Must Be Second Seapower.

New York Times 100 years ago today, June 25, 1913:
Admiral Dewey Says Only England Should Outstrip This Country.
    WASHINGTON, June 24. — An adequate American Navy means a fleet second only to that of Great Britain, and "inadequacy is an invitation to war, " in the opinion of Admiral Dewey, ranking naval officer of the United States.
    "I believe it is the duty of each generation to pay its own insurance and not to thrust its burdens upon the generations that come after; and the insurance for peace is a navy strong enough to compel it, " says the Admiral in an article written for the programme for Navy Day at Newport, R. I., on July 2. and made public to-day. "The only function and justification for the existence of a navy is the preservation of peace. To perform this function the navy must be adequate; and, though so much discussed in these recent times, the word  'adequate, ' as applied to the navy, has but one meaning, and that is: An 'adequate navy' is a navy of a strength sufficient to meet and defeat any probable enemy. This strength is not absolute, but is relative and varies from period to period as the other naval powers of the world vary. At the present period 'adequacy' on our part calls for a navy second in strength to that of England only.
    "We ourselves, through lack of foresight of our fathers and grandfathers, paid the penalty of our generation in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and our sons and grandsons have been paying the costs of the billions of dollars wasted and the hundreds of millions in pensions for which they were mortgaged; and they still continue to pay.
    "We are paying to-day for the navy, as an insurance which does not insure us, roughly $1. 00 per capita per annum. Besides what has already been paid in lives and money, we are still mortgaged, by lack of foresight in our fathers, to the extent of the national debt and the additional $1.80 per capita per annum that we are paying in pensions.
    "Shall our lack of foresight continue this system of mortgaging the coming generations, or shall we add the relatively small sum needed to the insufficient insurance we all pay to make that insurance adequate? "