Ever since the late civil war ended the general of the army has annually given us earnest and intelligent warning as to the incomplete state of our fortifications, and the inability of our artillery for offensive and defensive operations against the improved armaments with which other nations have amply supplied themselves. The admiral of the navy has made similar reports. For a little while this looked like unnecessary precaution or what a distinguished Congressman once called old woman’s fussiness. Hadn’t we just triumphed over the largest armies that had been brought into the field, except by ourselves, in half a century? Hadn’t we organized a navy out of nothing, armed it splendidly, and done with it whatever was desirable that the naval power of the country should attempt? To be sure, our forts were few, but so were our harbors. The construction of some of the harbor forts in the United States was admired by the engineers of all the other civilized powers only thirty years ago, and the public knew of it. To afterward be told that these splendid and expensive structures were of no use, that they were inadequate, that two or three guns on a second or third-rate ship of some second or third-rate naval power could knock them to pieces would have been humiliating had it not been enraging. Attempts were made from time to time, in the earlier years following the close of the war, to keep our military and naval establishment in fine condition. We had admirable staff departments, and large “plants” for the manufacture of almost everything required in ordnance and ammunition. We had the nucleus of a navy and army from which a peace establishment unequalled by any on the face of the earth might have been selected. But we let it all go. No such spectacle as the disbandment and disappearance of the great armies of the North and South was ever before seen, and historians have glorified in this. Soldiers, however, whose opinions we may yet be called upon to respect, regarded the spectacle in entirely a different light. We had once before been caught--by England--napping in a most unexpected way, said these old fellows; we paid dearly for our neglect; but now we are repeating exactly the same blunder. Excellent men who [Illustration: MINES BUILDING.]