§ But in dealing with the tonnage situation we have not only got to take output and repairs, and repairs includes salvage, but there is another factor. There are three factors. I would like to go into that a little with the House. I am sure the House will understand that we cannot make out a balance sheet, and say in place of that 500,000 tons you have had so many tons in other ways, but it is a fact that we owe the drop—and it is a steady drop—in the curve of merchant tonnage losses very largely—I might, indeed, say mainly—to the efficiency of our patrol of anti-submarine craft and to the invaluable convoy work done by destroyers, sloops, patrol boats and other craft. In fact, to consider correctly and adequately the tonnage situation one must consider together three main factors:
- (1)Patrol and other craft to destroy submarines and safeguard ships at sea.
- (2)Salvage and repair of damaged ships.
- (3)Building of new merchant ships.
§ Those three factors make one whole and indivisible problem. If we throw all our energies into No. 3, namely, new merchant ships, then Nos. 1 and 2, that is, anti-submarine patrol and escort work and salvage and repair work are allowed to suffer immediately, and we are simply providing sheep for the butcher's knife. If we were to throw all our energies into No. 1, that is, patrol and anti-submarine work, to the exclusion of 2 and 3, salvage and repairs and new construction, our land Armies in France and elsewhere might well be starved of 1024 men and munitions before we had completely won the War at sea. It is, believe me, no easy task to decide just what proportion of the available effort—and it is not unlimited—is to be devoted to each of these three factors. I can assure the House that the responsibility is no light one.
§ The House should not, forget that this great effort in naval mercantile construction and repair has been made concurrently with the enormous, and I would point out, increasing effort in the output of munitions of all kinds, and at a time when the man-power of the country available for civil work has been reduced to a lower point than at any previous time in the history of the War. I do not think I am divulging information which should not be made public when I say that the output of tonnage and ammunition of all calibres in 1917 is not far short of twice the output of 1916. I need not remind the House of the special effort being made in the output of aeroplanes. These, I understand, are nearly two and a half times the output of 1916, and arrangements for labour and material to secure a still greater output this year were in progress during the later months of 1917. The output of other munitions, which I cannot detail, is so much larger in 1917 than it was in 1916 as to make comparison entirely futile. All these munitions make great demands on the same classes of material and men as do ships, yet, in spite of the big developments in all these we have been able to accomplish what, I think, must be admitted as an enormous development in the shipbuilding industry.
§ We have, as the House knows, reached in 1917 a total warship and merchant tonnage output practically equal to the biggest shipbuilding year this country has ever known. We have multiplied by ten times the number of naval craft repaired and refitted, and in six months we have increased the merchant ship repair tonnage by 80 per cent., or an increase of 237,000 tons per week. I would ask the House to take note of this fact, that, notwithstanding all these great expansions of work in many directions, and notwithstanding the growing demand upon the man-power of the country, as regards new merchant tonnage output, we ended the year 1917 with an output of 420,000 tons for the last quarter, as against 213,000 tons for the last quarter 1025 of 1916. This was done, moreover—I ask the Committee to note and give us credit for this point—with a dislocated industry, with yards only gradually being cleared of unfinished work, and with large numbers of unskilled personnel in the yards. I have no hesitation in submitting our record to the judgment of the House.