chance to move onward and upward which we have already given to the people of Cuba.  It will be doubly to our discredit as a Nation if we fail to take advantage of this chance; for it will be of damage to ourselves, and it will be of incalculable damage to Santo Domingo.  Every consideration of wise policy, and, above all, every consideration of large generosity, bids us meet the request of Santo Domingo as we are now trying to meet it.

We cannot consider the question of our foreign policy without at the same time treating of the Army and the Navy.  We now have a very small army indeed, one well-nigh infinitesimal when compared With the army of any other large nation.  Of course the army we do have should be as nearly perfect of its kind and for its size as is possible.  I do not believe that any army in the world has a better average of enlisted men or a better type of junior officer; but the army should be trained to act effectively in a mass.  Provision should be made by sufficient appropriations for manoeuvers of a practical kind, so that the troops may learn how to take care of themselves under actual service conditions; every march, for instance, being made with the soldier loaded exactly as he would be in active campaign.  The Generals and Colonels would thereby have opportunity of handling regiments, brigades, and divisions, and the commissary and medical departments would be tested in the field.  Provision should be made for the exercise at least of a brigade and by preference of a division in marching and embarking at some point on our coast and disembarking at some other point and continuing its march.  The number of posts in which the army is kept in time of peace should be materially diminished and the posts that are left made correspondingly larger.  No local interests should be allowed to stand in the way of assembling the greater part of the troops which would at need form our field armies in stations of such size as will permit the best training to be given to the personnel of all grades, including the high officers and staff officers.  To accomplish this end we must have not company or regimental garrisons, but brigade and division garrisons.  Promotion by mere seniority can never result in a thoroughly efficient corps of officers in the higher ranks unless there accompanies it a vigorous weeding-out process.  Such a weeding-out process—­that is, such a process of selection—­is a chief feature of the four years’ course of the young officer at West Point.  There is no good reason why it should stop immediately upon his graduation.  While at West Point he is dropped unless he comes up to a certain standard of excellence, and when he graduates he takes rank in the army according to his rank of graduation.  The results are good at West Point; and there should be in the army itself something that will achieve the same end.  After a certain age has been reached the average officer is unfit to do good work below a certain grade.  Provision should