A Billion Dollars for National Defense

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 28, 1915

A Billion Dollars for National Defense

THE probable extent of President Wilson’s plan for national defense is presented in the Washington Post of October 19:—

A national defense program that probably means an expenditure on the army and navy of upward of $1,000,000,000 in the next six years will be laid before the people by President Wilson November 4, when he goes to New York to make his first public address since the scope of the policy upon which his administration has embarked became known.

According to plans laid out by experts of the Navy and War Departments, this expenditure would produce by 1925 a first line of dreadnaughts and battle cruisers numbering forty-three; a fleet of coast defense submarines that would fringe the Atlantic and Pacific coasts with an almost solid line of interior defense against attack; a fleet of nearly one hundred and seventy-five destroyers and squadrons of huge seagoing submarines to operate with the battle squadrons at great distances from shore.

For the army, there would be at the end of six years a trained force of 1,200,000 men, including a regular army of 140,000 and the proposed continental army and reserves; a ring of fully manned coast defenses, equipped with the largest and most powerful guns yet built, and a vast reserve of field guns, machine guns, howitzers, and big-gun ammunition.

In addition, the enormously increased capacity of private munition plants would give assurances of ample supplies of small arms and field-gun ammunition.

A definite step toward enlarging the navy was taken yesterday, when contracts were awarded for twenty-two of the fighting craft authorized by the last Congress.