The Panama Canal Zone has great facilities for repairs, docking, and supplies; but it must be adequately fortified in order to be a trustworthy base in the case of operations in its vicinity.
New York, by reason of its enormous wealth of every kind, its steamer terminals, and its excessively vulnerable position, within gunshot of ships out in the deep water (a position without parallel in the large cities of the world) must, of course, be protected.

The cheapest way to protect it is to do so locally, by means of fortifications, and other shore defenses.

The only other means would be by a fleet permanently kept near New York, a measure that would be expensive beyond reason.
In case the enemy should inform us that he would reach the vicinity of New York at a certain time, and in case he should fulfil his promise, the fact that New York was properly strengthened would not be very important; since our fleet would go there, and the whole war would be settled by one "stand-up fight." But wars are not so conducted and never have been.

From the oldest times till now, and even among savage tribes, finesse has always been employed, in addition to actual force--more perhaps by the weaker than by the stronger side, but very considerably also by the stronger.

A coming enemy would endeavor to keep his objective a close secret, and even to mislead us; so that our fleet would have to take a position out at sea, perhaps far away, which would leave our bases open to attack by the enemy fleet or at least exposed to raids.
The most effective local defense of a naval base is a combination of mine-fields and heavy guns, which also give protection to which the wounded vessels can retire, as the German vessels did after the North Sea battle.