A great deal of attention has been paid to the feat of our battleship fleet in encircling South America and getting to San Francisco; and it would be hard too highly to compliment the officers and enlisted men of that fleet for what they have done.  Yet if I should draw any distinction at all it would be in favor of you and your associates who have taken out the torpedo flotilla.  Yours was an even more notable feat, and every officer and every enlisted man in the torpedo boat flotilla has the right to feel that he has rendered distinguished service to the United States navy and therefore to the people of the United States; and I wish I could thank each of them personally.  Will you have this letter read by the commanding officer of each torpedo boat to his officers and crew?

Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HUTCH.  I. CONE, U. S. N., Commanding Second Torpedo
Flotilla, Care Postmaster, San Francisco, Cal.

There were various amusing features connected with the trip.  Most of the wealthy people and “leaders of opinion” in the Eastern cities were panic-struck at the proposal to take the fleet away from Atlantic waters.  The great New York dailies issued frantic appeals to Congress to stop the fleet from going.  The head of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money—­he being from an Eastern seaboard State.  However, I announced in response that I had enough money to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyhow, that the fleet would certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough money to get the fleet back, why, it would stay in the Pacific.  There was no further difficulty about the money.

It was not originally my intention that the fleet should visit Australia, but the Australian Government sent a most cordial invitation, which I gladly accepted; for I have, as every American ought to have, a hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency.  The reception accorded the fleet in Australia was wonderful, and it showed the fundamental community of feeling between ourselves and the great commonwealth of the South Seas.  The considerate, generous, and open-handed hospitality with which the entire Australian people treated our officers and men could not have been surpassed had they been our own countrymen.  The fleet first visited Sydney, which has a singularly beautiful harbor.  The day after the arrival one of our captains noticed a member of his crew trying to go to sleep on a bench in the park.  He had fixed above his head a large paper with some lines evidently designed to forestall any questions from friendly would-be hosts:  “I am delighted with the Australian people.  I think your harbor the finest in the world.  I am very tired and would like to go to sleep.”