What else could have been done by him save the arbitrary adoption of some one plan, drawing up his own bill, and attempting to force it upon a Congress torn to pieces by a thousand indecisions? Out of the Babel what clear word is there for his guidance? The militarists, with their dream of empire, preach a preparedness that would turn the United States into an armed camp, and a program of naval increase that would burden the country with a terrible, crushing load of taxation. The pacifists go to an extreme that takes no account of present dangers or future needs, and stand as iron against augmentation of either army or navy. A middle ground must be found, as a matter of course, but who can tell just when the ground is middle? Not only is the problem of an adequate land defense a debatable question, but it will continue to be debatable for a long time to come, and the debate rages as fiercely wherever citizens gather as it does in Congress. An issue so vitally concerned with the life and future of democracy is not determinable in a day or by the violences of extremists. The same truth applies with equal force to the navy of the United States. Navies are not built in a year, and inadequacies complained of must be traced much further back than 1912, if blame is to be allotted justly. Between 1903 and 1912, the General Board, with Admiral Dewey at its head, recommended thirty-four battle-ships, yet fifteen only were authorized, while requests for aircraft, destroyers, cruisers, scouts, submarines, and fuel-ships were either halved, quartered, or ignored entirely. It was in 1906 that President Roosevelt declared that the navy need not be en larged, the only need being to replace existing war-ships as they were abandoned, and it was in 1909 that Germany passed the United States as a naval power. Beginning in 1903, the General Board made annual recommendations of a continuous building program instead of a slipshod yearly plan, but Secretaries Moody, Bonaparte, and Meyer flouted the idea, and held fast to a "small navy" policy. Can it be denied that such an attitude was entirely obedient to and expressive of the popular will? Even the humblest citizen to-day is competent to tell what should have been done, but the proper time for this competence to have displayed itself was ten years ago. The honest thing for present concern is not past neglects, but future plans. The Wilson administration is not to be judged by what Republican administrations did not do between 1900 and 1912, but what it is doing and what it promises to do. Naval defense presents no such tangles as land defense. The question is simply one of standstill or increase. Contrary to the average belief, Secretary of the Navy Daniels will not be a load for President Wilson to carry. When abuse is put to one side and fair investigation made, it is seen that this so-called "country editor" has incurred enmity by his honesty and economies, and that the navy to-day, in the opinion of Admiral Dewey and Admiral Badger, has reached a state of effectiveness and efficiency never possessed before. When Secretary Meyer went out of office in March, 1913, the navy was short 6000 men of the number allowed by law; of the men discharged in good standing, only fifty-four per cent. were reënlisting; there were 10,360 desertions during his term, an average of 1800 men in prison, and Annapolis was not within three hundred midshipmen of its capacity. Under Secretary Daniels the navy has been brought to its maximum allowance of 53,672 men, a gain of 6365; reënlistment has increased to eighty-five per cent. of the discharges; desertion has dropped seventeen per cent., there are fewer than 700 men in prison, and provision has been made for the addition of 531 midshipmen to the number now trained at Annapolis. The navy has been increased by the addition of forty-seven ships; a million dollars have been appropriated for aviation, fifteen machines have been purchased and fifteen ordered; the number of aviators has been increased from four to eighteen, and the establishment of an all-year school at the Pensacola station is turning out fliers and mechanicians as a matter of routine; the first three sea-going submarines ever possessed by the navy have been authorized; radio has been installed on all submarines and seventy-five ships; the navy is manufacturing its own powder for thirty-four cents a pound as against the fifty-three to eighty cents charged by the monopoly; the manufacture of torpedoes. has been doubled at the Newport and Washington yards; for every nine mines possessed two years ago, there are now thirty-one; in place of one mine-laying vessel there are three; nets and entanglements have been provided; and every navyyard has been turned into a building and manufacturing plant. A five-year program, prepared by the General Board and Secretary Daniels, will strengthen the navy by ten dreadnoughts, ten battle-cruisers, ten scouts, forty destroyers, fifteen fleet submarines, eighty-five coast submarines, and bulwarked by a $25,000,000 fund for reserve ammunition, all totaling a cost of $500, 000,000. It is up to Congress, Republicans as well as Democrats, and by the increases or decreases urged or brought about the people will be permitted to judge of the faith and intelligence of men and parties. President Wilson stands on Mr. Daniels's recommendations. Taken as a whole, and examined in connection with facts and results, the Wilson record presents an impregnable front. The truth stands clear, however, that this examination will not be made by the electorate unless the President himself compels it. The people are lacking in information, suffering from inflammation, and tormented by exaggeration. There is not a man in all his following able to make the interpretations that must be made, to give the explanations that must be given. If the President indulges his natural distaste for vote-begging and keeps to his tent, he will be defeated. Few men, however, have greater gift of the direct appeal that gets under the skin of people. Woodrow Wilson more than any other man in public life to-day possesses the ability to present confused and complicated issues simply and clearly, winning interest and understanding without resort to noise and fustian. If he goes before the country, taking the people into his confidence, it is not believed that all the millions of the opposition can prevent his reëlection. It is a duty laid upon him less by his ambitions than by the future welfare of the nation. The answers that must be given to the pressing problems of national defense and international relations will not disappear with the needs that call them forth, but will endure to shape the thought of the people and the destiny of democracy. It is the high privilege of Woodrow Wilson to restore habits of orderly deliberation so that these great answers may not be given in anger, fear, or hysteria. AVETE VICTORES. |