The President paused, his hands came together, and he leaned far forward, and a moment’s hesitancy marked the termination of his scientific periods. He continued, with sudden earnestness and vigour, with almost self-surrender to the impetus of his thought: “My friends, these are the facts, and no lamentations can change them. We must learn from the courage and devotion of the men who left this field defeated, to face this new predicament, not with resignation, simply, but with the constructive determination to seize this new turn in events and force it into our service, to make it only a more complete realization of our first designs. This is the triumph of Opportunity. Thus shall we wrest from the confusion of chance its empire of the fitting moment, and drive its scattered impulses into the straight, the narrow path of our strictest needs. The canal as a commercial necessity cannot be eclipsed or abandoned. The original project is replaced. Replaced by something greater, more permanent, more cosmopolitan. It becomes no longer a provincial fact, a national asset simply. It is a feature of the earth. “What exactly has happened, how complete is the transformation no one exactly knows, but if the assistance of engineering is still to be invoked it can only be in a way of a help to nature. The facts remain. “And now my friends a stranger possibility confronts us, nay it lifts up a sinister and awful, an ominous portent for the leading nations of the world. It seems likely that this physical alteration may mean a change in the climate of the older portion of the earth.” Again the President launched into a scientific lecture and he was fortunate, as at first, as alertly careful, as broadly popular, as adroitly technical, without obscurity. It was well received. And its conclusion was altogether wonderful. Leacraft had good reason to listen with all his ears.