The Cordova daily times., 1922-01-25
DO NOT ABOLISH OUR BEST DEFENSIVE
 WEAPON

That given war weapon is more advantag- eous to one nation than to some other, or that its use in defensive way is calculated to make the battleship ineffective, is not suffi- cient reason for its abolition.
 The submarine, invented by an American and perfected as war craft by Europeans, of itself renders the United States practical iy immune from invasion. Our isolated geo. graphical situation, with an ocean rolling between each of our coasts and any possible enemy of sufficient strength to give con ce,n, and the great length of coast line, equal to all that of Europe makes the sub marine more important to the United States than to any other nation. So long war ships are retained, this government should not give consideration to the abolition of the sub marine.
 The possibilities of the airplane as weapon to be used against noncombatants, are infln- iteIv greater than those of the submarine for an arpIane may cross the Atlantic and drop bombs upon a defenseess city. A development of the airplane and of poison gas is easily i'm aginable within few years, whereby single warplane might drop enough poison gas on New York City to decimate the population. It is not possible to limit the development of the airplane, or stop experiments in the develop ment of poison gas, and with these deadly weapons remaining the talk about eliminating the submarine seems to be entirely in the in terests of single power so situated that this weapon is most menacing to that nation s par ticuIar interests.
 The United States is ready to make all req sonahle concessions to promote peace. These concessions do not include the sacrifice of the nations means of protection against the arma ments permitted to remain "Safety first" is a motto it will be well for us to remember at this juncture. This nation did not seize any of the spells of war; it is not looking for the territory of any other nation; there is no req son why we should render our own situation dangerous by giving up weapons most essen tial to us for the reason that they are to us fundamentally defensive, and we do not ex- pect to fight any offensive war.
 The submarine is denounced as a murder ons device in propaganda which has been car ried on from an obvious source during the past few weeks. The business of war is mur- der, and talk of making war merciful is pu- erle. One of the biggest obstacles to future ware is that it has been made so murderous that all nations now realize that in modern wars is that it has been made so murderous power gets the worst of it. Besides our loss of life in the World war this nation made money sacrifice of fully a hundred billion dollars, a sum sufficient to provide a comfortable home for every family in the United States, with enough land around it to make it possible to raise enough food to sustain life The pre- tense that any considerable number of people in this country want another war is too thin to stand up. That is one reason why there is so much sentiment in this country against mak- ing the peace of America too much dependent upon the good behavior of nations in which public sentiment cuts very little figure in de- termining whether or not there shall be war;
 Only the unchangeable free trader is ques-