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Show NAVY DAY GENERALLY OHSERVEJ). Navy Day in- the Uuiu-d State- is jOctoU-r 27, the birthday of Thood c : RiO -evc-lt. Thi.- year, since the date fell on Sunday, Navy Day was ..b-! ..b-! ..-rvt-.l on M-nday, 0. tier 2. I: 's well worth saying that in this year of 1 9?,5 more than ordinary interest seemrd to In. taken in this very important im-portant holiday. All the way from Coston down and around the coast, even to the Isthmus of Panama, the day was celebrated, and people came J out to see Uncle Sam's new warships, j which may well he said to form our 'primary defen-e in the Nation's capi-' capi-' tal. Oper 170,0;.O people visited the navy yard on th:t Anacostia river. At the Brooklyn yards keels were laid .for two 1,500 ton destroyers and at the Philadelphia yard two destroyers were launched, with Henry L. Roosevelt, Roose-velt, assistant secretary of the navy, attending the ceremonies. Patr'otic ! organizations everywhere cooperated in the celebration and a number of 'sound American addresses were made. In thesa speeches the strengthening I of the navy to meet modern require-j require-j ments was urged by Uncle Sam's ' naval experts. There can be no doubt j as to the desirability of sxich a pro-! pro-! gram. Uncle Sam needs a navy second ' to none. We are not picking a quarrel 1 with any other nation and we will : not pick such a quarrel. But in case 'we are attacked, which is not at all improbable, our navy will serve as the first line of defense, because the attacker will naturally come, from the j other sr'de of one of the two broad oceans which touch us. A good navy for the United States is not an. extravagance, any more than life and fire insurance are extravagances. ex-travagances. A good defensive navy is an assurace against foreign aggression. ag-gression. Furthermore, in th's time when cur government is seeking to create jobs through spending federal money, nothing is mors important than navy building. The money used to build up our navy will not be wasted. wast-ed. As:'de from the matter of safety the money so expended will quicken industry everywhere. In this respect the people of the land-locked states have as much to gain as those along the seaboard. Many industries, not alone the shipbuilding business, get the benefit. Fewr people real'ze just how far-reaching the stimulus; . to I business may be. It is well, therefore, to quote a few pertinent paragraphs : from the Scientific American, on the subject : "From farm and forest, mine, quarry quar-ry and clay-pit, sheep ranch and oil well, come the materials of which our modern naval vessels are constructed. "Visualizing a modern, steel-clad ship as a machine-mad product, our tendency may be to forget that fact. "Some inlanders may even feel that they have not part in the navy since they never see one of its sh'ps and perhaps, also, because they can see no connection between their preponderantly preponder-antly agricultural states and those metal monsters which are designed to keep us out of trouble. j "Yet the factory is the only middle-1 man. The factory processes the raw materials drawn from our store of natural resources and from our farms. Each state makes its impor-' tant contribution some greater, some smaller, depending upon various factors." : I |
