, to be loaded on the big ships which are to take it across the sea. These same ports receive the colonial products and the raw material which are necessary to the industrial regions of the Rhine and of Westphalia and all upper Germany.

The Dutch have known how to profit from this situation, thanks to the long experience with navigation and commerce which a happy and glorious past had furnished that people. Rotterdam in particular, their most important port, has not ceased to prosper regularly and can rival the first ports of the world. In 1900, the movement in this port amounted to 6,327,000 tons. Ten years after, it had increased until it reached 10,659,000 tons.

Escaut Anvers Flessingue

THE NORTH SEA . Jahde Belgique London Rhin..

Scheldt

Breme

Antwerp

Allemagne

. Belgium The Rhine Bremen .. Germany

Flushing

Certainly, among the German ports, Hamburg, at the mouth of the Elbe, has a more important movement: in 1900, its commerce was 8,038,000 tons, and in 1910 it amounted to 12,657,000 tons. But it is seen that Rotterdam and Hamburg follow each other with the same rapidity; both have seen the figures of their commerce undergo the same augmentation of four and a half million tons; so that in 1900 as in 1910 the difference was the same, hardly two millions of tons. Nothing more was necessary to humiliate Germany and to expose Holland to her resentment.

In comparing their greatest port to that of the little Holland, in seeing that this latter was making the same progress as theirs and that the economic flight of the empire, far from allowing the port of the Elbe to surpass that of the Rhine, was maintaining them at equal distance the one from the other, the