them of that vigor, that distaste for ease and luxury, which we have been proud to own Exeter has bred in our bones. It is not for an easing of athletic work or training I plead, nor for conditions which would untemper the strong manhood of its students. A dressing room on the athletic field, baths near at hand, and an athletic field sufficiently large to hold all the school and sufficiently near to induce all the school to come out, are not conditions of luxury or effeminacy. They are just the forming conditions which have led other schools to forge ahead of us, and whose absence has retarded the athletic evolution of the boys at Exeter, soon to be, like us, loyal alumni, proud of a diploma and the years of happy life it denotes.

In suggesting a plan for our coöperation in the revival of athletics under better conditions at Exeter, friends, I have not come to you empty-handed. Already a generous graduate of the school, whose modest countenance I see before me, near our honored toastmaster, has taken the lead. To carry out a plan for better athletic grounds, friends, our fellow-alumnus, Mr. William Chadwick, has already offered to purchase for the use of the athletes at Exeter a large athletic field near the school, of sufficient size and of great attractiveness, which contains all the requirements the most scrupulous of us could demand. Mr. Chadwick has offered to purchase and give to the school a large field situated on Court Street, not a block from the Academy building, which we can all remember, lying as it does at the entrance to Gilman Park, and commanding a view over the river to the woods beyond, and down Court Street to Kensington Hill. No better location could possibly be found for our needs, and it is ours for the asking. "For the asking," did I say? Yes and no. For there is a condition attached to the gift. That condition is nothing more than that we shall proceed to justify our possession of the field by taking steps immediately to lay out suitable athletic fields upon it. There is room for two football fields, two baseball diamonds, practice fields for both sports, a cinder track, and inside the track a space for field events. These are all needed, both to fulfill the conditions of the gift and to make its possession suitable for our use. Besides this, the time is opportune for the erection upon it of an athletic building, of small size, but conveniently large, to contain a trophy room for our banners and

cups (for we have earned many such and hope to earn more), a large shower bath, dressing rooms and lockers. Such a building, I have found, will not cost more than $1500 or $2000, and together with the cost of rolling the field, laying out the diamond and gridiron, and making the cinder track, need cost us but a few thousand dollars. About $5000 will be supplied by the sale of the old campus, so that but $4000 is the contribution for which we can earn the everlasting praise of Exeter youth and repay the obligations so many of us feel to the old Academy.

This contribution made and our interest assured, Exeter will have conditions for the athletic training of her youth of which we may be proud, conditions which will, I confidently believe, and I am sure many of us confidently believe, put her once more in the front rank of preparatory schools of New England. Besides this, the laying out of a new field and the provision of better athletic equipment will arouse among the boys such a spirit of enthusiasm as may well bring us gratification, since it is sure to result in a more enthusiastic support of the athletic teams and a new birth of athletic sports.

Fellow-alumni, our opportunity lies before us. I will not call it "duty" for that word is too often misapplied to indicate what is unpleasant. And then it is as a privilege rather that we like to look at the chance of helping the boys who are now where we once were, and testifying our loyalty to the dear old Academy whose sons we proudly own ourselves to be. It is within our power to wave the wand of promise over Exeter and rejuvenate her athletics. It is within our power to see her sons prominent once more in victories won over Andover, to see her alumni once more on the Harvard and Yale elevens, eights, and nines, and to know that there is growing at Exeter a healthy love for athletics, for the good of the body, which will combine some day with the rising tide of athletic interest in our country to make a new race of stronger, abler, clearer-eyed men.

Already, friends, we have an initial gift, one which it would be the hardest for us to fulfill if we were to begin at the start. But the start has been made, and we are already on the road to our desire. We need but say the word, now, and we shall have what we need at Exeter, what Exeter wants, and what we want. Fellow-alumni, shall we say that word?

XXX

A PERSUASIVE ARGUMENT

THE FORTIFICATION OF THE PANAMA CANAL1

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

Gentlemen of the Pennsylvania Society:

I am glad to be here and am glad to know that so much of the energy, the enterprise, and the intelligence of New York has been contributed by the sons of William Penn. William Penn was in favor of peace. So, too, are the men of Pennsylvania. But I assume that they are practical men who do not lose sight of facts and existing conditions in an ecstasy of hope and Utopian enthusiasm.

