said Gifford, the director of the Advisory Commission, " it was necessary, if we were going to give intelligent advice, that somehow we should have a system for clearing the needs of the army and navy, and for having the needs brought before the people." The General Munitions Board included, at first, seven military and eight naval officers, and Baruch, Coffin, Martin and Rosenwald from the Advisory Commission. Its purpose was to coordinate army and navy purchases, to establish precedence of orders between the two departments and the industrial needs of the country, and to determine priority of delivery of materials. It was dependent for its success upon its powers of persuasion. The Secretary of War directed his supply departments to declare their needs to the General Munitions Board when time permitted, but reminded them that the full responsibility of the supply de- partments remained unchanged.
Within a few weeks of the declaration of war numerous special bodies were created to carry on parts of the munitions work. A Railroads' War Board (April n) undertook voluntary direc- tion of the operation of railway lines, retaining it until the in- auguration of the Railroad Administration (Dec. 26) under Director-General W. G. McAdoo. The Emergency Fleet Cor- poration (April 16) was created as a construction agency of the U.S. Shipping Board, with Maj.-Gen. George W. Goethals in charge, succeeded in turn by Rear-Adml. W. L. Capps and Charles M. Schwab. The Aircraft Production Board (May 16) under Howard E. Coffin exercised indefinite powers, in conjunc- tion with the Signal Corps of the army, over the designing and execution of the aeroplane programme. It undertook, said the Chief of Staff, in 1919, " an air programme entirely disproportion- ate to a properly balanced army and, as events showed, impos- sible of execution . . . practically independently of the rest of the army." Behind all these, the Council of National Defense stood in an advisory capacity, making suggestions, appointing other sub-committees, bringing citizens into contact with the Government bodies, but not generally administering the war agencies except in their initial steps.
The various parts of the munitions programme developed" in accordance with estimates as to the number of men that could be put into the line in France. In the spring of 1917 it was hoped to have 1,000,000 men there by the end of 1918; but the Allied commanders did not believe that American troops could be of use for independent work even by that date. This programme was frequently revised, until in July 1918 the Chief of Staff recommended preparations to put 3,360,000 American troops in France before July i 1919. The responsible departments, the special war bodies, and many civic agencies worked with abun- dant patriotic goodwill, and confusion was perhaps inevitable because of the undefined functions of the new war machines. Among the thousand of items to be procured, those that involved the country in the most uncertainty and controversy were ships, aircraft, gas and appliances for using it, heavy ordnance, artillery, rifles, and machine-guns.
Ships. When the Emergency Fleet Corporation began work there were 256 shipways in the United States capable of constructing ships of 3,000 deadweight tons' capacity, distributed among 67 yards mostly along the Atlantic coast. The merchant tonnage of the United States was 3,569,675 gross tons. 1 An early phase of the shipbuilding work was the designing of standard wooden ships of 3,000-5,000 tons and steel ships of 5,000-8,000 tons. Contracts were placed, before the Armistice, for building 17,399,961 deadweight tons, of which 2,368 new vessels, aggregating 13,616,836 deadweight tons, were retained in the final reduced programme of June 30 1919. By this latter date 1 ,056 ships of 5,858,164 deadweight tons had been delivered, many of them from new yards or new ways erected in old yards. By the date of the Armistice the merchant tonnage had been increased, in excess of marine losses and enemy destruction, by 498 ships of 1,944,773 gross tons, without counting enemy ships seized or Dutch ships requisitioned.
Ships
Gross tons
Strength April 6 1917 .... New construction to Nov. n 1918 Ships otherwise acquired to Nov. n 1918 Enemy ships seized in United States Dutch ships requisitioned .... Total to Nov. II 1918 .... Ships lost April 6 1917-Nov. II 1918 By enemy action By other causes Strength Nov. n 1918 ....
1,614 704 95 97
87
3,569,675 2,287,034 274,366 648,894 354,278
2,597
103 213
7,134,247
313.569
416,578
2,281
6,404,200
1 It was the practice of the Shipping Board to compute new ton- nage in deadweight tons, representing the actual freight-carrying capacity of the vessel, instead of gross tons, which are derived arbitrarily by dividing the external cubic dimensions by 100 cubic feet. The ratio between deadweight and gross tons vanes with the type of vessel; rough formula for conversion is, I gross ton equals i -60 deadweight tons.
