es not permit the postponement of it to the
hour of impending hostilities. To put into the water a first-class
battle-ship, fully armored, within a year after the laying of her
keel, as has been done latterly in England, is justly considered an
extraordinary exhibition of the nation's resources for naval
shipbuilding; and there yet remained to be done the placing of her
battery, and many other matters of principal detail essential to her
readiness for sea. This time certainly would not be less for
ourselves, doing our utmost.

War is simply a political movement, though violent and exceptional in
its character. However sudden the occasion from which it arises, it
results from antecedent conditions, the general tendency of which
should be manifest long before to the statesmen of a nation, and to at
least the reflective portion of the people. In such anticipation, such
forethought, as in the affairs of common life, lies the best hope of
the best solution,--peace by ordinary diplomatic action; peace by
timely agreement, while men's heads are cool, and the crisis of fever
has not been reached by the inflammatory utterances of an unscrupulous
press, to which agitated public apprehension means increase of
circulation. But while the maintenance of peace by sagacious prevision
is the laurel of the statesman, which, in failing to achieve except by
force, he takes from his own brow and gives to the warrior, it is none
the less a necessary part of his official competence to recognize that
in public disputes, as in private, there is not uncommonly on both
sides an element of right, real or really believed, which prevents
either party from yielding, and that it is better for men to fight
than, for the sake of peace, to refuse to support their convictions of
justice. How deplorable the war between the North and South! but more
deplorable by far had it been that either had flinched from the
maintenance of what it believed to be fundamental right. On questions
of merely material interest men may yield; on matters of principle
they may be honestly in the wrong; but a conviction of right, even
though mistaken, if yielded without contention, entails a
deterioration of character, except in the presence of force
demonstrably irresistible--and sometimes even then. Death before
dishonor is a phrase which at times has been abused infamously, but it
none the less contains a vital truth.

To provide a force adequate to maintain the nation's cau