the flotilla commander
the following letter:

May 18, 1908.

My dear Captain Cone:

A great deal of attention has been paid to the feat of our battleship
fleet in encircling South America and getting to San Francisco; and it
would be hard too highly to compliment the officers and enlisted men of
that fleet for what they have done. Yet if I should draw any distinction
at all it would be in favor of you and your associates who have taken
out the torpedo flotilla. Yours was an even more notable feat, and every
officer and every enlisted man in the torpedo boat flotilla has the
right to feel that he has rendered distinguished service to the United
States navy and therefore to the people of the United States; and I wish
I could thank each of them personally. Will you have this letter read by
the commanding officer of each torpedo boat to his officers and crew?

Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HUTCH. I. CONE, U. S. N., Commanding Second Torpedo
Flotilla, Care Postmaster, San Francisco, Cal.

There were various amusing features connected with the trip. Most of
the wealthy people and "leaders of opinion" in the Eastern cities
were panic-struck at the proposal to take the fleet away from Atlantic
waters. The great New York dailies issued frantic appeals to Congress
to stop the fleet from going. The head of the Senate Committee on Naval
Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go because
Congress would refuse to appropriate the money--he being from an Eastern
seaboard State. However, I announced in response that I had enough money
to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyhow, that the fleet would
certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough
money to get the fleet back, why, it would stay in the Pacific. There
was no further difficulty about the money.

It was not originally my intention that the fleet should visit
Australia, but the Australian Government sent a most cordial invitation,
which I gladly accepted; for I have, as every American ought to have, a
hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe
that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious
emergency. The reception accorded the fleet in Australia was wonderful,
and it showed the fundamental community of feeling between ourselves and
the great commonwealth of the South Seas. The considerate, generous, and
open-handed hospitality with which the