The Alaska daily empire., 1916-01-20

Critics of the Administration who Insist that ne,th or Presidents Congresses should venture to hold an opinion on the question of adequate navy or an adeouate army-that these issues far transcend the limitations of the civilian mind that they must be decid ed by military experts alone-haye strange theory of the history and processes of free government
 When NicOlay and Hay wrote their life of Aora- ham Lncoln they devoted themselves incidentally to scme of the censure that was passed the Govern ment for It's so-caled political conduct of the war;
 Military writers love to fight the cam
 paigns of history exclusively by the rules of
 the profession chessboard,. always suoordinat-
 Ing often totally ignoring tho element or poll
 tics This Is a radical error. Every war 70
 begun dominated and ended by political con-
 s.derauous; without nation without gov
 ernment without money or credit, without
 popular enthusiasm which furnishes volunteers
 or endures conscrptlon. there could be no ar
 my and no war-nether beginning nor end of
 methodical hostilities.a War and politics cam
 paign and statecraf are Siamese twins iusep'
 arabic and nterdependent; and to talk of mili-
 tarv operations without the direction and Inter-
 ference of an Administration is as absurd as
 to plan a campaign without recruits, pay or
 What Lncolns bographers 30 wisely said about war applies equally well preparedness. It is civil government and cyn government alone that must de termine an Of these issues the army and the navy are merely the tools of the civil government for the execution of Its policies. In peace they are also the tools Of the civil government Apart from the civil government they have no existence.
 Whether the country shall have navy greater than the British navy or the German navy or the Jap anese navy Is not matter for General Board to de eide It Is matter for the American people to decide through their National Administration and through their Congress It B not military question of general national policy to be determined by prospective re atons with these countries So Is the size of the army
 The so-called suppressed" report of the General Beard of the Navy furnishes impressive Illustration of the grave dangers that country would Incur by fol lowing the op non of military experts In defining such pollcies The General Board prepared q programme involving an expenditure of approximately Sl6OooOooOO for new naval construction during period of six years at the end Of which time United States navy would be equal theoretically to the British navy. What the General Board naively ignored the inevitable att tude of Britain toward such programme.
 If we undertook to build navy equal to the Brit ish navy tho British government would immediately proceed to double s own programme of construction; for the command of the sea matter of life and death Go the British Empire but Is at all matter of life and death to the United States. In the end the two great Englishspeaking Democraees would be bank ruptng themselves in bidding for seq power and oat os this nsensate rivalry should be almost certain to have war.
 Civilian common sense decides at once that such policy is both absurd and suicidal It s at variance with all the elementary facts of national policy. Yet if the champions Of superDreparedness could have their way would been the duty of the President the Secretary of the Navy and Congress to accept with out hesitation the plan of the General Oard for no req son at all except that t the plan of the General beard and the country would have embarked up on a course that could have only ended in disaster.
 So much for the pretended superiority of military judgment over political judgment in determining the scope and extent of national defense.