Mr. Andrew Carnegie himself is the greatest of all American armorers. He
it was who introduced the Bessemer steel process into the United States,
from which all our gun-makers and all our armament-makers have greatly
benefited. It is his name and that of Herr Krupp which Neptune reads
graven in the walls of fighting-ships. He still draws an income from his
interests in the great armor-making steel corporation--an annual income
big enough to pay the combined salaries of all the four thousand
officers of the United States Army.
Truly, if the discovery of room for a motive proves both the motive and
the crime, and is sufficient to convict these four thousand men of being
willing to sell their souls in order to raise their salaries a few
dollars, Mr. Carnegie himself is at least open to suspicion.
Likewise, the varied and many institutions--incubators of the doves of
peace--born of the great armor-maker's generosity, which continue to be
his beneficiaries, cannot escape the suspicion that taints their
pedigree.
Even the leading man--the principal star on the stage where _Uncle Sammy
unter Alles_ is being played--Dr. David Starr Jordan, is paid from the
Carnegie Peace Foundation with money equally tainted by the sweaty hands
of the grimy men who are forging armor-plate in the Smoky City.
But we all know that Mr. Carnegie is above any such suspicion. We know
that the pacifist method of reasoning must be false.
The education of our army and navy officers teaches them not alone
military science, but also national devotion and personal honor.
Devotion to duty is necessary in order to keep them in the service,
under the altogether inadequate pay they receive. The pay of the
American army and navy officers is smaller, in proportion to their
knowledge and the value of their services, than that of any other class
of men in the country. If every army and navy officer should abandon the
service for a position in civil life when he could get a raise of wages
for so doing, there would not be a corporal's guard left in the service.
Whenever a public work is placed in charge of an army or navy officer,
there is no _sub-rosa_ rake-off, or divvy with civilian contractors.
There is absolutely no graft of any kind in their service, and the
government is sure of getting the maximum amount of work for the minimum
cost. Not one cent of graft has fallen upon the palms either of Colonel
Goethals or of any other army officer in the whole course of
construction of that mighty work--the Panama Canal. New York City tried
to get Colonel Goethals as Police Commissioner. He has received scores
of offers of positions in civil life at many times his present salary,
because of the military capacity and honor that make the Goethals sort
of service very valuable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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