it does nothing, and could not do anything, to provide for such an adjustment of military and civil transportation as will prevent another coal famine in 1919. We do not criticise the order of the War Department. We simply point out its necessary limitations. That order still leaves it the duty of Congress to provide, by appropriate legislation, for a co-ordination of the separate departments of the Government as the Secretary of War has provided for the co-ordination of the separate bureaus in his Department. The alternative proposed by the Overman Bill-giving the President power to make whatever changes he deems best in the Government machinery-we do not believe Congress or the country will favorably consider. The only argument we have anywhere seen for it is that of the Washington correspondent of the New York "Evening Post:" What Mr. Wilson would have if the above provisions were enacted into the law is an elastic Government, one which he could change quickly as the exigencies of the day or moment required. Bureau chiefs would not have to work in constant fear of overstepping some ancient statute or provision of law. Decisions could be made rapidly, and if the President wanted to create two or three new Cabinet officers or department heads he would not have to wait until a measure is introduced, discussed by a committee, and debated and voted on after long delays. He could create bureaus instantly by executive order. Hitherto the United States has been a country governed by laws. These laws could be changed only by elected representatives of the people after a public discussion of the reasons for the change. Are the advantages of a flexible form of government so great that we should substitute for a government by laws a government dependent upon the judgment or caprice of a single individual who may change them at his pleasure? We do not think so. We do not believe that the country will think so. It will hail the order of Secretary Baker. And it will hope that Congress will develop a plan conceived in the same spirit for the larger reorganization which the Overman Bill makes it clear the President thinks it necessary to win the war. CRITICISM OF THE ADMINISTRATION Several readers of The Outlook have stated with varying degrees of vigor their objections to what The Outlook has had to say in criticism of certain aspects of the Administration's prosecution of the war. Some of these letters express very strong feeling. A fair example of the letters we have received from such readers is one which appears on page 271 in this issue of The Outlook. We recognize that there is room for wide difference in understanding of the facts. The reader who says, for instance, that there are half a million of our men now in France has a different understanding of the facts from that which we have. There is also room for difference of opinion concerning the significance of certain facts. It is not, however, within the range of fairness, and hardly within the range of intelligence, to ascribe all criticism of the Administration's prosecution of the war to motives of partisanship or personal animosity. Indeed, partisan criticism has been during the past ten months conspicuous by its absence; and to-day the severest criticism upon the Administra tion has come from members of its own party. By far the greatest part of the criticism directed to the President's prosecution of the war has been not at all personal. The whole country, without regard to party, has cordially recognized President Wilson's great and splendid ability in setting forth in his state papers the principles which should guide America in its war upon Germany and the objects which it is determined to attain. This policy and these objects are most clearly set forth in his now justly famous "fourteen points" address to Congress. Such criticism as has arisen has come from those who believe that President Wilson has not been equally successful as an administrator of the details of America's war activities. Nor could he be. No man can devote himself, as President Wilson must, to the philosophical problems of this war and at the same time devote himself to the executive details of putting those philosophical principles into action. It is as though the editor-in-chief of a newspaper should endeavor to frame its large and fundamental policies and at the same time busy himself with the details of bookkeeping or paper-buying or to the employing and direction of each clerical worker. In past crises American Presidents have not undertaken to gather into their own hands such authority or to dispense with the official assistance of political opponents. Washington had Thomas Jefferson, a personal and party opponent, in his Cabinet; Lincoln had Stanton, a political and personal opponent, in his Cabinet; but there are sometimes indications that Presi dent Wilson regards all differences as to policies and principles as the result of personal enmity, and is unwilling to have about him in his official family men who do not accept his own views as the supreme law. Those who believe that such an attitude on the part of any President must be obstructive to the winning of such a war as we are engaged in, and destructive of the very fabric of our democratic institutions, have not only the right to protest, but are bound by their loyalty to their country to make their pro tests heard if they can, and to point out what seems to them to be the right course to pursue. THAT OTHER DISCIPLE To the February "Atlantic" Dr. Joseph H. Odell contributes an article entitled "Peter Sat by the Fire Warming Himself," in which he scores, none too severely, the Peters in the