“This is a plain statement of fact that I do not think any reasonable person will have the temerity to dispute. For the present I have only to add, that we have done nothing as yet to lift this yoke from our necks. It cannot be done except by restoring our merchant marine and our naval power to their former status upon the high seas. The attempts thus far made in that direction are but feeble. I am not sanguine that they will be strong in our time, but I hope so. It may be that this result will not come until we have received a sterner lesson of our weakness and helplessness than any one now anticipates. “This pitiable condition on the ocean is emphasized by the contrast of our unrivalled power, resource, and enterprise within our own borders. It seems, indeed, the strangest anomaly of modern civilization, that the most enlightened, most ambitious, most energetic, most productive, and internally most powerful nation on the globe should be externally among the weakest, most helpless, and least respected. “The sole remedy for this situation is ships with seamen to handle them, whether for peace or for war; whether to carry our enormous exports, and bring our immense imports, and receive therefor the tremendous tolls which now flow into foreign coffers, or to vindicate the majesty and power of our flag abroad in the world to a degree befitting our status in the community of nations. “There is no lack of raw material, no lack of skill to fashion it into the instruments of commerce. We have the iron and the steel; we have the men to work them into the finished forms of stately ships; we have the money to promote the most colossal of enterprises by sea. All we need is assurance of a steady national policy of liberal and enlightened encouragement, based upon a patriotic common consent, and elevated above the turmoils of politics or the squabbles of parties. One decade of such a policy would make us second only to Great Britain on the high seas, either for commerce or for defence; and two decades of it would bring us fairly into the twentieth century as the master maritime power of the globe.” These observations, though written and printed in 1891, are as true and pertinent now as they were then; and they will remain true and pertinent indefinitely because they embody the practical logic of a situation; they point out the consequences it entails, and they suggest the only remedy that has been approved by the cumulative experience of other nations. The lines of fact are broad, plain, and unmistakable. No one disputes them.