Washington's Forgotten Maxim

Address of Hon. Theodore Roosevelt,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before the Class at the U. S. Naval War College, Newport, R. I., June 2d, 1897

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A century has passed since Washington wrote "To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to preserve peace." We pay to this maxim the lip-loyalty we so often pay to Washington's words; but it has never sunk deep into our hearts. Indeed, of late years many persons have refused it even the poor tribute of lip-loyalty, and prate about the iniquity of war as if somehow that was a justification for refusing to take the steps which alone can, in the long run, prevent war or avert the dreadful disasters it brings in its train. The truth of the maxim is so Obvious to every man of really far-sighted patriotism that its mere statement seems trite and useless; and it is not over-creditable to either our intelligence or our love of country that there Should be, as there is, need to dwell upon and amplify such a truism.

In this country there is not the slightest danger of an overdevelopment of warlike spirit, and there never has been any such danger. In all our history there has never been a time when preparedness for war was any menace to peace. On the contrary, again and again we have owed peace to the fact that we were prepared for war; and in the only contest which we have had with a European power since the Revolution, the War of 1812, the struggle, and all its attendant disasters, were due solely to the fact that we were not prepared to face, and were not ready instantly to resent, an attack upon our honor and interest; while the glorious triumphs at sea which redeemed that war were due to the few preparations which we had actually made. We are a great peaceful nation; a nation of merchants and manufacturers, of farmers and mechanics; a nation of workingmen, who labor incessantly with head or hand. It is idle to talk of such a nation ever being led into a course of wanton aggression or needless conflict with military powers by the possession of a sufficient navy.

The danger is of precisely the opposite character. If we forget that in the last resort we can only secure peace by being ready and willing to fight for it, we may some day have bitter cause to realize that a rich nation which is slothful, timid or unwieldy is an easy prey for any people which still retains those most valuable of all qualities, the soldierly virtues. We but keep to the traditions of Washington, to the traditions of all the great Americans who struggled for the real greatness of America, when we strive to build up those fighting qualities for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, no refinement, no culture, no wealth, no material prosperity, can atone.

Preparation for war is the surest guarantee for peace. Arbitration is an excellent thing, but ultimately those who wish to see this country at peace with foreign nations will be wise if they place reliance upon a first-class fleet of first-class battle-ships, rather than on any arbitration treaty which the wit of man can devise. Nelson said that the British fleet was the best negotiator in Europe, and there was much truth in the saying. Moreover, while we are sincere and earnest in our advocacy of peace, we must not forget that an ignoble peace is worse than any war. We should engrave in our legislative halls those splendid lines of Lowell:

"Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed

For honor lost and dear ones wasted,

But proud, to meet a people proud,

With eyes that tell o' triumph tasted!"

Peace is a goddess only when she comes with sword girt on thigh. The ship of state can be steered safely only when it is always possible to bring her against any foe with "her leashed thunders gathering for the leap." A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor. All the great masterful races have been fighting races, and the minute that a race loses the hard-fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art, it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin; and a wilful failure to prepare for danger may, in its effects, be as bad as cowardice. The timid man who cannot fight, and the selfish, short-sighted or foolish man who will not take the steps that will enable him to fight, stand on almost the same plane.

It is not only true that a peace may be so ignoble and degrading as to be worse than any war; it is also true that it may be fraught with more bloodshed than most wars. Of this there has been melancholy proof during the last two years. Thanks largely to the very unhealthy influence of the men whose business it is to speculate in the money market, and who approach every subject from the financial standpoint purely; and thanks quite as much to the cold-blooded brutality and calculating timidity of many European rulers and statesmen, the peace of Europe has been preserved, while the Turk has been allowed to butcher the Armenians with hideous and unmentionable barbarity, and has actually been helped to keep Crete in slavery. War has been averted at the cost of more bloodshed, and infinitely more suffering and degradation to wretched women and children, than have occurred in any European struggle since the days of Waterloo. No war of recent years, no matter how wanton, has been so productive of horrible misery as the peace which the powers have maintained during the continuance of the Armenian butcheries. The men who would preach this peace, and indeed the men who have preached universal peace in terms that have prepared the way for such a peace as this, have inflicted a wrong on humanity greater than could be inflicted by the most reckless and war-loving despot. Better a thousand times err on the side of overreadiness to fight than to err on the side of tame submission to injury or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.

