Excerpts of the President's News Conference

No information has come to me about any report from the Methodist Missionary Board in China that American gunboats are not helpful there and ought to be withdrawn. Such information as I have has rather been in the other direction. I think that the last session of the Congress made a specific appropriation for the purpose of building a special gunboat, or gunboats, to run on the rivers in China, some of them. These have to be of light draft and of special construction, and I think the building of those boats is now going on in China. I know of no such recommendation as this. There may be something of that kind in the State Department that hasn't come to my attention.