The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-03-13

 Roosevelt will have to be blamed. Yes | terday he forgot for a moment the need | of more battleships to put in plea TOT | additional coast defences. our growing | wealth he explains, makes us really \ more and more attractive morsel Tor | foreign nations. There is so much ! money stored away in our insurance ! and safety deposit vaults that some l foreign "gobbleun' will certainly get I us if we don't "wa.ch out" Fifty mill lions is the modest sum required to | complete in a modernlzed manner the | Notifications of the Endicott Board, 1 which have already cost more than l hundred millions. And then there are | the insuiar possessions for whose for | tification we are to spend nineteen mill l lions, unless we desire Japan to gobble | the Philippines and England to bounce l down on Porto Rico without mo- ment's notice. Guantanamo, San Juan, | Guam, Subig Bay, Manila Bay, Pearl Harbor and Honolulu are all eligible | places in which to sink good money, while to fortify Panama will take five millions These are some Items in I'm perialism's little bill MT. Roosevelt would have us pay. And the worst of 1t is. as the President admits, the fashions in coast artillery that what is an enormously costly and valuable ma chinery today goes to the junk-heap to- morrow. Undoubtedly, the country fa- vors reasonable coast defences But to have tremendously elaborate fortf- fcations, in addition to great fleet, is piling the burden on the taxpayer. A defensive fleet itself ought to protect our coasts. an aggressive one ought not to be in the American program.
 It is unfortunate for any country to have a President or other head of the Government who continually keeps his ear to the ground to listen to the tread telescope 70 his eye on the watch for hostile fleet. ,''The thief doth fear eacn bush an oficer." wrote Shake speare. and MT. Roosevelt apparently regards all ether countries of the world as actual or prospective ene- mics.
 It has been but little while, as all know, since Roosevelt was endeavor- ing to force the country to believe that our first and greatest need is an inn | mense navy. We were told repeatedly that Congress should at once set to | work and build a number of great bat tleships, and he has found quite num- Der of converts. The fact that battle ships are continually changing has no English Government condemned thirty or more of her war vessels and sold them practically as junk. The original cost of the lot was $S.000,00o. Of 1 course they were not of the largest | or more expensive class, but they could not be called old or unseaworthy, Few | of them had ever been in battle. They were merely "out of style" and were sold for less than one-twentieth of | what they cost the Government.
 Now the English Government Is | building some of the most powerful vessels of war the world ever saw, but how many years Is 1t likely to be be- fore they, too, will be considered, out of date and useless? Probably not a generation will pass ere they will go to the auctioneer's block. The United States will follow the same route If the President and other big navy advo- cates have their way. We could ex- pend a hundred million dollars for war vessels and their armaments, destroy or practically give away most that we now have, and in less than twenty years it will be found that the style of vessels and guns is an obsolete one and 1t must all be done over.
 Now the fad has suddenly whipped around from the big navy to an im- pregnably armed coast from Moose Cove to Key West, and from San Diego to Tillamook. Many more millions, if Roosevelt can have his way, must be spent in putting our seacoast in con dition to fend off the navies and armies of all creation If they all come at once, as the President evidently ex- poets them to do. It matters not that, as admitted, fashions of coast artillery, as well as of ships and armaments, are continually changing, and that what would be considered perfect and invul- nerable now may be obsolete in a few years. We suppose Roosevelt would 1 argue that the next generation, prob | ably the next administration, must look out for itself, so that he may get the glory of spending many millions of dollars for ships and guns.
 To ouP view there is something ap- preaching to cowardice in thus contin- ually talking about the need of great armies and navies. At the same time it savers too much of the bully. We are told in one breath that we are in imminent danger of being gobbled up by some piraticaI foreign nation, and
 in the next we are solemnly informed
 that the United States should prepare
 itself to become the ruler of the seas. :.
 We take no stock in either proposition.
 We have no fear of invasion from
 abroad, or of war being made on us
 unless we needlessly provoke it, as the
 President seems trying to do by his continual habit of putting his finger
 into the affairs of other countries witho 1t excuse. His inexcusable habit of putting in" whenever there is any disturbance in any part of the world. savage or civilized, may get us into a | needless war and it almost seems that is the object he has in view Then he could tell the country that he had given fair warning and was not heed ed The whole theory and insistence of the President looks too much like undue timidity or braggadocio.
 "Over in Alabama. too," says The | Albany Herald they have a candidat te