modern church; but he forgets that Other Disciple, who went into the court of Caiaphas with his Master and re mained with him, his companion, during all the tragic hours which followed. In this article Dr. Odell puts this question: "Thoughtful men and women are asking what became of the spiritual leaders of America during those thirty-two months when Europe and parts of Asia were passing through Gehenna. What prelate or bishop or ecclesiastical dignitary essayed the work of spiritual interpretation?" Because silence might seem to indicate that there is no answer, we reply: Archbishop Ireland and Bishop O'Gorman, two of the foremost Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in the United States, who both sent to a mass-meeting in New York, December 15, 1916, telegrams of vigorous protest against the enslavement of the Belgians; Dr. Manning, the rector of the richest and most conservative Episcopal church in the United States; Dr. Gordon, the most influential Congregational minister in New England; Drs. Hillis and Cadman, than whom there are no more representative Congregational ministers out of New England; Dr. Fosdick and Bishop Luther Wilson, distin guished representatives respectively of the Baptist and Methodist denominations; and Dr. Henry van Dyke, a representa tive Presbyterian, are some of the ecclesiastical dignitaries who "essayed the work of spiritual interpretation." To these names we might add those of not less than a score of ministers of different denominations in all parts of the United States whose printed sermons have reached us sermons directed by the same purpose and animated by the same spirit as Dr. Odell's article, though not possessing the passionate power which only a genius like that of Dr. Odell could have imparted to them. How many printed sermons have never reached us and how many delivered but never printed we have no means of estimating. Many, we think most, of these representatives of the churches spoke long before Mr. H. G. Wells, whom Dr. Odell hails as a leader, had published "Mr. Britling Sees It Through." Dr. van Dyke sent to the Administration from Holland his interpretation of Germany's purpose when Germany began the war, and as soon as he could obtain the right to speak gave that interpretation in articles since published in book form, entitled "Fighting for Peace." Not less significant than these ministerial utterances as a indication of the spirit of the Church is the fact that from many of our church buildings float Service Flags bearing starry witnesses to the spiritual enthusiasm which has carried their members into this war for humanity an enthusiasm which we may well believe was enkindled by the ministry of the churches from which they have gone; that many of our theological students have left their studies to interpret their faith in the gospel of justice and liberty by offering their lives for their fellow-men across the sea, and that the Young Men's Christian Association, long before the Nation had awakened to its duties, had engaged in a work the spiritual greatness of which Dr. Odell fully recognizes. It is true that the Young Men's Christian Association is a "lay organization," but it is also true that it is a child of the Church, born of her loins and nurtured at her breast. We hope that Dr. Odell's sweeping indictment of the Church will appeal to the sense of shame, even if it fails to awaken the conscience, of the Peters who during the last three years have sat warming themselves in the comfortable assurance that this war does not concern America. There have been many such both within and without the churches. During the thirty-two months which elapsed between the declaration of war by Germany and the formal entry into the war by America, there were not a few leaders, both in the pulpit and out of the pulpit, who spoke explicit and earnest words for righteousness to the Church and for the Church. Nevertheless the Church was not the leader it ought to have been. The truth is that the Church has from the very earliest ages shown itself a very human institution. Its ministers have been men very like other men. Even in the Master's time his chosen disciples included a W Peter who denied him, a Judas who betrayed him, and a James and John who sought office from him. There were apparently more false prophets than true in the days of Micaiah; more Jewish Christians who were afraid to venture out into the light and liberty of a Christian faith than were ready to follow Paul. the great Apostle and also the great heretic of his age. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, the subject of Dr. Odell's eulogy, is a historic figure because he was an exceptional character. History has not furnished many such heroes in either Church or State. The Church has always learned the truth by painful processes of life. It has always been true that the life is the light of men. Clergy and laity, churchmen and churchless, saints and sinners. we are all pupils together. We who call ourselves followers of the Christ have often misunderstood him, and we have not always really desired to understand him. But, as we may believe that the German people would never have entered upon this crusade of cruelty if they had not been first obsessed by reverence for Odin, the god of force and fear, so neither would there be to-day millions in America with "a Gethsemane in their souls seeking to make the world's redemption a historic fact if the Church of Christ had not awakened in them the hope of a world redemption and inspired in them faith in a divine Gethsemane. FOR THE SAILORS AT SEA Rude wind; Rude winter wind that blows, Breath of a thousand