MAEOH, 1917
The Commoner
and purchased about 250,000 pis
tols popguns instead of rifles.
When their military expenditures
had grown to enormous proportions
other nations found it necessary to
adopt an efllcient business system
for handling the public's money in
the matter of war expenditures.
England created a department of
munitions. Tho strongest man in
the empire was given the place of
minister of munitions. It revolu
tionized the policy of tho govern
ment and put efficiency and economy
to the fore. I firmly believe we will
have to adopt some such plan in the
nYattcr of expenditures of our money
for public defense or else our waste
will be enormous. If you say that
England's action was in time of war,
why should we not avail ourselves
in time of peace of the lesson she
had to learn by bitter experience in
time of trial and stress? We are
simply deluging the different depart
ments of tho army and the navy with
the flood of money. Having never
had to handle expenditures of su6h
tremendous magnitude before, being
suddenly given more money than
they ever dreamed existed, they are
really put to it to find a place to
even give it away. It is my opinion
that a committee of congress having
control of the purchase and manu
facture of all munitions and sup
plies both for the army and the navy
should be constituted by congress.
It should have jurisdiction over all
appropriations for arms, armament,
material and materiel.
This would require, of course, the
establishment of a new committee,
but I am firmly of-the opinion that
such a comnJittee could properly in
form itself as to the most economical
and efllcient means for supplying the
needs of this government in the mat
ter of war material and direct the
manufacture and purchase of war
supplies so that the best interests of
tho government and of the people,
who pay tho bills, would be served.
The efficiency of our national de
fense program would be tremend
ously Increased and the national
treasury saved from tho wasto of
untold millions of money.
If something is not done in the fu
ture to more carefully supervise the
expenditure of the billions that are
going to be spent by coming con
gresses upon the matter of national
defense, we will probably discover
what is somewhat apparent now
that while expenditures and appro
priations grow by hundreds of mil
lions at each succeeding session, our
army increases by thousands. Since
we started to increase our military
establishment for national defense
our appropriations for the army have
increased four hundred millions and
the army has been increased by
about 10,000 enlisted men of the
line.
We can get everything for an army
by appropriations except men. With
out men we can have no army. We
can get plenty of officers, eager for
rank and thirsty for glory, but the
lack is in fighting men for the line,
ready to die in the ditch. Kings and
rtOKSE-HIBH, WULl.
JBYRONQ. PIG-TIGHT.
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princes have at times in tho past
found it difficult to get men to fight
their battles for them. Napoleon
Bonaparte, tho wisest warrior tho
world ever knew, conceived tho plan
of universal conscription to fill his
ranks, and when ono nation had
adopted that policy it compelled
those who were its expected or pos
sible adversaries to inaugurate tho
same system or be overthrown. In
tho event of a war for national de
fense, this nation will spend its last
dollar and send tho last man to the.
front. In such a war tho United
States will never be troubled to find
soldiers for the fighting lino. It will
only be put to it to find guns and
ammunition with which to arnTthem.
It would be put to it to do so right
now.
Militarists are always ready to pay
any price for any kind of war ma
terial except the human unit, the
man who fights the battle, tho man
who is. the heart and lifoblood of
every array. Having to pay enor
mous prices for other war material,
they purpose under the plan of com
pulsory service to pay nothing for
tho men. In war everything goes
up in price except human life. The
nations at war in Europe will send
a man 5,000 miles across the sea
and over the land, away out to west
ern Nebraska, where I live, and pay
me $160 in good red gold for a
dinky horse that could command a
price of perhaps $60 In timo of
peace. They will ship that horse
back over land and sea to Europe,
and when they get him to th.e battle
line he has cost them six or seven
hundred dollars and will live per
haps 15 or 20 days.
But they will take the boy of Eu
rope, the flower of his race, tho pride
of his parents they tako him for
nothing. They send him to the fir
ing line and he is shot down. They
pay him perhaps 7 cents a day while
he lives. Seven cents for tho boy;
$700 for the horse. It is becauffe I
know that such things as this are
the inevitable consequence of war
that I hope that God may grant our
President the wisdom and the un
derstanding to keep us free from its
awful curse. We are at present free
from the fearful problems that con
front blood-soaked and war-weary
Europe. We can show them the true
way by example more surely than
we can drive them to it by force of
arms. There is room and stage here
in this, western world for this nation
to work out its final triumphant
destiny which, in my" judgment,
should be the leadership of tho peo
ples of earth in commerce, in edu
cation, and in civilization.
Let Columbia still continue to Bit
here, enthroned between our silver
seas, the Atlantic upon tho east, the
blue" Pacific upon the west, "these
seas which serve us in the office of a
wall or as a moat defensive against
the envy of less hanpy lands." And
to our future jubilee shall come, in
the fullness of time when we hold
it, not kingsttnd princes as a relic of
the imperialism, the barbarism, the
despotism of the past; not conquered
nations bound to our chariot wheels,
as trophies of conquest and all-conquering
war, but rather the nations
of the earth in peaceful procession,
to sit at our feet and learn froni a
study of America's history tho story
of man's final emancipation from
wrong and oppression and do Colum
bia reverence as the uncrowned
queen of tho highest, the freest, and
t, M,inf tvno nt nivilization unon
I Llitt 41VJUICJI. l'u - -
the face of the earth. That is the
ideal which I hoia ior my cuuuujr.
That is the mission I would have her
bring to mankind. (Applause.)
25
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