Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
accept--much as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized
dogma in their day--various assumptions and speculations by Marx and
others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been
shown to possess not one shred of value. Professor Simkhovitch possesses
the gift of condensation as well as the gift of clear and logical
statement, and it is not possible to give in brief any idea of his
admirable work. Every social reformer who desires to face facts should
study it--just as social reformers should study John Graham Brooks's
"American Syndicalism." From Professor Simkhovitch's book we Americans
should learn: First, to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that
the orthodox or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic
socialism of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory; and,
third, that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in
reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points good
citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, and whom
in many practical matters of government good citizens well afford to
follow.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE PANAMA CANAL
No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go
with the rights. It is a contemptible thing for a great nation to render
itself impotent in international action, whether because of cowardice or
sloth, or sheer inability or unwillingness to look into the future. It
is a very wicked thing for a nation to do wrong to others. But the most
contemptible and most wicked course of conduct is for a nation to use
offensive language or be guilty of offensive actions toward other people
and yet fail to hold its own if the other nation retaliates; and it is
almost as bad to undertake responsibilities and then not fulfil them.
During the seven and a half years that I was President, this Nation
behaved in international matters toward all other nations precisely as
an honorable man behaves to his fellow-men. We made no promise which
we could not and did not keep. We made no threat which we did not carry
out. We never failed to assert our rights in the face of the strong, and
we never failed to treat both strong and weak with courtesy and justice;
and against the weak when they misbehaved we were slower to assert our
rights than we were against the strong.
As a legacy of the Spanish War we were left with peculiar relations
to the Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico, and with an immensely added
interest in Central America and the Caribbean Sea. As regards the
Philippines my belief was that we should train them for self-government
as rapidly as possible, and then leave them free to decide their own
fate. I did not believe in setting the time-limit within which we would
give them independence, because I did not believe it wise to try to
forecast how soon they would be fit for self-government; and once having
made the promise I would have felt that it was imperative to keep it.
Within a few months of my assuming office we had stamped out the last
armed resistance in the Philippines that was not of merely sporadic
character; and as soon as peace was secured we turned our energies to
developing the islands in the interests of the natives. We established
schools everywhere; we built roads; we administered an even-handed
justice; we did everything possible to encourage agriculture and
industry; and in constantly increasing measure we employed natives to
do their own governing, and finally provided a legislative chamber. No
higher grade of public officials ever handled the affairs of any colony
than the public officials who in succession governed the Philippines.
With the possible exception of the Sudan, and not even excepting
Algiers, I know of no country ruled and administered by men of the white
race where that rule and that administration have been exercised
so emphatically with an eye single to the welfare of the natives
themselves. The English and Dutch administrators of Malaysia have done
admirable work; but the profit to the Europeans in those States has
always been one of the chief elements considered; whereas in the
Philippines our whole attention was concentrated upon the welfare of the
Filipinos themselves, if anything to the neglect of our own interests.
I do not believe that America has any special beneficial interest in
retaining the Philippines. Our work there has benefited us only as
any efficiently done work performed for the benefit of others does
incidentally help the character of those who do it. The people of the
islands have never developed so rapidly, from every standpoint, as
during the years of the American occupation. The time will come when
it will be wise to take their own judgment as to whether they wish to
continue their association with America or not. There is, however,
one consideration upon which we should insist. Either we should
retain complete control of the islands, or absolve ourselves from all
responsibility for them. Any half and half course would be both foolish
and disastrous. We are governing and have been governing the islands
in the interests of the Filipinos themselves. If after due time the
Filipinos themselves decide that they do not wish to be thus governed,
then I trust that we will leave; but when we do leave it must be
distinctly understood that we retain no protectorate--and above all that
we take part in no joint protectorate--over the islands, and give
them no guarantee, of neutrality or otherwise; that, in short, we
are absolutely quit of responsibility for them, of every kind and
description.
The Filipinos were quite incapable of standing by themselves when we
took possession of the islands, and we had made no promise concerning
them. But we had explicitly promised to leave the island of Cuba,
had explicitly promised that Cuba should be independent. Early in my
administration that promise was redeemed. When the promise was made,
I doubt if there was a single ruler or diplomat in Europe who believed
that it would be kept. As far as I know, the United States was the first
power which, having made such a promise, kept it in letter and spirit.
