good offices in the spirit in which they were made. We have not acted in this matter under the ordinary principles of international obligation. All the world expects us in such circumstances to act as Mexico's nearest friend and intimate adviser. This is our immemorial relation toward her. There is nowhere any serious question that we have the moral right in the case or that we are acting in the interest of a fair settlement and of good government, not for the promotion of some selfish interest of our own. If further motive were necessary than our own good will toward a sister Republic and our own deep concern to see peace and order prevail in Central America, this consent of mankind to what we are attempting, this attitude of the great nations of the world toward what we may attempt in dealing with this distressed people at our doors, should make us feel the more solemnly bound to go to the utmost length of patience and forbearance in this painful and anxious business. The steady pressure of moral force will before many days break the barriers of pride and prejudice down, and we shall triumph as Mexico's friends sooner than we could triumph as her enemies - and how much more handsomely, with how much higher and finer satisfactions of conscience and of honor! GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 9. Message of President Wilson to the Citizens of the Philippine Islands. October 6, 1913 (The Weekly Times (Manila, P. I.), October 10, 1913) We regard ourselves as trustees acting not for the advantage of the United States but for the benefit of the people of the Philippine Islands. Every step we take will be taken with a view to the ulti mate independence of the Islands and as a preparation for that independence. And we hope to move toward that end as rapidly as the safety and the permanent interests of the Islands will permit. After each step taken experience will guide us to the next. The administration will take one step at once and will give to the native citizens of the Islands a majority in the appointive Commission and thus in the upper as well as in the lower house of the legislature a majority representation will be secured to them. We do this in the confident hope and expectation that immediate proof will be given, in the action of the Commission under the new arrangement, of the political capacity of those native citizens who have already come forward to represent and to lead their people in affairs.1 NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE AND SELF- 10. Extract from an Address of President Wilson at Swarthmore College. October 25, 1913 - Sometimes we have been laughed at by foreigners in particular for boasting of the size of the American Continent, the size of our own domain as a nation; for they have, naturally enough, suggested that we did not make it. But I claim that every race and every man is as big as the thing that he takes possession of, and that the size of America is in some sense a standard of the size and 1 The address of Governor-General Harrison in presenting this message was published in the Weekly Times (Manila, P. I.), October 10, 1913. capacity of the American people. And yet the mere extent of the American conquest is not what gives America distinction in the annals of the world, but the professed purpose of the conquest which was to see to it that every foot of this land should be the home of free, self-governed people, who should have no government whatever which did not rest upon the consent of the governed. I would like to believe that all this hemisphere is devoted to the same sacred purpose and that nowhere can any government endure which is stained by blood or supported by anything but the consent of the governed. 11. Extract from an Address of President Wilson at Congress Hall in Philadelphia. October 25, 1913 (Congressional Record, L, 5809) We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances in the hundred years that have gone by since the event that we are celebrating. Almost all of them have come from self-centered men, men who saw in their own interest the interest of the country, and who did not have vision enough to read it in wider terms, in the universal terms of equity and justice and the rights of mankind. . . . The Declaration of Independence was . . . the first audible breath of liberty, . . . The men of that generation did not hesitate to say that every people has a right to choose its own forms of government, not once but as often as it pleases, and to accommodate those forms of government to its existing interests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to alter is the fundamental principle of self-government. ... ... Liberty inheres in the circumstances of the day. . . Every day problems arise which wear some new phase and aspect, and I must fall back, if I would serve my conscience, upon those things which are fundamental rather than upon those things which are superficial, and ask myself this question, How are you going to assist in some small part to give the American people and, by example, the peoples of the world more liberty, more happiness, more substantial prosperity; and how are you going to make that prosperity a common heritage instead of a selfish possession? ... No man can boast that he understands America. No man can boast that he has lived the life of America, No man can pretend that except by common counsel he can gather into his consciousness what the varied life of this people is. The duty that we have to keep open eyes and open hearts and accessible understandings is a very difficult duty to perform. . . . Yet how . . . important that it should be performed, for fear we make infinite and irreparable blunders. The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. . . . You are so apt to forget that the comparatively small number of persons, numerous as they seem to be when they swarm, who come to Washington to ask for things, do not constitute an important proportion of the population of the country, that it is constantly necessary to come away from Washington and renew one's contacts with the people who do not swarm there, who do not ask for anything, but who do trust you without their personal counsel to do your duty. Unless a man gets these contacts he grows weaker and weaker. . . . If you lifted him up too high or he lifts himself too high, he loses the contact and therefore loses the inspiration. 12. Extract from an Address of President Wilson at Mobile, Alabama. October 27, 1913 (Congressional Record, L, 5845) I want to speak of our present and prospective relations with our neighbors to the south. I deemed it a public duty, as well as a personal pleasure, to be here to express for myself and for the Government I represent the welcome we all feel to those who represent the Latin American States. The future. . . is going to be very different for this hemisphere from the past. These States lying to the south of us, which have always been our neighbors, will now be drawn closer to us by innumerable ties, and, I hope, chief of all, by the tie of a common understanding of each other. Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them, and I believe that by the new route that is just about to be opened, while we physically cut two continents asunder, we spiritually unite them. It is a spiritual union which we seek. There is one peculiarity about the history of the Latin American States which I am sure they are keenly aware of. You hear of "concessions" to foreign capitalists in Latin America. You do not hear of concessions to foreign capitalists in the United States. They are not granted concessions. They are invited to make investments. The work is ours, though they are welcome to invest in it. We do not ask them to supply the capital and do the work. It is an invitation, not a privilege; and States that are obliged, because their territory does not lie within the main field of modern enterprise and action, to grant concessions are in this condition, that foreign interests are apt to dominate their domestic affairs, a condition of affairs always danger |