Remember that after the war has begun it is too late to improvise a navy. A naval war is two-thirds settled in advance, at least two-thirds, because it is mainly settled by the preparation which has gone on for years preceding its outbreak. We won at Manila because the shipbuilders of the country, including those here at San Francisco, under the wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years before been preparing the navy. In 1882 our navy was a shame and a disgrace to the country in point of material. The personnel contained as fine material as there was to be found in the world but the ships and the guns were antiquated, and it would have been a wicked absurdity to have sent them against the ships of any good power. Then we began to build up the navy. Every ship that fought under Dewey had been built between 1883 and 1896. We come here as patriots remembering that our party lines stop at the water’s edge. That fleet was successful in 1898 because under the previous administrations of both political parties, under the previous Congresses controlled by both political parties, for the previous fifteen years there had been a resolute effort to build adequate ships. The ships that went in under Dewey had been constructed under different successive Secretaries of the Navy and had been provided for by different successive Congresses of the United States. Not one of them had been built less than two years, some of them fourteen years. We could not have begun to fight that battle if we had not been for so many years making ready the navy. The last Congress has taken greater strides than any previous Congress in making ready the navy, but it will be two or three years before the effects are seen. In no branch of the government are foresight and the carrying out of a steady and continuous policy so necessary as in the navy; and you, citizens of San Francisco, of California, and all our citizens should make it a matter of prime duty to see that there is no halt in that work, that the next Congress, and the Congress after that, and the Congress after that, go right on providing formidable warcraft, providing officers, providing men, and providing the means of training them in peace to be effective in war. The best ships and the best guns do not count unless they are handled aright and aimed aright, and the best men can not thus handle the one nor aim the other if they do not have ample practice. Our people must be trained in handling our ships in squadrons on the high seas. Our people on the ships must be trained by actual practice to do their duty in conning tower, in the engine-rooms, in the gun-turrets. The shots that count in battle are the shots that hit.