I think it is a natural, instinctive judgment of the people of the United States that they express their power appropriately in an efficient navy, and their interest is partly, I believe, because that navy somehow is expected to express their character, not within our own borders where that character is understood, but outside our borders, where it is hoped we may occasionally touch others with some slight vision of what America stands for.

But before I speak of the navy of the United States I want to take advantage of the first public opportunity I have had to speak of the Secretary of the Navy, to express my confidence and my admiration, and to say that he has my unqualified support, for I have counseled with him in intimate fashion.  I know how sincerely he has it at heart that everything that the navy does and handles should be done and handled as the people of the United States wish them handled—­because efficiency is something more than organization.  Efficiency runs into every well-considered detail of personnel and method.  Efficiency runs to the extent of lifting the ideals of a service above every personal interest.  So that when I speak my support of the Secretary of the Navy I am merely speaking my support of what I know every true lover of the navy to desire and to purpose, for the navy of the United States is a body specially trusted with the ideal of America.

I like to image in my thought this ideal.  These quiet ships lying in the river have no suggestion of bluster about them—­no intimation of aggression.  They are commanded by men thoughtful of the duty of citizens as well as the duty of officers—­men acquainted with the traditions of the great service to which they belong—­men who know by touch with the people of the United States what sort of purposes they ought to entertain and what sort of discretion they ought to exercise in order to use those engines of force as engines to promote the interests of humanity.

For the interesting and inspiring thing about America, gentlemen, is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.  We want no nation’s property; we wish to question no nation’s honor; we wish to stand selfishly in the way of the development of no nation; we want nothing that we cannot get by our own legitimate enterprise and by the inspiration of our own example, and, standing for these things, it is not pretention on our part to say that we are privileged to stand for what every nation would wish to stand for, and speak for those things which all humanity must desire.

When I think of the flag that those ships carry, the only touch of color about them, the only thing that moves as if it had a settled spirit in it, in their solid structure, it seems to me I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written the rights of liberty and justice and strips of blood spilt to vindicate those rights, and then, in the corner, a prediction of the blue serene into which every nation may swim which stands for these great things.