148 Military Preparedness 



the next few years, will be due to the failure to pro 

 vide for a thoroughly reorganized regular army of 

 adequate size in 1898; and for this failure the mem 

 bers in the Senate and the House who took the lead 

 against increasing the regular army, and reorgan 

 izing it, will be primarily responsible. On them 

 will rest the blame of any check to the national arms, 

 and the honor that will undoubtedly be won for the 

 flag by our army will have been won in spite of their 

 sinister opposition. 



In May, 1898, when our battleships were lying 

 off Havana and the Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers 

 were crossing the ocean, our best commanders felt 

 justifiable anxiety because we had no destroyers to 

 guard our fleet against the Spanish destroyers. 

 Thanks to the blunders and lack of initiative of the 

 Spaniards, they made no good use whatever of their 

 formidable boats, sending them against our ships 

 in daylight, when it was hopeless to expect anything 

 from them. 



But in war it is unsafe to trust to the blunders of 

 the adversary to offset our own blunders. Many 

 a naval officer, when with improvised craft of small 

 real worth he was trying to guard our battleships 

 against the terrible possibilities of an attack by tor 

 pedo-boat destroyers in the darkness, must have 

 thought with bitterness how a year before, when 

 Senator Lodge and those who thought like him were 



