_Governor, and You, my Fellow-Citizens_:
It is indeed a pleasure to greet you to-day. In greeting all I, of
course, greet above all others the men to whom we owe it that we are
here to-day, or that we have a country of which to be proud—the men
who fought to a finish the great Civil War. And, having greeted first
those at one end of the line, I want to speak of the others and say I
was exceedingly pleased to see the children. Also let me say a word
of greeting in your behalf, my comrades of the Civil War, to the
regulars who were here to-day as an escort—to the men who now wear the
uniform of “Uncle Sam,” and wear it honorably to defend the flag as
you defended it in your youth and early manhood. The memories of this
field are inextricably entwined in our hearts with the great deeds of
the leaders of the past, as one by one the men who here signalized
themselves have passed away.
Governor Pennypacker alluded to the fact that to-day Pennsylvania
mourns its senior Senator. The regiment which Senator Quay was
instrumental in raising took part in the battle of Gettysburg—the
battle in which Governor Pennypacker shared. Senator Quay was not with
it here; he had gone with another regiment, and it is appropriate at
this time to recall the fact that when the term of service of that
regiment expired, just before the battle of Fredericksburg, Senator
Quay declined to accept the discharge and continued as a volunteer with
the army that fought at Fredericksburg and won the medal of honor on
that bloody day.
The place where we now are has won a double distinction. Here was
fought one of the great battles of all time, and here was spoken one
of the few speeches which shall last through the ages. As long as this
Republic endures or its history is known, so long shall the memory of
the Battle of Gettysburg likewise endure and be known; and as long
as the English tongue is understood, so long shall Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg speech thrill the hearts of mankind.
The Civil War was a great war for righteousness; a war waged for the
noblest ideals, but waged also in thoroughgoing, practical fashion.
That is why you won then—because you had the ideals, because you had
the lift of soul in you, and because also you had the right stuff in
you to make those ideals count in actual life. You had to have the
ideals, but if you had not been able to march and shoot you could not
have put them into practice. It was one of the few wars which mean, in
their successful outcome, a lift toward better things for the nations
of mankind. Some wars have meant the triumph of order over anarchy
and licentiousness masquerading as liberty; some wars have meant
the triumph of liberty over tyranny masquerading as order; but this
victorious war of ours meant the triumph of both liberty and order,
the triumph of orderly liberty, the bestowal of civil rights upon
the freed slaves, and at the same time the stern insistence on the
supremacy of the national law throughout the length and breadth of the
land. Moreover, this was one of those rare contests in which it was
to the immeasurable interest of the vanquished that they should lose,
while at the same time the victors acquired the precious privilege
of transmitting to those who came after them, as a heritage of honor
forever, not only the memory of their own valiant deeds, but the memory
of the deeds of those who, no less valiantly and with equal sincerity
of purpose, fought against the stars in their courses. The war left to
us all, as fellow-countrymen, as brothers, the right to rejoice that
the Union has been restored in indestructible shape in a country where
slavery no longer mocks the boast of freedom, and also the right to
rejoice with exultant pride in the courage, the self-sacrifice, and the
devotion, alike of the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the
gray.
He is but a poor American who, looking at this field, does not feel
within himself a deeper reverence for the Nation’s past and a higher
purpose to make the Nation’s future rise level to her past. Here fought
the chosen sons of the North and the South, the East and the West.
The armies which on this field contended for the mastery were veteran
armies, hardened by long campaigning and desperate fighting into such
instruments of war as no other nation then possessed. The severity of
the fighting is attested by the proportionate loss—a loss unrivaled
in any battle of similar size since the close of the Napoleonic
struggles; a loss which in certain regiments was from three-fourths to
four-fifths of the men engaged. Every spot on this field has its own
associations of soldierly duty nobly done, of supreme self-sacrifice
freely rendered. The names of the chiefs who served in the two armies
form a long honor roll; and the enlisted men were worthy, and even more
than worthy, of those who led them. Every acre of this ground has its
own associations. We see where the fight thundered through and around
the village of Gettysburg; where the artillery formed on the ridges;
where the cavalry fought; where the hills were attacked and defended;
and where, finally, the great charge surged up the slope only to break
on the summit in the bloody spray of gallant failure.
