ent of waterways, are all
proper government functions which must involve large expenditure if
properly performed. While some of them, like the reclamation of arid
lands, are made to pay for themselves, others are of such an indirect
benefit that this cannot be expected of them. A permanent improvement,
like the Panama Canal, should be treated as a distinct enterprise, and
should be paid for by the proceeds of bonds, the issue of which will
distribute its cost between the present and future generations in
accordance with the benefits derived. It may well be submitted to the
serious consideration of Congress whether the deepening and control of
the channel of a great river system, like that of the Ohio or of the
Mississippi, when definite and practical plans for the enterprise have
been approved and determined upon, should not be provided for in the
same way.

Then, too, there are expenditures of Government absolutely necessary if
our country is to maintain its proper place among the nations of the
world, and is to exercise its proper influence in defense of its own
trade interests in the maintenance of traditional American policy
against the colonization of European monarchies in this hemisphere, and
in the promotion of peace and international morality. I refer to the
cost of maintaining a proper army, a proper navy, and suitable
fortifications upon the mainland of the United States and in its
dependencies.

We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in
time of emergency, in cooperation with the national militia and under
the provisions of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand
into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and
to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the
maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of
President Monroe.

Our fortifications are yet in a state of only partial completeness, and
the number of men to man them is insufficient. In a few years however,
the usual annual appropriations for our coast defenses, both on the
mainland and in the dependencies, will make them sufficient to resist
all direct attack, and by that time we may hope that the men to man them
will be provided as a necessary adjunct. The distance of our shores from
Europe and Asia of course reduces the necessity for maintaining under
arms a great army, but it does not take away the requirement of mere
prudence--that we shoul