Mr. President, the overshadowing importance of the subject has led me to extend my remarks far beyond my original intention. I express my strong convictions in favor of a lock canal and of the necessity for an early and specific declaration of Congress regarding the final plan or type of canal which the nation wants to have built at Panama. I am confident that it lies entirely within our power and means to build either type of waterway; that our engineering skill can successfully solve the technical problems involved in either the lock or the sea-level plan; but there is one all-important factor which controls, and which, in my opinion, should have more weight than any other, and that is the element of time. If I could advance no other reasons, if I knew of no better argument in favor of a lock canal, my convictions would sustain the project which can be completed within a measurable distance of years and for the benefit and to the advantage of the present generation. Time flies, and the years pass rapidly. Shall this project languish and linger and become the spoil of political controversy and a subject of political attack? Can we conceive of anything more likely to prove disastrous to the canal project than political strife, which proved the undoing of the French canal enterprise at Panama? Shall the success of this great project be imperiled by the possible changes in the fortunes of parties? Shall we incur the risk that changes in economic conditions, hard times, or panic and industrial depressions may bring about? Time flies, and in the progress of industry and commerce, in international competition and the growth of modern nations, no factor is of more supreme importance than the years, with new opportunities for political and commercial development. Shall we, then, neglect our chances? Shall we fail to make the most of this the greatest opportunity for the extension of our commerce and navigation into the most distant seas which will ever come to us in our history, because of the demands of idealists, who, with theoretical notions of the ultimately desirable, would deprive the nation and the world of what is necessary and indispensable to those who are living now? Vast commercial and political consequences will follow the opening of the transisthmian waterway. In the annals of commerce and navigation it is not conceivable that there will ever be a greater event or one fraught with more momentous consequences than uninterrupted navigation between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Little enough can we comprehend or anticipate what the far-distant future will bring forth, but this much we know--that it is our duty to solve the problems of _to-day_ and not to indulge in dreams and fancies in a vain effort to solve the problems of a far-distant future.