CONGRESS. (THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.) 



dent Monroe in his annual message announced 

 that " the American continents are henceforth 

 not to be considered as subjects for future coloni- 

 zation by any European power." In other words, 

 the Monroe doctrine is a declaration that there 

 must be no territorial aggrandizement by any 

 non-American power at the expense of any 

 American power on American soil. It is no wise 

 intended as hostile to any nation in the Old 

 World. Still less is it intended to give cover to 

 any aggression by one New World power at the 

 expense of any other. It is simply a step, and a 

 long step, toward assuring the universal peace of 

 the world by securing the possibility of perma- 

 nent peace on this hemisphere. 



During the past century other influences have 

 established the permanence and independence of 

 the smaller states of Europe. Through the Mon- 

 roe doctrine w T e hope to be able to safeguard 

 like independence and secure like permanence for 

 the lesser among the New World nations. 



This doctrine has nothing to do with the com- 

 mercial relations of any American power, save 

 that it in truth allows each of them to form 

 such as it desires. In other words, it is really 

 a guaranty of the commercial independence of 

 the Americas. We do not ask under this doc- 

 trine for any exclusive commercial dealings with 

 any other American state. We do not guaran- 

 tee any state against punishment if it miscon- 

 ducts itself, provided, that punishment does not 

 take the form of the acquisition of territory by 

 any non-American power. 



Our attitude in Cuba is a sufficient guaranty 

 of our own good faith. We have not the slight- 

 est desire to secure any territory at the expense 

 of any of our neighbors. We wish to work with 

 them hand in hand, so that all of us may be 

 uplifted together, and we rejoice over the good 

 fortune of any of them, we gladly hail their ma- 

 terial prosperity and political stability, and are 

 concerned and alarmed if any of them fall into 

 industrial or political chaos. We do not wish to 

 see any Old World military power grow up on 

 this continent, or to be compelled to become a 

 military power ourselves. The peoples of the 

 Americas can prosper best if left to work out 

 their own salvation in their own way. 



The work of upbuilding the navy must be 

 steadily continued. No one point of our policy, 

 foreign or domestic, is more important than this 

 to the honor and material welfare, and above all 

 to the peace, of our nation in the future. Wheth- 

 er we desire it or not, we must henceforth rec- 

 ognize that we have international duties no less 

 than international rights. Even if our flag were 

 hauled down in the Philippines and Porto Rico, 

 even if we decided not to build the isthmian canal, 

 we should need a thoroughly trained navy of ade- 

 quate size, or else be prepared definitely and for 

 all time to abandon the idea that our nation 

 is among those whose sons go down to the sea 

 in ships. Unless our commerce is always to be 



juried in foreign bottoms, we must have war 



raft to protect it. 



Inasmuch, however, as the American people 



ive no thought of abandoning the path upon 

 vhich they have entered, and especially in view 

 the fact that the building of the isthmian 



inal is fast becoming one of the matters which 



tie whole people are united in demanding, it is 



iperative that our navy should be put and 

 kept in the highest state of efficiency, and should 

 be made to answer to our growing needs. So far 



f*">m being in any way a provocation to war, an 

 equate and highly trained navy is the best 

 aranty against war, the cheapest and most ef- 



fective peace insurance. The cost of building and 

 maintaining such a navy represents the very 

 lightest premium for insuring peace wJiich this 

 nation can possibly pay. 



Probably no other great nation in the world 

 is so anxious for peace as we are. There is not 

 a single civilized power which has anything 

 whatever to fear from aggressiveness on our part. 

 All we want is peace; and toward this end we 

 wish to be able to secure the same respect for 

 our rights from others which we are eager and 

 anxious to extend to their rights in return, to 

 insure fair treatment to us commercially, and to 

 guarantee the safety of the American people. 



Our people intend to abide by the Monroe doc- 

 trine and to insist upon it as the one sure means 

 of securing the peace of the Western Hemisphere. 

 The navy offers us the only means of making 

 our insistence upon the Monroe doctrine any- 

 thing but a subject of derision to whatever na- 

 tion chooses to disregard it. We desire the peace 

 which comes as of right to the just man armed; 

 not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to 

 the craven and the weakling. 



It is not possible to improvise a navy after war 

 breaks out. The ships must be built and the 

 men trained long in advance. Some auxiliary ves- 

 sels can be turned into makeshifts which will do 

 in default of any better for the minor work, and 

 a proportion of raw men can be mixed with the 

 highly trained, their shortcomings being made 

 good by the skill of their fellows; but the effi- 

 cient fighting force of the navy when pitted 

 against an equal opponent will be found almost 

 exclusively in the war-ships that have been regu- 

 larly built and in the officers and men who 

 through years of faithful performance of sea 

 duty have been trained to handle their formida- 

 ble but complex and delicate weapons with the 

 highest efficiency. In the late war with Spain 

 the ships that dealt the decisive blows at Manila 

 and Santiago had been launched from two to 

 fourteen years, and they were able to do as they 

 did because the men in the conning towers, the 

 gun turrets, and the engine-rooms had through 

 long years of practise at sea learned how to do 

 their duty. 



Our present navy was begun in 1882. At that 

 period our navy consisted of a collection of anti- 

 quated wooden ships, already almost as out of 

 place against modern war-vessels as the galleys 

 of Alcibiades and Hamilcar certainly as the 

 ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time 

 did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of- 

 war. Under the wise legislation of the Congress 

 and the successful administration of a succession 

 of patriotic Secretaries of the Navy, belonging 

 to both political parties, the work of upbuilding 

 the navy went on, and ships equal to any in 

 the world of their kind were continually added; 

 and what was even more important, these ships 

 were exercised at sea singly and in squadrons 

 until the men aboard them were able to get the 

 best possible service out of them. The result 

 was seen in the short war with Spain, which 

 was decided with such rapidity because of the 

 infinitely greater preparedness of our navy than 

 of the Spanish navy. 



While awarding the fullest honor to the men 

 who actually commanded and manned the ships 

 which destroyed the Spanish sea forces in the 

 Philippines and in Cuba, we must not forget that 

 an equal meed of praise belongs to those without 

 whom neither blow could have been struck. The 

 congressmen who voted years in advance the 

 money to lay down the ships, to build the guns, 

 to buy the armor-plate; the department officials 



