fulfill the most immediate national tasks be voted. This
was the short-sighted policy of a narrow-minded politician who, when a
country's fate is hanging in the balance, complains only of the costs.
It was most assuredly a short-sighted policy, and we were compelled to
pay dearly for it.

The voyage of our fleet around South America had shown the world that
the value of a navy is not impaired because a few drunken sailors
occasionally forget to return to their ship when in port: on the
contrary, foreign critics had been obliged to admit that our navy in
point of equipment and of crews was second to none. And lo and behold,
this remarkable exhibition of power--the only sensible idea evolved by
our navy department in years--is followed by the insane dispersal of our
ships to so many different stations.

How foolish had it been, furthermore, to boast as we did about having
kept up communication with Washington by wireless during the whole of
our journey around South America. Had not the experience at Trinidad,
where a wireless message intercepted by an English steamer had warned
the coal-boats that our fleet would arrive a day sooner, taught us a
lesson? And had not the way in which the Japanese steamer, also provided
with a wireless apparatus, stuck to us so persistently between
Valparaiso and Callao shown us plainly that every new technical
discovery has its shady side?

No, we had learned nothing. In Washington they insisted on sending all
orders from the Navy Department to the different harbors and naval
stations by wireless, yet each of the stations along the whole distance
from east to west provided possibilities of indiscretion and treachery
and of unofficial interception. Why had we not made wireless telegraphy
a government monopoly, instead of giving each inhabitant of the United
States the right to erect an apparatus of his own if he so wished? Did
it never occur to anybody in Washington that long before the orders of
the Navy Department had reached Mare Island, Puget Sound and San Diego
they had been read with the greatest ease by hundreds of strangers? It
required the success of the enemy to make all this clear to us, when we
might just as well have listened to those who drew conclusions from
obvious facts and recommended caution.

In spite of all this, the press on Tuesday morning still adhered to the
hope that Admiral Perry would attack the enemy from the rear with his
twelve battleships of the Pacific sq