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Show WHY BUILD MORE FIGHTING SHIPS. The summer maneuvers of our Atlantic fleet off the coast of New England this year have been very fine. First the fleet was divided; half for I the time being acted as a hostile fleet come to attack the home fleet and the coast, then the whole fleet attacked tho coast. It was a mimicry of real war except that the furious passions were not called up in the souls of the men, and the man behind the gun fired only blank cartridges. Next winter, under the handling of Admiral Dewey, the maneuvers will be renewed in the West India In-dia waters, the purpose there to be the attack and defense of the islands and the Darien Isthmus. It is all fine. It drills the officers and crews; as t'-e landsman reads the accounts, he feels a thrill of pride that his country has the beginning of so superb a navy, and feels reconciled to the votin.. of new appropriations for its increase; tho confii ence of the people in the big sea police is magc fied; the flag takes on a new sovereignty d elief in the invinclbilty of Uncle Sam on land nd sea is strengthened. But after all, the account does not read at all "ke .e Sermon on the Mount, and it is hard to imagine, while looking at a modern first-class bat-Wesht bat-Wesht i. that the old law of might does not still rule i jth the sea and the shore. Atl why should not this be a good time to gin to slow down on this building of fighting ships The powers that are the world's concern ment, so far as their navies are concerned, are Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Japan and the United States. All are increasing their navies swiftly. What Is the sense of it all? Why not agree that after say three years they will hold their navies at their then strength and that no more new ships shall be built, for say a period of thirty years, except to supply the places of those that in that time shall be lost or dismantled. That would keep their relative strergth just where It now is; they would at all times be just as ready for attack or defense as they now are why not begin tho reign of peace? The Boer war was a notice served on the world that there cannot be many more wars of conquest, that a small, resolute people can, if educated and equipped properly, stand off a host it was a sign of the beginning of the end of wars. By an agreement agree-ment with Great Britain, no warships have been built on the Northern lakes, why cannot that be stretched to coyer the sea. Could President Roosevelt forward to the powers pow-ers named above a joint memorial of the Congress Con-gress of the United States, praying that the nations na-tions addressed might hold a conference with the purpose of stopping by mutual consent the further fur-ther increase of the world's navies: it would impress im-press the nations profoundly; we believe it would bo responded to with alacrity and that the agreement agree-ment might be reached. It would be a first step toward the arresting of battleship building; it would mean in the second sec-ond place the final disbanding of the world's great armies. Surely Christianity in its original idea does not contemplate a perpetual study of how men can be slaughtered by wholesale, or how cities can bo most effectually bombarded or burned. |