We need a national leader who shall have such size and quality of brain, and be possessed of such soul, courage, and wisdom as shall qualify him to use the power of his high office to the full to help save this country from the dire calamity that is impending.
Although the General Board knows a thousand times more about our needs and what we ought to do to provide for them than is known to the entire American Congress, still Congress, dominated by the pride of ignorance, believes that it knows best, oblivious to the fact that the voiced ignorance of a thousand men may have less truth in it than the voiced wisdom of a single man.
Members of Congress assume the responsibility of deciding what the strength of the Navy shall be, and what shall be its composition. Congress, not the General Board, decides how many battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines we shall have; how many officers and men they shall carry. The result is disastrous, for our Navy is inefficient and ill-balanced. It is dangerously weak where it should be strongest.
During the administration of Lord Haldane (then Mr. Haldane) the British Admiralty Board resigned because four battleships had been cut from the estimates for new construction, which were set at the minimum of national requirements; and it is due to forcing the matter by this action that the British have the four big battle-cruisers, of the Queen Elizabeth type, carrying 15-inch guns, which throw a shell weighing 1,925 pounds, and which out-range all other guns on ships.
Robert Blatchford, whom Mr. Winston Churchill dubbed a "ridiculous Jingo," said, in a remarkable series of articles written before the outbreak of the present war for The Daily Mail in the hope of arousing the British public to their danger:
"But the British people do not believe it. The British people take little interest in foreign affairs, and less in military matters. The British people do not want to bother, they do not want to pay, they do not want to fight, and they regard as cranks or nuisances all who try to warn them of their danger.
"The danger is very great, and is very near. It is greater and nearer than it was when I began to give warning of it, more than five years ago....
"The people are conceited, self-indulgent, decadent, and greedy. They want to keep the Empire without sacrifice or service. They will shout for the Empire, but they will not pay for the Empire or fight for it. Germany knows this. The world knows it. The Cabinet Ministers know it. But no Minister dares to say it. We are in sore need of a man....
"While the articles have been appearing in The Daily Mail I have received letters of strong approval from Lord Roberts and Lord Charles Beresford, and from many officers of the Army and the Navy.