CHECK MILITARISTIC PROGRAM NOW

...Last year, in the face of determined opposition of the administration executive forces, we reduced the estimates more than 50 per cent...

...The fault will be ours, because as we are the only great Nation which could maintain enormous establishments on land and sea without bankruptcy, without being condemned to bear indefinitely and add to today's frightful load of national debt, it is our duty to lead the way toward relief from a present and future burden of warlike expenditure which, irksome and oppressive to us, would be unbearable to other nations...

...This year we shall make approximately the same reduction below the estimates and as the bills are reported to the House shall effect a saving below the amounts actually carried in the bills for the current year of $64,000,000 in the Military Establishment and $38,000,000 in the Naval Establishment...

...Mondell was born in St...

...He asked for an appropriation of nearly $700,000,000, a large part of which was to be spent in the hurried completion of a building program costing over a billion dollars...

...The cost of such an establishment is difficult to accurately estimate...

...A total of $724,000,000, as compared with $258,000,000 before the war...

...I am quite certain we can very wisely and very properly check the speed at which we are spending money in the completion of that program and apply what we do spend to those ships which are most likely to be of value and service to us...

...It is true that the Government of Japan, stirred and spurred by the jingo sentiment of the minority opposition, was compelled to and did make an announcement of a plan and program of naval construction which, while small compared to ours, was practically impossible of accomplishment in the condition of the industries, the trade, and the finances of the Nation...

...We must in certain lines of development and construction increase them, and he who seeks an appreciable reduction of tax burdens must find it through a reduction of Army and Navy costs...

...The fact is, that the way to reduce war establishments on land and sea, the way to retrench in expenditures is to reduce and retrench...

...But this remains as yet, in the main, merely an announcement, a diminutive Roland for our monumental Oliver...

...i trust that before the fiscal year for which we are now appropriating has closed we may find means to further check enormous expenditure for these services...

...We did not take that program very seriously, most of us, but that was the announced military program of America which went forth to an astounded, astonished, war-Weary, and bankrupt world...

...As to England, her statesmen and her people have had the good sense to decline to be carried off their feet or impoverished in their resources by an effort to imitate or follow the fantastic program outlined by the administration...

...we shall not follow it...

...The actual reduction in the cost of the two establishments for the next fiscal year, if we keep within the appropriations, will, however, be more than $225,000,000 below the actual expenditures for the current fiscal year, for to the appropriations of this year must be added the enormous deficits which the administration has created in spite of the efforts of Congress to keep expenditures down...

...He has been determined in his fight against the big war program and in the closing days of the session just closed, made a remarkably able address in favor of reducing war expenditures.—Editor's Note...

...But the Secretary estimated for the Regular and Permanent Establishment an annual outlay of nearly $1,000,000,000, to which at least another billion should be added if the entire program were carried out—a program of 2,500,000 men under arms, at a cost of $2,000,000,000 annually, as compared with a total strength of the Military establishment in 1916 of about 100,000 men and an annual expenditure of about $100,-000,000...

...We can not greatly reduce the expenditures for other purposes...

...A reduction in appropriations for war establishments of approximately $100,000,000 in a year is excellent progress, but it still leaves us spending more money for these purposes than we should spend...

...In the meantime we are spending the people's money at the rate of about $150,000,-000 this year in construction largely of a character sharply challenged as to its value by the best naval experts of the world, and while we are keeping far below the administration's program we shall spend on our Navy this fiscal year considerably more than any other nation and nearly five times the amount we spent the last year before the World War...

...I am very earnest about it, because I believe that such an agreement or understanding is absolutely es-ential to the avoidance of bankruptcy by some of the important nations of the world with its attendant repudiation and measureless confusion and distress...

...Those who are complaining that the Government is not properly supporting activities of peace and development have little ground for complaint so long as they impoverish the National Treasury by the support of vast war expenditures...

...I am tremendously earnest in regard to this matter because of the all-important fact that If an agreement is not reached for the limitation of armaments and warlike expenditures in the near future the fault will be that of America, as in former days the fault was that of Germany...