winter woes, Blow softly. Brother wind that bears Breath of a thousand mothers' prayers, Be kind, Good winter wind. Cruel sea! Cruel winter sea that breaks, Grave of a thousand winter wrecks. Break softly. Mother sea that bears Weight of a thousand mothers' fears, Salt with a thousand mothers' tears, Softly! Oh good gray winter sea. WHO IS THE UNITED SPECIAL WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENCE BY JOSEPH H. ODELL HO is the United States? Do not pause to cavil about the peculiar structure of the sentence; I am compelled to cast it into that form in order to bring out forcefully the biggest fact in the world of to-day. If I were to ask, What is the United States? I might get numerous answers: a continent in the Western Hemisphere; a Republic of commonwealths; a democracy; a land inhabited by a hundred million people; and so on. But when I ask, Who is the United States? there is one and only one answer: Woodrow Wilson! The answer is final, complete, and admits of no debate. That is what my visit to Washington has taught me beyond a perad venture. I go to the Senate and find from baffled Senators that they are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is. I go to the House of Representatives and discover quite easily that that docile crowd of Congressmen are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is. I wander from department to depart ment, from bureau to bureau, from commission to commission, and everywhere it is the same: they are not the United States. Woodrow Wilson is. I meet distracted and confused men from every part of the Union, in khaki and in mufti, each one anxious to do something, to correct something, to suggest something, to accelerate something. "Good! Why don't you do it?" "I am not the United States," each replies; "Woodrow Wilson is!" I sit with groups of newspaper men, representing in the aggregate millions of front pages and editorial columns per day, and I ask, "Why don't you fellows do something?" The answer is the same: "Our papers, with their pages of facts and columns of opinion, are not the United States; Woodrow Wilson is." Political life in Washington is like a "choppy sea in dirty weather," as the old salts would say. On the surface it is all turmoil-irregular waves and breaking combers, foam, spray, noise. Navigation seems to be uncertain because the upper air makes solar observation difficult. Some of those on the lookout swear they see or hear breakers ahead. The ship of state seems to be laboring heavily. The course is evidently being laid by dead reckoning. If we were on an open and oft-traveled route, with the sun high overhead, there would be no anxiety and hardly any need for a lookout. Critics are superfluous when things cannot go wrong. Down below the stokers are sweating it were, great drops of blood," to keep the steam gauges at the necessary level. A few of the first-cabin passengers are gambling for high stakes and singing Browning's lyric, "God's in his heaven, 66 as All's right with the world." A large number of others are in their staterooms praying mightily against a possible disaster. The majority are on deck, straining eyes and ears, trying to show a calm demeanor, but looking anxiously from time to time up to the bridge, to see whether the Captain is there and what his face reveals-anxiety, indifference, or confidence. It may be that we are on an uncharted lee shore, with wind and tide against us. There are rumors to that effect. In laying a course by dead reckoning, the silent set of the tide and the currents are the least calculable but the most decisive factors. Tides are universal but of variable velocity; currents are local but sometimes stronger than the tides. Together, they are the emotions, the convictions, the ideals, the hopes, the fears, and the prejudices of human nature. Does the Captain know their set, their intensity, their part in determining the destination of his ship, with its priceless cargo? For the vessel is entirely, completely, absolutely, in the hands of the Captain. Its owners have put him in supreme command; and, for a long time to come, no power under heaven can annul or suspend those orders. That is the picture the city of Washington imprinted on my mind-Woodrow Wilson is Master of the Ship of State. One can hear anything one wants to hear in Washington; that is why I have likened the community to a choppy sea. There are optimism and pessimism, fear and confidence, suspicion and serenity, insurgency and loyalty. About the hotel corridors and lounge-rooms one gains the impression that everything is going wrong; the hotel population is made up largely of people with a mission of correction, and missionaries are necessarily vocal. One can pick up a dozen marrow-freezing tales a day of vacillation, dilatoriness, stupidity, utter blindness, or gross incompetency in this or that direction, or department, or bureau, or commission. And it always ends: "If I could only get to the President! He is the master here-the source, the controller, the arbiter !" In any one of the innumerable bureaus each man seems absorbingly engrossed with his own job, and is complacently certain that, whatever else may be rumored to be wrong in this weltering war community, at least his own particular section of the vast machine is functioning admirably and is beyond criticism and above suspicion. And he feels strongly that criticism should cease; it is unethical; it unintentionally gives "aid and comfort to the enemy;" it is a subtle species of disloyalty. Love me, love my dog," is oft quoted, and in a manner which says, "You cannot stand back of the President and at the same time kick any