to the limitations of armaments.  Such being the fact it would be most unwise for us to stop the upbuilding of our Navy.  To build one battleship of the best and most advanced type a year would barely keep our fleet up to its present force.  This is not enough.  In my judgment, we should this year provide for four battleships.  But it is idle to build battleships unless in addition to providing the men, and the means for thorough training, we provide the auxiliaries for them, unless we provide docks, the coaling stations, the colliers and supply ships that they need.  We are extremely deficient in coaling stations and docks on the Pacific, and this deficiency should not longer be permitted to exist.  Plenty of torpedo boats and destroyers should be built.  Both on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, fortifications of the best type should be provided for all our greatest harbors.

We need always to remember that in time of war the Navy is not to be used to defend harbors and sea-coast cities; we should perfect our system of coast fortifications.  The only efficient use for the Navy is for offense.  The only way in which it can efficiently protect our own coast against the possible action of a foreign navy is by destroying that foreign navy.  For defense against a hostile fleet which actually attacks them, the coast cities must depend upon their forts, mines, torpedoes, submarines, and torpedo boats and destroyers.  All of these together are efficient for defensive purposes, but they in no way supply the place of a thoroughly efficient navy capable of acting on the offensive; for parrying never yet won a fight.  It can only be won by hard hitting, and an aggressive sea-going navy alone can do this hard hitting of the offensive type.  But the forts and the like are necessary so that the Navy may be footloose.  In time of war there is sure to be demand, under pressure, of fright, for the ships to be scattered so as to defend all kind of ports.  Under penalty of terrible disaster, this demand must be refused.  The ships must be kept together, and their objective made the enemies’ fleet.  If fortifications are sufficiently strong, no modern navy will venture to attack them, so long as the foe has in existence a hostile navy of anything like the same size or efficiency.  But unless there exists such a navy then the fortifications are powerless by themselves to secure the victory.  For of course the mere deficiency means that any resolute enemy can at his leisure combine all his forces upon one point with the certainty that he can take it.

Until our battle fleet is much larger than at present it should never be split into detachments so far apart that they could not in event of emergency be speedily united.  Our coast line is on the Pacific just as much as on the Atlantic.  The interests of California, Oregon, and Washington are as emphatically the interests of the whole Union as those of Maine and New York, of Louisiana and Texas.  The battle