Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-11-19
THE DEFENSE OF THE LAKES.

| The attention of the New York Press
| has been attracted to the need of navy
on the lakes. 1t reports that Secretary
Tracy will recommend the abrogation of
the treaty of 1918, in order to permit the
United States to put squadron of mod
ern vessels on the lakes, and supports that
policy with the argument that in its pres
ent form the international agreement sis
grossly unjust to the United States" be-
cause England can send war vessels to the
lakes through the St Lawrence and the
Welland canals, and the United States
has no means of doing the same thing.
In other words, because Great Britain
and the Dominion OF Canada have been
far-sighted enough to provide water ways
whose commercial value repay their cost,
and which can be used for war vessels in
case of need, and the United States has
exercised no such foresight, therefore
treaty which antedates that enterprise on
the part of England and the lack of it on
our part is ''grossly unjust" 1t might oc-
cur to the mind that the remedy proposed
for it will continue the same kind of injus-
tice. For whatever expenditure is made
by the United States in building navy
on the lakes will be dead capital except in
the improbable event of war with Great
Britain. A sea-going navy can be used in
all parts of the world. England can use
hers wherever she needs it, and if she
ever wants force on the lakes can call
her vessels there from the four quarters of
the globe. But whatever the United
States provides to meet that remote contin-
gency must lie idle and useless in the
interior and, if built now, would probably
be as antiquated, before the need for it
came, as the vessels of our war era are on
the ocean at present
The utter stupidity of the policy
proposed by the administration organ
is plain from the fact that the cost
of building fleet on the lakes, which
would be adequate to cope with the force
that Great Britain could send there from
the ocean, would go far toward building
the water ways that would place us on
equality with Great Britain. In one case
the cost would be dead loss unless war
should arise before the vessels rotted.
In the other the cost of the canals would be
paid back in the increased prosperity of
lll6 WuS6ucl blcy WeTS ever uS6Q
for war purposes or not. The propriety
of building the canals which would give
light draft war vessels access to the
lakes from both the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers is emphasized by the fact that the
journal from which we have quoted is the
organ of movement to have the Govern
ment sink 500, 900 of its credit in the
Nicaraeua Canal. That sum would amnlv
provide for the commercial and naval
needs for the interior water ways, and
save the cost of a navy on the lakes
which could never be used anywhere else.
The true way to restore our equality
with England on the great lakes is to
build the Pittsburg and Lake Erie and the
Hennepin canals, and to improve the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers. With that
done we can build light draft war vessels
for use all over the world, and, if the re-
mote contingency, war with England,
should occur, we could send them to the
lakes as fast as Great Britain could send
hers there. To leave the canals unbuilt
while spending more than their cost in
vessels to lie idle ON the lakes and in
canals a thousand miles away from United
States territory would be the class of
stupidity that is criminal