Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/280

268 Of course, the ratio of growth decreases, but the size of the head increases in most persons up to the twentieth year, and usually until about the twenty-fifth.

Editor Popular Science Monthly: 


 * Whatever the influence has been that has been brought to bear for the past five or six years or more, it certainly has had the effect of moving Congress to appropriate money toward the building of some new war-vessels for our navy, and improving our coast-defenses. No doubt all this was very necessary; but do you know that the signs of the times prompt me to suggest that there are other things that our navy might be doing during these long days of peace, which would reflect far more credit upon us as a nation than if we had the most powerful fleet of war-vessels afloat in the world? Civilized nations are rapidly coming to that chapter in their history wherein it will be plainly shown that those states which will command the greatest measure of respect among us will be the ones which have best advanced the progress of science, art, and learning, and developed the culture that accrues therefrom, and not those who can cast the biggest cannon, and invent engines which will kill the greatest number of human beings in the shortest space of time. Even aside from this, it would almost seem as if our people overlook the fact sometimes that were Congress to appropriate to-day sufficient money to build a navy for this country which would be equal to the navies of such nations as England, France, or Italy, before we would have the opportunity to use it in actual warfare it would be thoroughly outstripped again by the marvelous rapidity of the improvement that is constantly going on in naval architecture. The nations I have mentioned have to be constantly renewing their war-vessels in order to keep up with the advance in such matters, and are continually selling their old patterns to the lesser powers. We have not the competition in the United States to excite any such movement as this, and the men-of-war we build to-day will in all probability be as absolutely powerless to compete with the massive floating steel and iron fortresses of France and England of the future, as if we were to build them as invulnerable as those vessels now are, and attempt to engage with what the same nations will surely possess twenty-five years hence.

One of the great outcries made by the officers of our navy is, that "we are not held in the proper respect on foreign stations," or, in other words, our puny little fishing-smacks do not favorably compare with the ponderous ironclad hulks that represent the naval powers of the world, and tower over them.

Now, I have a notion that the United States would gain an enormous amount of respect in the eyes of foreign nations, if not in the eyes of foreign navies, had she upon any foreign station one of her very best men-of-war and two corvettes, completely remodeled and thoroughly equipped both as regards men, officers, and scientific staff, and the necessary appliances to properly prosecute an exploring expedition around the world. It would seem to me that the commander of such a little fleet, were it anchored in the harbor of Shanghai or Rio Janeiro to-day, would feel a far greater pride in his country than were he in command of a seventeenth-rate gunboat, comparatively speaking, and there should steam in, with flying colors, such an infernal engine of destruction as the French man-of-war the Foudroyant or the Dévastation. With all the iron and steel we could rivet on to some of our best war-vessels to-day, they could not be made sufficiently effective to engage, with the slightest hope of success, such vessels as the two I have mentioned. Yet a very moderate expenditure on the part of Congress would splendidly refit them for exploring vessels in every sense of the word, and render them creditable institutions of the nation.

I am convinced that the day will come in the history of the world, whether we hold together as one country or not, when all the exploits of our navy during the war of the rebellion will pale, so far as the credit to humanity is concerned, by what was accomplished by the Wilkes Exploring Expedition; and England will blush when she compares the victories of her Nelson with the results obtained by the Challenger Expedition, and confesses to humanity which was the more important to the progress of the world.

Smile if you will, but I believe the day is coming for us in our race when national disputes will be settled without costing a million lives, and the breaking a million hearts—when war between countries will be as much a thing of the past as the duel is now between individuals; and finally, when the functions of our brain will prevail over the inherited instincts that came down, or perhaps I had better said passed up with us, along with our canine teeth.

Let us repeat, at as early a day as possible, the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, and see whether we do not gain credit, respect, and power by the movement, to say nothing of all that is sure to accrue from it in other particulars. Very respectfully,