254 State Papers and Addresses

did National Guard outfits, Maryland will have instantly available her full
quota of potential defenders of our State and of our Country.

With preparations for administration of the Selective Training and Serv-
''ce Act well behind us, the next important phase of defense activities facing
the administration will be the formation of a State defense force, to take over
when the Maryland National Guard units go into Federal Service in January.
Under war as waged today this State defense becomes infinitely more im-
portant than in any previous war because by the very nature of offensive
warfare today it would be possible for an attacking force to send its bombers
cruising over our cities and our countryside, pouring a hail of bombs on
strategic military posts and industries. It is for this reason that the projected
State defense force becomes of great importance, and must be worked out in
a way to assure the maximum in effectiveness and mobility.

Fortunately for Maryland, and for America, there are available hundreds
of thousands of veterans of the last war, many of whom, though above military
age, are still vigorous enough for any demands of State defense, and thoroughly
capable, because of their previous military experience, to meet the exacting
demands of modern defensive warfare.

You and I, and all of us, are earnest in the hope and the prayer that war
may not come to us, while we put our trust in God, let us not neglect to keep
our powder dry.

Economically there is cause for gratification in the splendid financial
position of our State at this important moment. Financially, we are better
prepared from a fiscal standpoint than many other states in the Union about
us. Maryland has ceased living on borrowed monies, has stopped the dubious
practice of leaving to future generations the cost of present-day government.
Maryland is living within its income. More than that, it is effecting savings
from its income. In the twenty-one months since this present administration
can into office, more than $1, 000, 000 has reverted to the State Treasury from
departmental appropriations, and the State surplus has risen, as of September
30th, to the very gratifying total of $5, 400, 000. Yet we have not spared doing
the things that Maryland needs to meet modern requirements. We have ex-
tended facilities for the care of our aged and infirmed, our feeble-minded and
our tubercular. We have improved educational facilities for normal, as well
as the sub-normal children. Our roads have been allotted every penny of the
millions collected and earmarked for road purposes, for a net gain in such
expenditures of nearly $5, 000, 000 during 1940 over the preceding year.

NAVY DAY

Lord Baltimore Hotel, October 28, 1940
Baltimore

THE slogan of this 1940 banquet—Maryland Means Navy to the Nation—is
one to capture the imagination of every Marylander, and particularly of
everyone, who, like myself, has had the good fortune to live in Navy Town
itself. From the days of the old Baltimore Clipper, Maryland always has had