because we are not afraid of war. But our protestations would neither
receive nor deserve the slightest attention if we were impotent to make
them good." At all times he urged a larger and more efficient navy. For
years, before he became Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he had been a
student of naval affairs. He found that there was no programme for
building ships as in the European countries, and that there was general
unpreparedness for war.
Before the war with Spain, the American navy was so inferior that it was
excluded from any table of the principal navies of the world. Had the
United States possessed a few more battleships at that time, it is