It requires time to build ships and guns, and to train men to handle them, and we must be prepared with suitable weapons to meet any enemy who may declare war against us.
Wars come upon us when least expected, and even we, who are advocates of settling all difficulties with foreign nations by arbitration, and who pride ourselves upon maintaining only a small army and navy, cannot escape the horrors of war.
If there is any truth in the saying that “History repeats itself,” then the time for us to be at war is close at hand.
We are young as a nation, and although our tendencies have been peaceful, and although we have almost, have sacrificed our honor, yet, in spite of all that, we have never had a reign of peace for a longer period than thirty-five years, and in the one hundred and odd years of our existence, we, the “peaceful nation,” have had four foreign wars. Two with Great Britain, one with France, and one with Mexico. Can any one believe we will never have another foreign war?
We are not prepared for war, and in time of peace we should prepare for war.
As stated above, we rank as a fifth-rate naval power, and our next war is going to be a foreign war—(for we will hardly fight among ourselves again)—and then the navy will have to do most, if not all, of the fighting.
Our resources are not as great as our people in their fancied security believe. For instance, the whole number of deep-sea sailor men from whom we could draw recruits, is only 60,000, including foreigners sailing under the American flag. These men are untrained for war purposes, and as much so as any man you might pick up in the streets is untrained as a cavalry man or artillery man, although he may have had some experience in riding a horse or in shooting birds with a shot gun.
The tendencies of the present age are to wars of short duration, and in our next war we will be “knocked out” in as comparatively short a time as Mr. Sullivan “knocks out” his opponents, unless we are better prepared than we are at present.
“At present England could bring, in thirty days, the greater part of her immense iron clad fleet to operate upon our coast, and the damage which this force could inflict upon the seaboard, and indirectly upon the whole country would be incalculable. In thirty days we would have paid in the way of ransom money and in the value of property destroyed the value of a dozen navies, to say nothing of the national disgrace, and a complete cessation of foreign and coastwise trade. In thirty days we could do nothing, absolutely nothing in the way of improvising a coast defense. Our naval vessels could not be recalled from foreign stations, and if they could their weakness and small number would only insure certain defeat.”
It takes a year to build even a simple unarmored ship, whose thin sides of 10-16 of an inch can be penetrated by modern guns at a distance of several miles;