114 THE MAINTENANCE OF THE FLEET. 



I merely make these remarks in introducing to your attention Captain Niblack's paper. 

 It deals with vital issues, and it is well worthy of our careful and painstaking consideration. 

 I trust that it will be fully and freely discussed, but, of course, in a most conservative and 

 helpful way. 



Mr. E. H. Rigg, Member: — There is nothing I can say except what is congratulatory 

 to the Society on the fact that we have such a paper as this before us at this time. 



Captain Niblack's paper deals more particularly with preparedness from a naval point 

 of view, and of course that is the point of view from which we are most interested in the 

 subject. 



I think it is perhaps pertinent to inquire — although if I am getting too far into the sphere 

 of politics I hope the Chair will stop me — what would be Great Britain's situation today if 

 her navy had not been ready? Back of that navy she has multiplied her military efficiency 

 by anything you like, from 20 to 30. Her army consisted of something like a quarter of a 

 million soldiers, and that army has been raised to at least fifteen times that number. If it 

 had not been for an effective navy, I do not think it need be said she would never have had a 

 chance to get that army in shape. That is one argument for preparedness, and is a very 

 important one, from our point of view also. 



I would like to raise a question which has been agitating us all very much of late, 

 especially in New York State and in the state in which I live. Captain Niblack in his 

 paper, near the top of page 108, says: "In coimtries in which there is conscription there 

 are at least no strikes in government munitions factories and shipyards, and no real agita- 

 tion for woman suffrage, for the right to vote implies the obligation to bear arms or to 

 manufacture them. One must either fish or cut bait." 



According to the pictures and accounts that have recently come to hand, the women in 

 the belligerent countries are both fishing and cutting bait. From Servia we read of women 

 serving in the trenches in considerable numbers, and in Britain and other countries they 

 are working in men's places in countless fields of activity and in munition factories in 

 great numbers. 



The other great work that women do in war, namely, nursing the wounded and sick, 

 and thus directly assisting in the return of the slightly wounded to the firing line, apart 

 from their care of those who will never be able to go back, also must be remembered. In 

 a war of the magnitude of the present one, the whole population, male and female, is 

 involved, and the old idea that women take no active part in war is exploded; they assist 

 in maintaining the efficiency of the fighting man and his equipment to an extent they have 

 never done before. 



The Chairman : — Is there any further discussion? If not, we will ask Captain Niblack 

 to close. 



Captain Niblack: — I merely wish to say this paper is in line with the attitude of 

 thinking people who stand for adequate preparedness. It calls attention to a condition of 

 afifairs which I have become familiar with during twelve years' sea service in the Pacific 

 Ocean, through cruising in all parts of it. It is a frank statement aimed at no other coun- 

 try, but intended merely to preserve our interests in the Pacific, which are more or less 

 threatened. It is dangerous to leave property lying around loose in the present state of the 

 political unequilibrium of the world. 



