The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1915. AMERICA'S NAVAL PROGRAMME.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 11, 16 December 1915, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1915. AMERICA'S NAVAL PROGRAMME.

The utter unpreparedness of the United States of America to bark up any of licr protests against German vandalism by anything more* convincing than "hot air" was made manifest by President Wilson's appeal for , great increases in the naval and military forces of the United States, and if America had possessed in August, 1914, the navy she hopes to have by Toai d Germany would probably have returned more than polite evasions to ! her series of protests, and the poor people killed in the sinking of the Uusitania might still be alive. According' to the forecasts published in the latest available American newspapers, the President's naval programme was to involve an expenditure of £200,000,000 in the next five years—£4o,ooo,ooo in each annual appropriation during that period. About half this sum was to be spent on the building of new vessels, on aviation, and on munition reserves, and the rest on upkeep. The army was to cost rather over £80,000.000, in return for which there was expected, at the end of six years, a trained force of more than a million men, including a regular army of 1-10,000, with a great reserve of field guns, howitzers, machine guns, and ammunition, behind a line of fully-man-ned and heavily armed "coast defences. in 1917 the units proposed to be added to the I'nited States Navy will be 55 additional; in 1918, .34; in 1919, l'7- in 1920,. 35; and in 1921, 34, maiking a total increase of 185 units. These are to include 10 battleships, b' cruisers, 10 scout cruisers, 50 destroyers, 15 fleet submarines and 85 coast submarines. For the "great nation" that was "too proud to light," and the home of perambulating and interfering idiots of the Ford stamp, the programme is a pretty fair one.