but taken by themselves they can not suffice. Airplanes must be at hand both to repel attack and to make the counterstroke, and only by the provision of ships specialized for carrying aircraft can their presence in considerable numbers be assured.

STRIKING POWER AT LONG RANGE

As against all other naval vessels, in direct combat the airplanecarrying ship would have enormous advantage in the combination of speed to keep the enemy at the desired distance and enormously effective range of action to make it possible to strike him crippling blows while he, outside his own range of fire, is powerless to strike back.

The heaviest ship of the line of a generation or two ago, brought to face a modern cruiser, to say nothing of a battleship, would be blown to bits at leisure before her own guns could be brought to bear. Obviously analogous would be the prospective fate of a vessel possessing no airplanes, finding itself at a distance of 30 or 40, or for that matter 100, miles from a fighting craft disposing of bombing planes and capable of flying them from its deck.

Lacking a sufficient margin of speed either to escape or to close within gun range, lacking the ability to make any defensive effort except by fire against the individual planes during the few seconds available while they are dropping their bombs and starting back for their base, the only hope would be in bad marksmanship by the bombers to permit of escaping serious damage until the merciful fall of darkness gave hope of evasion. That offers but a slender reed to lean

upon.

Indispensable" is a strong word, but, indicating the need for airplane carriers in a fleet such as ours, operating normally on the high seas far beyond the effective military radius of action of airplanes based on friendly shores, its use is fully justified.

The value of the ship that uses bomb-dropping airplanes in place of guns, and observation from a score of planes flying far out in all directions to supplant a lookout from the crow's nest or bridge, has not been reduced but rather enhanced by the sensational developments of the past year.

Enthusiasts with but superficial knowledge either of sea power and its strategy or of airplane design and its limitations have sought to graft onto the flights of Lindbergh, Chamberlin, Byrd, and others an interpretation which those who are in the best position to know would probably be first to deny. It did not need new crossings of the Atlantic by air to demonstrate that the airplane alone can be a tremendously, even a decisively, effective factor in protecting a coast from attack. In the broader problem of protecting trade which may originate thousands of miles from home, not even the ability to fly from the United States to Europe without stop renders the airplane self-sufficient. Trade must still travel on the surface of the sea. Trade routes require constant surveillance. Merchant ships need convoys capable of staying with them throughout their danger zone. Not only distance travel but time as well is involved.

If the problem of naval aviation were merely one of attacking an enemy fleet of which the approximate location is known in advance, airplanes might now be built for effective operation to a radius of a thousand miles or more. When it becomes necessary to scout to and fro over hundreds of thousands of square miles of sea and to furnish constant protection for a convoy of freighters wallowing along at 12 miles an hour, even an airplane that can fly 4,000 miles without stop is likely to be of little direct use unless it can also slow down so as to remain aloft for a week or so.

Failing that yet unattainable accomplishment, the aircraft-carrier deck is essential as a mobile base offering far greater efficiency than the fixed point of departure, on some very remote shoreless hazard, and the assurance of being able to concentrate a force of 40 or 50 airplanes at any point within 150 miles of the ship in but little more than an hour.

SAME FUNCTION AS OTHER NAVAL CRAFT

The carrier has the same ultimate function as the cruiser, the destroyer, or any other type of naval vessel-to scout and to fight.

In so far as it does what can not be done at all by any other means, or provides safeguard against a danger having no other antidote, it is absolutely necessary. In so far as it is able to do more expeditiously and certainly and with greater economy of force and effort what would have to be done in some way in any case, its procurement in quantity as a substitute for vessels of other types is desirable. Seldom are any two instruments wholly interchangeable.

Seldom, on the other hand, are two types of naval vessel mutually exclusive in their employment or incapable of doing a certain part of each other's work. In measuring relative economy, if it befell that the cost of constructing their floating airports runs into high figures, the comparison must be made with the cost of other ships able to cover the same ground and do the same things, so far as other ships could do them at all.

To compare the expenditure on airplane-carrying ships with those of shore-based airplanes would be ridiculous, for the ship is the essential adjunct without which the airplane can not usefully function in general operations upon the oceans. It would be no more absurd to condemn the building of battleships merely because eight 16-inch guns mounted

on a capital ship cost more than a like armament installed in a fort on solid ground.

Any believer in aviation, and all those who look forward expectantly to continuing progress in the aeronautical field, and their name is now legion, must extend his approbation over the airplane carrier and hold it worth all it cost if we are to maintain any naval force at all.

STILL AN OBJECT OF STUDY

The time is not yet ripe to say how large a place the carrier may come to deserve in the naval organization. That it can be used for many purposes is obvious, but the relative advantage of doing some of those things with carriers and doing them with other vessels can only be determined by more extensive trial. That no carriers would in any case be wasted, that a considerable number of them could be made continuously useful either in peace or in war, is evident.

