recedented and appalling. There is reason to fear
that the time is near, if it be not already at hand, when several of the
countries of Europe will find it difficult to do for their people what
they have hitherto been always easily able to do,--many essential and
fundamental things. At any rate, they will need our help and our
manifold services as they have never needed them before; and we should
be ready, more fit and ready than we have ever been.

It is of equal consequence that the nations whom Europe has usually
supplied with innumerable articles of manufacture and commerce of which
they are in constant need and without which their economic development
halts and stands still can now get only a small part of what they
formerly imported and eagerly look to us to supply their all but empty
markets. This is particularly true of our own neighbors, the States,
great and small, of Central and South America. Their lines of trade have
hitherto run chiefly athwart the seas, not to our ports but to the
ports of Great Britain and of the older continent of Europe. I do not
stop to inquire why, or to make any comment on probable causes. What
interests us just now is not the explanation but the fact, and our duty
and opportunity in the presence of it. Here are markets which we must
supply, and we must find the means of action. The United States, this
great people for whom we speak and act, should be ready, as never
before, to serve itself and to serve mankind; ready with its resources,
its energies, its forces of production, and its means of distribution.

It is a very practical matter, a matter of ways and means. We have the
resources, but are we fully ready to use them? And, if we can make ready
what we have, have we the means at hand to distribute it? We are not
fully ready; neither have we the means of distribution. We are willing,
but we are not fully able. We have the wish to serve and to serve
greatly, generously; but we are not prepared as we should be. We are not
ready to mobilize our resources at once. We are not prepared to use them
immediately and at their best, without delay and without waste.

To speak plainly, we have grossly erred in the way in which we have
stunted and hindered the development of our merchant marine. And now,
when we need ships, we have not got them. We have year after year
debated, without end or conclusion, the best policy to pursue with
regard to the use of the ores and forests and water power