It can as easily keep the peace with all other nations in the future as it has done in the past. When it grants the independence to the Philippines that is promised by President-elect Taft, it can secure their neutralization by mutual agreement of the nations and free us with honor from the one weak spot within our possessions. Pending the granting of independence, no nation will pay the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to wrest this white elephant from us. No difficulty can arise with any nation which now can not be arbitrated if we choose. Today a huge navy offers a temptation to settle questions in a more spectacular way than quiet arbitration, especially if jingo journalism decides that a little blood-letting would be interesting and promote certain vested interests.
War is far more likely with a huge navy than without it.
Naval expenditures have swelled so preposterously in the last ten years, not from increased need but from increased desire for prestige, and from a timidity and scare carefully worked up by the navy cranks, who go up and down the land sowing suspicion and enmity to men of other lands, in order to get large naval appropriations passed. It should be emphasized that the supposed preventative of war, a huge navy, is fast becoming as terrible as war itself. In 1908 we spent as much for armaments in time of peace as we spent in war ten years before. The armament extravagance is a question of life as well as money. Meanwhile we are getting alarmed about our forests and we lament that Congress will not give one cent from the treasury to save our mountains from erosion, our valleys from desolation and our mill-wheels from alternate drought and flood.