Show SE SENATE NATE FIDDLE WHILE ROME BURNS the united states senate continues to fiddle bicker and haggle over niceties of the national defense program while the other great powers of the world rush their armament programs and enlarge their navies chairman walsh of the naval committee committed of the senate warns that a bombina tion of either germany and japan or of russia and japan could whip our navy alid the opponents of a strong nation al defense program insist that we shall have nothing to do with league of nations or other collective peace enforce ment alliances ot councils senators nye of north dakota and of michigan are two of the vigorous opponents of the T eions navy expansion bill and while other leaders view with much alarm our present navy when com t pared with that of leading world powers such as japan senator nye told the senate there is is not any group of foes that might be conceived of today that could afford leaving their front yards and their back yards long enough to even threaten an encroachment on our territory perhaps not today senator nye but navies are not built in a day or a year and how about tomorrow or a year or two from now when they get their fences up their desperately resisting foes conquered and their new alliances made what then how about a combination of the enlarged german state with japan italy and a few wavering converts thrown in we have disparaged and defeated the movements that have bean tried or started for world security so it is up to ua u to make our own defenses to withstand attacks by sea by air and by land england has a defense program and we balk on a proposal to expend less than a billion and a half dollars for defenses true we should not have to expend a tithe of this amount and we would not have needed to do so if our brilliant statesmen had been possessed of enough good horse sense to have nurtured and strengthened the league to the point where individual nations could have been prohibited from accumulating offensive armaments and been compelled to contribute their proportion of men and armaments required to preserve international peace nye norris borah and johnson are some of those senators who were most instrumental in keeping this country out of the league now they surely would not deliver us over to our enemies by refusing to permit us to fortify ourselves the best we can against possible attack we all want peace in this country but we also want protection and security with all the strong arm methods being employed in the world today there is only one sane course left to follow and that is to match force with force and president roosevelt has the situation correctly sized up it is to be hoped that the senate has enough sense and patriotism to pass the navy appropriation bill the money will mostly go to workmen anyhow and there are over twelve million of them unemployed in this country at the present time better put them to work building ships guns and ammunition than to have them idle and drawing dole |