The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1918-03-08

throwing promises TO the winds huri-
ed us into the seething whirlpool of
war. Then the very men who had
been at the helm of the ship of
state for 16 years, the men whose
polirieS had weakened the Army and
Stunted the Navy, began to howl be-
cause We could not equip a million
men overnight and put them in the
trenches of France in a dag. They
forgot the experience of England,
they forgot the experience OF France;
they IO.got their own neglect of our
martial strength; they forgot every
thing but their own personal adver-
tisemenI and their own political ad-
VaECeiIent.
Mythology tells us that Minerva
spTang full-armed from the mind of
Jupiter, and despite the fact that
the age for NEUROLOGICAL miracles
has passed, these acrimonious critics
demanded that the United States
white r.Iies out of the air and by
some sort of prestidigitorial art
transform million civilians into full
trained soldiers between the sinking
and the rising of the sun. What
| these critics had failed to do in 16
wears, they insist that Woodrow Will
son should do in l 6 days. The wind
Iisteth in the night, the dew falls,
| the stars come out, the moon works
her magic charm, and behold at
dawn a full-grown mushroom whit
tens the lawn where at sunset only
an embryonic stalk Snuggled in the
grass This is the kind of marvel,
this the kind OF impossible legerde-
main that Col. Roosevelt and his
school demand should be duplicated
| in our military world. They demand
that an invincible army be created
overnight out OF wind and dew star
light and moonshine. But they fail
to provide the Aladdin's lamp with
which to work the miracle; they fail
| to furnish the necromantic art where
with to ram into night the task OF
decade.
And this miracle, too, they de-
mand in the teeth of the hoary-
headed truth that from the days OF
Washington, Franklin and Adams
| this Nation has set its face against
militaristic policy. A large Army,
potential Military Establishment,
has been the ghost that has given
this country sleepless nights for 140
years-a Fictitious ghost, perhaps,
but nevertheless a ghost hypnotic in
| its influence and awesome in its
sway And the Navy, too, has been
hampered by short-sighted sentl-
ment of the great interior part of
| the country, whose congressional
Representative persistently opposed
large naval appropriations from fear
of retrenchment against the home
town projects of their own native
heaths. For this ingrained repug-
nance to a big Army, an adequate
Navy, neither the Republicans of to-
day nor the Democrats of today are
to blame The fault lies at the door
of the predominant sentiment of the
Nation since 1875. And as we have
sown, SO today We reap.
Gen. Winfield Scott, one of the
worlds greatest soldiers, compressed
! an historic situation in nutshell
when he said, Republics are never
prepared for war"
The business of republics is
peace; the business of autocracies is
war.
Autocracy lives by the sword. The
father and grandfather of Frederick
the Great said so; Frederick himself
said so; and so saith the Kaiser, and
the Crown Prince, too.
A love and a craving for peace,
however, form the very genesis of a
republic To this genesis republics
are true; from this genesis republics
depart only at the call of honor or
| the command of necessity.
Hence it is,though critics may for
get, the people remember, that in
eight months of war the United
States, -under-~the leadership ef
Woodrow Wilson, has done twice as
| much, and even more, than England
and France did in the corresponding
period of time. The accusations, the
exaggerations, the fabrications, the
| distortions of supercilious censors
and enviousfanged contemners of
| the Wilsonian policies wear such a
| fimsy goSSamer covering as to ex-
pose this political plot in all its ma
ked hideousness.
We make no claim that the ad-
ministration has created sunbeams
/ out of cucumbe1s or performed feats
| beyond the pale of human possibili-
| ty, but we do maintain that its eff
| forts have been amazing, its accom-
plishments beyond compare in the
history of modern warfare.
We have not whipped the Kaiser
yet, but we will whip him if calum
mating critics do not dampen the
| fires of enthusiasm or grease the
tracks wherein must ride our ma
| tional chariots of war. We have
more men in France today than
Roosevelt knows or Germany sus-
poets, and million more are waiting
for the ships.
We have an Army SO well cared
for that the death rate in our ranks
for the four months ending January
1, 1918, averaged only rs per thou
sand-a death rate, mind you, less
than the death rate for men of like
age in peaceful avocations at home.
Compare this with the death rate of
20.14 per thousand under the good
old Republican rule of the days OF
the Spanish-American War. Compare
these figures, and then applaud the
Roosevelt charges, if you can.
True, we have made some mis-
takes, but in the magnitude of our
undertaking some mistakes were in
evitable, unavoidable In balance
though with the wondrous achieve
ments these mistakes have been tri-
vial and not worthy of the attention
of the men who minimize their tall
ents by trying to magnify molehills
into mountains.
And, furthermore, unlike the