The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-05-11


 have always been wrong in the past,
 but as soon as they can trump up some
 fantastic issue they will claim they are right this time. Four years hence they will admit they were wrong this year.
 We do not yet know what their allega- tions will be. We do not know because
 they do not know themselves. But we
 know this: It will be 8 fake issue and a losing issue. Since the election of Me
 Kinley in 1896 great changes have come.
 We have not only successfully conduc-.
 ted a foreign war, but we have become the leading commercial nation of the world. By our victory over Spain we acquired insular possessions of vast inn
 portance. The Philippine Islands are now ours. They lie at the entrance of the Orient and furnish the strategic point for approaching the trade of countless millions of people. The Uni- lted States wants it's share of that trade.
 China, with it's four hundred and fifty millions of inhabitants, is yet without modern appliances. She is just rousing herself from the Iethargy of antiquity.
 She is rich in natural resources. and as oOOA ciS l4tC liSlll Ol IAG lWEullSlIl SCll- tury shall have fully broken in upon
 her she will need all the equipment of
 modern civilization. She will want railroads, electrical devices, mining ma chinery, agricultural tools, manufac- tured articles of all kinds and many food products. And so of Japan, and in large measure of the other eastern countries. We are now producing more lof many things than we consume. We. by our superior ingenuity our better
 machinery, our higher education and
 our more skillful labor, have come to the point where we want to broaden our foreign markets and we want to protect our home markets also We want the policy of the open door to prevail in the
 Orient. There are being built in New London harbor to-day two twenty-thou- sand steel ships, the largest ever built anywhere in the world. They are to be run by the Great Northern railroad from Seattle to China and MT. James Hill says that with them he can carry freight from Duluth to the Pacific coast by his railroad and thence by these mammoth ships to China as cheaply as he can from Duluth to New York by rail. With the completion of the great Panama canal our manufacturers on the Atlantic coast will be brought as close to China almost as the Pacific coast now is, which will be closer by the width of the Atlantic ocean than any other European competitor. The republican party has established civil government in these Philippine Islands. We have built schools, brought order out of chaos; enlightened the people; and these islands are now more pros porous and the inhabitants more con tented than they have ever been under the four hundred years of Spanish rule. The man who has wrought this splen- did result was educated here at old Yale and is now our secretary of war, and is known to every son of Yale as dear old Bill Taft. As told you in the beginning the republican party does things, and that Is the reason the peo- pie keep 1t in power. We have done more. We have just made an appro- priation for naval base of supplies and Notifications in these islands so that our blue-jackets can be properly taken care of and our ships can be repaired if they are injured.
 At present we are at peace with the world. We hope to remain so. Under the splendid statesmanship and. able diplomacy of our great secretary of state, John Hay, there is little danger of breaking our amiable relations with any foreign power. But none can tell when nation may have to fight for it's rights. An army consists mainly of men, "of personnel" as it is called. But the navy is composed of men and ships. You cannot create modern navy in the face of an emergency. It takes years to build and equip ships and train crews. It is like your system of fire protection or hospital service in your large cities. It has to be main tained, just as insurance has to be car. ried.
 A strong navy is the strong right arm of diplomacy, and it has been well said that the Monroe doctrine is no stronger than the American navy With our ir1- sular possessions the country has twen- ty-five thousand miles of sea-coast. Our interests extend around the world. We believe the country will never con- sent to have those interests neglected, and the republican party intends to protect them by keeping the American navy up to the high ideals and the glo- rious traditions of our naval history. These are some of the things the re- publican party has been doing.
 While we are solving them we are opposed by our friends of the democratic party, who continually cry that everything we do is unconstitu- tional, and as soon as all turns out well, attempt to take the credit of having done it. We took Cuba, cleaned up the accumulated filth of centuries; estab- lished law and order; and then turned the island over to it's people. They have now established free American repub- lie which will quickly draw us into closer commercial relations and conduce to the great advantage of both parties. All this has been accomplished under the direction of that wise far-sighted, patient and able chairman of the sen- ate committee on relations with Cuba, our beloved Orville H. Platt. He is the real leader of the senate and Connecti- cut can never pay the debt she owes him. We have insured the construction