It was humiliating to go abroad for what we could not make ourselves. But another statement of the kind must be made, and then the record of shame ends; for which let us all be sincerely and devoutly thankful. We went abroad for the plans of one of our largest cruisers--the _Charleston_. Let the reader have no misunderstanding about this matter. If war had been impending it would have been right, and even an imperative duty, to buy warships fully equipped wherever they could be found. But we were building a navy in time of peace, and a ship that “could not get out of her own way,” from our own designers, was better than the best afloat bought from a foreign land. In the building of the new navy--in the building of the White Squadron, of which we make boast in our periodicals--the product was nothing; the building of men was everything. It was not without labor and pain that we got the first modern ships afloat. It was not so much that short-sighted economists interfered, for a surplus of money was found in the treasury, but the politicians were numerous and the patriots few. The politician in power must needs use the new ships to perpetuate his power; he who was out of power must use them as ferries to get into power. They were extravagantly praised and extravagantly decried. Time has shown the extravagance in both directions; but it is the tendency of man to admire his own, and when the truth is told, these ships are not “the best of their class afloat,” unless we add the modifying and saving clause “considering the circumstances under which they were built.” As the product of apprentices in the art of building modern warships, they are marvels of excellence. But since they were designed we have learned something.