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Show WOODEN SHIPS M1EB0ILT, llSJEIi Declares Most Successful Steel Building Campaign Possible Will Not Give U. S. Vessels Needed. RESENTS SPEECH MADE BY GOETHALS Insists That a Public Dinner With Head of Steel Trust Is Not the Place for Discussion. WASHINGTON, May 27. Replying today to-day to Major General Goethals's declaration declara-tion that the shipping board's wooden ship programme entrusted to the general Is hopeless, Chairman Denman of the board issued a statement declaring that with the most successful steel-building campaign cam-paign possible there still will be need for a thousand wooden ships. Referring directly to General Goethals's speech at a dinner in New York Friday night. Mr. Denman said: "We believe that the committees of congress, and not a public dinner with the head of the steel trust, are the places for t he discussion of matters of policy with regard to ship building." "Tlie shipping board has but one purpose pur-pose in its activities in Washington." said Mr. Denman. "That Is. to use its utmost endeavors and power to defeat the German submarine campaign. No persnn, nor any interested group of capitalists, cap-italists, can draw any one of us into a controversy with General Goethals. nor do we think the general is seeking it. Would Still Need Ships. j "If all the ships that can be built within i the next eighteen months were built, there still would be need for a thousand wooden ships to make good the deficit in our merchant tonnage, though the Germa n rate of destruction is reduced to half that established In the month of April. I do not know whether a thousand wooden ships can be built tn eighteen months. I There was a hope expressed that we 1 could, and J have carefully avoided denying deny-ing the possibility of realization of this hope. My reason for not denying it is because I do not care to have our German Ger-man enemies in Berlin receive that amount of comfort. "Every attempt to make It appear that there is disruption between General Goethals and the board Is adding to Germany's Ger-many's comfort and assurance." Money Furnished. I Of General Goethals's statement that the j treasury has made no effort to sell $50,00,000 worth of Panama canal bonds, to provide funds for the board's work, he safd : I "EvVry request we have rnade to the ; treasury for money has met a. uuick response. re-sponse. It was not necessary to sell Panama canal bonds to obtain money, and General Goethals must have been under un-der some misapprehension in regard to this matter. "It is not going to hHp the war by spreading stories of discord among the various organizations of the government govern-ment here in Washington." |