"You flatter me!" exclaimed his chum, with a mock bow.

"But what good will it be?" went on Ned. "Making big guns
doesn't help any in war, that I can see."

"Ned!" exclaimed Tom, "you don't look far enough ahead. Now
here's my scheme in a nutshell. You know what Uncle Sam is doing
down in his big ditch; don't you?"

"You mean digging the Panama Canal?"

Yes, the greatest engineering feat of centuries. It is going
to make a big change in the whole world, and the United States is
going to become--if she is not already--a world-power. Now that
canal has to be protected--I mean against the possibility of
war. For, though it may never come, and the chances are it never
will, still it may.

"Uncle Sam has to be ready for it. There never was a more true
saying than 'in time of peace prepare for war.' Preparing for
war is, in my opinion, the best way not to have one.

"Once the Panama Canal is in operation, and the world-changes
incidental to it have been made, if it should pass into the hands
of some foreign country--as it very possibly might do--the United
States would not only be the laughing-stock of the world, but she
would lose the high place she holds.

"Now, then, to protect the canal, several things are necessary.