 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
XXI
AT FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA, APRIL 7, 1903
My fellow-citizens:
The Northwest, whose sons in the Civil War added such
brilliant pages to the honor roll of the Republic, likewise
bore a full share in the struggle of which the war with
Spain was the beginning,—a struggle slight indeed when
compared with the gigantic death-wrestle which for four
years stamped to and fro across the Southern States in
the Civil War, but a struggle fraught with consequences
to the nation, and indeed to the world, out of all proportion
to the smallness of the effort upon our part.
Three and a half years ago President McKinley spoke
in the adjoining State of Minnesota on the occasion of
the return of the Thirteenth Minnesota Volunteers from
the Philippine Islands, where they had served with your
own gallant sons of the North Dakota regiment. After
heartily thanking the returned soldiers for their valor and
patriotism, and their contemptuous refusal to be daunted
or misled by the outcry raised at home by the men of
little faith who wished us to abandon the islands, he
spoke of the islands themselves as follows:
That Congress will provide for them a government which
will bring them blessings, which will promote their material
interests as well as advance their people in the path of civilization
and intelligence, I confidently believe. They will not be
governed as vassals or serfs or slaves. They will be given a
government of liberty, regulated by law, honestly administered,
without bribe, education without distinction of social condition,
freedom of religious worship, and protection in "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness."
What he said then lay in the realm of promise. Now
it lies in the realm of positive performance.
It is a good thing to look back upon what has been said
and compare it with the record of what has actually been
done. If promises are violated, if plighted word is not
kept, then those who have failed in their duty should be
held up to reprobation. If, on the other hand, the
promises have been substantially made good; if the
achievement has kept pace and more than kept pace with
the prophecy, then they who made the one and are responsible
for the other are entitled of just right to claim
the credit which attaches to those who serve the nation
well. This credit I claim for the men who have managed
so admirably the military and the civil affairs of the
Philippine Islands, and for those other men who have so
heartily backed them in Congress, and without whose aid
and support not one thing could have been accomplished.
When President McKinley spoke, the first duty was the
restoration of order; and to this end the use of the army
of the United States—an army composed of regulars
and volunteers alike—was necessary. To put down the
insurrection and restore peace to the islands was a duty
not only to ourselves but to the islanders also. We could
not have abandoned the conflict without shirking this
duty, without proving ourselves recreants to the memory
of our forefathers. Moreover, if we had abandoned it
we would have inflicted upon the Filipinos the most cruel
wrong and would have doomed them to a bloody jumble
of anarchy and tyranny. It seems strange, looking back,
that any of our people should have failed to recognize
a duty so obvious; but there was such failure, and the
and above all our gallant army, had to do their
work amid a storm of detraction. The army in especial
was attacked in a way which finally did good, for in the
end it aroused the hearty resentment of the great body
of the American people, not against the army, but
against the army's traducers. The circumstances of the
war made it one of peculiar difficulty, and our soldiers
were exposed to peculiar wrongs from their foes. They
fought in dense tropical jungles against enemies who were
very treacherous and very cruel, not only toward our own
men, but toward the great numbers of friendly natives,
the most peaceable and most civilized among whom
eagerly welcomed our rule. Under such circumstances,
among a hundred thousand hot-blooded and powerful
young men serving in small detachments on the other
side of the globe, it was impossible that occasional instances
of wrong-doing should not occur. The fact that
they occurred in retaliation for well-nigh intolerable provocation
cannot for one moment be admitted in the way
of excuse or justification. All good Americans regret
and deplore them, and the War Department has taken
every step in its power to punish the offenders and to
prevent or minimize the chance of repetition of the
offence. But these offences were the exception and not
the rule. As a whole, our troops showed not only signal
courage and efficiency, but great humanity and the most
sincere desire to promote the welfare and liberties of the
islanders. In a series of exceedingly harassing and difficult
campaigns they completely overthrew the enemy,
reducing them finally to a condition of mere brigandage;
and wherever they conquered, they conquered only to
make way for the rule of the civil government, for the
introduction of law, and of liberty under the law. When,
by last July, the last vestige of organized insurrection
had disappeared, peace and amnesty were proclaimed.
