IN HONOR OF THE ARMY AND AVIATION 



277 



gested and urged the passage of a bill 

 for the appropriation of $10,000,000 to 

 make an investigation in those islands, 

 and make them complete according to 

 scientific ideas. But after I had found 

 a great deal of difficulty in getting two 

 or three millions out of the government 

 for the purpose of helping us along with 

 our education and with other things, I 

 concluded that that sort of a survey was 

 in the nature of a luxury and might be 

 postponed for many years ; but luxuries 

 are to be reached through private contri- 

 butions. We in this country depend on 

 the generosity of our millionaires for 

 doing the things that we do not think 

 the government ought to do, and I sug- 

 gest that one very useful place in which 

 to spend the income from these $10,000,- 



000 funds that are being distributed with 

 such a lavish hand would be a scientific 

 survey in the Philippines. 



Another thing I should congratulate 

 the National Geographic Society upon is 

 that Congress is taking slow steps — but 



1 hope sure steps — to recognize in an 

 appropriate way the man who went to 

 the North Pole. You who are scientific 

 members of this body understand the 

 value of what he did, and all of us who 

 have read can understand the tremen- 

 dous labor that he undertook and the 

 amount of inconceivable endurance that 

 he had in winning that place, which, 

 when we find it, does not seem to be 

 particularly useful except by way of 

 satisfying what had theretofore been a 

 most dangerous curiosity. I sincerely 

 hope that Congress will recognize the 

 fact that Commander Peary has done 

 something of which every American 

 ought to be proud, and which, if he had 

 been an Englishman or a German or a 

 Frenchman, would have been long ago 

 recognized by a promotion to some per- 

 manent honor and by something more 

 substantial that would have enabled him 

 to enjoy that honor without working. 



Now, my friends, I did not intend to 

 make a speech any more than Ambassa- 

 dor Bryce ; but I cannot close without 

 making a remark or two in respect to 

 something in which the National Geo- 



graphic Society is deeply interested, be- 

 cause when it is completed it will change 

 geography and it will make the Atlantic 

 and the Pacific oceans very much the 

 same. Ambassador Bryce visited Pan- 

 ama two or three weeks before I did. 

 He sent me some suggestions with refer- 

 ence to the geological investigations that 

 ought to be made there ; and, having the 

 power without consulting Congress to 

 send a geologist there, I did so. And he 

 discovered a condition of things on the 

 Isthmus that will certainly be most inter- 

 esting to geologists and is certainly most 

 valuable to uz in the construction of the 

 canal with reference to the slides that 

 may be anticipated in the deep cut at 

 Culebra. 



I am glad to be able to say that the 

 work is going on and that quite a number 

 of months before January, 191 5, I hope, 

 we shall have straits cutting through the 

 Isthmus, for the canal will be 300 feet 

 wide in the narrowest part and will in 

 almost all its length be 500 to 1,000 feet 

 wide. We shall have straits there that 

 will carry out the idea that was con- 

 ceived in the time of Charles V, when 

 the Isthmus was first discovered. It has 

 taken 400 years to carry out that idea, 

 and it must thrill through the veins and 

 the nerves of every American to go down 

 there and see that work and realize what 

 this country is doing there with the aid 

 of its army engineers and with the or- 

 ganization which moves as one machine 

 through 40 miles to cleave that isthmus 

 and make it an instrument of commerce 

 between the oceans. I thank you. 



THE TOASTM ASTER, GEN. JOHN M. WIESON 



We have heard from the Chief Execu- 

 tive of our nation, from some of the 

 superb ambassadors from foreign coun- 

 tries, and now we turn to the Army of 

 the United States. It gives me great 

 pleasure to present to you a soldier and 

 a scientist, a man who has given magnifi- 

 cent service in the Indian country, whose 

 service in the Spanish war was great not 

 only from a military point of view, but 

 as an executive officer, and who after- 

 wards did even more superb work in the 