But the soldiers who won at Gettysburg, the soldiers who fought to a
finish the Civil War and thereby made their countrymen forever their
debtors, have left us far more even than the memories of the war
itself. They fought for four years in order that on this Continent
those who came after them, their children and their children’s
children, might enjoy a lasting peace. They took arms not to destroy,
but to save liberty; not to overthrow, but to establish the supremacy
of the law. The crisis which they faced was to determine whether or
not this people was fit for self-government and, therefore, fit for
liberty. Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those
who show themselves worthy of it. In this world no privilege can
be permanently appropriated by men who have not the power and the
will successfully to assume the responsibility of using it aright.
In his recent admirable little volume on freedom and responsibility
in democratic government, President Hadley of Yale has pointed
out that the freedom which is worth anything is the freedom which
means self-government and not anarchy. Freedom thus conceived is a
constructive force, which enables an intelligent and good man to do
better things than he could do without it; which is in its essence the
substitution of self-restraint for external restraint—the substitution
of a form of restraint which promotes progress for the form which
retards it. This is the right view to take of freedom; but it can only
be taken if there is a full recognition of the close connection between
liberty and responsibility in every domain of human thought and action.
It was essentially the view taken by Abraham Lincoln, and by all those
who, when the Civil War broke out, realized that in a self-governing
democracy those who desire to be considered fit to enjoy liberty must
show that they know how to use it with moderation and justice in peace,
and how to fight for it when it is jeoparded by malice domestic or
foreign levy.
The lessons they taught us are lessons as applicable in our everyday
lives now as in the rare times of great stress. The men who made this
field forever memorable did so because they combined the power of
fealty to a lofty ideal with the power of showing that fealty in hard,
practical, common-sense fashion. They stood for the life of effort, not
the life of ease. They had that love of country, that love of justice,
that love of their fellow-men, without which power and resourceful
efficiency but make a man a danger to his fellows. Yet, in addition
thereto, they likewise possessed the power and the efficiency; for
otherwise their high purpose would have been barren of result. They
knew each how to act for himself, and yet each how to act with his
fellows. They learned, as all the generation of the Civil War learned,
that rare indeed is the chance to do anything worth doing by one sudden
and violent effort. The men who believed that the Civil War would be
ended in ninety days, the men who cried loudest “On to Richmond,” if
they had the right stuff in them speedily learned their error; and the
war was actually won by those who settled themselves steadfastly down
to fight for three years, or for as much longer as the war might last,
and who gradually grew to understand that the triumph would come, not
by a single brilliant victory, but by a hundred painful and tedious
campaigns. In the East and the West the columns advanced and recoiled,
swayed from side to side, and again advanced; along the coasts the
black ships stood endlessly off and on before the hostile forts;
generals and admirals emerged into the light, each to face his crowded
hour of success or failure; the men in front fought; the men behind
supplied and pushed forward those in front; and the final victory was
due to the deeds of all who played their parts well and manfully, in
the scores of battles, in the countless skirmishes, in march, in camp,
or in reserve, as commissioned officers, or in the ranks—wherever and
whenever duty called them. That is why the title that most appeals to
you now is the title of comrade, by which the private in the ranks
and the lieutenant-general address one another, because each did his
duty and asks no more than recognition of that fact. Just so it must
be for us in civil life. We can make and keep this country worthy of
the men who gave their lives to save it, only on condition that the
average man among us on the whole does his duty bravely, loyally, and
with common-sense, in whatever position life allots to him. Exactly
as in time of war courage is the cardinal virtue of the soldier, so
in time of peace honesty, using the word in its deepest and broadest
significance, is the essential basic virtue, without which all else
avails nothing. National greatness is of slow growth. It can not be
forced and yet be stable and enduring; for it is based fundamentally
upon national character, and national character is stamped deep in a
people by the lives of many generations. The men who went into the army
had to submit to discipline, had to submit to restraint through the
government of the leaders they had chosen, as the price of winning.
So we, the people, can preserve our liberty and our greatness in
time of peace only by ourselves exercising the virtues of honesty, of
self-restraint, and of fair dealing between man and man. In all the
ages of the past men have seen countries lose their liberty, because
their people could not restrain and order themselves, and therefore
forfeited the right to what they were unable to use with wisdom.
