Nevertheless this was a time of transition, and the vigor which emanated from the young President passed like electricity through all lines and hastened the change. He caused the White House to be remodeled and fitted on the one hand for social purposes which required much more spacious accommodation, and on the other for offices in which he could conduct the largely increased Presidential business. Instead of one telephone there were many working night and day, and instead of a single longhand secretary, there were a score of stenographers and typists. Before he left Washington he saw a vast Union Station erected instead of the over-grown shanties at Sixth Street, and he had encouraged the laying-out of the waste places beyond the Capitol, thus adding to the city another and imposing section. His interest did not stop at politics, nor at carrying through the reforms he had at heart. He attended with equal keenness and solicitude to external improvements. Now at first, as I have suggested, his chief duty was to continue President McKinley's policies, which concerned mostly the establishment of our insular dependencies, and the readjustment of our diplomatic relations. I have described how he closed the dispute over the Alaskan Boundary, over our joint control with England over the Isthmus of Panama, and how he circumvented the attempt of the Colombian blackmailers to block our construction of the Canal. We must now glance at a matter of almost equal importance--our relations with Germany. The German attack on civilization, which was openly delivered in 194, revealed to the world that for twenty years before the German Emperor had been secretly preparing his mad project of Universal Conquest. We see now that he used all sorts of base tools German exchange professors, spies, bribers, conventional insinuators and corrupters, organizers of pro-German sentiment, and of societies of German Americans. So little did he and his lackeys understand the American spirit that they assumed that at the given signal the people of the United States would gladly go over to them. He counted on securing North and South America by commerce and corruption, and not by armed force. The reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine by President Cleveland in 1895 seriously troubled him; for he contemplated planting German colonies in Central and South America without resistance, but the Monroe Doctrine in its latest interpretation forbade him or any foreign government from establishing dominion in either American continent. Still, two things comforted him: the Americans were, he thought, a loose, happy-go-lucky people, without any consecutive or deep-laid policy, as foolish republicans must be; and next, he knew that he had the most powerful army in the world, which, if put to the test, would crush the undisciplined American militia at the first onset. He adopted, therefore, a double policy: he pretended openly to be most friendly to the Americans; he flattered all of