The exact scope of their use, and the extent to which it may be wise to seek to increase their numbers a few years from now, can only be determined by constant study in maneuvers simulating battle problems. Problems must be worked out with carriers on both sides in such maneuvers, working with each other and against each other. Aerial combats, attacks on enemy carriers, convoy, long-range scouting and a host of other activities must be not merely imitated but actually practiced up to the limit of possibility. A single carrier is of but little use in such studies. Two, our present total, if one experimental ship of painful slowness be omitted from the count, are

better.

Four or five, all of good speed, begin to constitute a fair force with which to work. In studying the tactics of cruiser, destroyer, or submarine, even five units working together in maneuvers would be all too few. Airplane carriers, like all other ships, need trial in groups as well as singly.

It would be a bold prophet who would undertake to say just what ships we shall be laying down for naval purposes 10 years hence, or what characteristics will be most stressed in their design, but it may be confidently predicted that the fleet will then embody much that results from experience with airplane carriers completed during the first 6 years of the 10-year interval, together with those already in existence. That forecast requires only the proviso that commanders in chief during the next decade must have had the opportunity of working with carriers in such number and variety as to make it possible to draw valid conclusions.

Enthusiasts for aviation and those interested primarily in the development of naval science will share with the plain citizen, concerned with the efficient and economical maintenance of a proper national defense at sea, an intense desire that knowledge of naval flying and of the ships upon which the breadth of its usefulness largely depends should be expanded with all possible rapidity.

AIRCRAFT CARRIERS NATION'S BIG NEED-USE OF PLANES IN CONJUNC TION WITH SHIPS DEPENDENT ON OFFSHORE BASES-NAVAL AIR SERVICE GROWING COOPERATION OF LAND, SEA, AND AIR FORCES NECESSARY FOR DEFENSE, NAVAL OFFICIAL SAYS

By Edward P. Warner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Aeronautics Among the many points of similarity between ourselves and our friends in the British Isles, with whom we share the heritage of English speech, is a common regard for the sea. For the American people and the British alike the oceans have been the channels of flow of a vitally important trade. No less important, they have offered us security against direct attack by land. Freed from such apprehensions as commonly beset continental powers concerning the probable action of great and powerful states, removed only by land frontiers, we, like the British for the last century, escape the necessity of keeping continuously under arms a great force either of professional military men or of conscripts. The sea itself becomes our safeguard if we keep ourselves in position to make it so. The Navy becomes our first line of defense, the action of sea power a national interest. There has long been among the American people an instinctive confidence that our national existence can not be very gravely endangered while the integrity of our naval force is preserved.

The advent of the airplane has made changes. It has modified, though, of course, it has not entirely destroyed, the military insularity of Great Britain, for practically the whole industrial area of that country now lies open to direct attack by air from the territory of other great powers. For us it has had a different effect. The range of flight of airplanes has not yet attained such figures that an air attack in force upon the United States from overseas would be feasible. For us it is not the airplane standing alone and taken by itself that is of greatest significance, but the airplane correlated with military and especially with naval instruments already existing. The Navy has long been accepted as the first line of defense of the continental United States, of our overseas possessions, and of our commercial interests abroad. In that it is likely to be earliest brought into use in naval engagements the airplane to-day occupies the van of naval force. As the first line of the Nation's first line the airplane carries a mighty responsibility.

AIR SERVICE A PART OF NAVY

It is hardly possible to say that aircraft support any single part of the burden alone, great as is their share, for the airplane has not been superposed on the naval organization. It has been woven into it. It is not engaged in doing things that were not done at all before and that could be stopped without affecting the remainder of naval activity. The service of the airplane at sea is to make it possible to do more efficiently work that was already being carried on after some fashion. The airplane and the surface ship are not mutually destructive rivals. They work in conjunction for mutual support, one in fact often being a part of the permanent equipment of the other. The commonly entertained picture of an airplane with a bomb on board going out to drop the bomb on a ship and to sink the ship is too simple by more than half. It has always been an axiom of the national defense when amphibious operations were in prospect that the Army and Navy should be used together, so that a desired end might be attained with a minimum of hazard and a minimum of sacrifice of blood and treasure, and it makes no difference which of the two services working together with a common aim may actually deliver the final or the most spectacular strike.

Similarly with the airplane. It matters not whether the final result is accomplished by shell, bomb, or torpedo, or whether the missile is launched from upon the surface or above it or below, and the airplane has done its work as well if it contributes to the chance of a successful attack by battleship, destroyer, or submarine, as if it plays a lone hand with the same successful result. Often it is possible to do the first when there is no chance for the second, and it follows that there are as many different modes of employment of aircraft as there are types of naval operations. It is even less possible to get along with one kind of airplane than with one kind of ship. They must vary in size, in speed, in carrying capacity, and even in the most general arrangement of landing gear, for the machine intended to operate on aircraft carriers, those to be used on battleships and cruisers, and those which are expected to rise normally from the surface of the water must be of fundamentally different design.

