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Show mmiT'rf-m Washington, D. C. IMPROVED NAVAL POSITION Eehind the Solomon islands battle are some optimistic naval facts, entirely en-tirely aside from the announcement of victory. These facts had to be very carefully considered even before be-fore U. S. naval chiefs started to invade the Solomons. One of these naval facts is that the Japs have suffered very severe losses in cruisers. Although it has escaped public notice, U. S. forces have been bumping off this fast, important im-portant type of warship with deadly regularity, so that Jap - cruiser strength is now cut at least in half, perhaps more. Another known naval fact is that the Japs have lost approximately half of their airplane carriers. And with air power what it is today, this is the type of vessel they can least afford to lose. On the American side of the picture pic-ture is the fact that U. S. repairs of ships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor have been miraculously swift. All this obviously was taken into consideration before the United States started a major engagement and the offensive in the South Pacific. Pa-cific. For Admiral King had to calculate cal-culate the risk of the Jap admirals rushing a large force to the Solomon islands. Simultaneously he also had to figure fig-ure the risk of a Jap attack on various vari-ous other vital points Midway, Alaska, Hawaii, even the continental continen-tal United States. Top admirals these days to not take chances. Not when the fate of a nation depends on them. Therefore, There-fore, it requires only a mathematician mathemati-cian to figure that the scale of American Amer-ican strength in the Pacific has turned. It reached its low ebb just after Pearl Harbor, when the navy was unable to do anything about the Philippines, Singapore, or Java. But now the Battle of Midway has shown that Hawaii and the West coast can be defended by land-based planes. No Jap ship dares come near land-based planes without committing com-mitting suicide. This leaves a reinforced fleet to operate in the Pacific Top naval men are not doing any crowing yet. But at least the naval picture seems to counterbalance some of the bad news from Russia which is going to get a lot worse. BURIED SILVER Ten years ago, President Roosevelt Roose-velt and Cordell Hull held a series of discussions with the foreign ministers min-isters of Europe in preparation for the London Economic conference, at which one of the chief proposals of the United States was world use of silver. At these conferences, the late Senator Sen-ator Key Pittman, of the great silver sil-ver state of Nevada, droned through a regular 45 minute lecture on silver sil-ver which American experts knew almost by heart and which put Hjal-mar Hjal-mar Schacht, German finance minister, min-ister, to sleep. After Pittman had finished, the German minister woke up with a start, hastily brushed aside silver. "We accept silver. Now this is what we want in return." The London Economic conference was a dismal failure. But the United Unit-ed States had committed itself so completely to silver in these preliminary pre-liminary talks, that it undertook a silver program, which actually meant that the world sold its silver to us at an artificial price and we buried it in the ground at West Point, N. Y. It was a fine thing for Mexico, Mex-ico, China and Canada and a great victory for Senator Pittman and the Rocky Mountain states. Also it resulted re-sulted in the U. S. treasury accumulating accu-mulating two and a half billion ounces of silver other than coin. Today, however, there is a shortage short-age of industrial silver. And yet the treasury will not open up the giant hoard of silver gathering mold at West Point. Shortage Amid Plenty. What has happened is this. About 5,000,000 ounces of silver monthly is being mined in the United States, which is ample to care for war needs, but not enough for ordinary commercial needs, especially for the silver industry of New England. The silver industry, which makes knives, forks, and household ware, formerly used alloys and critical materials all of which have now been dispensed with. However, silver sil-ver is not a critical material. There is plenty mined for the war effort but not enough to supply the 80,000,-000 80,000,-000 ounces needed annually for the silver industry. So New England silversmiths now ask that they be permitted to buy a mere 80,000,000 ounces out of the two and a half billion ounces which the treasury has buried. MERRY-GO-ROUND ft Though the U. S. navy gave the royal run-around to the Sea Otter, Germany is now reported building exactly this type of shallow-draft, automobile-engined boat for use on the Danube, tne Black and Caspian seas against Russia. C. When the WPB ijade a survey of junk dealers it found 6.000, 00C pounds of "scrap" silk stockings on hand. This is a "geld mine" for making silk bags to hold gunpowder for tiie navy. Duy War Bonds |