Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography — Ch 14-The Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal, pt 1

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.

The Santo Domingan case was the less important; and yet it possessed a real importance, and moreover is instructive because the action there taken should serve as a precedent for American action in all similar cases.

During the early years of my administration Santo Domingo was in its usual condition of chronic revolution.

There was always fighting, always plundering; and the successful graspers for governmental power were always pawning ports and custom-houses, or trying to put them up as guarantees for loans.

Of course the foreigners who made loans under such conditions demanded exorbitant interest, and if they were Europeans expected their governments to stand by them.

So utter was the disorder that on one occasion when Admiral Dewey landed to pay a call of ceremony on the President, he and his party were shot at by revolutionists in crossing the square, and had to return to the ships, leaving the call unpaid.

There was default on the interest due to the creditors; and finally the latter insisted upon their governments intervening.

Two or three of the European powers were endeavoring to arrange for concerted action, and I was finally notified that these powers intended to take and hold several of the seaports which held custom-houses.

This meant that unless I acted at once I would find foreign powers in partial possession of Santo Domingo; in which event the very individuals who, in the actual event deprecated the precaution taken to prevent such action, would have advocated extreme and violent measures to undo the effect of their own supineness.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is to be wise in time, and at the right time; and my whole foreign policy was based on the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run into serious trouble.

Santo Domingo had fallen into such chaos that once for some weeks there were two rival governments in it, and a revolution was being carried on against each.

At one period one government was at sea in a small gunboat, but still stoutly maintained that it was in possession of the island and entitled to make loans and declare peace or war.

The situation had become intolerable by the time that I interfered.

There was a naval commander in the waters whom I directed to prevent any fighting which might menace the custom-houses.

He carried out his orders, both to his and my satisfaction, in thoroughgoing fashion.

On one occasion, when an insurgent force threatened to attack a town in which Americans had interests, he notified the commanders on both sides that he would not permit any fighting in the town, but that he would appoint a certain place where they could meet and fight it out, and that the victors should have the town.

They agreed to meet his wishes, the fight came off at the appointed place, and the victors, who if I remember rightly were the insurgents, were given the town.

It was the custom-houses that caused the trouble, for they offered the only means of raising money, and the revolutions were carried on to get possession of them.

Accordingly I secured an agreement with the governmental authorities, who for the moment seemed best able to speak for the country, by which these custom-houses were placed under American control.

The arrangement was that we should keep order and prevent any interference with the custom-houses or the places where they stood, and should collect the revenues.

Forty-five per cent of the revenue was then turned over to the Santo Domingan Government, and fifty-five per cent put in a sinking fund in New York for the benefit of the creditors.

The arrangement worked in capital style.

On the forty-five per cent basis the Santo Domingan Government received from us a larger sum than it had ever received before when nominally all the revenue went to it.

The creditors were entirely satisfied with the arrangement, and no excuse for interference by European powers remained.

Occasional disturbances occurred in the island, of course, but on the whole there ensued a degree of peace and prosperity which the island had not known before for at least a century.

All this was done without the loss of a life, with the assent of all the parties in interest, and without subjecting the United States to any charge, while practically all of the interference, after the naval commander whom I have mentioned had taken the initial steps in preserving order, consisted in putting a first-class man trained in our insular service at the head of the Santo Domingan customs service.

We secured peace, we protected the people of the islands against foreign foes, and we minimized the chance of domestic trouble.

We satisfied the creditors and the foreign nations to which the creditors belonged; and our own part of the work was done with the utmost efficiency and with rigid honesty, so that not a particle of scandal was ever so much as hinted at.

Under these circumstances those who do not know the nature of the professional international philanthropists would suppose that these apostles of international peace would have been overjoyed with what we had done.

As a matter of fact, when they took any notice of it at all it was to denounce it; and those American newspapers which are fondest of proclaiming themselves the foes of war and the friends of peace violently attacked me for averting war from, and bringing peace to, the island.

They insisted I had no power to make the agreement, and demanded the rejection of the treaty which was to perpetuate the agreement.

