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(Statement No. 20.) He again raised this question which he had raised at Philadelphia nearly a year earlier : "What are we going to do with the influence and power of this great nation? Are we going to play the old rôle of using that power for our aggrandizement and material benefit only? You know what that may mean. It may upon occasion mean that we shall use it to make the peoples of other nations suffer in the way in which we said. that it was intolerable to suffer when we uttered our Declaration of Independence." In refraining from debating the details of the situation of the moment, Mr. Wilson cut back to the basis of self-government, his usual starting point.

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He continued: We set this Nation up at any rate we professed to set it up — to vindicate the rights of men. We did not name any differences between one race and another. We did not set up any barriers against any particular people." Was this a veiled reference to the recent difference with Japan? Did it contain an admonition for a policy in the Philippines? Was it a reference to his views upon proposals for the restriction of immigration? It made little difference. The purpose and the principle

of the President were the same.

The entire address was charged with what had been repeatedly termed the impossible idealism of the President. "If I did not believe," he said, "that the moral judgment would be the last judgment, the final judgment, in the minds of men as well as at the tribunal of God, I could not believe in popular government. But I do be

lieve these things, and therefore I earnestly believe in the democracy not only of America but of every awakened people that wishes and intends to govern and control its own affairs."

The closing paragraph of the address shows clearly why in times of greater trial the President came quite naturally to voice the idealism of the nation: "My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America, it . . . will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some enterprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity; and that America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America, but of humanity. What other great people has devoted itself to this exalted ideal? To what other nation in the world can all eyes look for an instant sympathy that thrills the whole body politic when men anywhere are fighting for their rights? I do not know that there will ever be a declaration of independence and of grievances for mankind, but I believe that if any such document is ever drawn it will be drawn in the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence, and that America has lifted high the light which will. shine. unto all generations and guide the feet of mankind to the goal of justice and liberty and peace."

The day following this address Huerta was elected President of Mexico. But it was the end. He resigned on July fifteenth and five days later fled from Mexico. Critics of the administration now asserted that the refusal of the President to recognize Huerta had pulled down the only strong power in Mexico. They reiterated the belief in the responsibility of the United States to force its conception of order upon its less powerful neighbours. But to other commentators the retirement of Huerta signalized a triumph for the policy of idealism, that is, the course of the administration in refusing to intervene in Mexico. The Wilson practice in Mexico had been to insist upon order as a necessary element for membership in the group of states, but to permit the Mexican people to achieve their own victory against the elements of disorder within the state. The larger significance of the success of the administration's program in Latin America, and in Mexico in particular, was still unsuspected.

The triumph of the Wilson program, as far as it related to the growth of friendly relations, was signalized late in July when treaties providing for arbitration were signed with the three South American governments with whom the United States had recently been acting. On the fifteenth of September an order was issued for the withdrawal of troops from Vera Cruz, and the troops were withdrawn on the twenty-third of November. The hon

1 See editorials "Exit Huerta and "Again the Big Policeman," The Nation (New York), XCIX, 91.

our of the United States had not been vindicated, that is, if a salute to the flag was the test, but Huerta had gone from power. A better opportunity was now afforded the Mexican people to justify the faith of the republics of North and South America.

Eighteen months in office had revealed in practice the principles underlying the foreign policy of President Wilson. Of the problems facing him at the opening of his administration he had disposed of the controversy with Great Britain, and in such a way as to emphasize our belief in the inviolability of treaty obligations, and in Mexico had carried to a triumphant conclusion the most important phase of his Latin American program. Although the Mexican problem had yet to assume its most threatening character, and pending controversies with Japan and Colombia were unsettled, the President had indicated his mode of procedure in each case, and his conduct in other matters and his expressions of purpose gave ample warrant for the thought that difficulties were to be lessened by a general acceptance of his leadership. In evaluating the work of the administration Charles W. Eliot placed as the principal achievements, not the legislative enactments upon tariff, currency and the trusts that had occupied so much of the attention of the President, but the "contributions to sound international policies and conduct." 1 It is this record and the

1 Harper's Weekly, August 22, 1914. Also printed in Congressional Record, LI, Appendix, 869.

impression that its character had made abroad as well as at home that stood as a matter of history when the European war broke upon the world and gave President Wilson the leadership of the American people in the greatest crisis of their history.

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