The question of building the emergency ships of wood or steel aroused warm controversy between those who saw in the wooden ship a means of putting to use materials and labour that were relatively plentiful, and those who believed that only the steel ship could perform the work required. Contracts for steel ships of stan- dardized design were let in large numbers to existing companies, or to new companies organized to receive contracts. In addition to these, provision was made for making separate parts of ships in numerous inland factories and assembling them in great Government yards, at Hog Island, on the Delaware river below Philadelphia, with 50 erecting ways; at Newark, N.J., with 28; and at Bristol, Pa., with 12. The contract for building the Hog Island yard, in an unimproved but accessible swamp, was signed Sept. 13 1917; the first ship assembled there, the " Quistconck," was launched Aug. 5 1918; a keel was laid on the fiftieth way in Nov. 1918 ; but in spite of all the speed that patriotic effort and lavish expenditure could produce, not one of the fabricated ships took on a cargo before the Armistice. The results of the ship-building programme could not have been realized before 1919. In addition to the increase of the merchant tonnage through the building of new ships upon contract of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the Government requisitioned all American ocean- going vessels, seized enemy ships in American ports, chartered many neutral ships, and requisitioned Dutch ships lying idle in American waters and partly finished vessels that were under construction for foreign owners. The growth of shipping under the American flag (in vessels of 500 gross tons or over) is as follows :
Aircraft. Prior to April 6 1917, the United States had acquired in all 224 aeroplanes, which were controlled by the Signal Corps of the army, and none of which reflected in their design the lessons of 'the World War. The appropriations of Congress for military aviation are as follows :
1912-6 . $900,000
1916-7 (Urg. Def. Bill) 500,000
1917 (Army approp.) 13,281,666
1917 (Milit. aeronautics) 10,800,000
July 24 1917 640,000,000
1917-8 (Urg. Def. Bill) 43,450,000
The funds thus made available were expended first by the Signal Corps in conjunction with the Aircraft Production Board and the Aircraft Board which superseded it Oct. I 1917; then by the Bureau of Aircraft Production of the War Department which was created May 20 1918 under John D. Ryan; and after Aug. 28 1918 by the Air Service of the War Department with the same director. The policy was to design a standard type of aeroplane engine, put it into quantity production, and have ready for the campaign of 1918 a fleet of 22,000 effective aeroplanes. By July 4 1917 the first experi- mental " Liberty Motor," as the standard engine was named, had been constructed. After further refinement of design it was turned over for production to the manufacturers of automobiles in the absence of large aircraft industries in the United States. The first finished Liberty engines were delivered in Dec. 1917, and 15,572 more followed within the next year. The first American squadron, completely equipped by American production, was reported by Gen. Pershing to have crossed the German lines on Aug. 7 1918. The A.E.F. was provided by the French Government with 2,676 aeroplanes, and received from the United States 1,379 planes of the De Haviland type. The delivery of aeroplane engines of all types to the Government in the United States began with 66 in July 1917, and rose to 5,297 in Oct. 1918, with a total of 28,509 to the end of Oct. 1918.
Toxic Gases. Much of the preliminary work in gas warfare was done in the U.S. Bureau of Mines, which had already made studies in connexion with the safety factor in the operation of mines. The laboratories of leading universities took up experiments before the declaration of war, and there was gathered at the American Uni- versity in Washington, D.C., a nucleus of experts in the investigation of problems in gas offence, gas defence, toxicology of gases, and the manufacture of gas and containers. The strictly military study of the use of toxic gases was made in the Trench Warfare Section of the Ordnance Department, but it was necessary to call into the work the officers of the Medical Department. There was no commercial equipment in America for gas manufacture upon the scale needed for the American programme, and the Edgewood Arsenal (3,400 acres) in Maryland was accordingly built to manufacture gas and fill gas shells. In June 1918 the various agencies concerned in gas warfare