It was because you men of the Civil War both knew how to use liberty
temperately and how to defend it at need that we and our children
and our children’s children shall hold you in honor forever. Here,
on Memorial Day, on this great battlefield, we commemorate not only
the chiefs who actually won this battle; not only Meade, and his
lieutenants, Hancock and Reynolds and Howard and Sickles, and the
many others whose names flame in our annals; but also the chiefs
who had made the Army of the Potomac what it was, and those who
afterward led it in the campaigns which were crowned at Appomattox;
and furthermore those who made and used its sister armies: McClellan,
with his extraordinary genius for organization; Rosecrans; Buell;
Thomas, the unyielding, the steadfast; and that great trio, Sherman,
Sheridan, and last and greatest of all, Grant himself, the silent
soldier whose hammer-like blows finally beat down even the prowess of
the men who fought against him. Above all we meet here to pay homage to
the officers and enlisted men who served and fought and died, without
having, as their chiefs had, the chance to write their names on the
tablets of fame; to the men who marched and fought in the ranks, who
were buried in long trenches on the field of battle, who died in cots
marked only by numbers in the hospitals; who, if they lived, when the
war was over, went back each to his task on the farm or in the town, to
do his duty in peace as he had done it in war; to take up the threads
of his working life where he had dropped them when the trumpets of the
Nation pealed to arms. To-day, all over this land our people meet to
pay reverent homage to the dead who died that the Nation might live;
and we pay homage also to their comrades who are still with us.
All are at one now, the sons of those who wore the blue and the sons
of those who wore the gray, and all can unite in paying respect to the
memory of those who fell, each of them giving his life for his duty
as he saw it; and all should be at one in learning from the deaths of
these men how to live usefully while the times call for the performance
of the countless necessary duties of everyday life, and how to hold
ourselves ready to die nobly should the Nation ever again demand of her
sons the splendid ultimate proof of loyalty to her and to the flag.
REMARKS AT THE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL CHAPEL, VALLEY FORGE, PA., JUNE 19,
1904
It is a great pleasure to come here this afternoon and say a word
on behalf of the project to erect a memorial chapel on this great
historic site. Three weeks ago I was at the field where the bloodiest
and most decisive battle of the Civil War was fought, and it is a
noteworthy thing that this State of Pennsylvania should have within
its borders the places which mark the two turning points in our
history—Gettysburg, which saw the high-tide of the Rebellion—Valley
Forge, which saw the getting beyond the danger point of the Revolution.
There have been two great crises in our national history—two crises
where failure meant the absolute breaking asunder of the Nation—one
the Revolutionary War, one the Civil War. If the men who took to arms
in ’76 for national independence had failed, then not merely would
there never have been a national growth on this Continent, but the
whole spirit of nationality for the younger lands of the world would
have perished still-born. If the men of ’61 had failed in the great
struggle for national unity it would have meant that the work done by
Washington and his associates might almost or quite as well have been
left undone. There would have been no point in commemorating what was
done at Valley Forge if Gettysburg had not given us the national right
to commemorate it. If we were now split up into a dozen wrangling
little communities, if we lacked the power to keep away here on our own
Continent, within our own lines, or to show ourselves a unit as against
foreign aggression, then, indeed, the Declaration of Independence would
read like empty sound, and the Constitution would not be worth the
paper upon which it was written, save as a study for antiquarians.
There have been other crises than those that culminated during the War
for Independence and the great Civil War, there have been great deeds
and great men at other periods of our national history, but there never
has been another deed vital to the welfare of the Nation save the
two—the deed of those who founded and the deed of those who saved the
Republic. There never has been another man whose life has been vital to
the Republic save Washington and Lincoln. I am not here to say anything
about Lincoln, but I do not see how any American can think of either of
them without thinking of the other too, because they represent the same
work. Think how fortunate we are as a Nation. Think what it means to
us as a people that our young men should have as their ideals two men,
not conquerors, not men who have won glory by wrongdoing; not men whose
lives were spent in their own advancement, but men who lived, one of
whom died, that the Nation might grow steadily greater and better—the
man who founded the Republic and took no glory from it himself save
what was freely given him by his fellow-citizens, and that only in the
shape of a chance of rendering them service, and the man who afterward
saved the Republic, who saved the state, without striking down
liberty. Often in history a state has been saved and liberty struck
down at the same time. Lincoln saved the Union and lifted the cause of
liberty higher than before. Washington created the Republic, rose by
statecraft to the highest position, and used that position only for the
welfare of his fellows and for so long as his fellows wished him to
keep it.