EQUIPMENT FOR WAR

The employments of the Navy in peace are varied, but taken by themselves they make explicit demand upon but a relatively small part of the naval organization. Navies, like armies, exist primarily for war, and not merely for police duty in the more backward areas of the earth and those where life and property are unsafe, but in conflict with major maritime powers.

In such a war the fleet and the naval vessels and aircraft assigned to various detached duties have three clear responsibilities. It is for them, if their strength permits, to defend American commerce, including the transport of troops and their supplies; to deny the seas to enemy trade; and to protect American territory from attack. It may also become necessary at times to participate directly in assault on hostile shores or to support landing operations by troops, but that is a special case somewhat infrequently arising.

It is toward the naval battle, then, that naval aviation must first look. The use of aircraft in conjunction with ships engaged in battle on the high seas is absolutely dependent on provision for basing them on board of surface vessels. We have actually in commission at the present time one aircraft carrier, the Langley, slow and experimental. Excellent results have been obtained with the ship and much has been learned, but she does not constitute an effective unit to be relied upon in emergency. Two more carriers, the Saratoga and Lexington, will go in full commission within a few weeks, but we shall still be limited to two points within the whole area of all the seas upon which our fleet might operate to which our planes can return and reprovision and prepare for fresh flight. Many of the other vessels of war carry airplanes and have provision for catapulting them into the air, but can only pick them up again by stopping to hoist them out of the water after they have made landing alongside the ship. For steady use with the fleet under conditions of stress the carrier is the prime reliance, and the concentration of all our existing tonnage in two very large units occasions a serious shortage of flying decks. There is real need for provision of further ships of that type if the fleet is to be rounded out and if airplanes are to be able to do their proper part of its work. The President in his message to Congress during the past week directed attention to that need.

Given a sufficiency of mobile bases, it may be anticipated that in scouting for an enemy fleet, for isolated surface vessels or submarines, or for commercial craft the airplanes will take a leading part. A carrier equipped with only 40 planes can while traveling at a moderate speed in order to economize its own fuel expenditure minutely cover an area 150 miles or more in width and still have a number of machines held in reserve on the ship for emergencies.

The carrier can also, by sending scouting airplanes straight ahead on its own course during the afternoon, decrease the probability that the fleet to which the ship is attached will be surprised by an enemy attack during the hours of darkness.

The airplane justifies its claim to be considered as the Navy's first line of action, in that it would be likely to be through the medium of air

force that contact would first be made between vessels of the opposing fleet and information first furnished. It establishes its position again in the probability that airplanes would be first to take actual offensive action. As a naval weapon the airplane has a range exceeding that of any gun yet imagined, save the legendary one which took Jules Verne's readers on a trip to the moon. The range of the naval gun is 15 or 20 miles. That of the airplane is limited only by fuel capacity, and accuracy does not decrease with increasing distance from the point of departure to the target. Were it possible to mount on a naval vessel such a supergun as that which fired on Paris in 1918, and to increase range to 60 or 80 thousand yards, there could be little expectation of making a hit on a ship, but the bombing airplane can work at two or three times that distance, starting from a floating base which is in complete security unless the enemy, too, employs aircraft, and can be directed by its pilot's intelligence to within a few thousand or perhaps even a few hundred feet of the object of its attack.

In the days of John Paul Jones, of Decatur and Hull and Nelson, fleet actions were fought at a few hundreds yards' range, and might even culminate in contact of the ships and boarding expeditions crossing from one to the other. The improvement of armaments and the increasing deadliness of fire have been such that it would have been most unusual for capital ships of the era of 1915 to approach each other within ten or twelve thousand yards during an action.

It might easily happen that a future naval engagement, or many of them, would be decided and one fleet or the other sent down to total defeat without the main bodies ever having come within 40 miles of each other. There is no suggestion that anything of that sort would be typical, but it might happen, and the possibility would in itself indicate the indispensability of aircraft, for it is too obvious to require discussion that if a battle is begun and finished at a range at which one of the two contending fleets is unable to use its weapons, that fleet is not going to emerge victorious.

In recapitulation, if naval battle is joined the degree of success gained, at least in the first stages of that battle, is likely to be influenced very largely by the relative strength in aircraft of the opposing forces. That, in turn, is dependent on the number and nature of aircraft-carrying ships possessed. From this time on the aircraft carrier is a vital element in naval power, and it is unusual among naval vessels in that it combines extreme speed and mobility for scouting purposes, and relatively small displacement for economical construction and operation, with the ability to strike effective blows against even the heaviest and best protected capital ships without waiting for cover of darkness or fog, and without exposing itself to a virtual certainty of destruction.

To return to the fundamentals. They were enumerated as three. The prime objects of navies were declared to be the support of friendly commerce, the extirpation of commercial activity under the enemy flag or friendly to the enemy, so far as that is compatible with international law on the freedom of trade at sea, and the protection of friendly soil.

