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Show TWO DREADNOUGHTS. In passing tho naval appropriation bill the house steered a middle course between the greater navy plans of Cap-t Cap-t p' Richmond Pearson Hobeon and the views of Democratic Leader Cuder-wnod. Cuder-wnod. Honson wanted the government to build four dreadnoughts the coming com-ing year. Underwood insisted, upon the score of economy and the fact that the European navies were being destroyed de-stroyed instead of augmented, that one big war.-hip was enough to cod struct at the present ti:ne. The houe decided de-cided to build two and a great majority I of the people of (he country will approve ap-prove the action taken. Whilfi w-e should maintain on -ff icieut navy, there is not the least excuse for attempting the control of the high seas. We coul'-i not if we would. It used to be said of a saloon in a certain mining camp that a man who entered it with the announcement that he could whip anybody in town soon found out whether he could or not. It would be the same ay with tho control con-trol of the seas. If the United States ever arrives at that stage when we ! believe our navy is all powerful, it will not be long before we shall have the same experience as the man in the mining camp saloon. So far as armament arma-ment is concerned, tho United States can very well afford to wait until the present European war is over before spending hundreds of millions of dollars dol-lars for national defense which will never be needed. Our present position is secure and it is quito likely that if the struggle now going on does not take all the fight out of the Europeans they will bo too poor to start another war right away. There is no objection to xa reasonable reason-able naval programme or to increasing the numerical strength and efficiency of the army. At the same time we should not be throwing money away when a treasury deficit is sure to result. re-sult. Economy should be the watchword watch-word of congress at this particular time. |