England was unwise enough to make such a promise when she took Egypt.
It would have been a capital misfortune to have kept the promise,
and England has remained in Egypt for over thirty years, and will
unquestionably remain indefinitely; but though it is necessary for her
to do so, the fact of her doing so has meant the breaking of a positive
promise and has been a real evil. Japan made the same guarantee about
Korea, but as far as can be seen there was never even any thought of
keeping the promise in this case; and Korea, which had shown herself
utterly impotent either for self-government or self-defense, was in
actual fact almost immediately annexed to Japan.
We made the promise to give Cuba independence; and we kept the promise.
Leonard Wood was left in as Governor for two or three years, and evolved
order out of chaos, raising the administration of the island to a level,
moral and material, which it had never before achieved. We also by
treaty gave the Cubans substantial advantages in our markets. Then we
left the island, turning the government over to its own people. After
four or five years a revolution broke out, during my administration, and
we again had to intervene to restore order. We promptly sent thither a
small army of pacification. Under General Barry, order was restored and
kept, and absolute justice done. The American troops were then withdrawn
and the Cubans reestablished in complete possession of their own
beautiful island, and they are in possession of it now. There are plenty
of occasions in our history when we have shown weakness or inefficiency,
and some occasions when we have not been as scrupulous as we should have
been as regards the rights of others. But I know of no action by
any other government in relation to a weaker power which showed such
disinterested efficiency in rendering service as was true in connection
with our intervention in Cuba.
In Cuba, as in the Philippines and as in Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, and
later in Panama, no small part of our success was due to the fact that
we put in the highest grade of men as public officials. This practice
was inaugurated under President McKinley. I found admirable men in
office, and I continued them and appointed men like them as their
successors. The way that the custom-houses in Santo Domingo were
administered by Colton definitely established the success of our
experiment in securing peace for that island republic; and in Porto
Rico, under the administration of affairs under such officials as Hunt,
Winthrop, Post, Ward and Grahame, more substantial progress was achieved
in a decade than in any previous century.
The Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico came within our own sphere of
governmental action. In addition to this we asserted certain rights in
the Western Hemisphere under the Monroe Doctrine. My endeavor was not
only to assert these rights, but frankly and fully to acknowledge the
duties that went with the rights.
The Monroe Doctrine lays down the rule that the Western Hemisphere is
not hereafter to be treated as subject to settlement and occupation
by Old World powers. It is not international law; but it is a cardinal
principle of our foreign policy. There is no difficulty at the present
day in maintaining this doctrine, save where the American power whose
interest is threatened has shown itself in international matters both
weak and delinquent. The great and prosperous civilized commonwealths,
such as the Argentine, Brazil, and Chile, in the Southern half of South
America, have advanced so far that they no longer stand in any position
of tutelage toward the United States. They occupy toward us precisely
the position that Canada occupies. Their friendship is the friendship of
equals for equals. My view was that as regards these nations there was
no more necessity for asserting the Monroe Doctrine than there was to
assert it in regard to Canada. They were competent to assert it for
themselves. Of course if one of these nations, or if Canada, should be
overcome by some Old World power, which then proceeded to occupy its
territory, we would undoubtedly, if the American Nation needed our help,
give it in order to prevent such occupation from taking place. But the
initiative would come from the Nation itself, and the United States
would merely act as a friend whose help was invoked.
The case was (and is) widely different as regards certain--not all--of
the tropical states in the neighborhood of the Caribbean Sea. Where
these states are stable and prosperous, they stand on a footing of
absolute equality with all other communities. But some of them have
been a prey to such continuous revolutionary misrule as to have grown
impotent either to do their duties to outsiders or to enforce their
rights against outsiders. The United States has not the slightest desire
to make aggressions on any one of these states. On the contrary, it
will submit to much from them without showing resentment. If any great
civilized power, Russia or Germany, for instance, had behaved toward us
as Venezuela under Castro behaved, this country would have gone to war
at once. We did not go to war with Venezuela merely because our people
declined to be irritated by the actions of a weak opponent, and showed a
forbearance which probably went beyond the limits of wisdom in refusing
to take umbrage at what was done by the weak; although we would
certainly have resented it had it been done by the strong. In the case
of two states, however, affairs reached such a crisis that we had to
act. These two states were Santo Domingo and the then owner of the
Isthmus of Panama, Colombia.