The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser., 1909-12-10
OUR WASHINGTON LETTER


OUR WASHINGTON LETTER
Washington, D. c., December 4, 1900
MR.. EDITOR:
The few days preceding the meeting
of Congress in Washington are not
without interest. The President is i'm
mersed in his message to Congress
which, it is said, inasmuch, as it will
contain not more than fifteen thousand
words. This, however, will be of suf-
ficient length and most readers will pre-
fer to confiue themselves to such
epitomes as the press always furnishes.
The Cabinet members are busy with
their several reports and come of them
have been completed. They are gen.
orally asking smaller appropriations
than were demanded last year.
Economy is the watchword of the pre-
sent administration but it is not at all
improbable that before the budget is
made up it will exceed more than the
billion dollar mark as did the last ap-
preparation. 1t is difficult with the
ambitious schemes of public improve
ment and betterment in almost every
direction to see how appropriations can
be kept down.
There are many public plans and en-
terprises for improvement of the public
service but none of them are startlingly
new although they are all increasingly
urgent. The Secretary of the Navy
has issued orders for the reorganization
of the Navy Department and are looked
upon by those whom it will affect as
nothing short of revolutionary. If he
is successful in carrying out his plans
much good will be accomplished. The
keynote to the changes in the Naval
establishment has been expressed in the
not novel truism that the object of the
Navy is to maintain an effective war
aeei on the seas. There is, probably
not school boy but knows that this
is selfevident proposition and not a
Senator who would maintain that there
could be any other legitimate object
for the Navy and, yet, there are Sena
tors and members, admirals, COM
| modores, captains and lieutenants of
the Navy with their wives, mothers-in-
law, sisters, cousins and aunts who
have for seventy-five or hundred years
lived, moved and had their being on the
| hypothesis that the object of the Navy
was to maintain, first, splendid Navy
Department at Washington with dis.
| tinguished Naval officers at the heads
| of various bureaus and other Naval
| officers at dozen Naval stations and
Navy Yards that are no longer used
but are kept up at an immense expense
and that cannot be used for any Iegiti-
mate Naval purpose because the en-.
trance to these Navy Yards is too
shallow for the admission of modern
warships. Their idea of the Navy is
that it was created and is maintained,
not for National defence but for the
benefit of brilliant corps of Naval
| officers and their families and friends.
These Naval officers have intermarried
into the families of senators and cabinet
ministers, until they form the highest
social aristocracy in this country. They
are sore hit by this order of Secretary
Meyer. Senator Hale of Maine, who
has the sobriquet of the Lord of the
Navy" will, doubtless, be heard from
in opposition and other senators and
members will, doubtless, speak in
eulogy of the old Navy and the old
system and tell how much was accom-
plished at Manila Bay and Santiago.
1t may be excusable to "point with
pride," but naval experts and close
students of naval progress know that
many improvements in naval construc-
ton. naval equipments and naval
practice have been made since
the Spanish War and that if the
American navy is equal in strength.
man for man and ship for ship, with
the foremost navies of the world it is
because it has made great progress
and improvement since it sank the
leaking lobster pot navies of Spain in
Manila Bay and at Santiago.
The Postmaster General is contem-
plating improvements in the Postal
establishment, nothing new but several
things urgent that have been long ad-
vocated and that would have been car
ried in'o effect in more effective and
less unwieldy Government than our
own. All reforms and governmental
betterments here have to wait on leg
islation; legislation has to wait on a
Congress that has been elected thirteen
months before it meets, a Congress
that knows more about District, county
or parochial affairs than about National
affairs, Congress composed of hundreds
of men who by time they learn their
business as National legislators have
lost their places or rather have their
places filled by men as green and un-
tried as they themselves were when
first sent TO Washington. In other
words, the legislative management of
the United States is not in the hands
of seniors but of freshmen who are
responsible not so much to the Nation
as to the provincial homes from they
which they come.