Popular sentiment is just when it selects as popular heroes the men who have led in the struggle against malice domestic or foreign levy. No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war. The courage of the soldier, the courage of the statesman who has to meet storms which can be quelled only by soldierly qualities, this stands higher than any quality called out merely in time of peace. It is by no means necessary that we should have war to develop soldierly attributes and soldierly qualities; but if the peace we enjoy is of such a kind that it causes their loss, then it is far too dearly purchased, no matter what its attendant benefits may be. It may be that some time in the dim future of the race the need for war will vanish; but that time is yet ages distant. As yet no nation can hold its place in the world or can do any work really worth doing unless it stands ready to guard its rights with an armed hand. That orderly liberty which is both the foundation and the cap-stone of our civilization can be gained and kept only by men who are willing to fight for an ideal; who hold high the love of honor, love of faith, love of flag, and love of country. It is true that no nation can be really great unless it is great in peace, industry, integrity, honesty. Skilled intelligence in civic affairs and industrial enterprises alike; the special ability of the artist, the man of letters, the man of science and the man of business; the rigid determination to wrong no man and to stand for righteousness, all these are necessary in a great nation. But it is also necessary that the nation should have physical no less than moral courage; the capacity to do and dare and die at need, and that grim and steadfast resolution which alone will carry a great people through a great peril. The occasion may come at any instant when

"'Tis man's perdition to be safe

When for the truth he ought to die."

All great nations have shown these qualities. The Dutch held but a little corner of Europe. Their industry, thrift and enterprise in the pursuits of peace, their cultivation of the arts, helped to render them great; but these qualities would have been barren had they not been backed by those sterner qualities which rendered them able to wrest their freedom from the cruel strength of Spain and to guard it against the banded might of England and of France. The merchants and the artists of Holland did much for her; but even more was done by the famished burghers who fought to the death on the walls of Harlem and Leyden, and the great admirals who led their fleets to victory on the broad and narrow seas.

England's history is rich in splendid names and splendid deeds. Her literature is even greater than that of Greece. In commerce she has stood in the modern world as more than ever Carthage was when civilization clustered in a fringe around the Mediterranean. But she has risen far higher than ever Greece or Carthage rose, because she possesses also the great masterful qualities which were possessed by the Romans who overthrew them both. England has been fertile in soldiers and administrators; in men who triumphed by sea and by land; in adventurers and explorers who won for her the world's waste spaces; and it is because of this that the English-speaking race now shares with the Slav the fate of the coming years.

We of the United States have passed most of our few years of national life in peace. We honor the architects of our wonderful material prosperity; we appreciate the necessity of thrift, energy and business enterprise; and we know that even these are of no avail without the civic and social virtues. But we feel, after all, that the men who have dared greatly in war, or the work which is akin to war, are those who deserve best of the country. The men of Bunker Hill and Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown, the men of New Orleans and Mobile Bay, Gettysburg and Appomattox, are those to whom we owe most. None of our heroes of peace, save a few great constructive statesmen, can rank with our heroes of war. The Americans who stand highest on the list of 'the world's worthies are Washington, who fought to found the country which he afterwards governed, and Lincoln, who saved it through the blood of the best and bravest in the land; Washington, the soldier and the statesman, the man of cool head, dauntless heart and iron will, the greatest of good men, and the best of great men; and Lincoln, sad, patient, kindly Lincoln, who for four years toiled and suffered for the people, and when his work was done laid down his life that the flag which had been rent asunder might once more be made whole and without a seam.

It is on men such as these, and not on the advocates of peace at any price, or upon those so short-sighted that they refuse to take into account the possibility of war, that we must rely in every crisis which deeply touches the true greatness and true honor of the republic. The United States have never once in the course of their history suffered harm because of preparation for war or because of entering into war. But we have suffered incalculable harm again and again from a foolish failure to prepare for war or from reluctance to fight when to fight was proper. The men who to-day protest against a navy, and protest also against every movement to carry out the traditional policy of the country in foreign affairs, and to uphold the honor of the flag, are themselves but following in the course of those who protested against the acquisition of the Great West and who failed to make proper preparations for the War of 1812, or refused to support it after it had been made. They are own brothers to the men whose shortsightedness and supine indifference prevented any reorganization of the personnel of the navy during the middle of the century, so that we entered upon the Civil War with captains seventy years old. They are as close kin to the men who, when the Southern States seceded, wished to let the Union be disrupted in peace rather than restored through the grim agony of armed conflict.

