Military defense has centered chiefly upon the army and navy and has dealt largely with numbers and appropriations. The pending measures can hardly be said to represent a policy. The conflicting provisions scarcely constitute a program. Let us see how we have approached this subject: Under the guise of a first and immediate defense step we are urged to provide for a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains; for a road connecting two forts in Georgia; for rifle clubs, the Federal government to supply the rifles; for a national aviation corps school; for volunteer training camps for high school students; for the purchase of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal; for a naval or a military academy in this or that particular state; for a “multiroad highway”; for a marvelous continental army on a voluntary plan, whereby 88,000 men are to enlist for six months, a second 88,000 within sixty days, and so on “as long as in the opinion of the President this procedure is necessary to public welfare.” This last bill well illustrates the detached point of view we have adopted toward the defense issue--an army of _volunteers_, _i.e._ whoever see fit, is to be raised overnight, and another army two months later and so on, so long as the President thinks there is any danger. Then this volunteer force is to dissolve into civilian life, and we are all to rest easy again until the next scare comes--when we shall again leave it to the most adventurous or the most conscientious among us to make up a hasty miscellaneous _volunteer_ force to defend our homes and our liberty. There is the usual supply of academic bills providing for commissions to investigate this or that aspect of defense. No doubt accurate information and therefore investigation on many points is necessary, but--the commission is too often a death chamber. By one bill a joint committee of the House and Senate is instructed as one of a series of academic charges to “investigate the advisability of universal service.” The problem has come upon the horizon, so to speak, and in a leisurely and philosophical way we get out our field glasses to observe it. We have been doing too many sums in our defense propaganda. How many men in the army, how many millions of dollars for the navy,--all of these important,--but when an adequate plan is worked out for training _every_ man and woman, according to his or her capacity, the numbers will take care of themselves. Until we are all “volunteers” we can dispense with mathematics.