land. In addition to the
school-house, libraries are multiplying with rapidity, art galleries and
museums of science are rising everywhere, temples to music and the drama
are found in all our cities, the press is turning out books and
newspapers with almost abnormal energy, and in everything calculated to
enhance the intelligence of the people the United States has no
superior, if any equal, among the nations of the earth.

It may seem unnecessary to tell the people of the United States the
story of their growth. The greatness to which this nation has attained
is too evident to need to be put in words. It has, in fact, been made
evident in two great and a multitude of smaller exhibitions in which the
marvels of American progress have been shown, either by themselves or in
contrast with those of foreign lands. The first of these, the Centennial
Exposition of 1876, had a double effect: it opened our eyes at once to
our triumphs and our deficiencies, to the particulars in which we
excelled and those in which we were inferior to foreign peoples. In the
next great exhibition, that at Chicago in 1893, we had the satisfaction
to perceive, not only that we had made great progress in our points of
superiority, but had worked nobly and heartily to overcome our defects,
and were able to show ourselves the equal of Europe in almost every
field of human thought and skill. In architecture a vision of beauty was
shown such as the world had never before seen, and in the general domain
of art the United States no longer had need to be ashamed of what it had
to show.

And now, having briefly summed up the steps of progress of the United
States, I may close with some consideration of the problem which we
confront in our new position as the Greater Republic, the lord of
islands spread widely over the seas. Down to the year 1898 this country
held a position of isolation, so far as its political interests were
concerned. Although the sails of its merchant ships whitened every sea
and its commerce extended to all lands, its boundaries were confined to
the North American continent, its political activities largely to
American interests. Jealous of any intrusion by foreign nations upon
this hemisphere, it warned them off, while still in its feeble youth, by
the stern words of the Monroe doctrine, and has since shown France and
England, by decisive measures, that this doctrine is more than an empty
form of words.

Such was our position at th