I do not believe that any considerable number of our citizens are stamped with this timid lack of patriotism. There are some doctrinaires whose eyes are so firmly fixed on the golden vision of universal peace that they cannot see the grim facts of real life until they stumble over them to their own hurt, and, what is much worse, to the possible undoing of their fellows. There are some educated men in whom education merely serves to soften the fiber and to eliminate the higher, sterner qualities which tell for national greatness; and these men prate about love for mankind, or for another country, as being in some hidden way a substitute for love of their own country. What is of more weight, there are not a few men of means who have made the till their fatherland, and who are always ready to balance a temporary interruption of money-making, or a temporary financial and commercial disaster, against the self-sacrifice necessary in upholding the honor of the nation and the glory of the flag.

But, after all, these people, though often noisy, form but a small minority of the whole. They would be swept like chaff before the gust of popular fury which would surely come if ever the nation really saw and felt a danger or an insult. The real trouble is that in such case this gust of popular fury would come too late. Unreadiness for war is merely rendered more disastrous by readiness to bluster; to talk defiance and advocate a vigorous policy in words, while refusing to back up these words by deeds, is cause for humiliation. It has always been true, and in this age it is more than ever true, that it is too late to prepare for war when the time of peace has passed. The short-sightedness of many people, the good-humored indifference to facts of others, the sheer ignorance of a vast number, and the selfish reluctance to insure against future danger by present sacrifice among yet others—these are the chief obstacles in the way of building up a proper navy and carrying out a proper foreign policy.

The men who opposed the War of 1812 and preferred to have the nation humiliated by unresented insult from a foreign power rather than see her suffer the losses of an honorable conflict, occupied a position little short of contemptible; but it was not much worse than that of the men who brought on the war and yet deliberately refused to make the preparations necessary to carry it to a successful conclusion. The visionary schemes for defending the country by gunboats instead of by a fleet of seagoing battle-ships, the refusal to increase the navy to a proper size, the determination to place reliance upon militia instead of upon regularly trained troops, and the disasters which followed upon each and every one of these determinations, should be studied in every school-book in the land so as to enforce in the minds of all our citizens the truth of Washington's adage that in time of peace it is necessary to prepare for war.

All this applied in 1812; but it applies with ten-fold greater force now. Then, as now, it was the navy upon which the country had to depend in the event of war with a foreign power; and then, as now, one of the chief tasks of a wise and far-seeing statesmanship should have been the upbuilding of a formidable fighting navy. In 1812 untold evils followed from the failure to provide such a fighting navy, for the splendid feats of our few cruisers merely showed what could have been done if we had had a great fleet of battle-ships. But ships, guns and men were much more easily provided in time of emergency at the beginning of this century than at the end. It takes months to build guns and ships now, where it took days or, at the most, weeks then; and it takes far longer now to train men to the management of the vast and complicated engines with which war is waged. Therefore, preparation is much more difficult and requires a much longer time; and yet wars are so much quicker, they last so comparatively short a period, and can be begun so instantaneously that there is very much less time than there was formerly in which to make preparations.

No battle-ship can be built inside of two years under no matter what stress of circumstances, for we have not in this country the plant to enable us to work faster. Cruisers would take almost as long. Even torpedo-boats, the smallest of all, could not be put in first-class form under ninety days. Guns available for use against a hostile invader would require two or three months; and in the case of the larger guns, the only ones really available for the actual shock of battle could not be made under eight months. Rifles and military munitions of every kind would require a corresponding length of time for preparation; in most cases we should have to build, not merely the weapons we need, but the plant with which to make them in any large quantity. Even if the enemy did not interfere with our efforts, which they undoubtedly would, it would therefore take from three to six months after the outbreak of a war, for which we are unprepared, before we could in the slightest degree remedy our unreadiness. During these six months it would be impossible to over-estimate the damage that could be done by a resolute and powerful antagonist. Even at the end of that time we would only be beginning to prepare to parry his attack, for it would be two years before we could attempt to return it. Since the change in military conditions in modern times there has never been an instance in which a war between any two nations has lasted more than about two years. In most recent wars the operations of the first ninety days have decided the result of the conflict. All that followed has been a mere vain effort to strive against the stars in their courses by doing at the twelfth hour what it was useless to do after the eleventh.

