America Speeds-up
If it took some time even in Britain to get up full steam in the organisation of war industry, it is not surprising that in non-belligerent America there should be some delays in galvan- ising industry into quick production to meet war necessities. Yet step by step the United States has been moving in the direction of giving us help and more help. Dissatisfied with the results obtained by his Defence Advisory Commission President Roosevelt has now appointed a Board of four persons to give drive to its proceedings, with Mr. Knudsen, former production manager of the General Motors Company, at its head, and Mr. Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, to look after the interests of labour. It will be their task to insist that existing plant is used to the utmost, and that factories outside organised industry are brought into munitions making. Mr. Roosevelt, in fact, has appointed something like a Ministry of Munitions to carry out what Mr. Cordell Hull is so insistently demanding—the con- centration of American industry on the urgent task of providing arms not only for the equipment of Americans but for those who are fighting on their behalf. Among the things that we need from America are ships just as much as aeroplanes. Sixty merchantmen are on order, and are to be built as quickly as the yards can turn them out. Meantime there are lying useless in American ports Danish and other foreign ships which might very well be employed in the American service, thus releasing American ships for use by Britain. That would involve no breach of legal neutrality. Germany's indiscriminate war on neutral vessels affords one among other technical grounds for taking such action. But there are broader con- siderations which will determine America's course.
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