Chapter 33

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S SECOND TERM--CONTINUED

[1907]

While President Roosevelt advocated peace, he believed that the best means to preserve peace was suitable preparation for war. In his message to Congress, 1904, he said; "There is no more patriotic duty before us as a people than to keep the navy adequate to the needs of this country's position. Our voice is now potent for peace, and is so potent because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations would neither receive nor deserve the slightest attention if we were impotent to make them good." At all times he urged a larger and more efficient navy. For years, before he became Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he had been a student of naval affairs. He found that there was no programme for building ships as in the European countries, and that there was general unpreparedness for war.

Before the war with Spain, the American navy was so inferior that it was excluded from any table of the principal navies of the world. Had the United States possessed a few more battleships at that time, it is probable that war would not have occurred. Spanish authorities had been told by naval experts that their navy was superior to ours.

Profiting by that experience, plans for a larger navy were projected. By the close of the year 1907 there were about 300 vessels in the navy manned by 35,377 men. In comparative strength it ranked second only to that of Great Britain. Not only was there an increase in the number of vessels but there was great improvement in marksmanship and in the handling of ships. In the battle of Santiago it has been estimated that about five per cent of the shells struck the enemy. During the year 1902 Rear-Admiral Robley D. Evans introduced regular and frequent target practice. So effective was this work that in 1908, at ranges twice as great as at Santiago, gunners throughout the fleet averaged sixty per cent and one vessel scored eighty per cent. Rapidity of fire also was increased nearly fourfold.

It was the custom to send the fleet each winter to the Caribbean Sea for manoeuvres, which lasted about four months. In December, 1907, the Atlantic fleet, comprising sixteen battle-ships and a flotilla of torpedo-boats, began a cruise around the world. President Roosevelt steadily adhered to the plan in the face of the most extravagant denunciation on the part of those who declared that it could be considered only as a menace toward Japan. Naval experts claimed, however, that the experience to be gained by this cruise, such as practice in handling ships in all kinds of weather, the renewal of stores and coal, and the meeting of other problems incident to actual warfare, justified the experiment.