The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-02-09

1n this country in sudden war at this time. It is true that the Navy De- partment has taken steps to secure a very moderate reserve supply of Chil- 1 ian nitrates and that. the construction under government support of a plant 1 for the fixation of atmospheric nitro ! gen is contemplated. Any such plant :! under government ausu5ees is likely to be somewhat lingering in construc- tion. Appropriations should be made Tor a much larger supply of reserve l, nitrates for the War and Navy de- partments, and in any event, the con- trol of the North Pacific in war, to prevent cutting our communication With Chilli, is of grave importance. With that control assured and with the Panama Canal still in our hands, any other attack on these communi- cations would have to come-as Cap- tain McKean shows-through the Straits of Magellan or from Cape Town via Australia and would be so long in arriving that provision to meet 1t could be made.
 "Now, consider for a moment the indications which point to the shuffl- ing of the cards for the great game of empire on the Pacific. These in- dications are, of course, vague and general, but for such prie as the mastery of the ocean the players would hardly lay their cards face up on the table. Tn the first place, before the Euro pean war, Germany had colonial pos sessions in eight separate groups of islands in the South Seas. When war broke out Great Britain took all of these loo oxyfy the chart shows-the Caroline and Marshall groups, north of it, to her ally, Japan.
 "Now, was this division of the spells forced on England by her ally? For the answer, look at Jaluit, in the Marshall group. It lies between Hawaii and Guam and in the rear of both Guam and the Philippines-that ! is, it would serve most effectively as an intercepting naval base, which, in the hands of an Asiastic Power, would 1 gravely imperil our Philippine com munications in war.
 Second, Guam is little island seven miles by 29-with no ships sta- toned there and garrisoned only by small force of marines. We'll, the war was but three months old when a Japanese battle ship cruised slowly around the island just outside the three mile limit examining the shore line with care. Later a Japanese ' merchant steamer, although warned off by boarding officer, entered the harbor, made evasive excuses forS her presence and was ordered out Ntne next day-doubtless after she had gained the information she came for Later still it is said that a scientific commission was sent to the island from Tokio, ostensibly to take longi- | tude observations
 '"Third-Japan has recently made a
 secret treaty with Russia, arhother of 1 her allies. Now. the fact that a
 treaty between two powers is secret
 presupposes usually that it contains
 provisions antagonistic to other na-
 tions. So the safe and customary | course for the diplomatists of any
 other country concerned is to as-
 sume that such a treaty has articles
 aimed at it. From these considera-
 tions and knowing Japan's colossal
 ambitions, for Pacific control there is well grounded Suspicion that Russia has granted for the right to. use in ] war the harbor of Petropavlovsk, in ! Russian Kamschatka. This port
 would be the most accessible half-
 way house for a fleet leaving Yoko-
 hama to seive Dutch Harbor, in Un-
 alaska-fron which Petropavlovsk is
 but 1,400 miles. due west. And-in the view of the naval authority
 cite-the seizure of Unalaska would
 mean, not only the loss of Alaska,
 but, in present conditions, the fall, | like a house of cards, of our other
 possessions in the Pacific Ocean.
 "Fourth-The Japan Year Book of
 1914 said: The object of expansion
 is to prepare against a possible emergency with the United States
 and these preparations have been | pressed since with tireless energy. /; Her naval program is more or less, ] secret, but it is stated that she is Ibuilding three 30,600-ton dread
 noughts, each carrying 12 14-inch
 guns, and another, the Nagato,l of
 32,OO0~ tons, mounting twelve 15 or | 16-inch guns. In addition it is said
 that three battleships, probably as 1 formidable as the Nagato, and two battle cruisers are contemplated in
 the new program. Our proposed
 40 900 ton battleships, armed with
 twelve 16inch guns, are presumably
 an answer to all this.
 i "But these are at best but eleventh hour ships of ours, whose completion, three or four years hence, may be too late. And even if they are not where
 are the insular bases to support them? Guam, Samoa and Dutch Harbor are wholly undeveloped.
 Hawaii is but paTtial1y fortified and
 the garrison of Alaska is just 500 | men t >@ e.t
 "what this Republic has to fear is
 less the Yellow Peril than the American Peril'-the. incomprehen- sible ignorance of. the careless indif-