Washington, June 4.
'EL, Frank Knox, Secretary of Navy, yesterday proposed that the Government sponsor a competitive system among private shipbuilders in an effort to produce a "miracle" in supplying more ships to Britain and the United States.
"We must play a determinative part in the tragedy now going on or spend the rest of our lives and our children's lives trying to fend off an enemy that possesses the rest of the world, he declared.
"The world situation is filled with danger for us, filled with peril for everything that we hold worthwhile. It is utterly impossible to exaggerate that statement. We have got to fight the clock 24 hours daily. seven days a week," he added.
Col. Knox addressed the Conference of shipbuilders and Allied Industry, whose spokesman. Mr. L. H. Korndort, declared that "the industry accepts this challenge and will do the job."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.