Vol. XXXIV, No. 3 WASHINGTON September, 1918 



THE 



JMATOONAL 

 I 



SHIPS FOR THE SEVEN SEAS 



The Story of America's Maritime Needs, Her Capabilities 



and Her Achievements 



By Ralph A. Graves 



Author of "Fearful Famines of the Past" 



THE human mind cannot conceive 

 of millions ; to most of us even 

 tens of thousands convey no con- 

 crete idea save that of a numeral and 

 four ciphers. Let this, then, be a story 

 of America's ships and American ship- 

 building in the language of units. 



Our merchant fleets, already created 

 and those to be, are the great, pulsing 

 arteries supplying our armies abroad with 

 all that constitutes the life-blood of fight- 

 ing forces — food, clothing, ammunition, 

 machine-guns, artillery, locomotives, air- 

 planes, ambulances, reinforcements ! 



Ships in sufficiency spell victory. And 

 to make that victory sure the American 

 Government has authorized the United 

 States Shipping Board to expend, as 

 quickly as it can pay men for labor and 

 material, a sum nine times as large as the 

 value of all the gold and silver produced 

 by all the mines of the earth during the 

 year 1916; a sum nearly fifteen times as 

 great as the cost of the Panama Canal ; 

 more than seven times as much as the 

 original vast appropriation for our air- 

 plane program. 



When that sum is exhausted as much 

 more will be placed at the disposal of the 

 Shipping Board, provided the ships are 

 forthcoming in numbers never before 

 built in the same length of time by any 



nation, or by all the nations of the world 

 combined. Quantity of production, qual- 

 ity of production, and speed of produc- 

 tion constitute the supreme aim of the 

 shipbuilding program in the minds of 

 Americans today ; the cost is secondary 

 and for subsequent consideration. 



THRFE TONS PFR FIGHTING MAN 



Why the quantity and why the haste? 

 The answer lies in the historic fact that 

 two million American soldiers are now in 

 France fighting for the cause of a free 

 world, and in the historic promise that by 

 next July that number will have swelled 

 to four million. Every individual man of 

 that army requires three tons of shipping 

 to keep him supplied with the essentials 

 of life and of effective warfare. Not 

 three tons of supplies, but three tons of 

 shipping plying constantly back and forth 

 across the Atlantic, month in and month 

 out, through calm and storm, autumn, 

 winter, spring, and summer. Every sol- 

 dier — be he in base camp far behind the 

 lines, in aviation training camp, in port of 

 debarkation, in labor battalion, or among 

 the shock troops of the front line — re- 

 quires that three tons of shipping be set 

 aside, consecrated to his particular needs. 



Four million men in France, twelve 

 million tons of shipping on the Atlantic — 



