The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-07-16
OUR NAVY ON A WAR FOOTING.

From the Cincinnati Gazette.
1t is pleasant to hear that the administra-
ton has concluded that war about the Ho-
henzollern and the Spanish succession is in-
evitable, and therefore that our navy should
be put on war footing, and therefore Congress
will make the appropriation for that purpose
Why our navy should be put on a war footing
because European powers threaten to tear
each other is mystery to people away from
Washington. But as an outlet is needed for
our surplus revenue, to relieve Congress from
the painful necessity of reducing taxes, per-
hsps this will serve. And Congress has also
found that funding is the philosophers stone,
by which the national debt can be extin-
guished by turning it over and over. So we
may contemn the expenses.
Another curiosity is, what is it to put our
navy ON a war footing? Rear Almiral Por-
ter, who runs the Navy Department, has tes-
tilted that we have not a naval steamer that
could catch anything running, nor ship that
could cope with first -class cruiser of the
European navies, nor a sea- going mailed ship
and that, in fact, we have no navy, and must
begin anew to build one How shall We put
such navy on war footing? Shall we
man the monitors, and commit hari-kari by
sinking more crews in these iron coffins, be-
cause France and Prussia are fighting +?
These vessels are as terrible i'll peace as in
war. They carried down three full crews,
while they never scratched an enemy. To
put these on a war footing ''means business, "
and heavy casualty list.
There is the class of so-called light draught
monitors-those that had to be torn down and
built up again because it was discovered that
if launched they would go straight to the bot
tom-which have never yet been turreted or
armed. 1t was found that they had not
buoyancy enough for turrets, and so it was
concluded that they would have one gun on
an open deck. The end of the war concealed
this most wonderful blunder. Let these be
put on a war footing, that the world may see
how American mechanical ingenuity can be
disgraced by departmental imbecility and
knavery.
But inasmuch as it was decided where i'm
becility was sinking a hundred millions in
monitors, that iron -cads must be limited to
shore defense, and as it is confessed by our
Navy Department that we have no ship that
can cope with any of the first-class vessels of
Europe and inasmuch as the war does not
touch our withers, we would be wiser to save
our money and invest some portion of 1t III the
construction of ships that willnot disgrace our
mechanical genius and dshOnor our nation.
Would it not be an exhllarating spectacle, if,
when the navies OF the great powers of Europe
were assembled to watch the interests of their
respective Governments, representative of
the great American hepuollc, On war IoOC-
ing, should heave in sight, III the shape of ii
monitor, laboriously towed by two wooden
steamers,
Remote unfriended melancholy, slow"
surviving sinking only by miracle; a craft
dangerous only to its own crew; which can
pursue nothing and escape nothing; and of
which a fleet could be run down and sunk by
such a ship as the Monarch, without danger?
AS the more our navy is stirred the worse it
smells, let us leave it to rest, and mind our
own business.