Index :: 1905 Roosevelt Philippines

Harper’s Weekly March 11, 1905

COMMENT

The speech delivered by President ROOSEVELT on February 22 at the University of Pennsylvania was appropriately devoted to the illustrious man whose birthday it was, and especially to an exposition of the principles laid down by him for the guidance of his countrymen.  Ostensibly, the speaker confined himself to the maxim s propounded in the "Farewell Address," but one of those discussed cannot be found in that composition, nor can it easily be reconciled with one of WASHINGTON’S later utterances.  Mr. ROOSEVELT said that among the maxims bequeathed by WASHINGTON was the following; "To be prepared for war is the most effective means to promote peace." As the New York Sun has pointed out, WASHINGTON says nothing of the kind in the "Farewell Address "nor is any unqualified statement to the effect indicated by Mr. ROOSEVELT discoverable in any of his extant utterances.  The nearest thing to it is the qualified assertion made in his first annual address, or message, sent to Congress on January 8, 1790. Then he suggested that "to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."  Cautious as this statement is, it is scarcely consistent with the conviction at which WASHINGTON arrived near the close of his life, and which found earnest expression in the following words; "My first wish is to see this plague to mankind [war] banished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing implements and exercising them for the destruction of mankind." A Quaker correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger directs attention to the fact that the modern battleship is clearly, nay, preeminently, one of the  "implements" coming under the above category.

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Another of Mr. ROOSEVELT’S averments has provoked dissent. In the vehemence of his desire for large annual increases of our naval force, the President says that "never since the beginning of our country’s history has the navy been used in an unjust war."  As the New York Evening Post recalls, it was used in the Mexican war, which General GRANT pronounced one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.  Mr. ROOSEVELT may decline to take his opinions at second hand from GRANT, but he cannot, with any show of consistency, dissent from the judgment rendered by himself in his Life of Benton, when he spoke of the Mexican war as  "a wrong" and recorded, without disapprovals, Benton’s denunciation of that act of aggression.  Another of WASHINGTON’S maxims quoted by Mr. ROOSEVELT was: Give to mankind the example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence."  Observe, says Mr. ROOSEVELT, that WASHINGTON puts justice first.  The President asserts that by the treatment of the Filipinos by TAFT and WRIGHT we have shown the world how we practice the justice which Washington enjoined.  As a matter of fact, the fundamental principle of justice, upon which WASHINGTON had acted from July 4, 1776 up to the day of his death, was that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." If WASHINGTON’S conception of justice is to prevail, it is for the Filipinos, and not for us, to decide what kind of government they shall have.  That is the principle for which WASHINGTON fought, and if we are to repudiate it, with what propriety do we honor his birthday or celebrate the Fourth of July?