1928 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE 1917 SENATE L\1R
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1928 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE 1917 SENATE l\1r. HALE. I give notice that I shall move to take it up at the earliest possible moment; if not before, immediately follow TUESDAY, Januart; ~4, 19~8 ing the final disposition of the pending unfinished business, the merchant marine bill. (Legi-~:~latilve aa.y of Monilay, Ja;nuary ~3, 1928) Mr~ SIMMONS. Mr. President, in this connection I ask The Senate reassembled at 12 o"clock meridian, on the expira unanimous consent to have printed in the REcoRD an article tion of the recess. entitled u What is the truth about the S-4?" written by Mr. Mr. CURTIS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a Courtenay Terrett, a · newspaper correspondent who was pres quorum. ent all the while during the activities of the Government to Tbe VICE PRESIDENT. The clerk will eall the roll. recover the submarine and rescue its inmates. The article The legislative clerk called tbe roll, and the following Sena appears in the Outlook for January 11, 1928. I bad intended tors answered to their names : · to have it read to the Senate, but it is too long, so I am going .Ashurst Fess McKellar Shortridge to content myself by asking unanimous consent to have it Barkley Fletcher McMaster Simmons printed in the RECoRD. But I want to call the attention of Bayard Frazier McNary Smith Smoot Senators to the article, written by this newspaper man of ~Fagam ~~f~e ~:l~tfid Steck repute, I understand, as being worthy of their reading and Rlaine Gillett Moses Steiwer consideration. Rlea e Glass Neely Stephens Borah Gooding Norbeck Swanson The VICE PRESIDE~~. Without objection, it is so ordered. Bratton Gould Norris Thomas The article is as follows : Brookhart Greene Nye Trammell Broussard Hale 0<1die Tydings WHAT IS THE TRUTH .ABOUT THE " s-4 " ? Bruce Harris 0Yerman Tyson Capper Harrison Phipps Wagner By Courtenay Terrett Caraway Hawes Pine Walsh, Mass. (Mr. Terrett was one of the correspondents wbo went to Province Copeland Hayden Pittman Walsh, Mont. Couzens Heflin Ransdell Warren · town to see the Navy rescue six living men trapped in the torpedo Curtis Howell Reed, Pa. Waterman room of the sunken submarine 8-J,. The effort quickly degenerated into Cutting .Johnson Robinson, Ark. Watson a plain job of salvage. The story Mr. Terrett tells of tbe actual con Deneen Jones Robinson, Ind. Wheeler Dill Kendrick Sackett Willis sideration given to alvaging the ship as opposed to saving the lives E<lge Keyes Schall of its survivors, is not pleasant reading. It may be, as he Sllys, that Edwards King · · Sheppard suitable explanations can be made to naval boards of inquiry and con Ferris La Follette Shlpstead gressional committ~es; but his facts are hard facts, and one or two are The VICE PRESIDENT. Eighty-nine Senators having an capable of a sinister interpretation.) swered to their names, a quorum is present. The sea wind riflled the water and broke up the white-gold patches DISPOSITION OF USELESS PAPERS of refieeted llgbt into shimmering streaks. The scattered fleet seemed to lle in a restless moonlit sky, the anchor chains barnacled with stars. The VICE PRESIDENT laid before the Senate a communi All but one vessel. cation from the Secretary of the Interior reporting, pursuant to law relative to documents and files of papers in the depart The Falc()'l],, long and low, stood out as whitely against the liquid mer{t which are not needed or useful in the transaction of cur darkness as a medieval painting of the Holy Grail. Batteries of rent business and have no permanent value or historical in strong lights scoured the decks on which 200 men were working late terest, and asking for action looking toward their disposition, and hard, and the illulllination ran oft' to spread in a glowing film over which was referred to a Joint Select Committee on the Disposi the waters around tbe ship. tion of Useless Papers in the Executive Departments. At the stern two bose lines trailed off into the burnished water, and The VICE PRESIDENT appointed Mr. NY.E and Mr. PITT a di\Ter, whiter in his rubber suit than a naked man, stood clumsy and hideous on a platform slung out over the rail by a crane. He was MAN members of the committee on the part of the Senate. going below, 17 fathoms under that brigl1t surface, where lay the THE MERCHANT MARINE gashed and floode<l carcass of the submarine S-.f. The Senate, ns in Committee of the Whole, resumed the con The two hose lines led down to her. One