If we are able to keep up substantially the rate of progress that now obtains we shall finish the actual digging within five or six years; though when we come to the great Gatun dam and locks, while there is no question as to the work being feasible, there are several elements entering into the time problem which make it unwise at present to hazard a prophecy in reference thereto. Now, gentlemen, this leads me up to another matter for national consideration, and that is our Navy. The Navy is not primarily of importance only to the coast regions. It is every bit as much the concern of the farmer who dwells a thousand miles from sea water as of the fisherman who makes his living on the ocean, for it is the concern of every good American who knows what the meaning of the word patriotism is. This country is definitely committed to certain fundamental policies――to the Monroe doctrine, for instance, and to the duty not only of building, but, when it is built, of policing and defending the Panama Canal. We have definitely taken our place among the great world powers, and it would be a sign of ignoble weakness, having taken such a place, to shirk its responsibilities. Therefore, unless we are willing to abandon this place, to abandon our insistence upon the Monroe doctrine, to give up the Panama Canal, and to be content to acknowledge ourselves a weak and timid nation, we must steadily build up and maintain a great fighting Navy. Our Navy is already so efficient as to be a matter of just pride to every American. So long as our Navy is no larger than at present, it must be considered as an elementary principle that the bulk of our battle fleet must always be kept together. When the Panama Canal is built it can be transferred without difficulty from one part of our coast to the other; but even before that canal is built it ought to be thus transferred to and fro from time to time. In a couple of months our fleet of great armored ships starts for the Pacific. California, Oregon, and Washington have a coast line which is our coast line just as emphatically as the coast line of New York and Maine, of Louisiana and Texas. Our fleet is going to its own home waters in the Pacific, and after a stay there it will return to its own home waters in the Atlantic. The best place for a naval officer to learn his duties is at sea, by performing them, and only by actually putting through a voyage of this nature, a voyage longer than any ever before undertaken by as large a fleet of any nation, can we find out just exactly what is necessary for us to know as to our naval needs and practice our officers and enlisted men in the highest duties of their profession. Among all our citizens there is no body of equal size to whom we owe quite as much as to the officers and enlisted men of the Army and Navy of the United States, and I bespeak from you the fullest and heartiest support, in the name of our Nation and of our flag, for the services to which these men belong.