East St. Louis Daily Journal

NEW IMMIGRATION POLICY MAKES WAR IMPERATIVE, SAYS REAR ADMIRAL.
Peace will be no nearer in the coming generations than it has been in the past, according to Rear Admiral W. L. Rodgers, former chairman of the executive committee of the navy general board, who declared that despite the horrors of modern warfare, the fighting instinct would remain.
Admiral Rodgers asserted that America needed a strong navy to protect its new immigration policy against nations that seek expansion because of the population question.
"The whole regulation of life by any community depends upon the population and its economic means of support.
The more land a given community holds, and the greater and more varied its agricultural and mineral wealth, the greater the possibilities of the prosperity of its inhabitants. But the area of the globe is limited, and so is the population which it can support.
Already many local areas are over-populated and their people flow over the borders to find an easier life elsewhere. For long the United States has invited immigration, but with diminishing warmth as time has passed, and this spring restrictive legislation culminated in an act which caused protest by Rumania and Italy and violent resentment in Japan.
Quick Assets for Warfare.
"We must be armed today to maintain America for its present occupants and their descendants.
In order to preserve a high standard of personal and national well-being, we wish a homogeneous population. Our original English, Scandinavian and Teutonic stock is not yet too heavily crossed with dissimilar races. Other nations desire to dump their offscourings here, and we need force to hold America for ourselves. The world much envies us for our riches, but respects us only according to our strength.
"People talk much of the horrors of modern war. If the spirit of warfare is alive in the souls of men they will find means to fight, and in so much as the regular armies are reduced, so much the more will nations depend upon the quick assets for warfare available in commercial utilities capable of transformation for military service. Chief among these quick assets we may see commercial airplanes using the products of commercial chemistry for combatant purposes.
Sees Need of Strong Navy Now.
"We need a strong navy now to protect our immigration policy against nations which complain of their own over-population, and our descendants will no doubt make use of armed force to protect their standards of living when the distribution of population of various races and the productivity of the soil make it seem advantageous to them.
"No one can foresee just how that realignment of the driving forces of the world will take place, but I feel sure that peace is no nearer the next generation, or the next, than it has been to previous generations.
The nations of the world must continue to compete for a place upon which to stand, and we can only afford to be generous to others when we are not in want ourselves.
"In a general discussion of world affairs, it appears to me that a great many people who advocate generosity and forbearance toward other nations less rich and less powerful than ourselves do not perceive that such generosity must be limited in its extent or we will lose our own power to be generous. We are in a way to permit our national sympathy for others to go so far as to become a national weakness, and I regret that we hear so little of maintaining the armed strength of the United States in order that we may continue to be rich and prosperous and have it within our power to be generous when and to whom we please."