The Washington times., 1911-10-05
WHY MAKE OUR NAVAL
STRENGTH GUESSWoRK.

| The doctrine that to guarantee
peace a country must have an up-to
date navy certainly has its drawbacks
The more effcacious the guarantee, tn,
less opportunity do we have to aseer
tain whether the navy is up-to-date OIL
not. Boats may look very well OF
paper; their tonnage, their speed, theil
armor, their batteries may seem very
impressive. But it nevertheless remain.
only a matter of seeming until ar
actual test under war conditions has
been made. We are relying on unsatis
factory experiments, the least Of which
is to bang away at ten-by-ten piece
of armor- plate to determine its re.
sistance, or, as the case may be, the
penetration of shell. At the best, we
can but sacrifice some ship which we
conceive to be antiquated in design OF
equipment, in order to find out whether
the newest ships are any better; and,
if not, how the next lot should be
built.
Experiments of this kind have re-
Gently been made on that old warhorse
the Texas. And with what result ?
Since her day we have graduated from
the plain batv 'sship to the dread
nought, and fl m the dreadnought to
the super-dreadnought. England is
spending 500, 100000 a year to keep
even with these improvements; and all
the rest of us are doing what little we
can to initiate her pace. The ships of
ten years ago are obsolete, the navies
of which such are still an essential
part are scorned and laughed at as
third-rate. And now the Texas be-
queaths us this information as a
legacy:
1t is practically impossible to pro-
tect the entire hull of a battleship
against attack by big guns. The prac-
tice of placing the thickest armor over
the vitals of the ship and coating the
rest of her with thinner plate is to be
condemned; for this thin sheathing is
not strong enough to keep a shell out,
yet offers sufficient resistance to cause
the shell to explode inside the ship.
Instead of being a protection, there
fore, it is positively dangerous.
Henceforth the ends of the hull will
be left unprotected, and the saving in
weight thus made compensated for by
an increase in the thickness of the
armor over the machinery and turrets.
Thus, even Argentina's monster
Rivadavia, launched only a month ago,
is already out of date, Germany and
England, each encountered by a lot
of passe and self-destructive craft,
must begin their race all over again.
None of the worlds navies are any
good, and if peace has been maintained
through fear of this or that one, it has
been because man did not know their
weaknesses.
The question arises as to how best
to correct the waste of effort and
money and the false confidence which
this uncertainty as to our true naval
efficiency entails. When peace, for
which everything else may be sacrificed,
is the goal, why keep plunging ahead
in the dark? If it can be attained only
through the medium of potent navies,
why not prove their potency This
can only be done by actual combat. o.
course, we do not suggest frequent
repetitions of Salamis or Lepanto or
Trafalgar. Such wholesale fights are
not necessary; indeed, even the fiercest
of them taught less than did the scrap
between the Monitor and Merrimac.
But think of how much that battle
taught usl And think of how much
money would be saved, how much more
we would know about our naval
strength, and how much stronger &C
cordingly would be the guarantee of
peace could we only arrange for some
thing like that as an annual fixture!
Of course, an international prize-fght
between the two naval, wonders of the
year sounds brutal. But history has
shown that that progress is surest
which is attended by little rough
house, and the final goal is too i'm
portant for us to hesitate over little
sacrifice in attaining it.