one of the departments or bureaus or commissions which is carrying out the will of the President!" They feel that they are miniature replicas of the supreme mind, and that allegiance to that mind must cover them also. At any rate, the only thoroughly happy, contented, and satisfied people in Washington are the bureaucrats, big and little; and their self-satisfaction seems only to vary in accordance with their proximity to the President. Of course there may be an occasional exception, but he is very discreet. The newspaper men-known at home as " Our Special Washington Correspondent"-are so engrossed with the story of each day and so eager to get their current news feature into the next issue that they have little time for review or preview. They are day laborers and "laborers worthy of their hire," for without their careful chronicle the prophet, the philosopher, or the practical man of affairs would be minus the data for his grand deductions. And they are conscious that they do not get the real news; in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in the corridors of the departments, and in the anterooms of the bureaus they are simply skirting about the fringes of authority, they are only in the precincts of power. The soul, the center, the seat of all that is vital and determinative, is in the White House. "What do you think of the chances of this particular bill?" I ask a reporter from the Senate. "Tell me what the President thinks and that will be my answer," he says. "How will the House act on this measure?" I ask a reporter "Whichever way the from the House of Representatives. President wishes," he replies. Congress exists in Washington to-day to put into legal form whatsoever powers the President believes he needs. Congress has denied him nothing. Never before in the history of this Nation have the legislative and the executive branches of the Government fused so perfectly. As we have asked, "Who is the United States?" we might further ask, "Who is the Senate? Who is the House of Representatives?" And the answer in each case must be the same: Woodrow Wilson, he is the Senate, he is the House of Representa tives; his mind, his policies, his wishes, his will, are supreme. The Chamberlain episode was just the kind of an exception to prove the rule. Does any one doubt the statements so far made? Well, let us be specific. When President Wilson asked for certain sums of money with which to carry on a war to "make the world safe for democracy," the amounts requested were voted without hesi tation. When President Wilson asked for specified powers to conscript the available manhood of the Nation for military pur poses, those powers were granted with amazing promptness. When President Wilson asked for the legal instrumentalities by which he could control or regulate or "take over" the food, the fuel, and the transportation of the country, those instru mentalities were placed unreservedly in his hands. He has selected Mr. Hoover to act for him as Food Controller, Dr. Garfield as Fuel Controller, and Mr. McAdoo as Director of Transportation. When President Wilson has wanted the consent of Congress for any other powers which he needs as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Nation or for flexibility in methods of administration, that consent has been given or implied in almost instantaneous and unanimous legislation. His appointments have been promptly ratified. In a dozen ways Congress has given him what would be equivalent to votes of confidence under foreign parliamentary rules. Thus the President has had a free hand in creating a Coun cil of National Defense, a War Industries Board, a Shipping Board, and various and sundry other advisory or administrative organizations. His appointments to these councils and boards have been entirely his own, made without dictation or press ure or even suggestion from the legislative branch of the Government. Never in a single instance has the will of the President been thwarted or even hampered. Not one of the rulers or presidents or premiers of our allies has anything like the unrestricted, unsupervised, unshared power which now belongs, constitutionally or by specific legislation, to President Woodrow Wilson. Further still it can be shown that President Wilson is the United States. Our foreign relations are carried on through the Department of State. No one for a moment imagines that Mr. Lansing initiates policies, or even modifies them to any con siderable degree. Many of the most important aspects of our foreign policy are first made known to the world in a speech delivered to Congress by the President himself, and are there fore out of the class of ordinary state papers. The Secretary of War is not only appointed by the President, but he is retained in office by the President when under criticism. The President frankly accepts the responsibility, thereby accepting the respon sibility for the conduct of the Department of War. Cabinet officers are not responsible to the people or to Congress but to the President, and the President is obviously satisfied with the arrangement. When the Senate Committee on Military Affairs prepares bills, not to embarrass or weaken the President, but to help him, according to their belief, in co-ordinating the functions of the Administration, the President announces his opposition to the measures and begs members of the Senate not even to discuss them on the floor of the chamber. But, because there has been some friction or misunderstanding between some members of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and one of his Cabinet officers, the President requests Senator Overman to introduce