I could advance no other reasons, if I knew of no better
argument in favor of a lock canal, my convictions would sustain the
project which can be completed within a measurable distance of years and
for the benefit and to the advantage of the present generation. Time
flies, and the years pass rapidly. Shall this project languish and
linger and become the spoil of political controversy and a subject of
political attack? Can we conceive of anything more likely to prove
disastrous to the canal project than political strife, which proved the
undoing of the French canal enterprise at Panama?

Shall the success of this great project be imperiled by the possible
changes in the fortunes of parties? Shall we incur the risk that changes
in economic conditions, hard times, or panic and industrial depressions
may bring about? Time flies, and in the progress of industry and
commerce, in international competition and the growth of modern nations,
no factor is of more supreme importance than the years, with new
opportunities for political and commercial development. Shall we, then,
neglect our chances? Shall we fail to make the most of this the greatest
opportunity for the extension of our commerce and navigation into the
most distant seas which will ever come to us in our history, because of
the demands of idealists, who, with theoretical notions of the
ultimately desirable, would deprive the nation and the world of what is
necessary and indispensable to those who are living now?

Vast commercial and political consequences will follow the opening of
the transisthmian waterway. In the annals of commerce and navigation it
is not conceivable that there will ever be a greater event or one
fraught with more momentous consequences than uninterrupted navigation
between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Little enough can we comprehend or
anticipate what the far-distant future will bring forth, but this much
we know--that it is our duty to solve the problems of _to-day_ and not
to indulge in dreams and fancies in a vain effort to solve the problems
of a far-distant future.

But _money_ also counts. Can we defend an expenditure of an additional
$100,000,000 or more for objects so remote, and upon a basis of theory
and fact so slender and so open to question, when a plan and a project
feasible and practicable is before us which will meet all of our needs
and the needs of generations to come? Shall we disregard in the building
of this canal every p