It is a good thing that of these great landmarks of our
history—Gettysburg and Valley Forge—one should commemorate a single
tremendous effort and the other what we need, on the whole, much more
commonly, and what I think is, on the whole, rather more difficult to
do—long-sustained effort. Only men with a touch of the heroic in them
could have lasted out that three days’ struggle at Gettysburg. Only
men fit to rank with the great men of all time could have beaten back
the mighty onslaught of that gallant and wonderful army of Northern
Virginia, whose final supreme effort faded at the stone wall on
Cemetery Ridge on that July day forty-one years ago.
But after all, hard though it is to rise to the supreme height of
self-sacrifice and of effort at a time of crisis that is short, to
rise to it for a single great effort—it is harder yet to rise to the
level of a crisis when that crisis takes the form of needing constant,
patient, steady work, month after month, year after year, when, too, it
does not end after a terrible struggle in a glorious day—when it means
months of gloom and effort steadfastly endured, and triumph wrested
only at the very end.
Here at Valley Forge Washington and his Continentals warred not
against the foreign soldiery, but against themselves, against all
the appeals of our nature that are most difficult to resist—against
discouragement, discontent, the mean envies and jealousies, and
heart-burnings sure to arise at any time in large bodies of men, but
especially sure to arise when defeat and disaster have come to large
bodies of men. Here the soldiers who carried our national flag had to
suffer from cold, from privation, from hardship, knowing that their
foes were well housed, knowing that things went easier for the others
than it did for them. And they conquered, because they had in them the
spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day,
but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well.
When two lessons are both indispensable, it seems hardly worth while
to dwell more on one than on the other. Yet I think that as a people
we need more to learn the lesson of Valley Forge even than that of
Gettysburg. I have not the slightest anxiety but that this people, if
the need should come in the future, will be able to show the heroism,
the supreme effort that was shown at Gettysburg, though it may well
be that it would mean a similar two years of effort, checkered by
disaster, to lead up to it. But the vital thing for this Nation to do
is steadily to cultivate the quality which Washington and those under
him so pre-eminently showed during the winter at Valley Forge—the
quality of steady adherence to duty in the teeth of difficulty, in the
teeth of discouragement, and even disaster, the quality that makes a
man do what is straight and decent, not one day when a great crisis
comes, but every day, day in and day out, until success comes at the
end.
Of course, all of us are agreed that a prime national need is the need
of commemorating the memories of the men who did greatly, thought
highly, who fought, suffered, endured, for the Nation. It is a great
thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do
so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them. If
we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us
incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the
only homage which is really worthy of them. If we treat their great
deeds as matters merely for idle boasting, not as spurring us on to
effort, but as excusing us from effort, then we show that we are not
worthy of our sires, of the people who went before us in the history of
our land. What we as a people need more than aught else is the steady
performance of the everyday duties of life, not with hope of reward,
but because they are duties.
I spoke of how we felt that we had in Washington and Lincoln national
ideals. I contrasted their names with the names of many others in
history, names which will shine as brightly, but oh! with how much less
power and light. I think you will find that the fundamental difference
between our two great national heroes and almost any other men of equal
note in the world’s history, is that when you think of our two men you
think inevitably not of glory, but of duty, not of what the man did
for himself in achieving name, or fame, or position, but of what he
did for his fellows. They set the right ideal and also they lived up to
it in practical fashion. Had either of them possessed that fantastic
quality of mind which sets an impossible, and, perhaps, an undesirable
ideal, or which declines to do the actual work of the present because
forsooth the implements with which it is necessary to work are not to
that man’s choice, his fame would have been missed, his achievement
would have crumbled into dust, and he would not have left one stroke on
the book which tells of effort accomplished for the good of mankind.
