238 APPENDIX. 
true, inasmuch as practically the whole of Japan is covered with almost impossible moun- 
tains that from most ancient times have rendered inland transport so replete with hardships 
as to drive the people down to the sea in ships. 
I had been in Japan some weeks before the occurrence of these impressive ceremonies 
and had become much impressed by the marvelous progress in all branches of engineering 
and shipbuilding that has been made by the profession and the Japanese people generally, 
and I did not hesitate to make known to my audience the extremely favorable impression 
they had made upon me. My address, taken down at the time, was as follows: 
“Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Council, and the Society of Naval Architecture of Japan: 
“Tt is a very great honor for me to be permitted to appear on this auspicious occasion 
of your twenty-fifth birthday and to bring you greetings from your neighbor to the east. We 
are a long way apart physically, but we have been drawn closer and closer as the years have 
passed, especially in the minds of thinking men. 
“Broadly speaking, naval architecture is the highest example of engineering and the 
most ancient. What, then, is more fitting than that this ancient art of engineering should be 
the intermediary between the two nations? Shipbuilding is an art of the greatest import- 
ance as shipping and transport is one of the foundations of civilization. It was one of the 
earliest necessities felt by human beings, and as necessity always brings to us the object— 
we say ‘necessity is the mother of invention’—so it is necessity that made the first ships that 
the Phoenicians went down and explored the Mediterranean with. They went to England 
to get tin and brought this then precious metal back to Asia Minor. They inspired the 
intrepid Viking to cross or at least to explore the Atlantic. 
“But it seems to me that your people must have been among the first in the world to 
go down to the sea in ships, because having just come from the western part of your country, 
as far as Nagasaki, I was never out of sight of mountains, endless mountains. To me they 
are cruel and oppressive to poor Japan, and it may have been the mountains that drove you 
to the sea for easier transportation. It must have been your people who were the first to 
engage in this greatest engineering feat of making ships that would ride out the seas. His- 
tory shows us that you knew all about Korea at a very early date. This shows that your 
early ships must have been seaworthy. The sea which I crossed to Korea was by no means 
a smooth sea (our ship rolled almost incessantly). So all honor to the Japanese people 
for their being one of the first, as I see it, to go down to the sea in ships. 
“We are so young in America that our Society of Naval Architects there is not an old 
body, but a very active one, and they have led others of our great engineering bodies to join 
them and extend to you the heartiest greetings on this occasion of your half-jubilee period. 
We look upon the jubilee period as being fifty years. I remember being appointed one of 
the official delegates from America to attend the first jubilee meeting of the Institution of 
Naval Architects of Great Britain, so they are leaders of us all in the activities of a society 
of naval architects. 
“But in America it is the shipping and ships, as expressed in our Navy and naval activi- 
ties, that have been the means of joining our two nations closer together than ever. For 
what could we have done at the Washington Conference without the able backing of the Japa- 
nese people? They stood there day after day with their steady purpose, and it was only 
through their able support that those extraordinary measures were carried forward. It so 
happened that I knew something of the activities that brought the final result, and the 
