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 Finally, I want to look briefly at the necessity for a long-term U.S. military presence in Panama..
 Today the Panama Canal is more important to the national security interests of the United States than it has ever been, and its strategic importance will continue to grow with the foreseeable future.
 Three factors combine to substantiate this growing importance. Certainly this illustrates that we are living in a different world from what it was even a few years ago. First, it is a fact that the U.S. Navy has less than 500 ships today as compared to nearly 1,000 ships only 10 years a go. Certainly, that is not the only way to measure a navy, nor the effectiveness of a navy. But it is j ust a physical fact of life to find that we have entrusted our naval power to a greatly lessened number of individual ships.ounaafocsrqiettthAlaMost cnignisinvolvingor aafocseqiettthAl n
tic Fleet reinforce the Pacific Fleet or vice versa, and the Panama Canal is a vital link. Every ship now in our inventory, every ship except the aircraft carriers, the larger ones, can transit the canal, and this includes the newest LilA, large new ships that carry our Marine "contin gency forces," which are so important to our contingency plans.
 Despite. the fact that our Navy is now smaller than it. has been since World War 11 in numbers strength, our globe has not shrunk. Today it would add 3-12,?weeks and 8,000 miles to the transit between oceans if we did not have the Panama Canal.
 Second, the threat to our naval forces is the greatest now than it has been since World War 111, and that threat is growing.
 Admiral Holloway, presently the Chief of Naval Operations, in recent testimony before the Senate Armned Services Committee, said that it was -his estimate that, and I quotelhim:
 If current trends are allowed to continue, the balance of maritime superiority could tip substatially in favor of the Soviets in 10 years.
 Now, there is something we could and should do about those things, apart from the canal, but that statement ought to be a valid warning that time can run out. And, more particularly, this is no time to be weakening in any substantial way any sea passages that are to our advantage, particularly one we now control.
 In timeo national emergency, the availability of the Panama Canal could be decisive if we are to be able to counter the growing Soviet threat. That threat is certainly increased by the presence of a Communist Cuba astride the Atlantic approach to the canal. Cuba, a. Soviet satellite, now has over830,000 military troops in faraway Africa, and is growing in military sophistication each day. Who would have dreamed of a situation like that coming true? Who would have dreamed of it, just a few years ago? Certainly it tells us today, "Do not go too fast, and do not go too far in assuming that if you pull out of that canal some other powers are not going to immediately try to find a way to come in. Those with the power and enough cooperation will find a way to come in. They will1 get in.
 How can we ignore that fact?
 Thus, the Soviets have a growin,active vigorous satellite here in the Western 1-einisphere, eager, as I believe, for us to depart and give up the canal. In surrendering the "canal, we are surrendering strength, we