In protecting friendly commerce the airplane service is a most effective instrument of convoy, especially against submarine attack. Successful action by submarines against merchant ships well convoyed by airplanes was virtually unknown during the late war. Attacks on a convoy by a substantial force on the surface, of course, would be met by airplanes and surface ships in conjunction. Most important, however, is that the airplane, together with the submarine, makes a close blockade virtually impossible. To station ships within 200 miles, or thereabouts, of an enemy coast and keep them there on blockade duty is to invite constant harrying attacks both by submarine torpedo and by bombing of all kinds destructive to upper works and to the installation of accessories, and extremely damaging to the morale of the crew, if not actually fatal to the ship.

WIDENED SURVEILLANCE

In attacks on enemy commerce airplanes are most useful for reconnaissance, to find and identify ships for search or seizure. Treaties prohibitive of the destruction of merchant vessels, without due provision for the safety of the crew, would make it impossible without open violation of those humanitarian agreements to attack merchant craft with bombs, but the airplane can enormously increase the area kept under observation by a single ship, and the aircraft carrier accordingly becomes a most useful instrument for commerce raiding or surveillance. Most effective of all, however, is the airplane in protecting our own coast and overseas possessions. The coast defense of the continental United States and also of the islands and other areas flying the American flag has always been built up of successive layers. The first line of coast defense has always been the fleet, which went forth from bases on shore to hold the sea for varying periods, for as long as American vessels held the seas secure so that it was unsafe for enemy ships to slip past, singly or as a group, so long would the coast behind the fleet be immune from attack. The next recourse behind the fleet in olden days was the coastal fort, with its artillery, which protected important harbors and bases in which ships might take refuge for refitting and repair. Recent developments have thrown in an intermediate stage. If the fleet is evaded, or if it is occupied elsewhere, or even if it should by

mischance be insufficiently strong to contend directly with the enemy force for the time being, attacks on the coast should be detected in advance of their delivery by the scouting of patrol planes or large flying boats and airships. Attacks may be delivered by sea or by air, but if they come by air, except for the possibility of a sporadic raid for moral effect by a single machine flying an enormous distance over water and carrying a trivial military load, they must take their departure from a floating base to strike anywhere along our coast or at Hawaii. Even in the Canal Zone the same general conclusion holds as a strong possibility, although not with the absolute rigor that it does in Hawaii where there is no land available as a point of departure, outside the Hawaiian group, for well over a thousand miles. The problem of patrolling is therefore that of scouting for enemy ships, and it is handled in essentially the same way as it would be if the scouting airplane were based on an aircraft carrier instead of ashore, except that the distances covered are likely to be longer, and the importance of navigation is therefore greater. Patrol aviation is of the very first significance to the coast defense, and especially to the defense of the Panama Canal, and it deserves the increased attention that it is now receiving. Vigorous steps are being taken to secure metal flying boats of the most modern design to replace the antiquated wooden craft upon which the operations in our mid-Pacific territory and the Canal Zone have so far had to depend.

METHODS OF ATTACK

If enemy activity were detected from the air, an attempt would be made to repulse it from the air. In the case of submarines or light surface craft, not well equipped with antiaircraft guns and not having airplanes of their own, the patrol machine itself should be prepared to bomb on the spot immediately after detection. If a more specialized attack were needed, as it would be in contending with battle cruisers or other heavy forces, or with any considerable number of ships, it would be delivered by any naval vessels located in the neighborhood, and especially by submarines and bombing aircraft in close conjunction and cooperation. The provision of aircraft and submarines in such areas as Hawaii and the Canal Zone, as well as in strategic proximity to points of our continental coast line critical in a particular campaign, ought to be such that the chances of turning back any enemy thrust, either in an attack in force or a light raid, would be bright. If the effort and repulse should, however, fail, there would still remain the Coast Artillery, the final resort prior to the arrival of landing forces at the shore line.

The danger of exclusive dependence on coastal fortifications, or on bombing aircraft operated to comparatively short distances offshore, would be that any raid carried out from the sea in war, especially against the Panama Canal, would be likely to include the use of aircraft carriers, which would launch their planes when they themselves were still far from the coast. To attack the carriers directly would then not suffice, and to find airplanes and bring them down when they have once left their base and are actually on their way to their objective has repeatedly been shown by theory and in maneuver perience since the war, to say nothing of the actual test of 1916-1918, to be a matter of extreme difficulty.

ex

As it is easier to sink an armed vessel and so put all guns out of action at once than it is to pick off individually a like number of guns independently mounted on permanent foundations ashore, so it is far better in the planning of a defensive organization to prepare to contend with aircraft carriers when they are far enough offshore to have all their planes still aboard, and thus to seek to get rid of all the planes at one stroke, rather than to wait for them to get into the air and then try to hunt them down separately. The problem of defending the territorial possessions of the United States against attack from the sea is largely a problem of coordinated effort by aircraft and surface and subsurface vessels at the greatest practicable distance offshore, and as soon after the first notice of impending enemy action is received as the necessary forces can possibly be mobilized.