We must therefore make up our minds once for all to the fact that it is too late to make ready for war when the fight has once begun. The preparation must come before that. In the case of the Civil War none of these conditions applied. In 1861 we had a good fleet and the Southern Confederacy had not a ship. We were able to blockade the southern ports at once, and we could improvise engines of war more than sufficient to put against those of an enemy who also had to improvise them, and who labored under even more serious disadvantages. The Monitor was got ready in the nick of time to meet the Merrimac, because the Confederates had to plan and build the latter while we were planning and building the former; but if ever we have to go to war with a modern military power we shall find its Merrimacs already built, and it will then be altogether too late to try to build Monitors to meet them.

If this point needs any emphasis surely the history of the War of 1812 applies to it. For twelve years before that war broke out even the blindest could see that we were almost certain to be drawn into hostilities with one or the other of the pair of combatants whose battle-royal ended at Waterloo. Yet we made not the slightest preparation for war. The authorities at Washington contented themselves with trying to build a flotilla of gunboats which could defend our own harbors without making it necessary to take the offensive ourselves. We already possessed a dozen first-class cruisers, but not a battle-ship of any kind. With almost incredible folly the very Congress that declared the war voted down the bill to increase the navy by twenty battleships, though it was probably too late then anyhow, for even under the simpler conditions of that day such a fleet could not have been built and put into first-class order in less than a couple of years. Bitterly did the nation pay for its want of foresight and forethought. Our cruisers won a number of striking victories, heartening and giving hope to the nation in the face of disaster; but they were powerless to do material harm to the gigantic naval strength of Great Britain. Efforts were made to increase our little navy, but in the face of a hostile enemy already possessing command of the seas this was impossible. Two or three small cruisers were built; but practically almost all the fighting on the ocean was done by the handful of frigates and sloops which we Possessed when the war broke out. Not a battle-ship was able to put to sea until after peace was restored. Meanwhile, our coast was blockaded from one end to the other, and was harried at will by the hostile squadrons. Our capital city was burned, and the ceaseless pressure of the blockade produced such suffering and irritation as nearly to bring about a civil war among ourselves. If in the first decade of the present century the American people and their rulers had possessed the wisdom to provide an efficient fleet of powerful battle-ships there would probably have been no War of 1812; and even if war had come, the immense loss to, and destruction of, trade and commerce by the blockade would have been prevented. Merely from the monetary standpoint, the saving would have been incalculable; and yet this would have been the smallest part of the gain.

It can therefore be taken for granted that there must be adequate preparation for conflict, if conflict is not to mean disaster. Furthermore, this preparation must take the shape of an efficient fighting navy. We have no foe able to conquer or overrun our territory. Our small army should always be kept in first-class condition, and every attention should be paid to the national guard; but neither on the north nor the south have we neighbors capable of menacing us with invasion, or long resisting a serious effort on our part to invade them. The enemies we may have to face will come from over sea; they may come from Europe, or they may come from Asia. Events move fast in the West; but this generation has been forced to see that they moved even faster in the oldest East. Our interests are as great in the Pacific as in the Atlantic, in the Hawaiian Islands as in the West Indies. Merely for the protection of our own shores we need a great navy, and, what is more, we need it to protect our interests in the islands from which it is possible to command our shores and to protect our commerce on the high seas.

In building this navy we must remember two things: first, that our ships and guns should be the very best of their kind; and second, that no matter how good they are they will be useless unless the man in the conning tower and the man behind the gun are also the best of their kind. It is mere folly to send men to perish because they have arms with which they cannot win. With poor ships, were an Admiral Nelson and Farragut rolled in one, he might be beaten by any first-class fleet, and he surely would be beaten if his opponents were in any degree his equal in skill and courage; but without this skill and courage no perfection of material can avail, and with them very grave shortcomings in equipment may be overcome. The men who command our ships must have as perfect weapons ready to their hands as can be found in the civilized world, and they must be trained to the highest point in using them. They must have skill in handling the ships, skill in tactics, skill in strategy, for ignorant courage cannot avail, but without the courage neither will skill avail. They must have in them the dogged ability to bear punishment; the power and desire to inflict it; the daring, the resolution, the willingness to take risks and incur responsibility which have been possessed by the great captains of all ages, and without which no man can ever hope to stand in the front rank of fighting men.

