Lost: Seven Months

The Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, last week contributed a pithy catch line to naval preparedness: "Dollars cannot buy yesterday." More important to the Navy was a joint announcement by Secretary Knox and Admiral Stark. Their announcement: that the Navy needed $300,000,000 to improve its warships' protection against aircraft. Observant citizens immediately recalled what onetime Secretary Charles Edison had had to say about anti-aircraft protection last May, recalled also that very little had been done about it.

Charles Edison was never very happy either as Assistant Secretary or Secretary of the Navy. Mountains of paper work vexed and baffled him. So, occasionally, did admirals who were his nominal subordinates. They buffeted him from stem to stern when he proposed to tighten the Navy's loose organization, bucked like destroyers in a gale when he partially reorganized the shore bureaus to handle the enormous construction job now under way. And they practically keelhauled him (unofficially) when he came back from inspecting the Pacific Fleet last spring with word that "aircraft have a temporary advantage over ships."

Tactless Mr. Edison's point was that U. S. warships needed more anti-aircraft protection. To have agreed with him last May, after the first flush of German air triumphs in Norway, would have meant that the admirals yielded an inch or so in the hot controversy between sea and air power. Naval officers in Washington privately suggested that Mr. Edison was a bit of an ignoramus. Charles Edison was glad enough to turn his portfolio over to Pub lisher Frank Knox and get elected Governor of New Jersey.

Mr. Edison thought that the Navy should rearmor, redesign the topsides of its ships to resist bomb fragments, flying splinters. Naval top hats last week indicated that they leaned more to increasing the numbers of anti-aircraft guns on the ships. Whatever the method they eventually decided on, they had substantially conceded Charles Edison's point. It would be a long job, in any case. To rearm or rearmor ships now with the Fleet would take five to six years, the Navy Department announced. In that case, the seven months lost between May and December 1940 probably made no difference to the Navy's high command. But anxious civilians took the words out of Harold Stark's mouth: "Dollars cannot buy yesterday."

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