12 The Strenuous Life 



sponsibilities with proper seriousness, courage, and 

 high resolve. We must demand the highest order 

 of integrity and ability in our public men who are 

 to grapple with these new problems. We must hold 

 to a rigid accountability those public servants who 

 show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or 

 inability to rise to the high level of the new demands 

 upon our strength and our resources. 



Of course we must remember not to judge any 

 public servant by any one act, and especially should 

 we beware of attacking the men who are merely the 

 occasions and not the causes of disaster. Let me 

 illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. 

 If twenty years ago we had gone to war, we should 

 have found the navy as absolutely unprepared as the 

 army. At that time our ships could not have en 

 countered with success the fleets of Spain any more 

 than ' nowadays we can put untrained soldiers, no 

 matter how brave, who are armed with archaic 

 black-powder weapons, against well-drilled regulars 

 armed with the highest type of modern repeating 

 rifle. But in the early eighties the attention of the 

 nation became directed to our naval needs. Con 

 gress most wisely made a series of appropriations to 

 build up a new navy, and under a succession of able 

 and patriotic Secretaries, of both political parties, the 

 navy was gradually built up, until its material be 

 came equal to its splendid personnel, with the result 



