pathy with the movement to
encourage American shipping, but, for sectional or other reasons, a
large proportion of them objected to the particular form in which the
end was sought to be reached in the last Congress. So long as the voice
and opinion of Mr. Roosevelt have any weight, it is not to be expected
that the subject is going to be allowed to drop; and with his strength
of will and determination of character it is at least not improbable
that, where successive Presidents before him have failed, he will,
whether still in the Presidential chair or not, ultimately succeed, and
that not the smallest of the reasons for gratitude to him which future
generations of Americans will recognise will be that he helped to
recreate the nation's merchant marine. At present, less than nine
percent of the American foreign commerce is carried in American bottoms,
a situation which is not only sufficiently humiliating to a people who
but a short while ago hoped to dominate the carrying trade of all
countries but also, what perhaps hurts the Americans almost as much as
the injury to their pride, absurdly wasteful and unbusinesslike.
English shipping circles may take the prospect of efforts being made by
the United States to recover some measure of its lost prestige seriously
or not: but it would be inadvisable to admit as a factor in their
calculations any theory as to the inability of the Americans either to
build ships or sail them as well as the best. With the growth of an
American merchant marine--if a growth comes--will come also the obvious
need of a larger navy; and other nations might do well to remember that
Americans have never yet shown any inability to fight their ships, any
more than they have to build or sail them.

In basing any estimate of the fighting strength of the United States on
the figures of her army or navy as they look on paper, the people of
other nations--Englishmen no less than any--leave out of sight, because
they have no standard for measuring, that remarkable attribute of the
American character, which is the greatest of the national assets, the
combination of self-reliance and resourceful ingenuity which seems to
make the individual American equal to almost any fortune. It is
remarkable, but not beyond explanation. It is an essentially Anglo-Saxon
trait. The British have always possessed it in a degree, if inferior to
the present day American, at least in excess of other peoples. The
history of the Empi