...Following the lead of President Wilson, he wanted "incomparably the greatest Navy in the world...

...I am not at this time urging the abandonment of the naval construction pro gram now under way, but I think a considerable portion of it is very questionable...

...Louis in 1860 and settled in Wyoming in 1887...

...We are proposing to spend more than ought to be spent on our construction program this year, and yet the present administration is obligated to contracts which can not be well avoided...

...I do not advocate complete disarmament, either on our own motion or through international agreements...

...I do not advocate a personnel below a thoroughly effective figure, but I do know that we are spending altogether too much money for war purposes in America right now and that we can effect a great saving without destroying the effectiveness of our present establishments and without waiting for international agreements...

...Not sati-fled with the feverish development of an enormous big ship program, at a time when naval strategists and naval commanders the world over were seriously questioning the value of the superdreadnaught, the Secretary proposed a new program of construction in addition to the ambitious program under way of 38 ships at an estimated cost of about $2,000,000,000...

...The announcements and proposals of the Secretary of the Navy were even more startling...

...Enormous Expenditures for Future Wars Should Be Stopped By FRANK W. MONDELL (Congressman from Wyoming) Congressman Frank W. Mondell, majority floor leader at the beginning of the special session of the Sixty-sixth Congress, has taken an active stand against the building of a huge militaristic machine in this country...

...He was elected a member of the first state senate of Wyoming in 1890...

...But that program is the message that goes out to all the world from alleged peace-loving, nonmili-taristic America as the official announcement of the administration, accepted abroad as a mandate to, if not an expression of the will and purpose of the American people...

...I know it is impossible...

...I do not advocate any scrapping of essential and effective war establishments or material...

...But there should be a further reduction...

...Hammer Out Dreadnaughts WHILE we still feverishly hammer out dreadnaughts, which many able naval men believe will be superannuated when launched, England has given heed to her sea fighters and builders who have raised a doubt as to the efficiency, efficacy, or value of $35,000,000 battleships armed with 16-inch guns under present or probable future conditions of naval warfare...

...Some Progress Made WE ARE fortunately making some progress in the direction of a reduction in military expenditures in this country...

...No nation in the world is spending anything like the sum that we are spending this year on our war establishments on land and sea...

...The term "on land and sea" applies equally to the naval as to the military forces, for curiously enough we seem to have built up a larger Navy on the land than on the water...

...We have not followed Secretary Daniels's ambitious program...

...The amazing thing with regard to these announcements, the fact of deep significance em-phasizing the world's weariness of war, the world's prostration under its debts, the world's distrust of the efficacy of great and expensive war instruments, is to be found in the fact that even the nations against whom these vast armaments must have been aimed, if in fact they are to serve any purpose other than the satisfaction of national vanity and the advancement of the selfish interests of those who promote them, refuse to be profoundly stirred by them...

...Program of War FOLLOWING the Great War the Secretary of War proposed a permanent establishment of approximately one-half million men, and in addition to that a plan of military service, under the name of military training, which would give us a total of men under arms of from 2,000,000 to 2,500,000...

...More than that, it is our duty to lead the way, because strangely enough we are the only great Nation that since the World War has officially taken a position favorable to the increase rather than the decrease of armaments and warlike expenditures, and the one Nation in which, I fear, there is a really dangerous sentiment in favor of increases rather than decreases in military establishments...

...In closing, let me remind those who are clamoring for relief from obnoxious, vexatious, and at times almost confiscatory burdens of Federal taxation that relief can only come through a reduction of Federal expenditure, and that the only place where Federal expenditure can be largely reduced is in the war establishments...

...a sentiment limited, it is true, as to the number of people openly avowing it, but a sentiment nevertheless deeply planted, shrewdly calculating, and very persistent...

...He was elected to congress in 1895...

...IAM very earnest in my advocacy of an effort to secure an international agreement for the limitation of war establishments on land and sea and a curtailment and limitation of expenditures for these purposes...