A man, to amount to anything, must be practical. He must actually do
things, not talk about doing them, least of all cavil at how they are
accomplished by those who actually go down into the arena, and actually
face the dust and the blood and the sweat, who actually triumphed in
the struggle. The man must have the force, the power, the will to
accomplish results, but he must have also the lift toward lofty things
which shall make him incapable of striving for aught unless that for
which he strives is something honorable and high—something well worth
striving for.
I congratulate you that it is your good fortune to be engaged in
erecting a memorial to the great man who was equal to the great days—to
the man and the men who showed by their lives that they were indeed
doers of the word and not hearers only.
ADDRESS AT OYSTER BAY, N. Y., JULY 27, 1904, IN RESPONSE TO THE
COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO NOTIFY HIM OF HIS NOMINATION FOR THE PRESIDENCY
_Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Notification Committee_:
I am deeply sensible of the high honor conferred upon me by the
representatives of the Republican party assembled in convention, and I
accept the nomination for the Presidency with solemn realization of the
obligations I assume. I heartily approve the declaration of principles
which the Republican National Convention has adopted, and at some
future day I shall communicate to you, Mr. Chairman, more at length and
in detail a formal written acceptance of the nomination.
Three years ago I became President because of the death of my lamented
predecessor. I then stated that it was my purpose to carry out his
principles and policies for the honor and the interest of the country.
To the best of my ability I have kept the promise thus made. If
next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the
convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work
with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.
A party is of worth only in so far as it promotes the national
interest, and every official, high or low, can serve his party
best by rendering to the people the best service of which he is
capable. Effective government comes only as the result of the
loyal co-operation of many different persons. The members of a
legislative majority, the officers in the various departments of the
Administration, and the Legislative and Executive branches as toward
each other, must work together with subordination of self to the common
end of successful government. We who have been intrusted with power
as public servants during the past seven years of administration and
legislation now come before the people content to be judged by our
record of achievement. In the years that have gone by we have made the
deed square with the word; and if we are continued in power we shall
unswervingly follow out the great lines of public policy which the
Republican party has already laid down; a public policy to which we are
giving, and shall give, a united, and therefore an efficient, support.
In all of this we are more fortunate than our opponents, who now appeal
for confidence on the ground, which some express and some seek to have
confidentially understood, that if triumphant they may be trusted to
prove false to every principle which in the last eight years they have
laid down as vital, and to leave undisturbed those very acts of the
Administration because of which they ask that the Administration itself
be driven from power. Seemingly their present attitude as to their past
record is that some of them were mistaken and others insincere. We
make our appeal in a wholly different spirit. We are not constrained
to keep silent on any vital question; we are divided on no vital
question; our policy is continuous, and is the same for all sections
and localities. There is nothing experimental about the Government we
ask the people to continue in power, for our performance in the past,
our proved governmental efficiency, is a guarantee as to our promises
for the future. Our opponents, either openly or secretly, according to
their several temperaments, now ask the people to trust their present
promises in consideration of the fact that they intend to treat their
past promises as null and void. We know our own minds and we have kept
of the same mind for a sufficient length of time to give to our policy
coherence and sanity. In such a fundamental matter as the enforcement
of the law we do not have to depend upon promises, but merely to ask
that our record be taken as an earnest of what we shall continue to
do. In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we do not
have to explain why the laws were not enforced, but to point out that
they actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted
to increase the effectiveness of their enforcement. We do not have to
propose to “turn the rascals out,” for we have shown in very deed that
whenever by diligent investigation a public official can be found who
has betrayed his trust he will be punished to the full extent of the
law without regard to whether he was appointed under a Republican or
a Democratic Administration. This is the efficient way to turn the
rascals out and to keep them out, and it has the merit of sincerity.
Moreover, the betrayals of trust in the last seven years have been
insignificant in number when compared with the extent of the public
service. Never has the administration of the Government been on a
cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the Nation been
done more honestly and efficiently.
