William
Franklin Knox
was born in Boston on 1st January 1874.
After graduating from Alma College he served with Theodore
Roosevelt in
Cuba.
On his
return to the United States he became a journalist
and was active in the Republican
Party.
In the First World War he joined the US
Army and
went to France where he rose to the rank
of colonel.
After the
war he returned to work as a journalist in Chicago
and eventually became the publisher of the Chicago
Daily News. He was the Republican vice presidential candidate
in 1936 but was defeated by Franklin
D. Roosevelt and
Henry
Wallace.
When the
German
Army invaded
France in 1940 Knox called for the United
States government to increase spending on the armed forces. President
Franklin
D. Roosevelt responded
by appointing Knox as his Secretary of the Navy.
During
the Second World War Knox worked harmoniously
with Admiral Ernest
King.
Along with Admiral
Chester Nimitz and Admiral William
Halsey, he helped plan Operation Vengeance that resulted
in the assassintion of Isoruku Yamamoto,
the man responsible for Pearl Harbor.
William
Franklin Knox died
on 23rd April 1944 and
was replaced by James Forrestal as
Secretary of the Navy.
Cliff
Berryman, Washington
Evening Post (1941)
(1)
William Knox argued in favour of Lend-Lease
in a statement made before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
(27th January, 1941)
Before
coming here, your chairman advised me that he would permit me to develop
further some of the points which I made in my statement before the
House Foreign Affairs Committee on Bill 1776, Lend-Lease Bill.
In
Europe the military situation is far from stable, and I believe that
there are few British who would care to accept German peace commitments
at their face value. I should like to quote three short paragraphs
from my statement given before the House committee:
"To
keep our land secure we must prevent the establishment of strong aggressive
military power in any pan of the New World. We can keep non-American
military power out of our hemisphere only through being able to control
the seas that surround its shores. Once we lose the power to control
even a part of those seas, inevitably the wars of Europe and Asia
will be transferred to the Americas. We need time to build ships and
to train their crews. We need time to build up our outlying bases
so that we can operate our fleets as a screen for our continent. We
need time to train our armies, to accumulate war stores, to gear our
industry for defense. Only Great Britain and its fleet can give us
that time. And they need our help to survive."
I
reiterate here my belief that the chief question that confronts us
is whether we shall now take steps to keep Europe's wars in Europe,
or shall drift along and permit those wars to be transferred to the
Americas. We need time to get ready to meet out at sea a strong, aggressive
Germany if we are to keep the fighting away from the lands of this
hemisphere. You may remember that in my statement before the House
committee I gave a comparative table of naval tonnage which might
oppose us, both in the immediate future and over the next several
years, if Britain does not survive Germany's attack. I would not have
you draw the implication from my statement and from those figures
that I fear that the United States will not fully realize in time
the danger that confronts them. But they have no time to waste and
must act at once.
In
public speeches I have warned the American people that if Britain
is defeated, we ought then to be fully prepared to repel attempts
by Germany to seize bases on this side of the Atlantic. Germany would
use these bases either to attack us directly or else first to establish
herself solidly in South America. Many of our people and many of the
speakers who have opposed giving ample aid to Great Britain apparently
believe it fantastic to think that there is any real danger of invasion.
I disagree with such people and believe that a victorious Germany
would move over to this hemisphere just as soon as she could accumulate
the strength to do so, and certainly very soon unless we now take
the steps to check her
career of reckless aggression.
Admiral
General Raeder, chief of the German Navy, recently made a speech to
the shipyard workers in Bremen. The significant portion of his speech
to the United States was a promise that after the war Germany would
have - I quote -
A fleet developed and enlarged to a size befitting a world power,
and overseas naval bases where there would be plenty of work of all
kinds. There can be little doubt as to German ambitions for world
sea power in the event of victory.
The
existence of the British Navy and a balance of power in Europe have
operated to give us military security against aggressions from that
region. For many years we actually have had the benefits of a two-ocean
Navy instead of only the one-ocean Navy that flies the American flag.
The defeat of Great Britain would definitely carry with it the destruction
of the British Fleet or would transfer it to German hands to be used
against us when Germany has trainee German naval personnel to operate
it.
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