The Press., 1891-04-02
THE COUNTRIES DEFENSE:
SUGGESTIONS BY SENATOR HAWLEY.

ordinary common sense every year over and over again before body that is SUD- posed to be composed of the most intelli- gent legislators of 63 3,0O0, 900 people. We have to demonstrate that steel is better than cast iron, and that twice two are four.
 % The senator from Missouri (Mr. Cock relD feels, as great many candid and honest people do, that inasmuch as weigh ed on Fairbanks scales we weigh more than other people we can whip them all. ask him what chance he, stark naked, as the Lord made him, would stand against man with a Colts revolver or a bowie knife? He would rely upon the moral strength of his cause and upon his superior physique.
 There are 63,0OO,OOO people in the United States, capable of making the finest troops the world ever saw, but in case of an unexpected war with foreign nation, summoned down to the coast to stand there in military array, they would be what Wellington called 'carrion for for powder" absolutely helpless. What sdo you suppose the British navy would care for square acres or square miles of human flesh of that description, that could not shoot over 1,2O0 yards anyhow; and that with one ounce ball?
 The cold, practical fact is-it is 8 very hYaroo 1ioti foo o+ hut; great many times here; I do not want to show the nakedness of my country, but it so happens that the whole world knows it already-that every foreign legation has upon it usually some bright young man of the army or the navy who travels the country over and reads all the reports of your secretary of war, your general of the army, your ordance officers, your quarter masters, your commissaries, etc., and makes a. due report of it, and it is all writ ten down and tabulated for their nations Hat home. They know as well as I do when say here that we are absolutely helpless, that we can not honorably nego- tate to-day, it is the Bible truth, as plain as the sun this morning was over our heads.
 The British have magnificent harbor up here at Halifax, a splendid dry dock, a noble battery, and abundant supplies oi ammunition. They have a very noble fleet, altogether the best and heaviest in the world. It can be collected there at their leisure, so far as we are concerned. They have another one at Bermuda. They have others scattered all about at convenient positions. They have one on the very northwesternmost corner of our country, where they can almost throw a shot to our lines. In case of any serious controversy with us they would assemble a few fleets at Halifax. Wars do not come by years agreement in advance For the last hundred years not 10 pel cent. of them have been formally de. clared; they explode upon the world without notice. Secret plans are laid fol the occupation of a frontier, for some ad. vantage to be seized without notice, and the first the world knows there is wal there. We had the biggest war the world has ever known, and nobody believed 1T it, and some did not believe in it until il was six months in operation. Some saic it would be over in day or two; that il was nothing but little shower, as they told Noah. Wars, say, do not come by agreement or long notice.
 Great Britain you say will not fight that she can not afford to go without oul wheat and without our pork; that it k the same blood; we have the same Shake speare, and all that sort of thing. Joh1 Bull is very much like other people; ht gets mad and makes an ass of himself oc casionally. He fights when he should not. He fights when he wants to defend himself against robbery in a minute, ane he fights for the sake of robbery some times. He will fight-I do not want tt make a mistake about it-he will fgh when somebody else will join him in fight ing. Great Britain assemblies at Halifax | and in about twelve to eighteen hours squadron sailing leisurely, going no faste than the slowest ship can go, IA to il miles an hour-I have all this tabulatet somewhere-is at Portland; in eighteen to twenty, at Boston; in twenty -four perhaps, at New York. and there the, can concentrate. They can meet the flee at Bermuda at all ports along down ou harbors.
 There is not anything from New Or leans along that is sixty hours away iron the guns of Spain and England startinl from their own harbors.
 What are you going to do when the come to New York? Go to work, yo, say. I do not know, but know enougl to take the judgment of the wisest mel upon the arts of defense and attack in tn world, and those believe to be our ow
 educated and accomplished scholars c the army and navy. Go and talk wit
 them and see how well you are able to de fend, absolutely nothing, against the ship that will be likely to be sent here. The l OOuAO AONy O1 O
 $1OO, ,O0O, 900 upon the city of New Tor
 and compel New York to pay it. But i
 the meantime these gallant sons of libe1
 ty, by the hundred thousand and fiv
 hundred thousand, would be rallying t
 the coast, and they would not be worth S
 much as last years birds nest, tn | whole force bAcausa vO,1 cannot dafan
 your harbor at Portland, at Boston, Q
 New York, or FortressMo Monroe, or Charles
 town, nor at any of the deep harbor
 along the southern coast, or at New Or
 leans, or anywhere. You cannot defen
 them; you have not the modern guns. l. You say we are very ingenious pee
 pie, and we can extemporize something
 So we can. We can collect several thous
 and ships and fill them with stones an
 sink them on the bar at the mouth ( Noxu Work horI,or onA holx, 4o kooY, @boo