cargo shipbuilding area for us both, while your country was 
      to devote its facilities and resources principally to the construction 
      of combat vessels, escorts, as well as other implements of war. 
      It would have been unnatural had we done otherwise, because the 
      case for our assuming this division of responsibility was irresistible. 
      Each of us has faced up very creditably indeed to our respective 
      share of the general task that we then laid out.
 
      
 
 
You, in your country, reduced your merchant shipbuilding program 
      and directed your resources more particularly to other fields 
      in which you were more favorably situated, while we became the 
      merchant shipbuilder for the two of us and have built, and are 
      continuing to build, a vast tonnage of cargo vessels.
 
      
 
 
Our merchant fleet has become larger and will continue to 
      grow at a rapid rate. To man its ever increasing number of vessels 
      will, we foresee, present difficulties of no mean proportion. 
      On your side, the British merchant fleet has been steadily dwindling. 
      Depending upon the way in which the calculation is made, it has 
      shrunk somewhere between six to nine million deadweight tons 
      since the war began, and you have in your pool as a consequence 
      about 10,000 trained seamen and licensed personnel. Clearly it 
      would be extravagant were this body of experienced men of the 
      sea not to be used as promptly as possible. To fail to use them 
      would result in a wastage of manpower on your side, a wastage 
      of manpower on our side, and what is of equal importance, a wastage 
      of shipping facilities. We cannot