and Unpreparedness 147 



sonnel and enabling it to practice, deserves well of 

 the whole nation, and a record of his action should 

 be kept, that his children may feel proud of him. 

 No less clearly should we understand that through 

 out these fifteen years the men who, whether from 

 honest but misguided motives, from short-sighted 

 ness, from lack of patriotism, or from demagogy, 

 opposed the building up of the navy, have deserved 

 ill of the nation, exactly as did those men who re^- 

 cently prevented the purchase of armor for the bat 

 tleships, or, under the lead of Senator Gorman, pre 

 vented the establishment of our army on the footing 

 necessary for our national needs. If disaster comes 

 through lack of preparedness, the fault necessarily 

 lies far less with the men under whom the disaster 

 actually occurs than with those to whose wrong- 

 headedness or short-sighted indifference in time past 

 the lack of preparedness is due. 



The mistakes, the blunders, and the shortcomings 

 in the army management during the summer of 1898 

 should be credited mainly, not to any one in office in 

 1898, but to the public servants of the people, and 

 therefore to the people themselves, who permitted 

 the army to rust since the Civil War with a wholly 

 faulty administration, and with no chance whatever 

 to perfect itself by practice, as the navy was per 

 fected. In like manner, any trouble that may come 

 upon the army, and therefore upon the nation, in 



