It is, of course, possible that the action would have failed of its immediate purpose. But even in that case it cannot be doubted that it would have been efficient as a check upon the subsequent wrongs committed. Nor was the opportunity for action limited in time. Even if the administration had failed thus to act at the outset of the war, the protests officially made both by the German Emperor and by the Belgian government to the President as to alleged misconduct in the prosecution of the war not only gave him warrant for action but required him to act. Meanwhile, from the moment when the war was declared, it became inexcusable of the administration not to take immediate steps to put the navy into efficient shape, and at least to make our military forces on land more respectable. It is possible not to justify but to explain the action of the administration in using the navy for the sixteen months prior to this war in such a way as greatly to impair its efficiency; for of course when the President selected Mr. Daniels as Secretary of the Navy he showed, on the supposition that he was not indifferent to its welfare, an entire ignorance of what that welfare demanded; and therefore the failure to keep the navy efficient may have been due at first to mere inability to exercise foresight. But with war impending, such failure to exercise foresight became inexcusable. None of the effective fighting craft are of any real use so far as Mexico is concerned. The navy should at once have been assembled in northern waters, either in the Atlantic or the Pacific, and immediate steps taken to bring it to the highest point of efficiency. It is because I believe our attitude should be one of sincere good-will toward all nations that I so strongly feel that we should endeavor to work for a league of peace among all nations rather than trust to alliances with any particular group. Moreover, alliances are very shifty and uncertain. Within twenty years England has regarded France as her immediately dangerous opponent; within ten years she has felt that Russia was the one power against which she must at all costs guard herself; and during the same period there have been times when Belgium has hated England with a peculiar fervor. Alliances must be based on self-interest and must continually shift. But in such a world league as that of which we speak and dream, the test would be conduct and not merely selfish interest, and so there would be no shifting of policy.