Would Prepare Tremendously
THOMAS A. EDISON, while visiting the Pacific coast, said to a newspaper reporter that the military preparedness of the United States is "zero." Furthermore, he stated: "To be properly prepared for war, the United States should have powder and guns sufficient to equip a trench reaching from Florida to Maine. The bay of San Francisco should be made impregnable, and heavy fortifications should be set up along the entire length of both the Atlantic and the Pacific coast." Mr. Edison further said: "We want to fight with machinery, not men. We hope to save the men. In order to be properly prepared, we must have machinery capable of equipping us, within forty-eight hours' notice, with twice as much powder and ammunition as the warring nations of Europe possess." Mr. Edison is chairman of the board of experts employed by the Navy Department to make suggestions for the defense of the United States against foreign invasion. The foregoing statements from the great inventor are but a part of what he said upon the subject, but they show that his active mind is busy with the great problems of war. And while Mr. Edison is making these statements, the dispatches are telling us of the great activity of the war and navy men of our nation. They tell of the program that it is proposed to submit to Congress for the building of a navy and the erecting of fortifications and the equipping of an army—and all with the great purpose in view of striking terror to the other portions of the world that would ever have any thought of invading this nation. But as we ought to expect, these feverish activities on the part of the United States are already stirring the powers of Europe, so the dispatches say, to the determination to build still larger navies, and equip themselves still more powerfully, so as to cope with this enormous equipment proposed for the United States. There is an awful spirit of war in this world. Powerful interests are cultivating it. There is big money in it for the money power. But the student of prophecy knows that the divine Father has not only foretold the angry condition of the nations when the Judgment is pending, but He has also foretold that the last days would be made perilous through the love of self and the love of money. Self-love and money love in this time have not only blinded men, but have driven them insanely mad, and they do not seem to have any realizing sense of the destructive vortex around which they are whirling. The same prophecies that have foretold these things, have also presented the door of hope that opens into the eternal domains of the Prince of Peace.