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Show AND PEACE REIGNS. When Great Britain produced the type of warship war-ship known as the Dreadnought, she set a new standard by which the navies of the world were to be measured. It is now understood among naval experts that the relative strength of a navy depends upon the number of available ships of the Dreadnought Dread-nought class. Great Britain built the first one. and immediately her magnificent naval establishment became obsolete. With the building of the first vessel of that class, other nations took it as a model and began building Dreadnoughts, too. Germany insists on building modern warships, and the other nations of the world cannot afford to be without them. Mr. Balfour, the leader of the opposition in the British parliament, has made the wonderful discovery that now it is a question "not of maintaining main-taining a two-power standard, but of maintaining a one-power standard in first-class ships." In other words, the proud position of Great Britain as mistress mis-tress of the seas, with a navy numbering twice the ships of any other nower. i rprlnnnrJ n i e I equality. England cannot hope to maintain twice as many Dreadnoughts as Germany, for it is the belief be-lief that Germany can build at many as England herself, and hence bids fair to become the equal, if not the superior, of England in naval armament. Inasmuch as England, in her anxiety lest she should suffer invasion and consequent loss of her national integrity, inaugurated the new fashion in battleships, battle-ships, she is herself to blame tor the eefjsciju-fint reduction of her relative naval strength. All this preparation for war, which at the present pres-ent time seems as remote a a If i. a;a l ill tug I11S- tory of the world, on the part of the great powers, costs money, and lots of it. The United States' alone is spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on its naval and military establishments, which establishments will in a short time, if war does not ensue, become obsolete and the money invested in-vested in warships a Waste never to be retrieved In the Atlantic Monthly for March is an article bv Mr. Charles Edward Jefferson, which is an admirable ad-mirable presentation of the question of war preparedness, pre-paredness, and which is worthy of perusal bv all those who believe in a very large navy, in total disarmament, dis-armament, or m any position between the two extremes. ex-tremes. Mr. Jefferson takes the position that the nations of the world are obsessed with the military idea, and compares the hallucination under which they labor with that of a man who is pursued by I ;malnary enemies, vindictive and relentless foe bent on doing him harm. He even goes so far as to suggest that actual war would be better than this armed truce of the nations of the world, which is now all but overwhelming the people with its tremendous tre-mendous cost Possibly he is right. Whether we give assent to the suggestions uT Mr. Jefferson a article, it is certainlya graceful . and demoralizing situation which obtains at the present time. Here we are, the nations of the world, .living in profound peace, with every prospect that 'we shall continue so to live, with a war scare stirml up occasionally to seemingly justify ever-increasing appropriation by the governing bodies of those nations for war preparedness, draining the world of its wealth and straining every nerve to be pre pared to fight tight, kill, maim and cripple. What has become of the brotherhood of man that we should thus prepare to do battle? What has become of the teachings of Chri?tian unity? Some day the good people, of the world will see things as they arc; that differences of opinion can be settled by arbitration, and that the cost of war preparedness is one which can be eliminated from the economies of national life without in any way affecting national integrity. As it is now. if one nation builds warships of the Dreadnought type, other nations roust do likewise, and no good is accomplished. ac-complished. And the drain upon the world cannot be kept up indefinitely, for sooner or later the people peo-ple will not have the money to give, and lacking that, there must come a reign of saviity-a reign of peace and good fellowship. |