_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
I enclose herewith the annual report of the Isthmian Canal Commission,
the annual report of the Panama Railroad Company, and the Secretary of
War’s letter transmitting the same, together with certain papers.
The work on the Isthmus is being admirably done, and great progress
has been made, especially during the last nine months. The plant is
being made ready and the organization perfected. The first work to
be done was the work of sanitation, the necessary preliminary to the
work of actual construction; and this has been pushed forward with
the utmost energy and means. In a short while I shall lay before you
the recommendations of the Commission and of the Board of Consulting
Engineers as to the proper plan to be adopted for the canal itself,
together with my own recommendations thereon. All the work so far has
been done, not only with the utmost expedition, but in the most careful
and thorough manner; and what has been accomplished gives us good
reason to believe that the canal will be dug in a shorter time than had
been anticipated, and at an expenditure within the estimated amount.
All our citizens have a right to congratulate themselves upon the high
standard of efficiency and integrity which has been hitherto maintained
by the representatives of the Government in doing this great work. If
this high standard of efficiency and integrity can be maintained in the
future at the same level which it has now reached, the construction of
the Panama Canal will be one of the feats to which the people of this
Republic will look back with the highest pride.
From time to time various publications have been made, and from time
to time in the future various similar publications doubtless will
be made, purporting to give an account of jobbery, or immorality,
or inefficiency, or misery, as obtaining on the Isthmus. I have
carefully examined into each of these accusations which seemed worthy
of attention. In every instance the accusations have proved to be
without foundation in any shape or form. They spring from several
sources. Sometimes they take the shape of statements by irresponsible
investigators of a sensational habit of mind, incapable of observing
or repeating with accuracy what they see, and desirous of obtaining
notoriety by widespread slander. More often they originate with, or
are given currency by, individuals with a personal grievance. The
sensation-mongers, both those who stay at home and those who visit
the Isthmus, may ground their accusations on false statements by
some engineer, who, having applied for service on the Commission and
been refused such service, now endeavors to discredit his successful
competitors; or by some lessee or owner of real estate who has sought
action or inaction by the Commission to increase the value of his
lots, and is bitter because the Commission can not be used for such
purposes; or on the tales of disappointed bidders for contracts; or of
office-holders who have proved incompetent, or who have been suspected
of corruption and dismissed, or who have been overcome by panic and
have fled from the Isthmus. Every specific charge relating to jobbery,
to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come,
has been immediately investigated, and in no single instance have the
statements of these sensation-mongers and the interested complainants
behind them proved true. The only discredit inhering in these false
accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who,
to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the
completion of the great work in which both the honor and the interest
of America are so deeply involved. It matters not whether those guilty
of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and
folly or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or
political grudge.
Any attempt to cut down the salaries of the officials of the Isthmian
Commission, or of their subordinates who are doing important work,
would be ruinous from the standpoint of accomplishing the work
effectively. To quote the words of one of the best observers on the
Isthmus: “Demoralization of the service is certain if the reward for
successful endeavor is a reduction of pay.” We are undertaking in
Panama a gigantic task—the largest piece of engineering ever done.
The employment of the men engaged thereon is only temporary, and yet
it will require the highest order of ability if it is to be done
economically, honestly, and efficiently. To attempt to secure men
to do this work on insufficient salaries would amount to putting a
premium upon inefficiency and corruption. Men fit for the work will
not undertake it unless they are well paid. In the end the men who
do undertake it will be left to seek other employment with as their
chief reward the reputations they achieve. Their work is infinitely
more difficult than any private work, both because of the peculiar
conditions of the tropical land in which it is laid, and because it
is impossible to free them from the peculiar limitations inseparably
connected with Government employment; while it is unfortunately
true that men engaged on public work, no matter how devoted and
disinterested their services, must expect to be made the objects of
misrepresentation and attack. At best, therefore, the positions are not
attractive in proportion to their importance; and among the men fit
to do the task, only those with a genuine sense of public spirit and
eager to do the great work for the work’s sake, can be obtained; and
such men can not be kept if they are to be treated with niggardliness
and parsimony, in addition to the certainty that false accusations will
continually be brought against them.
