yachts, together with the coast population about such centers as
life-saving stations and light-houses.

The American people must either build and maintain an adequate navy or
else make up their minds definitely to accept a secondary position in
international affairs, not merely in political, but in commercial,
matters. It has been well said that there is no surer way of courting
national disaster than to be "opulent, aggressive, and unarmed."

It is not necessary to increase our Army beyond its present size at this
time. But it is necessary to keep it at the highest point of efficiency.
The individual units who as officers and enlisted men compose this Army,
are, we have good reason to believe, at least as efficient as those of
any other army in the entire world. It is our duty to see that their
training is of a kind to insure the highest possible expression of power
to these units when acting in combination.

The conditions of modern war are such as to make an infinitely heavier
demand than ever before upon the individual character and capacity of
the officer and the enlisted man, and to make it far more difficult for
men to act together with effect. At present the fighting must be done in
extended order, which means that each man must act for himself and at
the same time act in combination with others with whom he is no longer
in the old-fashioned elbow-to-elbow touch. Under such conditions a few
men of the highest excellence are worth more than many men without the
special skill which is only found as the result of special training
applied to men of exceptional physique and morale. But nowadays the most
valuable fighting man and the most difficult to perfect is the rifleman
who is also a skillful and daring rider.