We must henceforth think of Mr. Hughes in the double role of statesman and founder of a new industry.

"With a view to determining the best method of developing the ship scrapping industry in the United States," so runs a dispatch from Washington, "the Paymaster General of the Navy has invited representative groups of financiers, steel operators, shipbuilders, scrap dealers, chambers of commerce, and editors of trade papers to meet this week at the Philadelphia Navy Yard." It is not too big a meeting when the tonnage involved runs into the millions. Part of it will be actual scrapping, we presume, as when Mr. Ford offers to wave the magic acetylene torch and turn gun-turrets into livers. Part of the scrapping will be figurative for the Government is offering for sale old cruisers, convertible into merchant ships. But, obviously, the thing is more than a job; it is an industry.

Will it, like so many other industries, develop its vested interests and its propaganda? Will junk barons buy up newspapers to preach the cause of international peace? Will second-hand dynamo lobbies try to put over disarmament jokers on Parliaments and Congresses? Will venal correspondents and news agencies flood the press of the world with fakes about peace banquets in Tokio, international meetings in London, interracial resolutions of friendship in Rome, all provocative of unity among the nations and designed to build up the scraping industry? More power to them! -New York Evening Post.