Tame submission to foreign aggression of any kind is a mean and unworthy thing, but it is even meaner and more unworthy to bluster first and then either submit or else refuse to make those preparations which can alone obviate the necessity for submission. I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine, and I believe also that the great mass of the American people are loyal to it; but it is worse than idle to announce our adherence to this doctrine and yet to decline to take measures to show that ours is not mere lip-loyalty. We had far better submit to interference by foreign powers with the affairs of this continent than to announce that we will not tolerate such interference and yet refuse to make ready the means by which alone we can prevent it. In public as in private life a bold front tends to insure peace and not strife. If we possess a formidable navy, small is the chance indeed that we shall ever be dragged into a war to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. If we do not possess such a navy, war may be forced on us at any time.

It is certain, then, that we need a first-class navy. It is equally certain that this should not be merely a navy for defense. Our chief harbors should of course be fortified and put in condition to resist the attack of an enemy's fleet; and one of our prime needs is an ample force of torpedo-boats to use primarily for coast defense. But in war the mere defensive never pays and can never result in anything but disaster. It is not enough to parry a blow. The surest way to prevent its repetition is to return it. No master of the prize ring ever fought his way to supremacy by mere dexterity in avoiding punishment. He had to win by inflicting punishment. If the enemy is given the choice of time and place to attack, sooner or later he will do irreparable damage, and if he is at any point beaten back, why after all it is merely a repulse and there are no means of following it up and making it a rout. We cannot rely upon coast protection alone. Forts and heavy land guns and torpedo-boats are indispensable, and the last, on an occasion, may be used for offensive purposes also. But in the present state of naval and military knowledge we must rely mainly, as all great nations always have relied, on the battle-ship, the fighting ship of the line. Gunboats and light cruisers serve an excellent purpose, and we could not do without them. In time of peace they are the police of the seas; in time of war they would do some harrying of commerce and a great deal of scouting and skirmishing, but our main reliance must be on the great armored battle-ships with their heavy guns and shot-proof vitals. In the last resort we must trust to the ships whose business it is to fight and not to run, and who can themselves go to sea and strike at the enemy when they choose, instead of waiting peacefully to receive his blow when and where he deems it best to deliver it. If in the event of war our fleet of battle-ships can destroy the hostile fleet, then our coasts are safe from the menace of serious attack; even a fight that ruined our fleet would probably so shatter the hostile fleet as to do away with all chance of invasion; but if we have no fleet wherewith to meet the enemy on the high seas or to anticipate his stroke by our own, then every city within reach of the tides must spend men and money in preparation for an attack that may not come, but which would cause crushing and irredeemable disaster if it did come.

Still more is it necessary to have a fleet of great battle-ships if we intend to live up to the Monroe Doctrine and to insist upon its observance in the two Americas and the islands on either side of them. If a foreign power, whether in Europe or Asia, should determine to assert its position in those lands wherein we feel that our influence should be supreme, there is but one way in which we can effectively interfere. Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier. The prosperity of peace, commercial and material prosperity, gives no weight whatever when the clash of arms comes. Even great naked strength is useless if there is no immediate means through which that strength can manifest itself. If we mean to protect the people of the lands who look to us for protection from tyranny and aggression; if we mean to uphold our interests in the teeth of the formidable Old World powers, we can only do it by being ready at any time, if the provocation is sufficient, to meet them on the seas, where the battle for supremacy must be fought. Unless we are prepared so to meet them, let us abandon all talk of devotion to the Monroe Doctrine or to the honor of the American name.

