I have a very strong feeling about the Panama Exposition. It was my good fortune to take the action in 1903, failure to take which, in exactly the shape I took it, would have meant that no Panama Canal would have been built for half a century, and, therefore, that there would have been no exposition to celebrate the building of the canal. In everything we did in connection with the acquiring of the Panama Zone we acted in a way to do absolute justice to all other nations, to benefit all other nations, including especially the adjacent States, and to render the utmost service, from the standpoint alike of honor and of material interest, to the United States. I am glad that this is the case, for if there were the slightest taint upon our title or our conduct it would have been an improper and shameful thing to hold this exposition. The building of the canal nearly doubles the potential efficiency of the United States Navy, as long as it is fortified and is in our hands; but if left unfortified it would at once become a menace to us. What is true as to our proper attitude in regard to the canal is no less true as regards our proper attitude concerning the interests of the United States taken as a whole. The canal is to be a great agency for peace; it can be such only, and exactly in proportion as it increased our potential efficiency in war. Those men who like myself believe that the highest duty of this nation is to prepare itself against war so that it may safely trust its honor and interest to its own strength are advocating merely that we do as a nation regarding our general interests what we have already done in Panama. If, instead of acting as this nation did in the Fall of 1903, we had confined ourselves to debates in Congress and diplomatic notes; if, in other words, we had treated elocution as a substitute for action, we would have done nobody any good, and for ourselves we would have earned the hearty derision of all other nations--the canal would not even have been begun at the present day, and there would have been a general consensus of international opinion to the effect that we were totally unfit to perform any of the duties of international life, especially in connection with the Western hemisphere. Unfortunately in the last few years we have as regards pretty much everything not connected with the Isthmus of Panama so failed in our duty of national preparedness that I fear there actually is a general consensus of opinion to precisely this effect among the nations of the world as regards the United States at the present day. This is primarily due to our unpreparedness. We have been culpably, well-nigh criminally, remiss as a nation in not preparing ourselves, and if, with the lessons taught the world by the dreadful tragedies of the last twelve months, we continue with soft complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world, we shall excite only contempt and derision if and when disaster ultimately overwhelms us.