Omaha daily bee., 1911-12-10

'CopyTght, 1911, by Frank o. CarpenterO
- ASIIINGTON. u. c. 1000 What
IXAT arrangements is Uncle sam,
patriarch, making for his
- American children? 1t is
AEHHEEHI all right to talk about peace
- but war with foreign nation
- likely to come at any moment Uncle
sam has no chip on his shoulder. but he
VIII have 10 fight il occasion demands
Just before our fleet made its pyrotechnlc
tour OF the Aslatic waters, Mr. Root
then in President Roosevelts cabinet.
made some remarkable statements re-
sarding possible war with Japan. This
was to a party OF newspaper men lie
did not mention the Japanese in so many
words. but everyone knew to whom he
referred, Said he. in substance:
; Many OF the foreign nations are sensi-
tive. Some of them look upon the voice
or the press as the voice of the nation
and / beg YOU newspaper writer's to be
careful about what you say as to for
eigners, Your words may be taken as an
insult and you must remember that Il
nation is like a man. If its feelings are
insulted and outraged It must fight"
! The way he said this. at that time
when the treasury box Of the mikado
was empty, made me think of the eondi-
! ton of poor man in the streets. down
at the heels, with a family half. starry
ing. An OF the mans interests might
demand that he keep out of trouble, but
u someone came up and. hit HIM in the
face without provocation, or called him
liar, he wor'd have to fight; he could
do no other.
Take the case of the blowing up of the
Maine, However We may feel in the
light OF recent Investigations, at the time
of the explosion we took II as an insult
and an outrage, and the result was our
war with Spain.
Only few years before that, President
cleveland sent a message to England as
TO the Venezuela complications that
brought war clouds into the international
Sky. IL was only through the forbearance
OF John Bull that the heavens became
cerulean. Another president may send a
similar message TO nation which win
not be so forbearing. We may some time
attempt TO dictate TO Germany, and the
warm-blooded kaiser, with the greed OF
a South American Deuts Inland In his eye,
may defy us, and with ! Is powerful army
and navy smash the Monroe doctrine to
pieces,
Uncle Sans Army.
Al this is preliminary to my investi-
cations this week as to the American
army and Uncle Sans plans for making
it big enough and strong enough for any
emergency. Much of MY information
comes from the War department and It
is based upon talks with the vlrIle youns
secretary of war, MI Stimson; the long
experienced fighting chief Of staff, Major
General Wood, and a number of others
who rank high IN the military affairs of
the nation.
In the first place la, me give eou some
idea of what or army a. and how Il
ranks among those OF the world shall
take the peace strength. b the last re-
port OF the secretary OF war, the number
actually serving Is little over $1,000 all
told, with an authorized strength which
brings II up to about 10000 We have
nov less than 500 officers and less than
75, 600 men The peace strength of thi
German army g. CO coo, that OF ,ha
French 6n0OO9 and OF Great Britain 81
coo. Little Switzerland can cal Two on
three hundred thousand men into th3
field at a touch OF the teles, aph button,
and Japan has now 5000 men under
arms.
Our War StrenEth.
As 70 our war strength We arc even
worse off. We have a militia OF 10000
and the army could. upon occasion, with
out further acts of congress, perhaps, put
a few more thousand men into the field.
our fighting force, however, al best could
not be made more than 2J).OJj ana Ne
should have TO rely. as We have in the
past. upon volunteer troops made up o.
.msR whO would have " be trained 6efor,