The functions of naval aircraft are divided in general under five headings, patrols, bombing-including torpedo carrying observation, fighting, and training, but in each of these general titles there is a diversity of employment. No greater mistake could be made than to interpret the naval aviation of 1927 in terms of recollections of 1918, and to think of it as engaged exclusively in cruising the coast line looking for submarines, or as employing exclusively flying boats, or nothing but seaplanes, or nothing but very large and slow machines. All naval airplanes are adapted to use over the water, as all naval aviators are especially trained to fly there, but that is a very slight limitation on the variety of their type. They include landplanes, seaplanes, and large machines and small ones, and the fastest airplanes that are to be had and others comparatively slow. Quietly and without seeking or getting great public acclaim, the air arm of the Navy has built for itself a new and a sound place in the national defense organization within the last seven years. Within the last three years $69,000,000 has been expended and 880 airplanes have been purchased. Its importance is constantly growing, the magnitude of the organization is expanding under provision made by Congress and in general accord with the recommendations and desires of the Navy Department, and the scope of the work is broadening in proportion.

HOUSE BILLS REFERRED

The following bills were severally read twice by their titles and referred as indicated below:

H. R. 5826. An act authorizing the Secretary of the Navy, in his discretion, to deliver to the custody of the Louisiana State Museum, of the city of New Orleans, La., the silver bell in use on the cruiser New Orleans; to the Committee on Naval Affairs. H. R. 12354. An act to grant to the city of Leominster, Mass., an easement over certain Government property; to the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads.

H. R. 11580. An act to authorize the leasing or sale of land reserved for administrative purposes on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Mont.;

H. R. 12067. An act to set aside certain lands for the Chippewa Indians in the State of Minnesota; and

H. R. 12446. An act to approve a deed of conveyance of certain land in the Seneca Oil Spring Reservation, N. Y.; to the Committee on Indian Affairs.

H. R. 10649. An act providing for the transfer of a portion of the military reservation known as Camp Sherman, Ohio, to the Department of Justice;

H. R. 11273. An act to amend section 127a, national defense act, as amended and approved June 4, 1920;

H. R. 11724. An act to provide for the paving of the Government road, known as the Ringgold Road, extending from Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, in the State of Georgia, to the town of Ringgold, Ga., constituting an approach road to the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park;

H. R. 11981. An act to authorize officers of the Medical Corps to account certain service in computing their rights for retirement, and for other purposes; and

H. R. 12479. An act authorizing the sale of all of the interest and rights of the United States of America in the Columbia Arsenal property, situated in the ninth civil district of Maury County, Tenn., and providing that the net fund be deposited in the military-post construction fund; to the Committee on Military Affairs.

H. R. 10951. An act authorizing H. L. McKee, his heirs, legal representatives, and assigns, to construet, maintain, and operate a bridge across Lake Sabine at or near Port Arthur, Tex.; H. R. 12235. An act authorizing B. F. Peek, G. A. Shallberg, and C. I. Josephson, of Moline, Ill.; J. W. Bettendorf, A. J. Russell, and J. L. Hecht, of Bettendorf and Davenport, Iowa, their heirs, legal representatives, and assigns, to construct, maintain, and operate a bridge across the Mississippi River at or near Tenth Street in Bettendorf, State of Iowa;

H. R. 13032. An act to amend the act of February 8, 1895, entitled "An act to regulate navigation on the Great Lakes and their connecting and tributary waters";

H. R. 13037. An act to amend section 1, rule 2, rule 3, subdivision (e), and rule 9 of an act to regulate navigation on the Great Lakes and their connecting and tributary waters, enacted February 8, 1895 (ch. 64, 28 Stat. L. sec. 645);

H. R. 13383. An act to provide for a five-year construction and maintenance program for the United States Bureau of Fisheries; and

H. R. 13481. An act granting the consent of Congress to the Alabama State Bridge Corporation to construct, maintain, and operate bridges across the Tennessee, Tombigbee, Warrior, Alabama, and Coosa Rivers, within the State of Alabama; to the Committee on Commerce.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER BRIDGE

The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the amendments of the House of Representatives to the bill (S. 3598) authorizing Dupo Bridge Co., a Missouri corporation, its successors and assigns, to construct, maintain, and operate a combined highway and railroad bridge across the Mississippi River at or near Carondelet, Mo., which were to strike out all after the enacting clause and insert:

That in order to promote interstate commerce, improve the Postal Service, and provide for military and other purposes, the Dupo Bridge Co., a Missouri corporation, its successors and assigns, be, and is hereby, authorized to construct, maintain, and operate a bridge and approaches thereto across the Mississippi River at a point suitable to the interests of navigation, at or near Carondelet, Mo., in accordance with the provisions of the act entitled "An act to regulate the construction of bridges over navigable waters," approved March 23, 1906, and subject to the conditions and limitations contained in this act.

