will put the matter of military preparedness beyond the bias of professionalism and where no politicians can place a blighting touch upon it.

PUTTING IT UP TO THE PEOPLE

In a democracy big things cannot be accomplished overnight. You must face the fact that you cannot get a democracy rich quick, or wise quick, or safe quickthat you cannot get anywhere at all, quickly or slowly, unless the people themselves act. This new legislation will give the people an opportunity so to act and it will put the burden where it belongs.

Such an act of Congress, empowering the President to raise annually and hold subject to his call thereafter a body of less than 150,000 men from all over the country, would scarcely scratch our national powers of response in men suitable for military services. It would, moreover, be economical in not necessitating the purchase of an enormous amount of material, a large amount of the same equipment being passed on to succeeding contingents for their use, with the bulk of the Nation's resources and material held in reserve-maximum of result, in other words, with minimum of outlay. Thus we should be laying a sane, sensible, and solid foundation for building in the future.

No intelligent public opinion ought to regard recommendations of this character as being forced or as being an imposition. They fall very far short of conscription, which we must remember could be fastened upon us by a mere act of Congress, the Constitution providing for it. Let us also not forget that we already have conscription in other forms. The jury system is a form of conscription, and the necessity for our children to be literate is a form of national compulsion.

Let us also not forget in making up our minds on these military measures that our destinies are not entirely in our own hands.

The British people are not deciding now whether or not they want conscription. It is being decided for them by outside events. It may very well be that we, in our turn, cannot calmly decide whether or not we want much more radical measures than Congress will be asked to adopt this winter. The British Government is sworn to an unyielding policy on our exports of cotton and foodstuffs. The German Government is quite capable of violating our neutral and human rights again. Across the Pacific a great and united nation opposes the growth of our Far Eastern trade, while at the same time it smarts under the sting of racial inequality. Such outside influences may shape our military policies for us. So when we coolly analyze our situation it simply comes down to the question whether or not we care enough about our institutions and about the inviolability of our territory to defend them.

Something of this kind is in the minds of the professional soldiers of the younger generation, who are not the fanatics that an uninformed civil point of view is apt to regard them. They all feel that unless the world changes materially and the relations of nations are put on a millennial basis we shall have to come sooner or later to something like universal military responsibility and service. Whether or not they are right, the point now is that, even were Congress to pass a law authorizing the enormous military establishment which universal service would necessitate, the country could not begin to handle it even willingly. Without compulsion we could not begin to get the recruits we need for a volunteer army of a million men, and when it comes to compulsion we cannot expect any Congress to pass a law which would cost its members their seats.

The Administration and those who are directing the Army policies feel that they have a great chance to accomplish something to advocate a measure which can be passed and thus, with the greatest possible saving of time, get something started. They do not want to fumble this chance. Therefore they hope that the overwhelming sensible preponderance of public opinion will stand back of them when their measures are subject to discussion.

T

BY

HE United States needs a Navy built upon a definite plan designed to produce and maintain a fighting fleet of a size and quality to meet any emergency which our foreign policies (such as the Monroe Doctrine) or our rights (such as our right to travel in safety on belligerent ships) may get us into. We have not been building our Navy on this

or any other-consistent plan. But the naval bill to be presented to the next Congress will recommend that we do follow such a building programme.

The amount of money asked for must almost necessarily be about a hundred millions in excess of the naval appropriation for 1915, authorized by the Sixty-third Congress. The greater part of such an increase will go into the building programme. No very starting changes are called for in the character of ships to be built, the consensus of the best opinion in the Navy still holding true to battleships as the nucleus of the fighting fleet. The old and supposedly useless navy yards need not be abandoned but can be given a new use as naval bases for submarines at many points on all our coasts.

Such a programme, in short, must impress both Congress and the public at large as being framed on very reasonable lines commensurate with the national problem of adequate defense.

"Preparedness" or "adequate defense" in the Navy can be defined far more easily than in the Army. In theory, when Congress authorizes a new warship, it grants at the same time the necessary guns and ammunition for that ship, the necessary crew to man her, and the necessary facilities on shore wherewith to dock and repair her.