Assuredly it is unwise to change the policies which have worked so well
and which are now working so well. Prosperity has come at home. The
national honor and interest have been upheld abroad. We have placed the
finances of the Nation upon a sound gold basis. We have done this with
the aid of many who were formerly our opponents, but who would neither
openly support nor silently acquiesce in the heresy of unsound finance;
and we have done it against the convinced and violent opposition of the
mass of our present opponents who still refuse to recant the unsound
opinions which for the moment they think it inexpedient to assert. We
know what we mean when we speak of an honest and stable currency. We
mean the same thing from year to year. We do not have to avoid definite
and conclusive committal on the most important issue which has recently
been before the people, and which may at any time in the near future be
before them again. Upon the principles which underlie this issue the
convictions of half of our number do not clash with those of the other
half. So long as the Republican party is in power the gold standard is
settled, not as a matter of temporary political expediency, not because
of shifting conditions in the production of gold in certain mining
centres, but in accordance with what we regard as the fundamental
principles of national morality and wisdom.
Under the financial legislation which we have enacted there is now
ample circulation for every business need; and every dollar of
this circulation is worth a dollar in gold. We have reduced the
interest-bearing debt, and in still larger measure the interest on
that debt. All of the war taxes imposed during the Spanish War have
been removed with a view to relieve the people and to prevent the
accumulation of an unnecessary surplus. The result is that hardly ever
before have the expenditures and income of the Government so closely
corresponded. In the fiscal year that has just closed the excess of
income over the ordinary expenditures was nine millions of dollars.
This does not take account of the fifty millions expended out of the
accumulated surplus for the purchase of the Isthmian Canal. It is an
extraordinary proof of the sound financial condition of the Nation that
instead of following the usual course in such matters and throwing the
burden upon posterity by an issue of bonds, we were able to make the
payment outright and yet after it to have in the treasury a surplus of
one hundred and sixty-one millions. Moreover, we were able to pay this
fifty millions of dollars out of hand without causing the slightest
disturbance to business conditions.
We have enacted a tariff law under which during the past few years
the country has attained a height of material well-being never before
reached. Wages are higher than ever before. That whenever the need
arises there should be a readjustment of the tariff schedules is
undoubted; but such changes can with safety be made only by those whose
devotion to the principle of a protective tariff is beyond question;
for otherwise the changes would amount not to readjustment, but to
repeal. The readjustment when made must maintain and not destroy the
protective principle. To the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer
this is vital; but perhaps no other man is so much interested as the
wage-worker in the maintenance of our present economic system, both
as regards the finances and the tariff. The standard of living of our
wage-workers is higher than that of any other country, and it can not
so remain unless we have a protective tariff which shall always keep as
a minimum a rate of duty sufficient to cover the difference between the
labor cost here and abroad. Those who, like our opponents, “denounce
protection as a robbery” thereby explicitly commit themselves to the
proposition that if they were to revise the tariff no heed would be
paid to the necessity of meeting this difference between the standards
of living for wage-workers here and in other countries; and therefore
on this point their antagonism to our position is fundamental. Here
again we ask that their promises and ours be judged by what has been
done in the immediate past. We ask that sober and sensible men compare
the workings of the present tariff law, and the conditions which obtain
under it, with the workings of the preceding tariff law of 1894 and the
conditions which that tariff of 1894 helped to bring about.
We believe in reciprocity with foreign nations on the terms outlined
in President McKinley’s last speech, which urged the extension of
our foreign markets by reciprocal agreements whenever they could be
made without injury to American industry and labor. It is a singular
fact that the only great reciprocity treaty recently adopted—that
with Cuba—was finally opposed almost alone by the representatives of
the very party which now states that it favors reciprocity. And here
again we ask that the worth of our words be judged by comparing their
deeds with ours. On this Cuban reciprocity treaty there were at the
outset grave differences of opinion among ourselves; and the notable
thing in the negotiation and ratification of the treaty, and in the
legislation which carried it into effect, was the highly practical
manner in which without sacrifice of principle these differences of
opinion were reconciled. There was no rupture of a great party, but an
excellent practical outcome, the result of the harmonious co-operation
of two successive Presidents and two successive Congresses. This is
an illustration of the governing capacity which entitles us to the
confidence of the people not only in our purposes but in our practical
ability to achieve those purposes. Judging by the history of the last
twelve years, down to this very month, is there justification for
believing that under similar circumstances and with similar initial
differences of opinion, our opponents would have achieved any practical
result?
We have already shown in actual fact that our policy is to do fair and
equal justice to all men, paying no heed to whether a man is rich or
poor; paying no heed to his race, his creed, or his birthplace.