I repeat that the work on the Isthmus has been done and is being done
admirably. The organization is good. The mistakes are extraordinarily
few, and these few have been of practically no consequence. The zeal,
intelligence, and efficient public service of the Isthmian Commission
and its subordinates have been noteworthy. I court the fullest, most
exhaustive, and most searching investigation of any act of theirs, and
if any one of them is ever shown to have done wrong his punishment
shall be exemplary. But I ask that they be decently paid, and that
their hands be upheld as long as they act decently. On any other
conditions we shall not be able to get men of the right type to do the
work; and this means that on any other conditions we shall ensure, if
not failure, at least delay, scandal, and inefficiency in the task of
digging the giant canal.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL
ASSOCIATION, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, JANUARY 10, 1906
_Gentlemen_:
I want to say just a word of greeting to you and to ask your influence
on behalf of the medical corps, not only of the Army, but of the Navy.
There is not a more exacting profession; there is not a profession
which makes greater demands upon those following it, and which more
entitles them to the gratitude of mankind, than is the profession which
is yours. The Army surgeon has to combine the work of your profession
with the work of the military man of the line. In saying that, I want
to call your attention to two specific things; one thing that is now
being done by men of your profession and one need of men of your
profession.
First, the thing that is being done: All the United States is the
debtor to the medical men who have accomplished such remarkable work
on the Isthmus of Panama. You hear very loose talk about making the
dirt fly in Panama. Before making the dirt fly it was necessary to get
the microbes under; it was necessary to grapple with the mosquitoes;
necessary to eradicate disease. That has been done to perfection. We
have had the foundation laid for that wonderful piece of constructive
engineering work, to dig the giant canal. Too much praise can not be
given to those who have done this work in Panama. So much for tribute
to your compeers. Now as to the need of your compeers. You recollect
the complaint made about hygienic conditions during the war with
Spain. Complaint was made that the troops were not properly treated,
etc. The blame rested, not on any one man then in office, but upon our
people as a whole who had declined, through their representatives, to
make provision long in advance for meeting such a need. If we had a
war break out to-morrow and had to raise any large army, there would
be an immediate breakdown in the medical department simply because
at present our medical corps is numerically only fit to take care of
about forty per cent of the Regular Army as it is now. The medical
corps is not numerically fit to grapple with a campaign in which our
whole Army as it is, the little Army as it is, should be employed. And
of course if we had to mobilize an army of volunteers we would under
present conditions have to count upon widespread disaster through the
shortcomings in the medical and sanitary and hygienic arrangements
rendered inevitable by our present lack of preparation.
The Japanese have given us a good lesson in this as in many other
particulars, by the way they handled their army in the recent war.
One of the reasons why their medical department did well—the main
reason—was the fact that they had an ample supply of doctors who had
been practiced in time of peace in doing the duties they would have to
do in war. And until we have provision for an ample corps of doctors
in the Army so that they can be practiced in time of peace we will not
have prepared as we ought to prepare for the possibilities of war.
Until we thus prepare we can make up our minds that we are ourselves
responsible for any disaster that occurs to any army that the United
States may raise in the future; not the man who may be at the head
of the Army at the time. The tendency is to attack the men in office
at the time. That is utterly unjust, and the people themselves, and
the representatives of the people in public life, who have failed
to provide the necessary means in advance—they are responsible when
disaster comes. That applies to the medical department, and it applies
to every other branch of the military establishment just as much.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERSTATE NATIONAL GUARD ASSOCIATION, AT THE
WHITE HOUSE, JANUARY 22, 1906
_Senator Dick; Members of the Association_:
I trust it is hardly necessary for me to say what a genuine pleasure it
is to me to-day to greet this organization. I have been a member of the
National Guard myself, and both at the time when I was Governor (as
the present Assistant Secretary of War can say) and since I have been
President, and even when I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, I have
always done all that in me lay to further the interests of the National
Guard.