a bill into the Senate (February 6, 1918) with the following preamble: "A bill authorizing the President to co-ordinate and consolidate the executive bureaus, agencies, and officers, and for other purposes in the interest of economy and the more effective administration of the Government." This bill, if it is passed, will make the War Cabinet Bill and the Ministry of Munitions Bill quite superfluous. The President will take upon himself, by deliberate legislation requested by himself, the full and absolute and unshared responsibility for the conduct of every department and bureau and and officer of the Government, and for the allocation agency of all moneys" heretofore or hereafter appropriated" by Congress to the use of any new agency which the President select or create in the process of the co-ordination. Or, to be very simple, the President asks for the power to rearrange the administrative branch as he sees fit, and to spend the Nation's money through any channel he ordains. Obviously this means that the financial resources of the Nation, as well as all the assignable powers of Government, shall be put absolutely into the hands of President Wilson. may Even though the Overman Bill should be defeated or die in committee, still the President has practically every power a chief executive can use. He may not hold the powers by direct gift of an omnibus act of legislation, but they belong to him by various specific acts of legislation, by his position of authority under the Constitution, by his right of veto and his prerogative of appointment. If not de jure, by a blanket law like that outlined in the Overman Bill, yet de facto, by actual exercise of authority, President Wilson is the center and almost the sum total of the powers of democracy, excepting of course the functions of the judiciary. This, then, is how it stands: the man-power resources, the financial resources, the material resources of fuel, food, and transportation, the legislative resources (by the consent of the legislatures hitherto), the administrative resources, the executive resources, the military and naval resources, are all now centered in and controlled by President Wilson, the Commander-inChief of the United States. Democracy has a single human exponent whose will is final, Woodrow Wilson; autocracy has a single human exponent whose will is final, Wilhelm Hohenzollern. My province is not to criticise but to state facts, to describe conditions. No President could have had more thorough and devoted allegiance than that accorded to Mr. Wilson by the people of the United States. To a very marked degree political partisanship, sectarian difference, regional rivalries, and industrial feuds have all been sunk in a splendid display of loyalty. But the people were and are loyal to Woodrow Wilson because he is the symbol of the principles upon which the Republic rests and the ideals toward which it strives. The loyalty is to the man who fills the executive office and who exercises the function of interpreter of those principles and ideals. When Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton University, the people felt no peculiar loyalty toward him; now that he is President of the United States they feel that everything of value in their material, social, moral, and spiritual life is summarized in him. And that loyalty is universal. They recognize now-it has come upon them in full force during the past few days-that he is more than the symbol of democracy; he is the actual holder of all the powers of democracy. Who is the United States? Woodrow Wilson is! He sums up in himself all the operative powers of democracy just as Wilhelm Hohenzollern sums up in himself all the operative powers of autocracy. To put it bluntly: this war has settled down into a contest between Woodrow Wilson, the human embodiment of democracy, and Wilhelm Hohenzollern, the human embodiment of autocracy. of Is the statement true? Let us try it out by a rigid process logic. Russia can give no further aid toward winning the war. Italy can continue to fight only with the assistance of Great Britain and France. France, indomitable, is nevertheless at the limit of her man power. Great Britain has just come to the zenith of her available resources. With Russia eliminated, the western European Allies cannot defeat Germany. They confess it; they welcome our aid as their one hope of success; all the glorious sacrifices of the past three years and a half would have been in vain but for the accession of the United States. Without our money, without our aerial service, without our food, without our munitions, without our men, democracy in Europe must go down before autocracy. The United States is the final factor in the fight. Who is the United States? Woodrow Wilson is. If we beat down militarism and overthrow barbarism, it will be Woodrow Wilson's victory-the most glorious personal achievement in the history of the ages. The money, the food, the fuel, the fabricating materials, the men who fight and work, are in his hands. He initiates the policies and he controls the processes and he directs the forces which are to bring the Allies to the goal. The responsibility is his because the power is his. The responsibility is awful; the power is adequate. There is only one thing in America stronger than Woodrow Wilson-public opinion! Practically, he controls Congress; actually, the departments are his subordinates. Doubtless in cases where expert knowledge is required the President calls in expert advisers, and their experience serves to guide him. Sometimes public opinion can be neglected. Public opinion is divided on the War Cabinet Bill; public