The Pensacola journal., 1914-12-19

fenses by a special commission.
Il am here to ask you to appropriate
for the full number of new ships rec
commended by the general naval board
for this years construction" he said
| Il am sorry to say that Secretary
! Daniels in his recommendations to
congress had cut the naval boards
building program for this year almost
+ in two.
! IF you gentlemen had permitted me
! to present as witnesses a few recently
retired officers, in a single day the
country would have learned Of our de-
mented policy of building war ships for
cold storage. Out of thirty completed
battleships, do you know that IL OF
them are unavailable without a long
i delay on account of our refusal to pay
the bills for manning them?
IF we had gone to war with the rest
of the first class powers early in Aug
ust,. do you realize that no less than
nine of our battleships would not have
been ready to fight? We have fifteen
cruisers, % destroyers, 18 torpet Q
boats, five submarines, and perhaps a
dozen miscellaneous fighting snlps
kept in cold storage with the battle
ships. Eighty fighting vessels of our
modern navy are not available for bat
tie in an emergency.
is 1900 MEN SHORT.
81 charge that our navy is $4,000 men
short and a further shortage Of 10000
men is in sight. The general board
which has actually made our war plans
estimates the enlisted force of the
navy as between 1000 and $4,000 men
short for war. If any attention had
been paid to the general boards en-
l. vol TnfT
instead of only q battleships built,
and building, and authorized, we
should now have AZ Dattleships built,
building and authorized; instead =
sixty eight destroyers, we should now
have 1877 destroyers. If we needed the
advice of the general board, we should
have a fleet of fast scouts today Now
many do you think we actually have
got? Just three, and those were au-
thorized over ten years ago.
you know that we have Sc sub
marines in all, built and building.
good, bad and indifferent. Now comes
Secretary Daniels and in a few sooth-
ing wo.ds recommends submarines to
the paltry number Of eight or SO.
1--WE have just a dozen aeroplanes in
the navy. Last year the aeroplane
board recommended an appropriation
of $1,000, 900. Instead of that sum, ac>
cording to Captain Bristol. we let the
aviation service spend only $685. 600 or
$50O,00O. The general naval board in
its current report says that we must
spend So 10000 on air craft. Secretary
Daniels recommends no regular speci-
fic appropriation at all, out he tells
us about a volunteer force that doesn't
amount to Hannah Cook.
Rear Admiral Straus tells us that
all battleships in commission now or
which will be in commission before the
Nevada and Oklahoma are completed.
are equipped with a short range tor
pedo which may oe considered absolete
for the battle fleet.
Some serons have quoted Rear Ad-
niral Fletcher as saying the American
navy ranks ahead Of that of Germany
/ have searched the admirars evidence
and find that he said nothing of the
sort. I don't believe that any well
Informed man believes our fleet to be
superior to that of Germany. A year
ago, Rear Admiral G. E. Vreeland tes-
titled that we are third in the race.
and moreover, that we are pretty
bad third. for he said that we should
still be third in 1920, even if we
adopted the building program of the
general board