SEC. 2. The Dupo Bridge Co., its successors and assigns, is authorized to construct, maintain, and operate such bridge and the necessary approaches thereto as a railroad bridge for the passage of railway trains or street cars, or both, or as a highway bridge for the passage of pedestrians, animals, and vehicles, adapted to travel on public highways, or as a combined railroad and highway bridge for all such

purposes; and there is hereby conferred upon the said Dupo Bridge Co., its successors and assigns, all such rights and powers to enter upon lands and to acquire, condemn, occupy, possess, and use real estate and other property needed for the location, construction, operation, and maintenance of such bridge and its approaches as are possessed by railroad corporations for railroad purposes or by bridge corporations for bridge purposes in the State in which such real estate or other property is situated, upon making just compensation therefor, to be ascertained and paid according to the laws of such State, and the proceedings therefor shall be the same as in the condemnation or expropriation of property for public purposes in such State.

SEC. 3. After the completion of such bridge, as determined by the Secretary of War, if the same is constructed as a highway bridge only, either the State of Missouri or the State of Illinois, any public agency or political subdivision of either of such States, within or adjoining which any part of such bridge is located, or any two or more of them jointly, may at any time acquire and take over all right, title, and interest in such bridge and its approaches, and any interest in real property necessary therefor, by purchase or by condemnation, in accordance with the laws of either of such States governing the acquisition of private property for public purposes by condemnation or expropriation. If at any time after the expiration of 10 years after the completion of such bridge the same is acquired by condemnation or expropriation, the amount of damages or compensation to be allowed shall not include good will, going value, or prospective revenues or profits, but shall be limited to the sum of (1) the actual cost of constructing such bridge and its approaches, less a reasonable deduction for actual depreciation in value, (2) the actual cost of acquiring such interests in real property, (3) actual financing and promotion cost, not to exceed 10 per cent of the sum of the cost of constructing the bridge and its approaches and acquiring such interests in real property, and (4) actual expenditures for necessary improvements.

SEC. 4. If such bridge shall at any time be taken over or acquired by the States or public agencies or political subdivisions thereof, or by either of them, under the provisions of section 3 of this act, and if tells are thereafter charged for the use thereof, the rates of toll shall be so adjusted as to provide a fund sufficient to pay for the reasonable eest of maintaining, repairing, and operating the bridge and its approaches under economical management, and to provide a sinking fund sufficient to amortize the amount paid therefor, including reasonable interest and financing cost, as soon as possible under reasonable charges, but within a period of not to exceed 10 years from the date of acquiring the same. After a sinking fund sufficient for such amortization shall have been so provided, such bridge shall thereafter be maintained and operated free of tolls, or the rates of toll shall thereafter be so adjusted as to provide a fund of not to exceed the amount necessary for the proper maintenance, repair, and operation of the bridge and its approaches under economical management. An accurate record of the amount paid for acquiring the bridge and its approaches, the actual expenditures for maintaining, repairing, and operating the same, and of the daily tolls collected shall be kept and shall be available for the information of all persons interested.

SEC. 5. If such bridge is constructed as a combined railroad bridge for the passage of railway trains or street cars, and a highway bridge for the passage of pedestrians, animals, and vehicles, then the right of purchase and condemnation conferred by this act shall apply to a right of way thereover for the passage without cost of persons, animals, and vehicles adapted to travel on public highways; and if the right of purchase or condemnation shall be exercised as to such right of way over the bridge, then the measure of damages or compensation to be allowed or paid for such right of way shall be a sum equal to the difference between the actual fair cash value of such bridge determined in accordance with the provisions of section 3 of this act and what its actual fair cash value so determined would have been if such bridge had been constructed as a railroad bridge only. If the right of purchase or condemnation conferred by this act shall be exercised as to the right of way over such bridge, then that part of the bridge which shall be purchased or condemned and shall be thereafter actually used for the passage of pedestrians, animals, or vehicles, shall be maintained, operated, and kept in repair by the purchaser thereof.

reasonable costs of the construction, financing, and promotion of the bridge shall be conclusive for the purposes mentioned in section 3 of this act, subject only to review in a court of equity for fraud or gross mistake.

SEC. 7. The Dupo Bridge Co., its successors and assigns, is hereby authorized and empowered to fix and charge just and reasonable tolls for the passage of such bridge of pedestrians, animals, and vehicles adapted to travel on public highways, and the rates so fixed shall be the legal rates until the Secretary of War shall prescribe other rates of toll as provided in the act of March 23, 1906; and if said bridge is constructed as a railroad bridge, or a joint railroad and highway bridge, as provided in this act, the said Dupo Bridge Co., its successors and assigns, is hereby authorized to fix by contract with any person or corporation desiring the use of the same for the passage of railway trains, or street cars, or for placing water or gas pipe lines or telephone or telegraph or electric light or power lines, or for any other such purposes, the terms, conditions, and rates of toll for such use; but in the absence of such contract, the terms, conditions, and rates of toll for such use shall be determined by the Secretary of War as provided in said act of March 23, 1906.