We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of
labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of
organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice
and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full
protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict
obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The
humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously
as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice,
no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our
modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which
it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of
honesty, of courage, and of common-sense.
In inaugurating the great work of irrigation in the West the
Administration has been enabled by Congress to take one of the longest
strides ever taken under our Government toward utilizing our vast
national domain for the settler, the actual homemaker.
Ever since this Continent was discovered the need of an Isthmian Canal
to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic has been recognized; and ever
since the birth of our Nation such a canal has been planned. At last
the dream has become a reality. The Isthmian Canal is now being built
by the Government of the United States. We conducted the negotiation
for its construction with the nicest and most scrupulous honor, and in
a spirit of the largest generosity toward those through whose territory
it was to run. Every sinister effort which could be devised by the
spirit of faction or the spirit of self-interest was made in order to
defeat the treaty with Panama and thereby prevent the consummation of
this work. The construction of the canal is now an assured fact; but
most certainly it is unwise to intrust the carrying out of so momentous
a policy to those who have endeavored to defeat the whole undertaking.
Our foreign policy has been so conducted that, while not one of our
just claims has been sacrificed, our relations with all foreign nations
are now of the most peaceful kind; there is not a cloud on the horizon.
The last cause of irritation between us and any other nation was
removed by the settlement of the Alaskan boundary.
In the Caribbean Sea we have made good our promises of independence to
Cuba, and have proved our assertion that our mission in the island was
one of justice and not of self-aggrandizement; and thereby no less than
by our action in Venezuela and Panama we have shown that the Monroe
Doctrine is a living reality, designed for the hurt of no nation, but
for the protection of civilization on the Western Continent, and for
the peace of the world. Our steady growth in power has gone hand in
hand with a strengthening disposition to use this power with strict
regard for the rights of others, and for the cause of international
justice and goodwill.
We earnestly desire friendship with all the nations of the New and
Old Worlds; and we endeavor to place our relations with them upon
a basis of reciprocal advantage instead of hostility. We hold that
the prosperity of each nation is an aid and not a hindrance to the
prosperity of other nations. We seek international amity for the same
reasons that make us believe in peace within our own borders; and we
seek this peace not because we are afraid or unready, but because we
think that peace is right as well as advantageous.
American interests in the Pacific have rapidly grown. American
enterprise has laid a cable across this, the greatest of oceans. We
have proved in effective fashion that we wish the Chinese Empire well
and desire its integrity and independence.
Our foothold in the Philippines greatly strengthens our position in
the competition for the trade of the East; but we are governing the
Philippines in the interest of the Philippine people themselves. We
have already given them a large share in their government, and our
purpose is to increase this share as rapidly as they give evidence of
increasing fitness for the task. The great majority of the officials
of the islands, whether elective or appointive, are already native
Filipinos. We are now providing for a legislative assembly. This is the
first step to be taken in the future; and it would be eminently unwise
to declare what our next step will be until this first step has been
taken and the results are manifest. To have gone faster than we have
already gone in giving the islanders a constantly increasing measure
of self-government would have been disastrous. At the present moment
to give political independence to the islands would result in the
immediate loss of civil rights, personal liberty, and public order, as
regards the mass of the Filipinos, for the majority of the islanders
have been given these great boons by us, and only keep them because we
vigilantly safeguard and guarantee them. To withdraw our Government
from the islands at this time would mean to the average native the loss
of his barely won civil freedom. We have established in the islands a
Government by Americans assisted by Filipinos. We are steadily striving
to transform this into self-government by the Filipinos assisted by
Americans.
The principles which we uphold should appeal to all our countrymen, in
all portions of our country. Above all they should give us strength
with the men and women who are the spiritual heirs of those who upheld
the hands of Abraham Lincoln; for we are striving to do our work in the
spirit with which Lincoln approached his. During the seven years that
have just passed there is no duty, domestic or foreign, which we have
shirked; no necessary task which we have feared to undertake, or which
we have not performed with reasonable efficiency. We have never pleaded
impotence. We have never sought refuge in criticism and complaint
instead of action. We face the future with our past and our present as
guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by
the record which we have made and are making.
LETTER ACCEPTING THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED
STATES