rs us the only means of making our insistence upon the
Monroe Doctrine anything but a subject of derision to whatever nation
chooses to disregard it. We desire the peace which comes as of right to
the just man armed; not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to the
craven and the weakling.

It is not possible to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships
must be built and the men trained long in advance. Some auxiliary
vessels can be turned into makeshifts which will do in default of any
better for the minor work, and a proportion of raw men can be mixed with
the highly trained, their shortcomings being made good by the skill of
their fellows; but the efficient fighting force of the Navy when pitted
against an equal opponent will be found almost exclusively in the war
ships that have been regularly built and in the officers and men who
through years of faithful performance of sea duty have been trained
to handle their formidable but complex and delicate weapons with the
highest efficiency. In the late war with Spain the ships that dealt the
decisive blows at Manila and Santiago had been launched from two to
fourteen years, and they were able to do as they did because the men in
the conning towers, the gun turrets, and the engine-rooms had through
long years of practice at sea learned how to do their duty.

Our present Navy was begun in 1882. At that period our Navy
consisted of a collection of antiquated wooden ships, already almost as
out of place against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alcibiades
and Hamilcar--certainly as the ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that
time did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the wise
legislation of the Congress and the successful administration of a
succession of patriotic Secretaries of the Navy, belonging to both
political parties, the work of upbuilding the Navy went on, and ships
equal to any in the world of their kind were continually added; and what
was even more important, these ships were exercised at sea singly and in
squadrons until the men aboard them were able to get the best possible
service out of them. The result was seen in the short war with Spain,
which was decided with such rapidity because of the infinitely greater
preparedness of our Navy than of the Spanish Navy.

While awarding the fullest honor to the men who actually commanded
and manned the ships which destroyed the Spanish sea forces in the
Philippines and in Cuba, we must not