SEC. 8. The right to sell, assign, transfer, and mortgage all the rights, powers, and privileges conferred by this act is hereby granted to the Dupo Bridge Co., its successors and assigns, and any corporation to which or any person to whom such rights, powers, and privileges may be sold, assigned, or transferred, or who shall acquire the same by mortgage foreclosure or otherwise, is hereby authorized and empowered to exercise the same as fully as though conferred herein directly upon such corporation or person.

SEC. 9. The right to alter, amend, or repeal this act is hereby expressly reserved.

Amend the title so as to read: "An act authorizing Dupo Bridge Co., a Missouri corporation, its successors and assigns, to construct, maintain, and operate a combined highway and railroad bridge across the Mississippi River at or near Carondelet, Mo."

Mr. HAWES. I move that the Senate concur in the amendments of the House.

The motion was agreed to.

FLOOD PROTECTION ON WHITE RIVER, ARK.

The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the amendment of the House of Representatives to the joint resolu- • tion (S. J. Res. 135) making an emergency appropriation for flood protection on White River, Ark., which was to strike out the preamble.

Mr. CARAWAY. I move that the Senate concur in the House amendment.

The motion was agreed to.

LANDS WITHIN CUSTER STATE PARK, S. DAK. The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the amendment of the House of Representatives to the bill (S. 2910) granting to the State of South Dakota for park purposes the public lands within the Custer State Park, S. Dak., which was, on page 2, line 4, after the word "domain," to insert:

Provided, That this grant shall not include any land which on the date of the approval of the act is covered by any existing bona fide right or claim under the laws of the United States, unless and until such right or claim is relinquished or extinguished.

Mr. NORBECK. I move that the Senate concur in the amendment of the House.

The motion was agreed to.

FLOOD CONTROL

The Senate resumed the consideration of the report of the committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the amendments of the House to the bill (S. 3740) for the control of floods on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and for other purposes.

Mr. FRAZIER. Mr. President, there has been a great deal of interest taken in the Mississippi flood-control situation, and it is a mighty important question. It is one in which the people of the lower Mississippi Valley are vitally interested. It is one in which the people throughout the Nation are inter

and because the waters that do the damage there come from some 38 States through tributaries to the Mississippi.

For something like 40 years there has been a commission which has had charge of flood control in the Mississippi Valley. A majority of that commission have been Army engineers all these years, and the chairman of that Mississippi River Commission is an Army engineer. These Army engineers, through all these past years, have said that the levees were sufficient to take care of the floods of the Mississippi River, and they have kept building the levees higher in places, and building them up where they wash out, and in spite of complaints that

have been made and damage that has been done by floods in previous years they have maintained, until the flood of a year ago, that the levees were high enough to protect the valley there, and that nothing else was needed. Since the flood of a year ago they have admitted, reluctantly apparently, that they have been mistaken, and that there is need of something more than levees.

The flood control bill as passed by the Senate provided for a commission consisting of the Secretary of War, the Chief of Engineers, the president of the Mississippi River Commission, and two civilian engineers. The House amended the bill by striking out the Secretary of War and changing the two civilian engineers to a civilian engineer, which would leave the control of this board, whose duty it will be to investigate and report on the methods of taking care of the flood situation, absolutely in the Army engineers.

The Army engineers have made a dismal failure of the floodcontrol situation in the lower Mississippi Valley for the last 40 years, and yet the committee of the Senate that held hearings on this measure, and also the committee of the House, and the Senate itself and House itself, and the committee of conference, have agreed to leave this whole situation up to the Army engineers, in face of the fact that they have made a failure of handling the situation during all these past years.

Some days ago I spoke briefly here on the floor in regard to a letter written by Major General Jadwin, Chief of Army Engineers, and his criticism of the so-called Riker spillway plan after he had visited the model that is in the subway of the Senate Office Building. I want to comment a little further upon some of the statements made by General Jadwin. Among other things, he stated in substance that—

Flood ways in the St. Francis Valley are not essential for flood relief of the main river above the mouth of the Arkansas.

On this map that has been prepared the blue lines represent routes that were suggested by the Mississippi River Commission, four different routes through the St. Francis Valley, spillways to take care of the flood situation, although General Jadwin now says that they are not needed.

The Mississippi River Commission did consider them at one time and said:

· Route 1. Its chief disadvantage is that it passes through the most highly developed portions of the St. Francis Basin.

Route 2. This route was abandoned after preliminary estimate of cost, which was $1,000,000,000.

Route 3. This route was selected for more detailed investigation.
Route 4. Its chief advantage is a relatively short length,

On page 89 of the Mississippi River Commission's report the further statement is made:

Diversions through the St. Francis Basin are deemed worthy of further study.

Yet the Chief of Engineers stated in his letter to the Senate of April 28 that in his opinion flood ways in the St. Fraucis Valley are not essential to flood relief.

General Jadwin further said:

The lands in the St. Francis and Yazoo Valleys have not been subjected to overflow frequently in recent years, and flood ways are not essential for relief of the river.

