eemingly fatal chance under the guns of Morro
Castle--through all the years, I say, and through all that they have
brought in the way of armed strife, the nation never for one moment has
ever doubted the United States Navy.

And neither did Woodrow Wilson doubt. He knew his men. But he wanted to
look them all in the eye and tell them that he knew their mettle, knew
what they could do, and held no thought of their failure. Every fighting
man fights the better for an incident of this sort.

Week by week since that time there has come to us from out the grim
North Sea, from the Mediterranean and the broad Atlantic abundant
testimony, many a story of individual and collective heroism, of ships
that have waged gallant fights, of Americans who have lived gallantly,
who have died gloriously--and above all there has come to us the
gratifying record of reduced submarine losses, as to which there is
abundant testimony--notably from the great maritime and naval power of
the world--Great Britain--that our navy has played a vital part in the
diminution of the undersea terror.

Less than a year after President Wilson boarded the flag-ship of the
Atlantic Fleet our navy had more than 150 naval vessels--battleships,
cruisers, submarines and tenders, gunboats, coast-guard cutters,
converted yachts, tugs, and numerous vessels of other types for special
purposes--in European waters. Serving on these vessels were nearly
40,000 men, more than half the strength of our navy before we entered
the war--and this number did not include the personnel of troop-ships,
supply-vessels, armed guards for merchantmen, signal-men, wireless
operators and the like, who go into the war zone on recurrent trips.

Submarines have been fought and sunk or captured--how many, a wise naval
policy bids absolute silence. Our antisubmarine activities now cover in
war areas alone over 1,000,000 square miles of sea. In a six-months
period one detachment of destroyers steamed over 1,000,000 of miles in
the war zone, attacked 81 submarines, escorted 717 single vessels,
participated in 86 convoys, and spent one hundred and fifty days at sea.

There have been mistakes, of course; there have been delays which have
tried the patience not only of the country, but of the Navy Department.
But they were inevitable under the high pressure of affairs as they
suddenly set in when we went to war. But in looking back over the year
and a half of conflict, considering the hundreds o