This nation cannot stand still if it is to retain its self-respect and to keep undimmed the honorable traditions inherited from the men who with the sword founded it and by the sword preserved it. We ask that the work of upbuilding the navy and of putting the United States where it should be put among maritime Powers go forward without a break. We ask this not in the interest of war, but in the interest of peace. No nation should ever wage war wantonly, but no nation should ever avoid it at the cost of the loss of national honor. A nation should never fight unless forced to; but it should always be ready to fight. The mere fact that it is ready will generally spare it the necessity of fighting. If this country now had a fleet of twenty battleships, their existence would make it all the more likely that we Should not have war. It is very important that we should as a race keep the virile fighting qualities and should be ready to use them at need; but it is not at all important to use them unless there is need. One of the surest ways to attain these qualities is to keep our navy in first-class trim. There never is, and never has been, on our part a desire to use a weapon because of its being well-tempered. There is not the least danger that the Possession of a good navy will render this country overbearing towards its neighbors. The direct contrary is the truth.

An unmanly desire to avoid a quarrel is often the surest way to Precipitate one, and utter unreadiness to fight is even surer. If at the time of our trouble with Chile six years ago we had not already possessed the nucleus of the new navy we should almost certainly have been forced into fighting, and even as it was, trouble was only averted because of the resolute stand then taken by the President and by the officers of the navy who were on the Spot. If at that time the Chileans had been able to get ready the battle-ship which was building for them, a war would almost certainly have followed, for we had no battle-ship to put against it.

If in the future we have war, it will almost certainly come because of some action, or lack of action, on our part in the way of refusing to accept responsibilities at the proper time, or failing to Prepare for war when war does not threaten. An ignoble peace is even worse than an unsuccessful war; but an unsuccessful war would leave behind it a legacy of bitter memories which would hurt our national development for a generation to come. It is true that no nation could actually conquer us, owing to our isolated position, but we would be seriously harmed, even materially, by disasters that stopped far short of conquest; and in these 'natters which are far more important than things material, we could readily be damaged beyond repair. No material loss can begin to compensate the loss of national self-respect. The damage to our commercial interests by the destruction of one of our coast cities would be as nothing compared to the humiliation which would be felt by every American worthy of the name if we had to submit to such an injury without amply avenging it. It has been finely said that "a gentleman is one who is willing to lay down his life for little things," that is, for those things which seem little to the man who cares only whether shares rise or fall in value, and to the timid doctrinaire who preaches timid peace from his cloistered study.

Much of that which is best and highest in national character is made up of glorious memories and traditions. The fight well fought, the life honorably lived, the death bravely met—these count for more in building a high and fine type of temper in a nation than any possible success in the stock market, than any possible prosperity in commerce or manufactures. A rich banker may be a valuable and useful citizen; but not a thousand rich bankers can leave to the country such a heritage as Farragut left, when, lashed in the rigging of the Hartford, he forged past the forts and over the unseen death below, to try his wooden stem against the iron-clad hull of the great Confederate ram. The people of some given section of our country may be better off because a shrewd and wealthy man has built up therein a great manufacturing business or has extended a line of railroad past its doors, but the whole nation is better, the whole nation is braver, because Cushing pushed his little torpedo-boat through the darkness to sink beside the sinking Albemarle.

Every feat of heroism makes us forever indebted to the man who performed it. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, all devotion to the ideal of honor and of the glory of the flag, make for a finer and nobler type of manhood. It is not only those who do and dare and endure that are benefited, but also the countless thousands who are not themselves called upon to face the peril, to show the strength or to win the reward. All of us lift our heads higher because those of our countrymen whose trade it is to meet danger have met it well and bravely. All of us are poorer for every base or ignoble deed by an American, for every instance of selfishness or weakness or folly on the part of the people as a whole. We are all worse off when any of us fails at any point in his duty toward the State in time of peace or his duty towards the State in time of war. If ever we had to meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe, or had to submit tamely to wrong or insult, every man among us worthy of the name of American would feel dishonored and debased. On the other hand, the memory of every triumph won by Americans, by Just so much helps to make each American nobler and better. Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which in the past the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph. There are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation can win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because we think that the possession of such a navy is the surest guarantee of peace, and partly because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure and tears like water rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown.

In closing, let me repeat that we ask for a great navy; we ask for an armament fit for the nation's needs, nor primarily to fight, but to avert fighting. Preparedness deters the foe and maintains right by the show of ready might without the use of violence. Peace, like freedom, is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of Cowards or of those too feeble or too short-sighted to deserve it, and we ask to be given the means to ensure that honorable peace Which alone is worth having.