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Show WOODEN VESSEL BUILDERS MEET IN WASHINGTON WASHINGTON, March U. Speeding Speed-ing up measures to enable the United States, in event of war with Germany, to procure without delay a great fleet of vessels for transportation of supplies to the allies were discussed here today by woodeu ship builders of the Atlantic Atlan-tic and gulf coasts, who mot at the call of the shipping board. Yards that produce pro-duce steel tonnage already are working to their capacity. In the near future the board will call in Pacific coast builders and then the makers of power machinery will be consulted. con-sulted. Theodore Brent of the shipping board told the builders the board desired to prepare for any emergency the' country may face and that the information asked concerning labor and standardization standard-ization was vital as a measure of pre-paredness. pre-paredness. The board, be declared, had no desire to go into shin building to compete with private yards and had no intention at the moment of placing orders, or-ders, but felt it necessary to prepare the way for rapid building if the occasion occa-sion arises. All the yards represented. It developed, devel-oped, could expand their development under emergency conditions. Frank W. Sprague, chflirman of the ship building committee of tho naval consulting board, made a statement concerning the importance im-portance of careo ships in wartime. The United States, he said, must realize that it faces a serious possibility of war with one of the greatest military groups the world has ever known. If suh a war should "ome. he Raid, the country could hpst make its resources of use bv ship-nine ship-nine a maximum of supplies to Kuropo in the shortest possible timn. For that purpose, he snid, in view of the submarine subma-rine menace, he vvns convinced the most useful fleet would be a largo number of mnderatplv sized vppfoIs, with onsid-ernble onsid-ernble spend and nuickne.s of rnntrol. (onstrm'tion of such hImps. he deHnrM, would be one of the most important duties du-ties nf defense. Orat Britain is prrpnrincr o con-struct con-struct a large numbpr of standardized steamers to mm carencq through tho submnri hp block ad p. British va rd pp. eard in ot her work were nrdrpd to construct the covemment vessels first. |