Life — March 23, 1916 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Queries D® we understand the President to say that this nation, with no enemy in sight in any direction, pro- poses to defend itself by building the most powerful navy on the seas? And that this navy would outrival even that of Great Britain, a nation which, in its insular helplessness and. far-flung im- perial plight, has greater need of sea- protection than all other nations put together? Or do we take this remark as a bit of humorous extravagance, a sort of twinkle of the eye, intended to lighten up a bit the way downward to the “end of the tr And did we understand that this nation which rightly refused to fight over a great international moral issue, not because it was afraid, or greedy, or indifferent, but because war offers no remedy for the wrongs of war, ma: find in “a cargo of wheat or cotton, now that Europe is bleeding to death, a chance to enter the brawl? Do we un- derstand that we who were “too proud to fight" over realities may now be ready at “the drop of the hat” to shed Dood over “a scrap of paper,” written by one diplomatist and blue-pencilled by another, neither of them caring a straw for justice, the one wishing to placate, the other to irritate us? The situation suggests a little story. There was once a leader of men, sore pressed by his adversaries on the one side, facing a perilous morass on the other. At a critical moment, he cast aside his cloak, disclosing the uni- form of his opponents. Thus equipped, wey ROW-Wwow-wow, THOU? “1M LITTLE KAISER WILLIE’S DOG—pow- wow-wow !” WHOSE DOG ART “AND HE PROMISED TO COME STRAIGHT HOME FROM THE OFFICE!” he led the enemy straight into the bog. Meanwhile, his followers in confusion had ascended to higher ground. When their leader again appeared in strange and mud-splotched uniform, his friends. did not know him. The moral of this tale is that a bold political stroke may be made to con- found our adversaries. It will also confound our friends. Another moral may be that an administrator must finally be judged by what he vetoes rather than by what he says. David Starr Jordan. Answers you are going to build a navy at all it is best not to postpone the work of construction till an enemy is in sight. A warship in the water, read is worth whole argosies of paper fleets. To outbuild the British navy seems. extravagant. But it may not seem so when the war is over. Meanwhile, re- turning travellers tell us the English know a great deal more about our navy than most of us do; that they know our fighting ships and what each one of them can do, and wish there were more of them, They still count them as a part of the potential defense of civilization against the contemporary Huns. . It has never worried Uncle Sam to have John Bull outbuild his navy. It may not worry John Bull to be out- built by Uncle Sam, This great job of policing the seas is one for a long pocket. John Bull is spending money like a drunken sailor to save himself and France and others, including us. When the danger is past it will not be a wonder if he says, “ Take the big end of this job for a while, till I replen- ish!” Moreover, if the naval cockpit shifts to the Caribbean Sea we may need a very powerful navy. The British navy is too big. It has been crowded into unwelcome excess by Germany, After the war it will shrink as much as Brit- ish statesmen dare to let it. Anyone who understands that our country may get into the war over a cargo of wheat or a scrap of paper should take care not to confuse super- ficials with essentials. People who fight at the dropping of the hat do not, ordinarily, fight for the hat. The cap- tured cargo or the torn scrap may be a signal for a fight compelled by the most vital, righteous and unescapable considerations. As for little stories, there is one about a warrior who excited appre- hensions among the pacifists of his day, so that they put him into girl's clothes and hid him in a boarding school. But a wily emissary who went to sort him comicbooks.com