Not only must the advance or retirement of troops be supported by artillery thundering from hill to hill, but also the troops must be supported and guided by pilots in the sky.
The last Congress appropriated $1,000,000 for the aviation purposes of the Navy. It is the same million dollars that was cut from last year's appropriation, which ought to have been expended for the purpose during that period.
It is a strange paradox that America, which has led the world in discovery and invention as applied to the industrial arts and sciences, should follow the rest of the world in their adoption by the Army and Navy. The trouble is not with the bureaus and boards of the Army and Navy, which have merely the power to recommend such things, but it is the fault of Congressional false economy. As long as we allow other nations to lead us, both in the character and quantity of naval and military equipment, we are destined always to be weaker than other nations in that equipment; consequently, when war comes, we spend money with the extravagance of frenzy to remedy the defect. We economized before the War of 1812, and during that war we wasted ten times as much as we had saved by our economy. We had disqualified ourselves by our economies to such an extent before the outbreak of the great Civil War that this conflict became one of the most deadly and most expensive in the history of the world. What we saved by our economies, compared to what we lost by them on that occasion is like a drop of water to a river of water. But we failed to profit by the experience, and, when the Spanish War broke out, we spent money with all the lavishness of prodigal inefficiency.
If we could only be as wise as we have been lessoned by our sad experience, we would immediately take adequate measures to forefend ourselves against a repetition of such experiences; and one of those measures would be the building of an aërial fleet commensurate with our large needs.
CHAPTER IX
OUR ARMAMENTS NOT A BURDEN
Life being a reaction between the individual and environing stimuli, it naturally follows that those stimuli not destructive are necessarily formative.
The health and development of nations are governed by the same law that governs the health and development of individuals. When an individual is subjected to a burden that does not break him, or to a trial that he is able to master, he is strengthened, not weakened, by the burden or the trial. Every individual is constantly being attacked by microbes of disease. So long as he possesses sufficient powers of resistance to repel invasion of disease, his ability to resist disease is strengthened, and his immunity to further attacks is increased. It is only when disease gets inside a man that it becomes a destroyer.
It is not a bad thing for a hen, but, on the contrary, it is a very good thing for a hen to lay eggs and sit on them and hunger for three weeks in order to hatch the chicks, and then to scratch for them and hunt for them until they are able to take care of themselves. She is stronger, healthier, more intelligent, more competent, and altogether a better hen because of her exertion and her sacrifice. The rearing of her chicks imposes no burden on the farmer, because she gets the wealth for their growth out of the ground.