All this applied in 1812; but it applies with tenfold greater force now. Then, as now, it was the Navy upon which the country had to depend in the event of war with a foreign power; and then, as now, one of the chief tasks of a wise and far-seeing statesmanship should have been the upbuilding of a formidable fighting navy. In 1812 untold evils followed from the failure to provide such a fighting navy; for the splendid feats of our few cruisers merely showed what could have been done if we had had a great fleet of battle-ships. But ships, guns, and men were much more easily provided in time of emergency at the beginning of this century than at the end. It takes months to build guns and ships now, where it then took days, or at the most, weeks; and it takes far longer now to train men to the management of the vast and complicated engines with which war is waged. Therefore preparation is much more difficult, and requires a much longer time; and yet wars are so much quicker, they last so comparatively short a period, and can be begun so instantaneously that there is very much less time than formerly in which to make preparations. No battle-ship can be built inside of two years under no matter what stress of circumstances, for we have not in this country the plant to enable us to work faster. Cruisers would take almost as long. Even torpedo boats, the smallest of all, could not be put in first-class form under ninety days. Guns available for use against a hostile invader would require two or three months; and in the case of the larger guns, the only ones really available for the actual shock of battle, could not be made under eight months. Rifles and military munitions of every kind would require a corresponding length of time for preparation; in most cases we should have to build, not merely the weapons we need, but the plant with which to make them in any large quantity. Even if the enemy did not interfere with our efforts, which they undoubtedly would, it would, therefore, take from three to six months after the outbreak of a war, for which we were unprepared, before we could in the slightest degree remedy our unreadiness. During this six months it would be impossible to overestimate the damage that could be done by a resolute and powerful antagonist. Even at the end of that time we would only be beginning to prepare to parry his attack, for it would be two years before we could attempt to return it. Since the change in military conditions in modern times there has never been an instance in which a war between any two nations has lasted more than about two years. In most recent wars the operations of the first ninety days have decided the result of the conflict. All that followed has been a mere vain effort to strive against the stars in their courses by doing at the twelfth hour what it was useless to do after the eleventh.