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Show GARDNER BEFORE NAVAL COMMITTEE Washington, Dec IS Representative Representa-tive Gardner was the principal witness wit-ness today before the House naval committee. He read a long statement state-ment in support of his proposal for Investigation of the national defenses defen-ses by a BpeciaJ commission "I am here to ask you to appropriate appro-priate for the full number of new ships recommended by the gom-rul baval board for this years construction." construc-tion." he said "I am sorry to say that Secretary Daniels in his recommendations to congress has cut the naval board's building program for this year almost al-most exactly in two "If you gentlemen had permitted me to present as witnesses a few recently retired officers, in a single day the country would have learned of our demented policy of building warships for cold storage. Out of thirty completed com-pleted battleships, do you know that twelve of them are unavailable without with-out a long delay on account of our refusal to pay the bills for manning them? Navy Tacks Fighters. "If we had gone to war with the rest of the first class powers early In August, do you realize that no less than nine of our. battleships would not hao heen ready to fight? We have fifteen cruisers, 22 destroyers, 18 torpedo boats, 5 submarines and perhaps a dozen miscellaneous fighting fight-ing ships in cold storage with the battleships. bat-tleships. Eighty fighting vessels of our navy are not available for battle in an emergency "I charge that our navy is 18,000 men short and a further shortage of 40.000 men is in sight Tho general board, which has actually actu-ally made our war plans, estimates the enlisted force of the navy as between be-tween 30.000 and 50,000 men short for war. Only 27 Battleships. If any attention had ben paid to the general board's emphatic appeals for our national safety, instead of only 27 battleships built, building and authorized, au-thorized, wo should now have 47 battleships bat-tleships built, building and authorized. author-ized. Instead of 68 destroyers we should now have 187 destroyers If we heeded the advice of the general board we should have a fleet of fast scouts today. How many do you think we actually have got? Just three, and those were authorized over ten years ago, "You know that we have fiftv-slx submarines, in all, built and building, build-ing, good, bad and indifferent Now comes Secretary Daniels and in a few soothing words recommends submarines sub-marines to the paltry number of eight nr sn Only Dozen Aeroplanes. "We have just a dozen aeroplanes In the navy Last year the aeroplnne board recommended an appropriation of $1,300,000. Instead of that sum. according to Captain Bristol, we let the aviation service spend onlv $350,-000 $350,-000 or $400,000. The general naval board in its current report savs that we must .spend $5,000,000 on air craft. Secretary Daniels recommends no regular specific appropriation at all, but he tells us about a volunteer aircraft air-craft force Captain Bristol says that the volunteer force does not amount to "Hannah Cook." "Hear Admiral Strauss tels us that all battleships in commission now, or which will be in commission before the Nevada and the Oklahoma are Lompleted, 'are equipped with a short range torpedo which may be considered consid-ered obsolete for the battle fleet.' Admiral Fletcher' Evidence. "Some persons have quoted Rear Admiral Fletcher as saying that the American navy ranks ahead of that 3f Germany. I have searched the admiral's evidence and tind that he said nothing of the sort. I don't be-teve be-teve that any well informed man be-mves be-mves our fleet to be superior to that f Germany. A year ago Rear Ad-niral Ad-niral C. E. Vreeland testified that ve are third in the race, and more-ver more-ver that we are a pretty bad third or he said that we should still be! bird jn 1920. even if we adopted the mllding program of the general board. Wfc |