I am going to invite your attention to the question now pending in Congress as to whether the Panama Canal ought to be fortified. I cannot think that any careful person will read the record of historical facts, treaties, and acts of Congress, and diplomatic negotiations without conceding the full right of the United States to fortify the canal. But memories are short, records are not always at hand, and, without in the slightest degree conceding that the existence of the full right of the United States to fortify her own property on the Isthmus is in the slightest doubt, I venture, before considering the question of the policy of fortifying the canal, to refer to the history which makes the right incontestable.

In 1850 we made the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with England, which contemplated a canal built by somebody other than the contracting parties and probably by private enterprise across Central America or the Isthmus of Panama. By that treaty we agreed with England that we would neither of us own any part of the land in which the canal was to be built, and we would neither of us fortify it, and we would unite together in guarantee

1 A speech delivered in New York before the Pennsylvania Society on January 21, 1911. Reprinted by permission of Chief Justice William H. Taft.

ing its neutrality and would invite the rest of the nations to become parties to the agreement. The canal was not built under that treaty. The French attempted it and failed. We had a Spanish war. The cruise of the Oregon of 12,000 miles along the seacoast of two continents from San Francisco to Cuba, at a time when the seat of war was in the West Indies fastened the attention of the American people upon the absolute necessity for a canal as a military instrument for doubling the efficiency of our Navy and for preventing a division of our forces of defense which might in the future subject us to humiliating defeat. This lesson brought about the effort to modify the Clayton-Bulwer treaty for the very purpose of securing the right on the part of the United States to own the land through which the canal was to be built, to construct the canal itself, and to regain the power to fortify the canal which it had parted with in the treaty of 1850 under other conditions. The correspondence between Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Hay, as well as Mr. Hay's statement to the Senate in transmitting the treaty which was finally ratified, show beyond peradventure that it was recognized by both parties to that treaty, first, that the canal to be built should be one to be built by the United States, to be owned by the United States, to be managed by the United States, and that the neutrality of the canal which was to be maintained, was to be maintained by the United States; second, that nothing in the treaty would prevent the United States from fortifying the canal, and that, in case of war between the United States and England or any other country, nothing in the treaty would prevent the United States from closing the canal to the shipping of an enemy. In the absence of treaty restriction, of course, these rights inhere in the sovereignty of the United States and the control of its own. It is perfectly palpable that this was insisted upon by the Senate, for the reason that one of the main motives in the construction of the canal was the extension of the coast line of the United States through the canal and the use of the canal in time of war as an instrument of defense. The guaranty of neutrality in the treaty is subject, and necessarily subject, to this construction.

The purpose and assertion of the right of the people of the United States to fortify the canal are shown again in the passage of the Spooner Act in 1902, directing the President to build the

canal and to make proper defenses. The treaty with Panama reaffirms the treaty with England, made in 1900, and expressly gives to the United States the power of fortification. How, then, can anyone dispute the right of the United States to fortify the canal, when the English treaty was amended for the very purpose of regaining it, when it is expressly given in the treaty made with Panama that granted us the land on which to build the canal, and when not a single foreign nation - including in this England, who has made a treaty with us on the subject — has ever seen fit to suggest a lack of power to do that which an act of Congress nine years old directed the President to do, and on the faith of which $500,000,000 are being expended?

The right of the United States to fortify the canal and to close it against the use of an enemy in time of war being established, what should be its policy? We built the canal to help us defend the country; not to help an enemy to attack it. Even if a certain and practical neutralization of the canal by an agreement of all nations could be secured to us when engaged in war, an enemy could then use the canal for transit to attack us in both oceans as we propose to use it to defend ourselves. After expending $500,000,000 thus to make our national defense easier, are we to surrender half the military value of the canal by giving the benefit of it to a nation seeking to destroy us? It seems to me that the very statement of the proposition carries its refutation.

But it is said that we ought to defend the canal by our Navy. I am not a strategist; I am not a military or a naval expert; but it seems to me as plain as that one and one are two that a navy is for the purpose of defense through offense, for the purpose of protection by attack, and that if we have to retain a part of our Navy in order to defend the canal on both sides, then the canal becomes a burden and not an instrument of defense at all. The canal ought to defend itself, and we ought to have fortifications there which will be powerful enough to keep off the navies of any nation that might possibly attack us. I am glad to see that Captain Mahan, one of the greatest naval strategists, in a communication to this morning's Tribune, confirms this view.

Again, under our treaty with England and other countries, it is we who guarantee the neutrality of the canal. It is not the other countries that guarantee it to us, and we are bound, if we