The flood of 1927, a year ago, was rather recent, and it did overflow those valleys and did a great deal of damage. Yet General Jadwin says they have not been flooded frequently in recent years and seems to draw the conclusion that it is not necessary to have any spillway to take care of the situation through the Yazoo and St. Francis Valleys, because the floods come only infrequently. But the damage that was done there last year, I am sure, proved to the people living in those valleys that they need some sort of a system to take care of the situation and to take care of the infrequent floods General Jadwin mentions.

His

Furthermore, on General Jadwin's own map there is shown in dark the portions that were flooded in the 1927 flood. own map shows that there was a great deal of land flooded and evidently a great deal of damage done there a year ago.

General Jadwin further stated that "the Riker-Mississippi spillway, 3 miles wide, will have insufficient flow below Red River junction to relieve the Mississippi River at New Orleans." The Mississippi junction with the Red River comes in at the point I indicate on the map. The proposed spillway will go directly straight down to the Gulf, a distance of 90 miles. It is proposed to be 3 miles wide, with a levee on each side 50 feet high.

General Jadwin said that the slope from the junction of the Red River with the Mississippi to the Gulf is not sufficient to take the water out of the Mississippi River, yet the water now

courses down the Mississippi in a crooked channel a distance of 300 miles, and the slope or fall is exactly the same from the mouth of the Red River by the way of the Mississippi, which is 300 miles to the Gulf, as it is from the mouth of the Red River by the way of the proposed spillway, 90 miles to the Gulf. In other words, General Jadwin says the water will not run down a straight course 3 miles wide and 90 miles long as fast as it will down a crooked course 300 miles long and about a mile wide. Yet an engineer who will make a statement of that kind is proposed to be put at the head of the commission that will survey the flood situation in the Mississippi Valley.

The spillway would have three times as much full as the river in every mile of its length, and at the same velocity as the river would discharge more than twice as much water, while, if its velocity was safely checked by proposed dams that will be put in there, the discharge would be more than four times that of the Jadwin predicted possible flood. General Jadwin further said:

The proposed levees along the Riker spillway are, in my opinion, too high for safety.

The Riker flood way or proposed spillway, 3 miles wide, runs down the lowest part of the valley from Cairo to the Gulf. The proposal is for a width of 3 miles and a levee on each side 50 feet high, built from earth taken on each side through the valley, forming a drainage ditch of the same depth and the same width as the levees will be. With a width of spillway of 3 miles and a 50-foot height of the levees we have merely a proposed plan. If the engineers shall investigate and say they do not need a 50-foot levee, all well and good; it may be 30 feet or whatever they may decide upon. If they decide the spillway is not wide enough and that it should be wider, it could be made 4 or 5 miles wide. The suggested width of 3 miles, Mr. Riker thinks, will be sufficient.

According to the amount of water that went down the valley last spring in flood time, it is estimated that in the proposed spillway 3 miles in width the water would not be over 20 feet deep. That would leave a safety margin of 30 feet above the water line to the top of the levee. In the opinion of Mr. Riker the levees should be at least 50 feet high, 300 feet wide at the base, and about 130 feet wide at the top. That will give sufficient weight with the width to hold the earth compact in the levees, so that no water will seep through it, and so that if any little cut is made in it by a cloudburst it will still be sufficient to carry the water.

Under the proposal of General Jadwin, in the spillways he has suggested at certain places, the water would be practically up to the top of the levees along the spillways, while in the proposed Riker plan it would not be within 30 feet of the top of the levees in ordinary floods, although if a greater flood came than we had last year, and it may be possible that we will have twice as great a flood, the spillway, it is believed, would handle even twice as large a flood as the one we had last year, and perhaps even more than that.

The Jadwin levees can not be made high because of insecure foundations on the river bank, lack of available material, river erosion, sand bars, and so forth; but not one of these objections is likely to be made to the proposition of the Riker levees because of their being so much higher, wider, and larger and made of soil along a practically level valley. No sand bars are likely to form in a straight spillway, for in order to form sand bars there must be an obstruction, such as a bend in the stream, which will cause silt to deposit and thus form the sand bar. But in going straight down the spillway there would be no sand bars likely to form. If silt should be deposited it could be removed by the use of dredges.

Members of the committee will recall that General Jadwin made a statement when Mr. Riker appeared before the Committee on Commerce with reference to the bill; that he objected to the proposed spillway because, he said, they had found that the water in rivers did not generally tend to take a straight course. A spillway is not a river. It is a spillway to take care of flood waters or excess waters. It is not a river. Of course, any child knows that the reason why the river runs in a crooked course instead of a straight course is because of obstructions. A level, straight spillway will take the water, of course, a great deal more rapidly than would the crooked course of the river. In order to prevent a too swift current it is proposed to put dams at certain places, some 12 or 13 of them throughout the spillway, to regulate the water with gates, to allow the amount of water to go down that is wanted, or to hold the water in the spillway, 3 miles wide, as a reservoir for the flood water, to be let out afterwards in case of low water in the river.

General Jadwin further said that the dredge proposed by Mr. Riker for use in building the levees is of a design that has not