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Show ALARMING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. The United States has spent millions yes, hundreds of millions of dollars in the lost ten yeara on its army and navy, and all in the name of being prepared for war. Yet the champions in congress of the war appropriations inform the country that the United States is absolutely defenseless against attack from without and wholly unprepared un-prepared to wage an aggressive campaign. What is wrong? Are our military and naval departments man-aged man-aged by scoundrels who pocket the money, or by incompetents? What has become of the more than a billion dollars expended in war preparations in the last few years? If one billion disbursed on the army and navy has left us defenseless, how many billions more are necessary to adequately protect the United States? We have never approved of an enlarged standing army in this country, such as the army officers have demanded. What this country coun-try needs is the enlarging of West Point for the training of military commanders, and nothing more, except the skeleton of & vast army to be called into action from the citizen soldiery, if ever found nec. essary. With commanders schooled in military tactics and war, maneuvers, maneu-vers, the army that could be recruited from the plain people of the United States of America, with its 92,000,000 population, might defy the best trained armies of the world. As to a navy, all navies are made obsolete every ten years. Three years ago England discovered that half a dozen Dreadnoughts, with batteries of heavy guns and impenetrable bands of steel, could sink the whole British navy, and immediately a billion dollars of floating machinery of war was virtually wiped out of existence. Then Germany, supposed to be awaiting an opportunity to crush John Bull on the high seas, commenced a desperate race to overtake Great Britain in the construction of these Dreadnoughts of 20,000, 25,000 and even 35,000 tons displacement. The United States, not to be outdone by either of the leading European powers, saw the necessity of having its bete noire, and began be-gan to arm against the dogs of war to be unleashed by Japan, and Japan, desiring an excuse, pointed to the extraordinary naval program pro-gram of the United States. But after all here we are, a defenseless nation, in danger of having hav-ing a rear piece nipped out of us at any time by the barking curs across the Pacific, unless we spend countless millions ! Can it be true, or have our naval authorities been having a dreadful nightmare? And are they attempting to frighten us with a recital of their bad dreams? |