NAVY: More Dunkirks?

This week the New York Times’s war analyst, Hanson W. Baldwin, summed up the terrific beating which the German battleship Bismarck took before she finally went down, adjudged her design ahead of anything in the U.S. or British Navies. He concluded:

“The discouraging thing about this conflict from the British and American point of view is that in technical perfection of the implements of war, both of us are still, after twenty months of war, following the Germans, instead of leading them.

The greatest industrial and technical nation in the world—the United States—has not yet successfully adapted and applied its capabilities to the end that our Army and Navy have better weapons than those of any other power. In some things, it is true, we lead . . . but in far too many items we are still lagging behind and, until that handicap is overcome, there may well be more Dunkirks.”