Unlike the Army, only a comparatively small amount of ammunition is necessary per unit in the Navy. One complete refilling of the ships' magazines is generally enough in time of active naval warfare because, as sea tactics have developed in the last year, if a ship once engages in action the chances are that either she will sink the enemy or be sunk herself. A sinking ship, moreover, automatically increases the reserve of ammunition per remaining unit. For the same reason the reserves of men necessary to naval preparedness are small as compared with those necessary for adequate Army preparedness.

Accordingly, the undertaking of an adequate preparation in the Navy must be distinguished qualitatively and quantitively. In the first sense, the necessity of drilling men and officers, of providing equipment and guns and ammunition, and of creating trained reserves provides fully as difficult problems as to time and method as do the corresponding problems in the Army. But in the Navy the sum total of

these ingredients requisite to thorough preparedness is much smaller than in the Army and their accumulation, therefore, is not nearly so difficult.

In the Navy, "adequate preparation" necessarily means preparedness before war comes. It takes longer to build a ship than to train a regiment. After war has begun it is too late to begin the construction of battleships and other vessels which form the backbone of naval success and which require a minimum period of approximately two years to build. The Queen Elizabeth and the other ships of her class that have appeared out of British dockyards since the beginning of the present war were laid down two years ago. The new type of German submarine operating off the Dardanelles and in the Adriatic was laid down eleven months ago. The control of the sea is decided by the actual number of capital ships which a nation can put into commission at the outbreak of war. All history proves this. The present war is conclusively proving it. Therefore it is comparatively easy for the voters and legislators in the United States to know just where we stand to-day and so, when we have decided what we want to defend, to make out and to pass into law a naval programme which will fit that need.

A NAVAL POLICY

In no essential respect have we lagged further behind the first class naval Powers of the world so far as in our unwillingness to formulate a definite naval policy. Sir William White, for nearly twenty years chief constructor of the British Navy, wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 1911:

"Efficient and economical administration of any navy can be achieved only when annual estimates form part of a complete scheme embracing the creation and maintenance of a war fleet adequate for the defense of the country to which it belongs. That scheme may be modified from time to time but it should be always in existence."

"The German principle," wrote Admiral Mahan, "asserts that the constitution and numbers of a navy are not a matter of domestic policy but of foreign relations."

In the clearer light of the European war

we are coming to realize that the constitution and numbers of the United States Navy have generally been a matter not of "domestic policy"-much less of foreign policy-but of domestic and partisan politics. Such questions must now be taken out of that sphere if we are to prepare the Navy for possible war.

In April, 1914, the Army War College had all details drawn up ready for operations in Mexico before General Funston landed at Vera Cruz. This preparedness was possible because, although the Government was then, and is still, unwilling to intervene in Mexico, it did go so far as to give the General Staff of the Army a military policy with relation to then existing affairs in Mexico sufficiently tangible to formulate plans upon.

But now contrast the state of mind which the Navy must deal with. Does our naval policy contemplate protection from invasion on the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards only? If so, such a decision would involve a willingness to have our exports and imports stopped, the Panama Canal, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and Alaska taken from us, and our international policies set at naught.

Or does "adequate defense" mean to the United States Government and people at least an attempt to defend our ocean-going commerce, our overseas dependencies, and our national policies?

Actually no Administration and no Congress has ever hinted to the naval experts what they meant or understood by "defense." fense." Those naval officers, therefore, have been compelled, year after year, to guess at what the country wants and to frame a programme accordingly.

FRAMING A NAVAL PROGRAMME

Now although there has never been what we could call a naval policy on the part of the Government or the majority of public opinion in the United States, there has always been a naval policy in the Navy. And the Navy has gone on trying for many years to define that policy in its reports and in its recommendations for legislation. It is not properly the Navy's business to construct a foreign policy, and the consequent naval policy of the Government,

but as some basis of recommendation was necessary and none was furnished, the Navy made the best guess it could.

