National Defence

THE standing army of the Republic used to consist of 25,000 men. After the Spanish war it was increased to 65,000, and at the turn of the century it was enlarged to 100,000. The United States can call out a fighting force of regulars, militia, and reserves numbering over 10,000,000 men. Increased responsibilities and expansion of area involve extra means of defence. When the newly acquired territories lie far from the centre of power, those risks and duties are intensified.

The War Department expenditures for the fiscal year 1900 were $134,774,767.78, a reduction of $95,066,486.69 from those of 1899.

In the Navy Department the expenditures were $55,-953,077.72 for the year 1900, as against $63,942,104.25 for the preceding year, a decrease of $7,989,026.53.

In this connection it is interesting to note that at the end of the fiscal year there were on the pension roll 993,225 names, a net increase of 2,010 over the fiscal year 1899. The number added to the rolls during the year was 45,344.

The amount disbursed for army pensions during the year was $134,700,597.24 and for navy pension $3,761,-533.41, a total of $138,462,130.65, leaving an unexpended balance of $5,542,768.25 to be covered into the Treasury which shows an increase over the previous year's expenditure of $107,077.70. There were 684 names added to the rolls during the year by special acts passed at the first session of the Fifty-sixth Congress.

The ever-growing cost of wars makes it of vital importance to strike swiftly and mightily when the time comes. The cost in human life and suffering is thus kept at a minimum, as well as the money outlay, which is relatively so much greater when a country is found unprepared. It has been estimated that the average daily cost of the Civil War was at least $2,000,000; while it is believed to have been $3,000,000 daily for the hundred days preceding its close. According to Mulhall the wars of ninety years, down to 1880, involved an expenditure of $14,778,000,000, besides the loss of 4,470,000 lives. The cost of our Civil War is given at $3,589,000,000. "This evidently does not include expenditures since the close of that war for property destroyed, nor the pension roll of thirty-three years,-all the direct result of the war. The Treasury accounts for these items even so long ago as June 30, 1879, amounted to $2,500,000,000. No separate accounts of such expenditures have been kept since that date, except for pension payments, which alone aggregate, for that period, $1,800,000,000, making a grand known total of nearly $8,000,000,000 to the present year, while pension payments will not cease for many years to come." So states Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Vanderlip.

The eight months' war between Germany and France is said to have cost, in all, about $1,500,000,000. The military burden under which European nations groan may be understood by the following published statement: The annual war appropriations of Russia amount to about $148,000,000; of Germany, $141,000,000; of France, $123,000,000; of Great Britain, $88,000,000; of Austria, $86,000,000; of the United States, $51,000,000; of the Italy, $45,000,000; of Turkey, $20,000,000. The army of France costs yearly $3 per capita; of Germany, $2.70; of Austria, $2.05; of Russia, $1.15; of Turkey, 59 cents; of Italy, $1.52; of England, $2.32, and of the United States, 68 cents.

Our war with Spain cost an average of $1,250,000 a day, according to the above quoted authority.

The navy of the United States has always been comparatively small but exceptionally efficient. Its record in the war of 1898 was a proud one, as has been shown in preceding pages. It was deemed necessary to add to the number of the best ships that the navy of the Republic should be commensurate with its rank as a first-rate power. Congress appropriated $50,000,000 for the national defence immediately before the outbreak of the war with Spain, of which nearly $30,000,000 was allotted to the navy. Of this over $17,000,000 was spent in the purchase of the auxiliary navy, a motley assortment of yachts, tugs, cruisers, torpedo-boats, and carrying craft. This was independent of the hire of the City of New York, City of Paris, the St. Louis and St. Paul, Atlantic liners, each costing above $2,000 a day.

The great battle-ships are expensive necessities. The bill for the Oregon was $3,791,777. Secretary Long urged the need of new docks, declaring that the most decided weakness of the United States navy is at present its inferior docking facilities. A modern war-ship should be docked every few months; but of the eleven government docks, nine on the Atlantic and two on the Pacific coast only a few are capable of docking a full-size battle-ship, and one of these is at Puget Sound. For the year ending June, 1897, before the Spanish war was on the carpet, the cost of the navy reached seventeen and a half millions, an increase of about two millions over the preceding year. Since that date we have secured a splendid docking and coaling station in the Hawaiian Islands.

The necessity for an enlarged navy was urged by Secretary Herbert when the victory in Manila Bay was undreamt of. Anticipating future possibilities, he suggested that history may repeat itself: