In conference with the Shipping Board last Saturday, the President
of the United States decided that unless the 388 vessels of the Government's merchant fleet could be sold " without justifiable sacrifice " within the next ninety days, the Government should take them over and go into the shipping business. Mr. Harding seems determined, one way or another, to make the United States a great shipping nation, or at any rate to " save the face " of the Shipping Board. This is the President's answer to the refusal of Congress to pass a Bill to sub- sidize privately-owned craft. Far from being jealous, we should, of course, welcome the cutting of freights which an American merchant fleet would give us, but from the purely American point of view the scheme of Government operation seems foolish, since a vast sum of money will be spent on an artificial stimulus for a trade that does not as yet flourish naturally in the United States. Moreover, as in the past, the policy of ,Protection is bound to destroy America's ability to supply cheap shipping profitably.
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