That makes necessary setting up some method for payment.

I assume that is for the purpose of making payment on goods that have been purchased here.

It is no different than any other commercial transaction, so far as I know.

I haven't very much information about the shipping of Russian gold to the United States.

There is always danger that the Congress will be too liberal in the matter of appropriations.

It doubled the appropriation that I proposed for the Shipping Board and I think added $6,000,000 or $8,000,000 to the Army bill, and it is true that if it goes on at that rate there won't be any surplus with which to meet tax reduction.

Of course, according to my best judgment, there should be added to the sums I have already mentioned $65,000,000 that has been put into the tax bill, which is in excess of what I believe tax reduction ought to include.

No, I have given you the wrong number.

I have understood that there was something of a propaganda under way against any Navy building program.

But I think if it is understood that this is a plan toward which the Navy is to work in the future as funds become available, and that so far as the cruisers are concerned it is to quite a large extent a matter of replacement, that a good…

I am not, of course, an expert at all on what is the type of ship that we need most, but I am advised by the Navy that it is in the matter of cruisers that we are most deficient.

There are some letters being received here at my office against the building program and some communications are being received in favor of it.