PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND 

 STATE PAPERS 



AT DEDICATION OF NAVY MEMORIAL MONU- 

 MENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903 



Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens: 



The ground for this monument was first turned by 

 President McKinley, and I am glad to have the 

 chance of saying a few words in dedication of the 

 completed monument. There is no branch of our 

 government in which all our people are so deeply 

 interested as the Navy of the United States. It is 

 not merely San Francisco, not merely New York, or 

 Boston, or Charleston, or New Orleans, not merely 

 the seacoast cities of the Nation ; every individual in 

 the Nation who is proud of America and jealous of 

 her good name must feel a thrill of generous emotion 

 at the erection of a monument to the navy, a monu- 

 ment to the fleet which was victorious under Admiral 

 Dewey on the first of May five years ago, a fleet which 

 then added a new page to the long honor roll of 

 American achievement. It is eminently fitting that 

 there should be here in this great city on the Pacific 

 Ocean a monument to commemorate the deed which 

 showed once for all that America had taken her po- 

 sition on the Pacific. I want you all to draw a prac- 

 tical lesson from this commemoration. We to-day 

 dedicate this monument because those who went be- 

 fore us had the wisdom to make ready for the vic- 

 i VOL. XIV (40I) 



