3. The people do not care--never have cared--whether the expenditures exceed the receipts by $6,000,000 or $100,000,000, _if they get the service for the money expended_. In comment on the last, I wish here to ask if anyone has heard much loud noise from the people about the army and the navy expenditures--_expenditures larger than that of any other nation on earth_ for similar purposes? Yet, for twenty or more years, the people have paid the appropriations for--also met the “deficit” bills of--each of those departments without any noticeable “holler.” But, again, it must be pertinently asked, what have the people received in return for their _billions_ of expenditures for those two departments? Yes, what? They have had the doubtful “glory” of having their army _debauch_ some island possessions, maneuver for local entertainments and do some society stunts while on “post leave”--which “leave”, for epauletted military officers, appears to have occupied most of their time. And the people have put up, ungrumblingly, $100,000,000 to $150,000,000 or more (I forget the figures), for a navy--a navy carrying on its payrolls more “shore leave” men and clerks than it has service men. (At any rate that was the showing in a recent year). For this vast expenditure of their money the people got--_got what_? Well, for their hundreds of millions expenditure on that navy of ours, the people, to date, have received in return _newspaper reports_ of numerous magazine and gun explosions with, of course, a list of the killed and wounded, and reports of “blow-hole” or otherwise faulted armor plate, turrets, etc., of raising “The Maine,” of shoaling this, that or the other battleship, or of “sparring” or “lightering” off, to the music that is made by a “blow-in” of fifty thousand to two or three hundred thousand more of their money. Reader, if you read--if you have read--the “news”--the periodical literature--of those past twenty years, you will know that the people have received little or no returns for the vast expenditure of money--of _their_ money--that their representatives (?) have made for the Navy Department. Oh, yes, I remember that our army and navy fought to a “victorious” conclusion the “Spanish American” war. No patriotic American citizen alive at the time that war occurred will ever forget it. He will ever remember Siboney, Camp Thomas, Camp Wycoff, and the cattle-ship transports for diseased and dying soldiers. He will also remember the “embalmed beef” and the “decayed tack” and other contracts and contractors.