It is we ourselves who are handicapped by isolation, not the enemy--isolation not of space, but of time. If it be true that God fights on the side that is the best equipped with artillery, God could not be expected to fight on the side of our militia. Our militia at the present time has only sixty-five organized batteries, with four guns each. It is absolutely imperative that we should have seventy-nine additional batteries, with six guns each, even moderately to complete our equipment in field artillery. Think of it! Our militia has less than half the number of field batteries necessary for battle. It is also worthy of mention that these batteries are without ammunition trains, and without officers or men for the new organization, and we have not the necessary horses to draw the batteries we already have. Our militia is entirely without siege artillery, while neither our militia nor our regular Army is equipped with field mortars or howitzers of the larger calibers now used abroad, which have been so terribly effective in the present war. Not only are foreign nations far ahead of us in actual existing war strength in men and guns, but also they have each an efficient system whereby their present equipment may be rapidly expanded. We have no such system. OUR FATAL ISOLATION Never yet have we perceived the important truth that in this age of war machinery, requiring months and years to create, isolation by time is an equivalent to isolation by distance. Our own isolation in the matter of the time required for us to raise and train armies and equip them with shoulder-rifles, automatic guns, quick-firing cannon, siege howitzers, ammunition supply trains, and to build, man, and equip with guns, battleships, battle-cruisers, torpedo-boat destroyers, submarines, and, no less important, to equip flying machines with trained aviators, would be a far more serious handicap to us than our isolation by the seas would be to our enemies. The _Scientific American_, February 6, 1915, says: * * * * * "_We could not supply the men for the necessary field-artillery organization for four months, or the ammunition trains and ammunition for a year and a half, and not a gun is yet made or appropriated for, for the volunteers. The militia is short in cavalry and requires over fifty additional troops of cavalry to provide the divisional cavalry alone. There is an alarming absence of auxiliary troops. Most of the militia cavalry is poorly mounted, much of it practically without mounts, and, with the exception of a few special organizations, has had little or no field training. It needs months of hard work in camp. Engineers, signal and medical troops of the militia are as a rule insufficient in number, deficient in organization, equipment, and reserve supplies, and very many of them are far below their prescribed strength and without available personnel to fill them up._" * * * * *