They were, of course, wholly unable to advance a single sound reason of any kind for their attitude.

I suppose the real explanation was partly their dislike of me personally, and unwillingness to see peace come through or national honor upheld by me; and in the next place their sheer, simple devotion to prattle and dislike of efficiency.

They liked to have people come together and talk about peace, or even sign bits of paper with something about peace or arbitration on them, but they took no interest whatever in the practical achievement of a peace that told for good government and decency and honesty.

They were joined by the many moderately well-meaning men who always demand that a thing be done, but also always demand that it be not done in the only way in which it is, as a matter of fact, possible to do it.

The men of this kind insisted that of course Santo Domingo must be protected and made to behave itself, and that of course the Panama Canal must be dug; but they insisted even more strongly that neither feat should be accomplished in the only way in which it was possible to accomplish it at all.

The Constitution did not explicitly give me power to bring about the necessary agreement with Santo Domingo.

But the Constitution did not forbid my doing what I did.

I put the agreement into effect, and I continued its execution for two years before the Senate acted; and I would have continued it until the end of my term, if necessary, without any action by Congress.

But it was far preferable that there should be action by Congress, so that we might be proceeding under a treaty which was the law of the land and not merely by a direction of the Chief Executive which would lapse when that particular executive left office.

I therefore did my best to get the Senate to ratify what I had done.

There was a good deal of difficulty about it.

With the exception of one or two men like Clark of Arkansas, the Democratic Senators acted in that spirit of unworthy partisanship which subordinates national interest to some fancied partisan advantage, and they were cordially backed by all that portion of the press which took its inspiration from Wall Street, and was violently hostile to the Administration because of its attitude towards great corporations.

Most of the Republican Senators under the lead of Senator Lodge stood by me; but some of them, of the more "conservative" or reactionary type, who were already growing hostile to me on the trust question, first proceeded to sneer at what had been done, and to raise all kinds of meticulous objections, which they themselves finally abandoned, but which furnished an excuse on which the opponents of the treaty could hang adverse action.

Unfortunately the Senators who were most apt to speak of the dignity of the Senate, and to insist upon its importance, were the very ones who were also most apt to try to make display of this dignity and importance by thwarting the public business.

This case was typical.

The Republicans in question spoke against certain provisions of the proposed treaty.

They then, having ingeniously provided ammunition for the foes of the treaty, abandoned their opposition to it, and the Democrats stepped into the position they had abandoned.

Enough Republicans were absent to prevent the securing of a two-thirds vote for the treaty, and the Senate adjourned without any action at all, and with a feeling of entire self-satisfaction at having left the country in the position of assuming a responsibility and then failing to fulfil it.

Apparently the Senators in question felt that in some way they had upheld their dignity.

All that they had really done was to shirk their duty.

Somebody had to do that duty, and accordingly I did it.

I went ahead and administered the proposed treaty anyhow, considering it as a simple agreement on the part of the Executive which would be converted into a treaty whenever the Senate acted.

After a couple of years the Senate did act, having previously made some utterly unimportant changes which I ratified and persuaded Santo Domingo to ratify.

In all its history Santo Domingo has had nothing happen to it as fortunate as this treaty, and the passing of it saved the United States from having to face serious difficulties with one or more foreign powers.

It cannot in the long run prove possible for the United States to protect delinquent American nations from punishment for the non-performance of their duties unless she undertakes to make them perform their duties.

People may theorize about this as much as they wish, but whenever a sufficiently strong outside nation becomes sufficiently aggrieved, then either that nation will act or the United States Government itself will have to act.

We were face to face at one period of my administration with this condition of affairs in Venezuela, when Germany, rather feebly backed by England, undertook a blockade against Venezuela to make Venezuela adopt the German and English view about certain agreements.

There was real danger that the blockade would finally result in Germany's taking possession of certain cities or custom-houses.

I succeeded, however, in getting all the parties in interest to submit their cases to the Hague Tribunal.