NEW LEGISLATION PROPOSED.

This consideration of the serious threefold disadvantages, which
American shipowners and seamen must now meet, brings us to the
definite, imperative question, What remedy does the Merchant Marine
Commission propose to Congress?
Our answer is embodied, as the result of eight months of inquiry
and reflection, in the accompanying bill “To promote the national
defense, to create a force of naval volunteers, to establish American
ocean-mail lines to foreign markets, to promote commerce. and to provide
 revenue from tonnage.”
For several years the Navy Department has been urging Congress
to authorize a naval reserve of professional officers and seamen of the
merchant service, who shall be in effect a militia of the sea, holding
the same relation to the Regular Navy that is held to the Regular
Army by the organized State militia and National Guard.

OUR NEED OF A REAL NAVAL RESERVE.

The United States is the only maritime power, except Russia, which
has not made provision for this essential factor of national defense.
There is, it is true, a naval militia now existing in a few States, but as
a rule it is composed of landsmen and is valuable in war only as an
auxiliary in coast and harbor protection, where its advantage is unquestioned.
 = Buta naval reserve in the true sense, composed of men habituated
 to the sea, trained in its difficult work and hardened to its perils,
has now virtually no existence in the United States, and nobody understands
 this better than the good and loyal officers of the State forces,
especially those who, because of our sheer lack of such a reserve, were
hastily drawn into the naval service on converted yachts or tughoats,
or deep-sea cruisers, in the war with Spain. Not a few militia officers
and men had at that time their first experience out of sight of land,
and for the first time saw the sun go down behind an ocean horizon.
“off soundings.”
A DANGEROUS NEGLECT.

There is, as has been said, one other maritime power besides the
United States that is destitute of a trained seafaring reserve, and is in
the same plight of fatuous unpreparedness. Asa neutral observer,
quoted by Rear-Admiral Luce to the Commission, page 1741. said of
the Russian Baltic squadron before it sailed away:
The units of the ships’ companies are brave, but as a rule are wanting in the
high-sea experience and the elasticity that enable the seamen of the American and
Brtich navies to adapt themselves to new and difficult responsibilities as they arise.