"If only we can get the British people to understand in time."
Now, reader, carefully weigh this wonderfully prophetic language, spoken by an Englishman to the English people, before the great war came, which is now wringing millions upon millions of pounds sterling from the English purse, and wringing blood from the veins of thousands upon thousands of young men gathered from the length and breadth of the whole empire, and wringing tears from millions of mourning eyes; let us take this powerful appeal of Blatchford to the English people and conceive it to be my own appeal now, to you and the whole American people. We are in the same danger that England was, and unless we prepare as England did not prepare we shall be wrung even more than England is wrung.
Our naval officers, who, more than all others, know what we should have in kinds of ships, in numbers of ships, and in personnel, are ignored. It is a case of the blind leading those who see clearly.
After the most careful and thorough, investigation and weighing of our Navy's actual needs, the General Board of the Navy figures closely, as near to the danger point as they dare, in order that their recommendations may stand a better chance of approval by Congress. But Congress assumes that, being naval men, they have an ax to grind and are naturally strongly biased in the direction of extravagance, and the Board's wise recommendations are accordingly discounted.
We have only 33 battleships less than twenty years old, eleven of which belong to the second line, with four building and authorized, which will make 37 in all. The General Board thinks that we should have 48 battleships less than twenty years old.
We have but 68 destroyers, while the General Board thinks that we should have 192 destroyers.
The General Board thinks that we could squeeze along with a minimum of 71,000 men to man our present fleet, without taking into account additional trained men needed for signal and tactical work on board auxiliary vessels, and without any provision for warships now building. As a bare fact, we have only 52,300 men. Thus we are short 18,000 of the men needed to man the fleet we have. In addition to this, there is a shortage in sight of 4,000 men required to man the fighting ships that will go into commission in 1915 and 1916.
Our naval experts tell Congress that we shall need 50,000 more men for the Navy as soon as they can be enlisted and drilled; but the ears of Congress are deaf to the appeal. Yet a whisper for a new post-office can be heard by a Congressman from his home district a thousand miles away.
