REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON MERCHANT MARINE, NATIONAL FOR- 

 EIGN TRADE COUNCIL. FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING, BILTMORE HOTEL, 

 NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 8, 1918. 



As the National Foreign Trade Council assembles in its Fifth Annual Meeting, the civi- 

 lized world is alert with the hope that it has come at last almost to the threshold of re-estab- 

 lished peace. The enemy's power of resistance is not yet wholly broken, and it may be that 

 we shall be required to endure some months more of hard fighting and sacrifice before it 

 collapses completely. But we are certain that it has been very greatly reduced and that it is 

 destined in the not far distant future to full overthrow. 



Concurrently with the restoration of peace there will confront the United States, as 

 there will confront the other nations of the world, an array of weighty problems which, by 

 common impulse, have been described as "problems of reconstruction." It is already clear 

 what some of these problems will be. Others no doubt will manifest themselves only as con- 

 ditions of actual peace develop. Many of them will be but variations in degree of problems 

 with which we have labored throughout the war. It is clearly the part of wisdom and duty 

 for all of us to make what preparation we can for the enduring solution of such of these 

 problems as we now know are certain to confront us. 



At the head of the list is the question of the Merchant Marine. Just as ships consti- 

 tuted the first problem of our participation in the war, so will ships constitute the first factor 

 in our great task of reconstruction. It made no matter how many men we raised and equipped, 

 or what supplies, what guns, what munitions, what airplanes and other paraphernalia of war 

 we prepared. They were separated by nearly 3,000 miles of ocean from the place where 

 they could render efifectively the service for which they were provided, and without ships to 

 transport them, they were all useless and a waste of effort. Thus ships have been the es- 

 sential agency by which we have borne and are bearing our part in the struggle for civilization. 



So, also, ships will be the essential agency through which we shall be enabled to do our 

 full share in the work of reconstruction after the restoration of peace and in the development 

 of our foreign commerce. And thereafter, ships — our own American ships — will be the es- 

 sential agency through which we shall be able to maintain that just and beneficial relation- 

 ship with the rest of the world to which our participation in the war and its prosecution to a 

 successful close will entitle us and the rest of the world. 



It is not only with us but with several others of the belligerent nations that ships will 

 render vital service in meeting the problems of reconstruction. Our immediate reconstruction 

 work will be different from that of France, Belgium, Serbia, Italy, Roumania, and the other 

 war ravaged countries of Europe. It will be different even from that of Great Britain. First 

 of all we must repatriate the millions of our men who have been sent abroad to take part in 

 the fighting. For many months now they have been going overseas at a rate of between 

 250,000 and 300,000 a month— nearly 10,000 a day. 



The first agency contributing to this marvelous result is our Navy. When the detail of 

 the Navy's work in the troop transport movement can be told, the people of this country will 

 have reason to be justly proud of the record. Every hope and expectation of the country 

 has been fulfilled by this popular branch of the national service and there should go to it the 

 fullest measure of credit. 



