The Annexation of America
"I think, All Highest, we had better not insist upon the annexation of America." In the inscription "Ten Million Men Between 21 and 30" on the Statue of Liberty, Raemaekers has as usual gone to the heart of things. Ten million trained citizen soldiers!!! What an insurance of peace and security against attack or insult. Universal Citizen Military Education and Training. From the beginning the first article in our International Creed has been the Monroe Doctrine—America for Americans. If the result of the present war shall be to add two additional items to that creed, namely, Universal Military Education and Training, and the United States, the First Air Power in the world, it will be worth all that it costs, and this great nation can go on in peace and security to work out the mighty destiny awaiting it. Raemaekers' placing "All Highest" and his aide upon the conning tower of a submarine, suggests another most vital matter at this present time. The submarine has held the world's spotlight for the last two years. Its deadly efficiency is universally conceded. That deadly efficiency is the direct result of Admiral von Tirpitz's unyielding insistence on a centralized, independent, untrammeled Department for the submarine. We must adopt the same methods if we expect to attain equally deadly efficiency in the air.
But the possibilities of the aeroplane are greater than those of the submarine. The aeroplane is capable of offensive in the air against aeroplanes or dirigibles, on the surface of the sea against ships, and under the sea against submarines. The offensive capabilities of the submarine can and soon will be restricted to under-surface activities.
Again, the submarine is limited to the oceans. The aeroplane is limited by nothing. It can go wherever there is air, and that means everywhere. In other words, the aeroplane is the master of the submarine.
If we today had a thousand swift, heavily armed seaplanes continuously patrolling the water within a radius of three hundred miles of Sandy Hook (from Portland, Maine, to Norfolk, Virginia), we should have our five Atlantic sea gateways well guarded, and could feel secure against any further serious damage from these pests.
Thus equipped, submarine raids upon our coast would be an impossibility; and even the imagination of a Raemaekers would not dare to conceive of a hostile submarine within sight of the Statue of Liberty.
PEARY.