The first partial expression of intent on the part of the Navy to start something in the nature of a continuing programme which would, if supported by successive legislatures, amount to something like a naval policy was on October 17, 1903, when the General Board of the Navy, "after mature consideration of our national policies and interests and of those of the other leading nations of the world," expressed its opinion of what the ultimate strength of the Navy should be, and recommended a programme for the completion of the Navy to the strength then believed adequate by the year 1919. The General Board's scheme of 1903 still forms

the background and scale upon which our recurring naval recommendations are formulated in the Navy Department.

This first recommendation was for 48 battleships ("battleship" since 1906 has meant a dreadnaught, i.e., an allbig-gun ship), 192 destroyers, and certain subsidiary and auxiliary vessels as needed. We had, in 1903, 10 battleships completed and 14 authorized. The older ships were considered ineffective after twenty years of life, and therefore to carry out the recommendation of 48 battleships by 1919 would have meant a building programme of two every year up to and including 1915, with a third added every three years. If this programme had been followed out we should have to-day 48 effective battleships built or building.

(k) Includes vessels of colonies.

We actually have, less than twenty years old, 30 battleships (since the sale of the Mississippi and Idaho to Greece) built, 7 building, and two authorized. We are, therefore, 9 battleships short of the recommended number. As for destroyers, we should have to-day, on the same scale with battleship construction, 192 provided for. We actually have only 74. The same shortcoming applies relatively to all the other classes of ships.

To make this situation clearer in its relation to the other three leading navies of the world, the table on page 56, prepared by the Bureau of Intelligence, is printed.

OUR PRESENT NAVAL NEEDS

In the first place, then, in determining what we ought to have now as a naval programme, it is of interest that the General Navy Board-with exception of its presiding officer, Admiral Dewey, almost totally different in its make-up from the board of 1903-said, in November, 1914:

The General Board remains of the opinion it has always held, that command of the sea can be gained and held only by vessels that can take and keep the sea in all times and in all weathers and overcome the strongest enemy vessels that can be brought against them. Other types are valuable and have their particular uses, all of which are indispensable but limited in character. But what has been true throughout all naval wars of the past and what is equally true to-day is that the backbone of any navy that can command the sea consists of the strongest sea-going, sea-keeping ships of its day, or of its battleships. The General Board therefore recommends that four of them be authorized.

Despite spectacular performances in the present war by submarines and battlecruisers, the great majority of those who are shaping the Navy side of preparedness in this country believe the same thing to-day about battleships that they believed in 1914 and 1903. Four battleships will therefore be asked for each year for three years to come, and this will just about bring us up to the programme laid down in 1903 which the naval experts still believe to be the approximate standard of our adequate naval defense. Congress

will also be asked to provide for 30 destroyers, and the Navy will advise a continuation of that scale of construction until we catch up with the proper proportion.

SCOUT CRUISERS

The General Board has recognized our almost total lack of scout cruisers. Last year they recommended four; to-day they are asking for eight every year for several years to come. In this connection it is interesting to know that a brand new type of ship is being considered in naval councils, a "scout destroyer" of about 7,500 tons displacement, of 34 or 35 knots speed, without armor, and carrying one or two 14-inch guns, without turret, on a high freeboard, forward. Three of these

could be built for what it costs to build a battle cruiser, and they could tackle anything which they could not outrun. The battle cruiser is essentially a weapon of opportunity. It can be used for special purposes, such as making raids, cutting lines of communication, etc. The United States Navy possesses not a single one, but it is fair to say that the United States Navy does not believe in having many of them. Other Powers have them and they have played a brilliant part thus far in the naval operations of the present war, notably the Goeben and Moltke, of the German navy, and the Inflexible, Invincible, and Tiger, of the British Navy. The best naval opinion in this country believes that we should have an answer to this particular class of ships, at least an answer to the four battle cruisers built and building by Japan. Therefore, two will probably be asked for this year and two for next.

SUBMARINES

The British Navy has succeeded in destroying between 60 and 75 German submarines. This fact strengthens the opinion in the United States Navy which is opposed to Sir Percy Scott in his assumption that the submarine has scrapped the battleship. Submarine plans for the coming year contemplate bringing up our total number of these vessels to 100, of which number we already have 76 built or building, of the coastwise type. The far-cruising fleet submarine, with a radius of 3,000