I have a good many things on hand, but one of the things that are
interesting me most at present, Senator Dick, is the encouragement of
rifle practice to the National Guard. I want to have it understood,
gentlemen, that I do not care anything like as much for how your
regiments march and perform parade-ground and armory maneuvres as I
care for how they are instructed in the work that would make them
valuable as soldiers in time of war. I earnestly hope that the National
Guard, and, Mr. Taft, the Regular Army also, especially the Regular
Army, will more and more have the kind of instruction that will make
it second nature for the man who marches to march fully equipped as he
would be in time of war. If he is trained to march that way he will
not throw away his equipment the first time he goes to war; otherwise
he will do it. I want to see the average National Guardsman know how
to shoot well. I want to see the fund that we have for rifle practice
distributed among the several State organizations, partly at least
with reference to the way in which those State organizations promote
marksmanship. I want to see the young fellow who has been through the
National Guard receive a training which will make him able to do his
work in time of war if the need comes.
In a great industrial civilization such as ours we may just as well
face the fact that there is a constant tendency to do away with, to
eliminate, those qualities which make a man a good soldier. It should
be the steady object of every legislator, of every executive officer,
and above all of you gentlemen who have to do with the National Guard,
to try to encourage those qualities, to try to counteract the tendency
toward their elimination. Every officer of the National Guard should
train his men the whole time as if he were training them with a view to
possible action, so that the men under him will be trained by him to
have those habits of body and mind which will render them formidable
as soldiers in the field. You should try to train your men so they can
live in the open; train them so they will know what cover is, so they
will be able to take advantage of it, so they will know how to march
and march well; and you should realize the relative importance of what
it is that the men under you learn, that as war is carried on nowadays,
ninety per cent of the ordinary work done either on the parade-ground
or in the armory, either by a militia regiment or a regular regiment,
amounts to nothing whatever in the way of training except so far as
the incidental effect it has in accustoming the men to act together
and to obey; but they are not going to fight shoulder to shoulder when
they get out into the field. It is absolutely not of the slightest
consequence what their alignment is, but is of vital consequence that
they shall know how to take cover, how to shoot, and how to make
themselves at home under any circumstances.
We have such a small regular army that you men of the National Guard
have upon you a heavy responsibility. I want to say that while it is
incumbent upon you to take your duties seriously and do them with all
your heart, if you do even that you do more good to the Nation than any
equal body of citizens to be found in our country.
TO THE STUDENTS OF THE MANASSAS, VIRGINIA, INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL, AT THE
WHITE HOUSE, FEBRUARY 14, 1906
_Mr. Hale_; _Ladies and Gentlemen_:
It is a peculiar pleasure to me to greet you to-day; and no body of our
fellow-citizens can have a greater claim to being received at the White
House than a body like this, which stands for the fundamental duty of
American citizenship—the duty of self-education. I am, of course, as we
all must be, peculiarly interested in the kind of development of which,
I am glad to say, I think we can accept this school as typical—not
as exceptional, but as typical. There are a great many very, very
excellent charitable people in the country, but some of them tend to
forget at times that the only charity that does permanent good is that
kind of charity that is not a charity at all, that teaches some one
how to help himself or herself. The only way in which any section of
our citizens, of no matter what color, can be permanently benefited is
by teaching them to pull their own weight, to do their own duty, their
duty to themselves, their duty to their neighbors, their duty to the
State at large. I have felt about the schools of which this is a type
as I feel, for instance, about Mr. Washington’s school at Tuskegee,
that one of the reasons they are so good is that they can serve as an
example of schools of which we should try to develop as many as we can
for the white people as well as for the colored people. The white man
needs just as much as the colored man to learn that for the average man
the education that fits him to do work in life is industrial. Other
things shall be added to it, or ought to be added to it, but that must
remain as the basis.
Of course, Miss Dean, the good that comes with any such school as this
is increased tenfold when the school is founded, as you founded this,
and as Mr. Washington founded Tuskegee, by a colored man or colored
woman to help the colored boys and colored girls of to-day to make the
best type of self-respecting, self-supporting American citizens of the
future. I esteem it an honor to welcome you here this afternoon, and it
is a very fitting thing that you should be introduced by the American
citizen whom every good American delights to honor—Rev. Edward Everett
Hale.