But in the United States the vital importance of ships is not widely understood. During the last decade of the 19th Century and the first one of the 20th it might almost have been said that the subject was not understood at all. The World War corrected that somewhat, but even after that holocaust had forced the subject before the public and had created a condition that demanded ships, the subject was not more than superficially grasped. The result was that the nation that had suddenly leaped to a position in world shipping second only to Great Britain so lightly took its responsibilities that its great fleet of ships was permitted to run down when an economic crisis made it impossible for them to find cargoes. Almost as important in this deterioration of the American Merchant Marine after the war were the backward laws and lack of interest on the part of the people. But the United States is not so situated that the importance of ships can easily be appreciated. The people would not starve if there were no ships, for the nation’s own resources, seconded by those of Canada, would prevent such a calamity. The land has coal and steel, has copper and cotton and farm products. It _could_ have enough sugar without going overseas. Its great area and diversity of climatic conditions produce, perhaps, more of the necessities of life than can be produced by any other single nation. Yet is it dependent upon ships. Without them the millions of automobiles would shortly stop running—for lack of rubber, from which to make tires and insulation. Without ships the vast wheat crop could only with difficulty be harvested—for lack of binder twine, which is made from Yucatan sisal. These imports are vital and there are others equally so, besides thousands without which we could get along, but less comfortably. Coffee and tea, spices, silk, diamonds (not merely for jewellery, which is unimportant, but for industry in which vast numbers of them are essential to many processes of manufacture), chocolate, fish (or at least most of them), many metals necessary to industry, ingredients for many important drugs and medicines, mahogany and other fine woods which are vital for more than furniture, and a thousand other things that now are a part of everyday life. The high standards of living now commonly accepted by the people of the United States would be greatly lowered were it not for the ships that bring to its ports the products of foreign lands and take away the country’s excess food products and manufactured and raw materials bought by those foreign lands. [Illustration: AN EXPERIMENT OF 1924