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Show Ai'HIPSOIi kKCi:s, WHICH? The matter of coast defenses is so important for us at the present that the attention of business men accustomed to consider financial questions cannot too often be called to the subject. Insurance Insur-ance is an urgently demanded against this danger as against fire -or mob violence. Insurance perhaps does not fully express what is needed, since it implies the distribution of unavoidable unavoida-ble loss among many sufferers, while a judicious investment for cost defense will prevent the loss altogether. The question narrows itself to this: How is security to be had against an attack from an armored fleet? Perhaps Per-haps the most natural suggestion is to meet like with like. The danger from a hostile fleet. Why not meet it by opposing a fleet of our own? Common Com-mon sense dictates, do so by all means. A certain amount ot money judiciously judicious-ly exjiended in increasing the , navy is money well spent. That branch of the public service has been allowed to deteriorate de-teriorate with as much thoughtlessness as have been our coast fortifications. "'VV''- danger now appears to be that urged by some that a navy alone may safely be trusted to repel naval attacks. This is not true for mauy reasons. Modern ships of war move rapidly and the ocean is trackless and wide. Our fleet, without any fault of its own, may be avoided and the intended blow may be delivered in its absence. This truth was practically demonstrated in 1SS8 by the peace manoeuvers of the British fleet, and the danger cannot be gainsaid. gain-said. The only mode of meeting this difficulty would be to have a fleet equal to that of the enemy retained in every port to be defended, which would involve in-volve an outlay not to be thought of for a moment. Vastly fewer land guns, with their accessories, will suffice to bar the entrance of every one of our chief ports than if mounted on shipboard, ship-board, because they can be much more perfectly projected and much more accurately ac-curately served. Again, ships of war are no longer moved by the winds of heaven, and we have not, as has England, coaling stations distributed over the world. Our ships will be held to our own shores. Most of them are of the cruiser type, designed to destroy commerce, reconnoiter the enemy and act on the skirmish line, rather than for heavy fighting. We must therefore provide ports of refuge where they cannot be overwhelmed by superior force, or they will be captured or destroyed. War on the ocean, as on land, demands secure bases of operation and supply, and they can be had only by fortifying the land approaches of our chief cities. Still another reason must commend itself to practical business men. No comparison exists between the cost of the two systems, whether for original outlay or for maintenance. The Naval Policy Board estimated the first cost of a navy suitable for the needs of the United States at about 8350,000,000; the joint board of army men, navy men I and civilians of 1SS5 estimated the first cost of the land defenses sufficient for the protection of all our chief ports at less than 9 100,000,000. But this enormous difference in first cost is small compared with the per. petual difference iu the cost of maintenance. The land defenses are permanent structures, imperishable, imperisha-ble, and kept in order by their small peace garrisons. The life of an unsheathed un-sheathed steel hull of the pattern adopted for our new ships is limited to about twenty-five years, after which extensive and costly repairs become necessary. As our own recent experience experi-ence has shown, constant repairs are needed by a ship ir. commission. The Boston already shows "pits," due to corrosion of her plates. Naval Constructor Con-structor llichborne stated some months ago: "The condition of the Dolphin is also somewhat serious; at about the usual low water line, a pitted belt varying from three to eighteen inches in width extends from the forward to the outer tower. The holes are from one-sixteenth to three-sixteenths three-sixteenths of an inch in depth, and as the olatts are but seven-sixteenths of an inch in thickness this becomes quite a serious matter." Evidently judicious economy demands de-mands that where mobility is not an essential condition of efficiency, preference prefer-ence should be given to forms of construction con-struction of a less perishable nature than shipping. Finally, guns even on harbor defense vessels, although little exposed to the ordinary dangers of the sea, are much more liable than guns on laud to suffer from the chances of battle. The "blow of a ram or a lucky torpedo shot may at any moment sink them; their floating carriages may run aground or become unmanageable from injuries to the complicated mechanism; in brief, to the risks of the land are aJded all those which pertain to the sea. For these and other reasons it is now everywhere recognized by responsible responsi-ble experts that a purely naval defense of the coast of the United States will not meet the demands of the problem. As well might a farmer attempt to protect pro-tect his fields against wandering cattle by whips instead of by fences. Both army and navy are required, and since Congress haa recently shown that the needs of the latter are beginning to be appreciated, it is to be hoped that those of the former may not be so seriously seri-ously overlooked, or rather underestimated, underesti-mated, as has been the case up to the present time. |