ould have been no exposition to celebrate the building of the canal.
In everything we did in connection with the acquiring of the Panama
Zone we acted in a way to do absolute justice to all other nations, to
benefit all other nations, including especially the adjacent States,
and to render the utmost service, from the standpoint alike of honor
and of material interest, to the United States. I am glad that this is
the case, for if there were the slightest taint upon our title or our
conduct it would have been an improper and shameful thing to hold this
exposition.

The building of the canal nearly doubles the potential efficiency of
the United States Navy, as long as it is fortified and is in our
hands; but if left unfortified it would at once become a menace to us.

What is true as to our proper attitude in regard to the canal is no
less true as regards our proper attitude concerning the interests of
the United States taken as a whole. The canal is to be a great agency
for peace; it can be such only, and exactly in proportion as it
increased our potential efficiency in war.

Those men who like myself believe that the highest duty of this nation
is to prepare itself against war so that it may safely trust its honor
and interest to its own strength are advocating merely that we do as a
nation regarding our general interests what we have already done in
Panama. If, instead of acting as this nation did in the Fall of 1903,
we had confined ourselves to debates in Congress and diplomatic notes;
if, in other words, we had treated elocution as a substitute for
action, we would have done nobody any good, and for ourselves we would
have earned the hearty derision of all other nations--the canal would
not even have been begun at the present day, and there would have been
a general consensus of international opinion to the effect that we
were totally unfit to perform any of the duties of international life,
especially in connection with the Western hemisphere.

Unfortunately in the last few years we have as regards pretty much
everything not connected with the Isthmus of Panama so failed in our
duty of national preparedness that I fear there actually is a general
consensus of opinion to precisely this effect among the nations of the
world as regards the United States at the present day. This is
primarily due to our unpreparedness.

We have been culpably, well-nigh criminally, remiss as a nation in not
preparing ourselves, and