Are we to go on for the next ten years doing as we have done in the last ten, and spend another billion dollars for the army and fortifications, while floods ravage unchecked?
If we had been getting actual protection from foreign invasion for that billion dollars, there might have been some justification for its expenditure; but we are getting neither protection from foreign invasion nor protection from flood invasion.
The fact that the people of the country at large give no heed whatever to the risk of tremendous losses of life and property by flood, arises from a fixed habit of apathetic indifference, and the fact that no commercial interest pushes steadily in behalf of flood protection.
There is money to be made, and large dividends may be earned, by furnishing insurance against fire. Consequently the owner of every building in every city is constantly reminded by insurance agents of the importance and necessity of fire insurance. This has been done until public education, stimulated by private profit, has created a habit of thought which instinctively recognizes the danger of fire, and insures against it. The property owner who now fails to carry fire insurance is commonly regarded as assuming an unwarranted risk.
The same conditions exist from a national point of view with reference to war. We build battleships, for example, largely because there is a huge private profit made therefrom, which warrants a nation-wide propaganda to educate and sustain a favorable public sentiment. The profit is large enough to permit of propitiating troublesome opposition by endowing peace palaces. That is a gruesome and ghastly hypocrisy that must come to an end, if the world is ever to attain to universal peace.
The government should, if it needs them, build its own battleships; but the first thing it should do, before it builds any more battleships, is to provide for its other more pressing naval requirements, such as trained men, target practice, transports, coaling stations with adequate coal supplies, swift cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines, aëroplanes, and ammunition.
After all that has been done, if it is made the law of the land that dividends shall no longer be earned by private corporations from building battleships or from manufacturing armor plate, it might be found that no more battleships ought to be built. By that time naval experts may have agreed that, as against torpedoes and aëroplanes, battleships are too uncertain a defense, and may have decided that we need something else.
A battleship costs anywhere from ten to twenty million dollars, and they are too expensive to be built for experiment or ornament.
The people of the United States have been relying on battleships for coast defense, but all Britain's battleships did not protect Scarborough or Hartlepool or Whitby. Neither have the battleships been able to protect themselves from torpedoes, mines, or submarines.
Congress is a mirror. It merely reflects public sentiment. So long as the need for battleships and more battleships—for bigger and still bigger battleships—is constantly dinged into the ears of the people by the profit-takers from the government, just that long will public sentiment, and the legislation and appropriations that respond to it, be warped and one sided. Our navy will continue to be top heavy with dreadnoughts, and inadequate attention will be paid to the other things necessary for a symmetrically equipped and efficient naval defense.