The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1918-02-26

most stupendous panic in history and enabled us to
ride the tumultuous waters of ''word-war" finance
with hardly squeak or trenor of our old ship OF
state Without this Federal Reserve Bank today the
United States would be grinding and pounding on the
rocks of disaster.
Nor is this all.
From vision almost prophetic came the Federal
Revenue Bill which wrung lordly portion of gov
ernmental revenue from internal taxes instead of
from tariff impostS which under the baneful influence
of war dwndled to a sum insufficient to provide
fabrication for our gears of government, let alone
provide fuel for the treasury boiler that makes the
wheels of national life 20 round.
Our national experience, since the war started
must carry conviction to every far-mnded American
that for these two measures alone an ineable
debt of gratitude to the wisdom and the statesman
slip of Woodrow Wilson.
And of our military realm, we have the self-same
tale.
Theodore Roosevelt may indulge himself in all
the weird juggling of language that pleases his fancy
he may nSensate himself in such inspirational riot of
emotional frenzy may give fire to his tongue and
flare to his imagination but the fact remains I'M
GCIdOlci lneHaCeaDe, nTemOVaDle That IN two years
OF ante-bellum days Woodrow Wilson did more to
put our army and our navy a foting for war than
10th William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt
did in the whole eleven years of their supne reign.
During these two years preparedness for pos
Sibe war was pushed by President Wilson fast as
The sentiment of the country would permit and quite
fast as even the most violent of his present-day
critics then deemed expedient or polite
Suddenly, however conditions created by the
autocratc dogmatiSm OF Germany dlSregardmg
treaties and throwing promises to the winds, hurled
US into the Seething whirlpool Of war. Then the
very men who had been at the helm of the ship of
state for sixteen years. the men whose policies had
weakened the army and stunted the navy, began to
howl because we could not equip million men over
night and put them in the trenches of France in
day. They forgot the experience of England; they
forgot the experience of France; they forgot their
own neglect of our martial strength; they forgot
everything but their personal advertisement and
their own political advancement.
Mythology tells us that Minerva sprang full
armed from the mind of Jupiter; and, despite the
TACT that the age for NEUROLOGICAL miracles has
passed these acrimonious critics demanded that the
United States white rifles out of the air and by some
sort of preStdigitoria art transform million civilians
into fulltrained soldiers between the sinking and the
rising of the sum- What these critics had failed to do.
in sixteen years, they insist that Woodrow Wilson
should do IN sixteen days The wind llSteth IN the
night the dew falls, the stars come out, the moon
works her magic charm and behold at dawn full
grown mushroom whitens the lawn where at sunset
only an embryonic stalk Snuggled in the grass This
is the kind of marvel this the kind of impossible
lagerdemain that Colonel 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, starlight and moon
shine But they fail to provide the Aladdin'S lamp
with which to work the miracle; they fail to furnish
the necromantic art wherewith to ram into night
the task of decade.
And this miracle, too, they demand in the teeth
If the hoary-headed truth that from the days OF
Washington Franklin and Adams this nation has set
IFS face against a militariStc policy. large army,
potential military establishment, has been the ghost
that has given this country sleepleSS nights for one
hundred and forty years. Fictitious ghost, perhaps
but nevertheless ghost hypnotic in its influence and
awesonie in its sway. And the navy too, has been
lampercd by a short-Sighed sentiment of the great
interior part of the country whose congressional
persstently opposed large naval ap
from fear of retrenchment against che
projects of their native heaths.
For this ingrained repugnance TO big army, an
adequate navy, neither the Republicans of today,
or the Democrats of today, are to blame. The fault
lies at the door of the predominant sentiment of the
nation since 1870 And as We have Sown; so today
we reap.
General Winfield Scott, one of the worlds great
est soldiers, compressed an historic situation in