Defenseless America . mendations are accordingly discounted. We have only 33 battleships less than twentyyears old, eleven of which belong to the secondline, with four building and authorized, which willmake 37 in all. The General Board thinks thatwe should have 48 battleships less than twentyyears old. We have but 68 destroyers, while the GeneralBoard thinks that we should have 192 destroyers. The General Board thinks that we could squeezealong mth a minimum of 71,000 men to man ourpresent fleet, without taking into account addi-tional trained men needed for signal and tacticalwork on board a
Defenseless America . mendations are accordingly discounted. We have only 33 battleships less than twentyyears old, eleven of which belong to the secondline, with four building and authorized, which willmake 37 in all. The General Board thinks thatwe should have 48 battleships less than twentyyears old. We have but 68 destroyers, while the GeneralBoard thinks that we should have 192 destroyers. The General Board thinks that we could squeezealong mth a minimum of 71,000 men to man ourpresent fleet, without taking into account addi-tional trained men needed for signal and tacticalwork on board auxiliary vessels, and without anyprovision for warships now building. As a barefact, we have only 52,300 men. Thus we are short18,000 of the men needed to man the fleet we addition to tliis, there is a shortage in sight of4,000 men required to man the fighting ships thatwill go into commission in 1915 and 1916. Our naval experts tell Congress that we shallneed 50,000 more men for the Navy as soon as they [168]. THE NEEDS OF OUR NAVY can be enlisted and drilled; but the ears of Con-gress are deaf to the appeal. Yet a whisper fora new post-office can be heard by a Congressmanfrom his home district a thousand miles away. We have only 7,700 men in our naval have no naval reserve. Congressman Gardner informs us, as a resultof his investigations, that it would take five yearsto get a reserve of 25,000 sailors. Our best-informed naval officers recommend forcoast defense the immediate construction of ahundred submarines of the latest and most suc-cessful type. As a matter of fact, this number isfar too few. We now have but 58 submarines,including those built, building, and authorized tobe built. Many of those we have are obsolete andabsolutely worthless. The following is an extract from a report bythe General Board of the Navy in 1913, which isvery enlightening: The absence of any definite naval policy onour part, except in the General Board, and thefailure of the pe
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