opinion is divided on the Ministry of Munitions Bill; public opinion is divided on the question of a change in the office of the Secretary of War; public opinion is divided on the wisdom of Senator Chamberlain's charges. But there is one subject on which public opinion is united-so united that there is scarcely an infinitesimal crack or seam in it from the Atlantic to the Pacific-we must win the war! We must win the war conclusively, decisively, finally. We must win the war in such a way that militaristic autocracy will be shorn of its power forever. We must win the war, whatever it costs in money and men. The people will forgive the President those slips of human judgment which even the greatest of men may make. They will be lenient toward his personal loyalties and his errors in the handling of unfamiliar business. They will be patient, and endeavor to correct the mistakes or stupidities of his subordinates. And they will not try to take any of his vast powers away from him; he is welcome to them, and to the choice of his subordi nates, and to his peculiar methods of business administrationif he only will win the war. For it burns now as a deep passion in the souls of the American people to defeat the cowardly and barbaric militaristic rulers of Germany. The people have pledged their honor, their wealth, their lives, to do it. The one thing the American people will not tolerate, will not even contemplate, is a negotiated peace, a peace which would leave the sacramental object of the conflict unrealized. Let me use a hypothesis-the only one I have used in this article. If the American people should dis cover that their President, contrary to his first point in what is known as the Fourteen Point speech of January 8, 1918-" Open covenants of peace and no more private international understandings "-if the American people should discover that their President is working through his Holiness the Pope to influence the Emperor Charles of Austria, or is dealing with Count Czernin on behalf of the Emperor Charles, in order to bring about a bargain-counter peace in which France is to be robbed of her holy and consuming claim to Alsace-Lorraine, then the people would turn from the President with a horror and an anger which would know no bounds. For the American people are not primarily interested in altering the map of Europe; they are dedicated to the establishment of justice, righteousness, fair dealing, and human sanctities in the earth. To this end they will make any sacrifice and endure any suffering. To this end they have invested the President with powers which come as near to omnipotence as any man can wield. For the time being they have abdicated many deeply cherished personal, social, industrial, and governmental rights, in order that those rights may be so much added power to the President. It used to be said: "We, the People, we are the United States!" Now it is said: "Woodrow Wilson, he is the United States !" And all that he may win the war! Not to end the war by barter, or by territo rial redistribution, or by a finely readjusted balance of powerno, but to win by the defeat of Prussian arrogance and brute force and barbarity and inhuman militarism-a defeat at arms, which is the only logic that the Prussians are capable of understanding. Washington, D. C. WHY THE GOVERNMENT IS CALLING FOR UNITED STATES SHIPYARD VOLUNTEERS BY FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN T has been stated by no less an authority than the Secretary of War that our military preparations are safeguarded by our reserve army is being selected and trained we have Great Britain and France holding the front-line trenches for us; while our munition plants are turning out shot and shell for 1919 France is supplying the ordnance necessities for Pershing and his men. But our greatest advantage is also our greatest handicap. If we could read the mind of the German General Staff, we should find them attaching equal importance to that distance of three thousand miles as a factor in the war, but with a difference; they are relying upon our remoteness to accomplish our defeat. They know that tonnage is the crux of our problem. They give passing attention to our training of a million or two men in the cantonments, to our work of producing and conserving food, our raising of Liberty Loans, our production of supplies and munitions, and our development of an airplane industry; they regard with academic interest our preoccupation with the fuel shortage and Dr. Garfield's heroic measures; their attention is focused upon the question of tonnage, upon our shipyards, and upon the work of the United States Shipping Board. They know better than we that with out ships all these other things avail us nothing; that ships are the neck of the bottle. If Berlin has underrated our strength, it is because the Germans did not believe that we were equal to the task of turning out a merchant fleet several times bigger than any that existed before 1914, and doing it fast enough to win. It is a stupendous executive task that the Shipping Board has been obliged to face. They had to begin with virtually nothing. Last April ship-building was a feeble and neglected industry. We had only too few up-to-date, businesslike shipyards; these were choked with boats being built for the Navy and for foreign and private firms. The problem was not like that of building up the airplane industry. Howard Coffin was able to adapt the brains and machinery of the automobile business to a kindred task, whereas the industry of ship construction had to be built up from the bottom. Few Americans knew anything about its immense technical details. People