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engined, as to insure the best results. But let us also keep ever in mind that all of this would not have availed if it had not been for the wisdom of the men who during the preceding fifteen years had built up the navy. Keep in mind the secretaries of the navy during those years; keep in mind the Senators and Congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to train the crews; remember also those who actually did build the ships, the armor and the guns; and remember the admirals and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser and torpedo-boat on the high seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gunnery and the power of acting together, which their successors utilized so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember the converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the navy, and for the sake of the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the Congressional Record. Find out the Senators and Congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships, who opposed the purchase of armor, without which the ships

were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance for the navy department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea captains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts

were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor; and we won in spite of their sinister opposition.

"Now, apply all this to our public men of to-day. Our army has never been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy millions of freemen is in danger of losing its liberties from the existence of an army of one hundred thousand men, threefourths of whom will be employed in certain foreign islands, in certain coast fortresses, and on Indian reservations. No man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any

event. To no body of men in the United States is the country so much indebted as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army and navy; there is no body from which the country has less to fear; and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be more anxious to upbuild.

"Our army needs complete reorganization— not merely enlarging-and the reorganization can only come as the result of legislation. A proper general staff should be established, and the positions of ordnance, commissary and quartermaster officers should be filled by detail from the line. Above all, the army must be given the chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again should we see, as we saw in the Spanish War, major-generals in command of divisions, who nad never before commanded three companies together in the field. Yet incredible to relate, the recent Congress has showed a queer inability to learn some of the lessons of the war. There were large bodies of men in both branches who opposed the declaration of war, who opposed the ratification of peace, who opposed the upbuilding of the army, and who even opposed the purchase of armor at a reasonable price for the battle-ships

and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to the building of any new fighting ships for the navy. If during the years to come any disaster should befall our arms, afloat or ashore, and thereby any shame come to the United States, remember that the blame will lie upon the men whose names appear upon the roll-calls of Congress on the wrong side of these great questions. On them will lie the burden of any loss of our soldiers and sailors, of any dishonor to the flag; and upon you and the people of this country will lie the blame, if you do not repudiate, in no unmistakable way, what these men have done. The blame will not rest upon the untrained commander of untried troops; upon the civil officers of a department, the organization of which has been left utterly inadequate; or upon the admiral with insufficient number of ships; but upon the public men who have so lamentably failed in forethought as to refuse to remedy these evils long in advance, and upon the nation that stands behind those public men.

"So at the present hour no small share of the responsibility for the bloodshed in the Philippines, the blood of our brothers, and the blood of their wild and ignorant foes, lies at the thresh

olds of those who so long delayed the adoption of the treaty of peace, and of those who by their worse than foolish words deliberately invited a savage people to plunge into a war fraught with sure disaster for them; a war, too, in which our own brave men who follow the flag must pay with their blood for the silly, mock-humanitarianism of the prattlers who sit at home in peace.

"The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry, if she is to do her duty among the nations of the earth -if she is not to stand merely as the China of the Western Hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual; for the wisest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own house

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