NAVAL STRENGTH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 89, 14 March 1941, Page 6

NAVAL STRENGTH

AMERICA’S GREAT NEED. (United Press Association —Copyright) (1.10 p.m.) WASHINGTON, March 13. Warning Congress to-day that the international situation may continue to grow worse, the Navy High Command urged all possible haste in the completion of the two-ocean navy because of the potential superior strength of the combined Axis fleet. The Secretary of the Navy (Colonel Ivnox) told the House Appropriations Committee during testimony on the Naval Supply Bill for the coming year that the German, Italian and Japanese fleets comprised 1,835,000 tons on January 1, compared with the United States’s 1,‘250,000 tons. The acquisition of the French fleet would further swell the Axis strength. Colonel Knox said the major units under construction would not be completed till 1946. In the meantime the United States was confronted, firstly, with the possible defeat of Britain; secondly, the possibility of Japan becoming an active belligerent. It was obviously most desirable to prevent these possibilities becoming realities. Admiral Stark (Chief of the Naval Staff) told the committee that requests undoubtedly would be made in excess of the 3359 million dollars he sought to carry out the huge naval expansion programme in the ensuing year. The committee was informed that the navy .has developed equipment which detects the approach of enemy surface ships or aircraft in time to use the information tactically. This alonfi will cost fifty million dollars for the existing fleet. The new graving dock will take a 55,000-ton battleship, but the largest now in prospect are four 45,000-ton battleships. By the summer time the navy will have the largest combat shipbuilding programme in the nation’s history. President Roosevelt conferred today with Miss Perkins (Labour Minister), Mr Knudsen and Mr Hillman on defence and labour problems. Out of 45 million workers about 16,000 are on strike. For several weeks Mr Rdosevelt has been studying proposals by the Labour Defence Board to settle industrial disputes and pliminate friction from the'defence programme. He ha 6 intimated that he envisages a board which, besides mediation activities, would survey production and labour problems from a longrange vantage point. Moreover, the Labour Mediation Board would seek to integrate the swelling defence production into a useful economic pattern developing after the national emergency passes, enabling the transfer of employment into planned national economy, thus avoiding the chaos otherwise resulting from the abrupt cessation of the huge defence programme.