had not paid much attention to merchant shipping for sixty years. And then we woke up to the fact that, with war declared and the submarines eating up six hundred thousand tons a month, on the Shipping Board rested the cruel responsibility of somehow building the yards, and the ships in the yards, which alone would make effective our participation in the war. To handle this administrative task the Board, under the chairmanship of William Denman, of California, created a Government-owned Emergency Fleet Corporation with a capital of fifty million dollars. The members of the Board acted as trustees of the Corporation. Major-General Goethals became its General Manager. While the Shipping Board proper had charge of the operation of ships already built, so as to supply as economically as possible the needs of the country for raw materials and food and the needs of our allies for supplies of every sort, and also had charge of repairing and putting into service the several hundred thousand tons of German shipping in our ports, the Emergency Fleet Corporation tackled the building job. This meant mapping out a huge programme for the building of steel ships, wooden ships, composite ships, and what are called fabricated steel ships-that is, ships in which part of the construction is done by outside shops on a standardized plan, rather than in the yards. It meant studying the extent of the supply of steel and wood, and seeing that this supply was maintained and, if necessary, extended. Whenever a firm that engaged to furnish materials failed to do so, it meant stepping in and finding another source of supply. It meant drawing the plans and specifications for ships of a standard size and speed; and when the would-be contractors appeared in Washington it meant studying their capacity and takings, and assuring them a fair but not too generous compensation. It meant commandeering the ships already being built in the yards for foreign and private firms, and hastening as far as possible the work on these and on new ships by securing the ablest engineers available to supervise their construction. Also it meant adjusting the innumerable differences between the ship-builders and labor. It meant coming to an understanding with the longshoremen who had to load the vessels. There have been numerous strikes to arbitrate. Impartial commissions have been sent to study the cost of living in the vicinity of shipyards on both coasts and to determine an equitable general wage scale. While it became clear that the supply of labor would have to be hugely increased, the Shipping Board had to plan for the housing of thousands of additional shipyard artisans, for the enrollment of a volunteer reserve of skilled mechanies who could be drawn to the yards when needed, and for the education of skilled labor in the occupations peculiar to shipbuilding. In this stupendous undertaking the Emergency Fleet Corporation was handicapped for some time, not only by an inadequate administrative force the Corporation was not even created until April 16, and one cannot build up a complete technical staff in a month, or even in three months-but also by defective organization. As the by-laws of the Fleet Corporation originally stood, authority was divided. Although the Chairman of the Shipping Board was also the President of the Emergency Fleet Corporation-so far, so good-he did not have the power to appoint or remove its General Manager. The General Manager was elected by the trustees that is, by the Shipping Board as a whole-and at the will of President Wilson, who had ap pointed these men themselves. General Goethals, the first General Manager, was therefore not answerable to William Denman, Chairman of the Board. And yet Denman, who could not discharge Goethals if he wanted to, or appoint or dismiss a single one of Goethals's subordinates, had to sign every contract as President of the Fleet Corporation. The situation was loaded with dynamite. It happened that Goethals believed in speed before everything else. He did not believe in losing days going over contracts with a fine-tooth comb looking for opportunities for excessive profits. He believed in placing the contracts as rapidly as possible; and then, he argued, if we find that ship-builders are making too much money, we can take it out of them by taxation. Mr. Denman felt differently. He feared wasting the people's money in extravagant contracts. He also happened to think more highly of the merit of wooden ships than General Goethals, who knew that we had a larger available supply of steel than of seasoned lumber, and that the work of building wooden ships could never be com pletely standardized, but would always depend on the craftsmanship and resourcefulness of individual artisans. The inevita ble conflict between the two men came to a head. President Wilson accepted the resignation of General Goethals, asked Mr. Denman to resign also, and appointed Edward N. Hurley. of Chicago, and Rear-Admiral Capps as Chairman of the Board and General Manager of the Corporation respectively. Although there was never conflict between Hurley and Capps. and Hurley very sensibly signed all the Admiral's contracts without question or delay, nevertheless the seeds of dissension were still there. Authority and responsibility remained divided until November 26. On that day the by-laws of the Fleet Corporation were changed. The General Manager became an ap pointive officer, holding his position at the will of the Presi dent of the Corporation-that is to say, of the Chairman of the Shipping Board. The General Manager also gave up to the President the control and management of the Corporation and |