had been made fast two sideration of the bill (S. 744) to further develop an American hours earlier, at 1 o'clock, and was now pumping sweet, living air into merchant mruine, to assure its permanence in the transporta the fetid forward torpedo compartment. It was this diver's purpose tion of the foreign trade of the United States, and for other to attach the second air bose. purposes. One would have thought that men were being saved from death, Mr. JONES obtained the floor. that these measures were parts of a rescue operation. Mr. BALE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield to me? Indeed, they might have been but for one fact: 1\Ir. JONES. I yield. The six men who had survived the submarine's quick plunge to sea bottom happened to be dead, and not all tbe air covering the earth I~VESTIOA.TIO::.'ii OF SINKING OF SUBMARINE " S-4 " nor all the divers in all the navies could bring them back to life. 1\lr. HALE. Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous Tbis was midnight of Wednesday, December 21, and they had been consent to call up Calendar Ko. 78, the joint resolution (H. J. dead for hours if not for days. Res. 131) providing for a commission to investigate and report It bad been the preceding Saturday afternoon that the rum-chasing upon the facts connected with the sinking of the submarine Coast Guard destroyer Pa1llait1{}, seeing nothlng of the submarine tender S-.t,, and upon methods and appliances for the proteetion of sub Wan(lank or its flag warning that a submarine was running on the marines. test course outside Ptovincetow11 Harbor, had slashed into the ascend The VICE PR.ESIDE~'T. Is there objection? ing 8-1~ cut ber halfway through amidship and sent her to the Mr. SWANSON. Ml·. President, I object; and I will state oottom with tons of green sea water in her belly. Thirty-four men that I shall not con ent to the consideration of the measure died then. until the Senate itself shall have the disposal of it when it Explanations will be offered as to wby air was not pumped in to the comes bere. We spent almost one day in discussion of it and six living m~ on Sunday afternoon, when it was pumped in, three days then it was withdrawn. The next time it comes before the later, to six dead men. Senate I think it proper that the Senate sball have the dis There will be technical explanations offered by men ::tnxiou to posal of it, and not one Member of the Senate who can inter ·explain, a.nd they may satisfy a naval board of inquiry or a congres pose and withdraw it from coru>ide1·ation wheneve1· he pleases. sionnl investigation. Mr. HALE. The joint resolution was withdrawn because But they will never satisfy those of us ·who for five maddening certain Senators were not here who wished to address the days watched a slowly assembling fleet of rescue ships, equipped with Senate during its consideration. I would like to have it the llest available apparatus and manned by a thousand experienced brought up at the earliest possible moment It is an important men, lying over the sunken submarine and accomplishing nothing measure that should be settled, and the commission. whatever toward saving those six known survivors. it may be, should get to work on an investigation of the In retrospect it seeiDB that rescue was never in the Navy's plan, but disaster. only the salvage of a fighting machine which cost upward of $3,000,000 Mr. SWANSON. The Senator can move to bring it up in the to build and might be reconditioned at an expense less than t•egular way. He had nearly a whole day devoted to the con replacement. sideration of the joint resolution, and then he withdrew it This view is unfair, perhaps, for there were men and officers in that because, as I thought, he could not get it passed. fleet who were feverishly anxious to do something, anything, that Mr. HALE. It could not have been finished that afternoon might save the six, and who were heart-sick and incautiously resentful under any circumstances. when they knew tbat the chance had passed. Yet tbe facts are Mr. SWANSON. I object. challenging. LXIX--121 i918 CONGRESS! ON AL RECORD-SENATE JANUABY 24 The Coast Guards men located the S-1/s resting place Saturday night the admiral. He came to the rail and identiflE'd himself by pointing to after dragging the ocean floor for hours from small boats, and a buoy the gold braid and leaves on his uniform cap. was put down to mark the spot. One newspaper man called to him, "Have you quit?" Already the destroyer Stu-rtevant and the mine sweeper Lat·k were The admiral's answer was au explosively negative. at the scene.