Lloyd's Register shows that there are 2000 fewer ships on the British register than there were 25 years ago. It may not again be possible to place a lien on any considerable number of neutral vessels, since most of'such ships use oil fuel and not British coal.
In spite of the great volume of tonnage under the Allied flags, the Ministry of Shipping, in the crisis of the' Great War, managed to carry on—and that with the utmost difficulty—only by recalling vessels fróm the outer seas and by requisitioning all the neutral tonnage that it could, by one means or another, bring un its cofitrol in its efforts to make good the losses at sea. Every berth inthe shipyards on both sides of the Atlantic was occupied, and the work of building new ships proceeded at feverish pace.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.