Ships and Baskets

Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison is happiest when perched at his piano, dashing off impromptu tunes and boisterous jingles. Unhappily remote from his piano, unable to conjure soothing rhymes was Charlie Edison one day last week. The House Naval Affairs Committee had him on the carpet, explaining a proposal which he recently submitted to Congress.

Mr. Edison's proposal (which he had made at the behest of his admirals and with the knowledge of Franklin Roosevelt) : that Congress empower the President to make U. S. manufacturers take Navy orders on Navy terms. The President could also amend any existing naval contract, commandeer plants and shipyards whose owners balked. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson had this power; Franklin Roosevelt would have it during national emergencies in peace or war. Mindful that the U. S., by White House proclamation, has been in a national emergency since last September, many a Congressman squawked loud & long.

Last week Charles Edison declined to pass the buck to his wide-awake admirals, apologized for having let himself go off into an undemocratic doze. Said he: "I was taken completely by surprise by all the commotion. . . . Various Congressmen and the press have seen in the proposal implications that I am free to confess I must have missed. If they are right and there really are possibilities inimical to our democratic systems in this proposal, I just made a mistake. ... I ask the country not to jump to the conclusion that I am so intrigued with the idea of national defense that I would sell democracy short to get it." Said the Committee's Chairman Carl Vinson: "It [the bill] is still resting very quietly in the basket." The Committee then called Charles Edison's No. 1 Admiral, Chief of Naval Operations Harold Raynsford Stark, to tell them why the Navy wants $1,270,806,913 in new appropriations during this and the coming fiscal year (TIME, Jan. 15)--a further authorization of $1,300,000,000 for yet more ships to be built by 1945. The ranking U. S. seadog's testimony was notably blunt, notably specific. Said he:

>"We must face the possibility of an Allied defeat [in World War II] and then measure the strength of the powers which might combine for action against the Americas. If our Navy is weaker than the combined strengths of potential enemies, then our Navy is too small. It is too small. . . ."

>"What we have asked for ... is not sufficient to defend our home waters, the Monroe Doctrine, our possessions and our trade routes against a coalition, that has been mentioned in the Committee, of Japan, Russia, Germany and Italy."

>"If we are attacked by the above combination, as has been asked me, something would have to be abandoned. Obviously it could not be our home coasts; and obviously Hawaii, the Panama Canal and its approaches, and the Atlantic coastal shipping are of vital interest. [With the fleet the Navy wants] I believe we could give a fair account of ourselves in protection of these vital interests. ... I do not maintain that we could accomplish the defense of the Monroe Doctrine. ..."

This U. S. sea-doggerel did not read well in Japan. "Glaring hostility," a Japanese newspaper called it. Whatever it was, it amounted to saying that in a two-ocean war the U. S. Navy, even with reinforcements now planned, could not keep Japan from gobbling up the Philippines, Guam, many another outlying U. S. possession. In the Atlantic, by Harold Stark's predictions, the Navy could expect to fend Russia, Germany and Italy off U. S. coasts and the Caribbean. But "the largest Navy in history" could not defend Canada, the Southern Hemisphere, and outlying British and French possessions (which President Roosevelt has covered with the Monroe Doctrine).* Like most experts testifying out loud, Admiral Stark ended with a weasel: ". . . Categorical statements as to what we can and cannot do are not only definitely approximations, but they are in a measure unwise. . . . Judged on relative strength, for instance, very few would have made an estimate that the Finns could do what they now appear to be doing."

*Said Mexico's President Cardenas last week: "The Monroe Doctrine never was recognized, nor could be, by Mexico or by the other nations of Spanish America."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.