New-York tribune., 1918-05-08

piece out the executive staff of groun
of yards.
"Everywhere shipbuilding activity is
held back by the absence of superin-
tendents, foremen and other secondary
executives. To find them, the work
3t men and to provide the conditions of
ilvlng IN which men will be contented
munities must discharge"
Dne of the curious handicans of
snipbuilding in some communities Mr..
filene said, was that local ordinances
dld not permit baseball games and
moving picture theatres on Sunday.
with the result that overworked men,
unable to stand the strain of continu-
Gus work, knocked off Saturday after
moons for the diversion they could not
get Sundays.
Colby Discloses Losses
Mr.. Colby prefaced his remarks with
an encouraging reference to the
launching of the steamship Tuckahoe
that record with the customary ten
or twelve months Of the Clyde ship
yards, Then. after remarking that
the Navy Department had not dis
closed the facts that would have en-
abled the country long ago to ap-
preciate the gravity of the shipping
situation and that the losses of ships
IN 1917 amounted to somewhere be-
tween 100000 and 100000 dead
weight tons, he said:
"You must always remember that
the British publish their tonnage
losses in. gross registered tons and
that deadweight tonnage, which has
been used in American maritime sta
tistics since time immemorial, is 1.65
times greater. than gross. So. when
the British give their shipping losses
IN units of more than 1000 tons we
should translate them into vessels of
2.oo0 tons, which is the assumed di-
viding line between coastwise and
ocean-golng vessels.
Ships Only Reply to Kaiser
"The destruction of ships during
1917 exceeds the combined building
programmes of America and England
for 1918. l doubt very much if we
shall pass 100000 tons this year
and yet if we do that we shall have
done greater thing by far in ship
building than was ever done before by
any nation.
people sometimes speak of a pro-
gramme of 100000 tons a year as if
there were something ultimate about
1t. On the contrary. we must double
and treble our programme. Ships are
war efforts of the nations.
Ships are the only answer to the
insolent insults of the arrogant Ger
man power. We must choke the seas
with American tonnage.
II want to see the business men of
this country put forth a great effort
OF the imagination to comprehend the
vastness of this task and to calculate
the part they can do in performing it.
1t is beyond the Shipping Board. it is
beyond the government-only the ma
ton is equal to it. There are between
100000 and 100000 men at work in the
shlpyards and an equal number in
contributory work There should be
at least million altogether.
Task of Business Men
"The mobilizing of these men and
the dealing with the thousand prob
lens incident thereto are the pre-
eminent task of business men and
business associations in voluntary ef-
fort. 1t is in the doing of such work
that we can really make the nation ef-
fective for war.
1--WE still suffer from what Ambas-
sador Page calls the three thousand
mile disease We must cure ourselves
Burke was wrong when he declared
that no nation could be unitedly ral-
lied for war that was fought on dis
tant shores, no matter how vital the
issues.
"Do you realize that last year more
than 100 British ships of more than
1,600 gross tons were sunk? Do you
know that, since the beginning of the
war, neutral Norway has lost 755
ships? Do you know that when the
Shipping Board commandeered the
ocean going marine of the United
States last fall we had only $50 ves-
sells all told?"
Attacks Navigation Laws
Mr. Colby commented on the fact
that unless our navigation laws were
amended or suspended by Presidential
action not single vessel of all the
host of ships the nation was building
could be operated economically. Con
gress," he said, with incredible folly
has for fifty years legislated US off the
seven seas"
In conclusion Mr.. Colby assured his
hearers that things were going we'll,
but not perfectly, at Washington, and
that it was the duty of all loyal citi-
zens to strengthen the hands of the
great man Providence had raised up to
be the national leader, and to put
away for this generation the fascinat-
ing game of acquiring riches and con-
secrate themselves to saving the ma
tion and maintaining liberty.
NYxe TT/e