The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-06-21
THE FARMER: JUNE 21, 1915

LninS IS to EeIuSe 1dEEfe until the chances are as favorable as they can be made. The inferior force must re- tire before a superior. It must force the invader to follow till he is weak ened by steadily lengthenfng lines of cOmmunica tions. His difficulties of food and ammunition transport grow. He becomes involved in strange ter rain. Last, but not least, he gets, more and more deeply into a land filled with hostile population. But if we must defend specific place at all hazards then we must stand and give battle well, it will be only one battle"
 You mean
 tEI mean that such a battle Is decided already. It was decided years ago when the country refused to prepare"
 Good God, manr' The congressman wiped his forehead with a trembling fat hand. |'I can't go back and tell my people that.''
 You'd better not,' said the general grfmly.
 The unhappy man and other unhappy men like him went back to their con stftuencies knowing that now no cam paign oratory would serve. Soften the news they must and would, but they were the bearers of i'll tidinss, and i they knew what comes to these.
 The stricken cities heard From aM the great coast, with it's piled gold and silver, there arose a cry. Men shook their fists and cursed the machinery of politics that had worked through the blind years to hinder, to deceive and to waste. The pork barrel ceased all at once to be the great American joke.
 Throw men into our harbor de. fenses!'' cried the cities of the coast. Hold them, hold themr'
 we have 17,0O0 trained regulars and 5000 militia more or less ex- perienced to handle these complex gi- ants," answered the army implacably. There are LISA guns and mortars to handle. It leaves no men to defend the works. To throw the mobile army or any part of it into the defenses for mere protection is only to lock them up. The mobile army must defend the defenses from outside. If it cannot do it they fal.'' This statement does not betray military secret. It is well known to all foreign governments that we cannot defend our coast de lenses against land attack-l
 Where is the mobile army?' cried the cities Send it here!p clamored each city.
 There was no reply. Somewhere behind the Atlantic coast lay the mobile army, silent
 The cities stared to sea. They lis tened for sounds from the sea. That serving ocean that had made them rich and great had become suddenly terrible, a secret place where there brooded wrath. Every day great muL titudes, stirred by helpless, vague imr pulse, moved toward the water fronts and gazed down the harbors. Every rumble of blasts or heavy vehicle, ev- cry sudden great noise startled the cities into a quick: ''Listeni Cannonsr P \ Where is the feet?' The question ran from Maine to Florida, til it, too, became one great clamor, stoxming at the White House. Again there was no answer.
 Days before, the American feet had steamed out of the eastern end of Long Island sound. The tall, gray eadnoughts and armored cruisers, each with it's circling; savage brood Of destroyers; light cruisers, torpedo boats, seagoing submarines, hospital ships, auxiliaries and colliers, one by one they had passed into the open sea and vanished.
 But though no man knew where it was, from its unknown place 1t spoke by wireless to Washington, and through Washington to the nation.
 From sssomeshere between the Vir- ginia capes and the northern end of the Bahama islands where 1t lay, it had sent out it's feelers across the sea toward the oncoming foe-swift gray feelers whose tall skeleton fire control tops were white with watching sailors. And so, presently, between the enemy and the American coast there lay a line of relays to catch the news and pass it on to the nation and it's feet.
 CHAPTER H.
 The Inevitable Order to an Inferior
 Fleet.
 RE ORE than a hundred miles of
 W& sea, said the news, were COW cred by the advancing fleet.
 It was a hundred miles of steel forts, and outsfdel of them, dash ing back and Sorth in ceaseless patrol, were the lighter and faster craft, con- sisting of destroyers and small, swift cruisers.
 The scout cruiser Birmingham had spied ships inside even the inner line. But they were not transports. They were still warships. The troop trans ports were so far within all the pro- tective cordons that the American scouts, lying far along the horizon, could not even sight their masts.
 The enemy fleet scarcely made an attempt to attack the spying vessels. It seemed almost that the enormous mass was too inso1ent1y sure of its power to trouble about the scouts.
 So, with watching cruisers and de- stroyers hanging to its sides day and night, the invaders armada moved westward as steady as lifeless, wick ed machine. And the outer cordon held true
 It did not move slowly, majest1cally like the armored line. Incessantly it swept back and forth and in and out,