The staff got right to business and conferred all day. Victor Henry worked with the planners, on the level below the chiefs of staff and their deputies whereBurne-Wilke operated, and of course far below the summit of the President, the Prime Minister, and their advisers. Familiar problems came up at once: excessive and contradictor/requests from theBritish services, unreal plans, unfilled contracts, jumbled priorities, fouled communications. One cardinal point the planners hammered out fast.Building new ships to replace U-boat sinkings came first. No war material could be used against Hitler until it had crossed the ocean. This plain truth, so simple once agreed on, ran a red line across every request, every program, every projection. Steel, a- luminum, rubber, valves, motors, machine tools, copper wire, all the thousand things of war, would go first to ships. This simple yardstick rapidly disclosed the poverty of the "arsenal of democracy", and dictated -as a matter of frightening urgency - a gigantic job of building new steel mills, and plants to turn the steel into combat machines and tools.