"More Army"

Admiral Edward Walter Eberle, Chief of Naval Operations, has his post aboard no ship but at a desk in the Navy Department, for after Edwin Denby and Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., he is the highest officer of the Navy Department, and its executive in practical operations. It is his business to control the operations of the fleet, prepare its plans for war. He is ex-officio Chairman of the General Board and ranking member for the Navy (coordinate with the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Pershing) on the Joint Board. To his desk will come the report of the umpires of the recent sham war at Panama (TIME, Jan. 28) in which the Pacific Fleet and the Panama Canal were "destroyed" or "rendered useless."

Admiral Eberle knows full well what the loss of the Panama Canal in war-time would mean. In 1898 he was aboard the Oregon on her famous run around the Horn to join Admiral Sampson against the Spanish fleet at Santiago, Cuba. Since then he has been twice around the world in the line of duty: once with the Atlantic Fleet on its circumnavigation in 1908, again in command of the gunboat Wheeling. Six months ago he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations. Now the umpires come to him with the verdict: "The Canal is wrecked; the fleet is wrecked--on paper. An enemy can wreck them again--without paper. Something must be done. The Navy needs more Army." Both as a member of the Joint Board and as practical adviser to the Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Eberle must design the remedy for a naval ill of which the chief peculiarity is need for more protection from the Army. The report which he receives is confidential but its main features are already known from a "critique" held by the umpires last week. Assembled at the Colon Y. M. C. A., 400 officers heard the critique conducted by Admiral Robert E, Coontz, Commander of the U. S. Fleet, and Major General John L. Hines, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army. Admiral Coontz was the predecessor of Admiral Eberle as Chief of Naval Operations and former commander of divisions both of the Atlantic and of the Pacific fleets. In conjunction with General Hines he reached the conclusion "that the Canal is open to attack from the air, to bombardment and to raids."

The recommendations, arrived at as a result of the "terrible effect" of the sham attack two weeks ago, are chiefly:

1) That the shore defenses of the Canal should be strengthened by installing four 16-inch guns on the Atlantic and five on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. (These guns are available to the Army from the Navy as result of the so-called Disarmament Treaty, and need only to be mouted at the Canal.) In the test attack ships bombarded the Canal out of range of its present guns.

2) That the peacetime garrison of the Canal should be strengthened from the present 8,000 or 9,000 men to 12,000 or 15,000. In the recent attack, half of the Canal guns could not be manned because of insufficient personnel; a landing was effected and a fort taken by hostile marines because the garrison was inadequate.

3) That the air force should be materially strengthened to check the hostile fleet.

4) That a system of latitudinal and longitudinal roads should be constructed to make possible proper communication and transport in the Canal Zone. Except the railroad, which was theoretically shot to pieces two weeks ago, there is no transportation route across the Isthmus.

5) That more scout and patrol ships should be assigned to duty at Panama.

6) That necessary alterations should be made so that all guns in the fleet can be elevated as high as those in foreign fleets, in order that they may not be outranged.

The cost of carrying out these recommendations is estimated at $15,000,000 for the first year and $10,000,000 a year, thereafter.