As rapidly as the military rule was extended over the
islands by the defeat of the insurgents, just so rapidly
was it replaced by the civil government. At the present
time the civil government is supreme and the army in the
Philippines has been reduced until it is sufficient merely
to provide against the recurrence of trouble. In Governor
Taft and his associates we sent to the Filipinos as
upright, as conscientious, and as able a group of administrators
as ever any country has been blessed with having.
With them and under them we have associated the best
men among the Filipinos, so that the great majority of the
officials, including many of the highest rank, are themselves
natives of the islands. The administration is incorruptibly
honest; justice is as jealously safeguarded as
here at home. The government is conducted purely in
the interests of the people of the islands; they are protected
in their religious and civil rights; they have been
given an excellent and well-administered school system,
and each of them now enjoys rights to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness" such as were never before
known in all the history of the islands.
The Congress which has just adjourned has passed
legislation of high importance and great wisdom in the
interests of the Filipino people. First and foremost,
they conferred upon them by law the present admirable
civil government; in addition they gave them an excellent
currency; they passed a measure allowing the organization
of a native constabulary; and they provided, in
the interests of the islands, for a reduction of twenty-five
per cent, in the tariff on Filipino articles brought to this
country. I asked that a still further reduction should be
made. It was not granted by the last Congress, but I
think that in some shape it will be granted by the next.
And even without it, the record of legislation in the interests
of the Filipinos is one with which we have a right
to feel great satisfaction.
Moreover, Congress appropriated three million dollars,
following the precedent it set when the people of Porto
Rico were afflicted by sudden disaster; this money to be
used by the Philippine Government in order to meet the
distress occasioned primarily by the terrible cattle disease
which almost annihilated the carabao or water-buffalo,
the chief and most important domestic animal in the
islands. Coming as this disaster did upon the heels of
the havoc wrought by the insurrectionary war, great suffering
has been caused; and this misery, for which this
Government is in no way responsible, will doubtless in
turn increase the difficulties of the Philippine Government
for the next year or so. In consequence there will
doubtless here and there occur sporadic increases of the
armed brigandage to which the islands have been habituated
from time immemorial, and here and there for their
own purposes the bandits may choose to style themselves
patriots or insurrectionists; but these local difficulties will
be of little consequence save as they give occasion to a
few men here at home again to try to mislead our people.
Not only has the military problem in the Philippines
been worked out quicker and better than we had dared
to expect, but the progress socially and in civil government
has likewise exceeded our fondest hopes.
The best thing that can be done in handling such a
problem as that in the Philippine Islands, so peculiar, so
delicate, so difficult, and so remote, is to put the best
man possible in charge and then give him the heartiest
possible support and the freest possible hand. This is
what has been done with Governor Taft. There is not
in this nation a higher or finer type of public servant
than Governor Taft. He has rendered literally inestimable
service, not only to the people of the Philippine
Islands but also to the people of the United States, by
what he has done in those islands. He has been able to
do it, because from the beginning he has been given
Root. With the cessation of organized resistance
the civil government assumed its proper position of headship.
The army in the Philippines is now one of the
instruments through which Governor Taft does his admirable
work. The civil government, of which Governor
Taft is the head, is supreme, and it will do well in the
future as it has in the past, because it will be backed up
in the future as it has been in the past.
Remember always that in the Philippines the American
Government has tried and is trying to carry out exactly
what the greatest genius and most revered patriot ever
known in the Philippine Islands—José Rizal—steadfastly
advocated. This man, shortly before his death, in a
message to his countrymen, under date of December 16,
1896, condemned unsparingly the insurrection of Aguinaldo,
terminated just before our navy appeared upon the
scene, and pointed out the path his people should follow
to liberty and enlightenment. Speaking of the insurrection
and of the pretence that Filipino independence of a
wholesome character could thereby be obtained, he wrote:
When, in spite of my advice, a movement was begun, I
offered of my own accord, not only my services, but my life
and even my good name to be used in any way they might
believe effective in stifling the rebellion. I thought of the disaster
which would follow the success of the revolution, and I
deemed myself fortunate if by any sacrifice I could block the
progress of such a useless calamity.
My countrymen, I have given proof that I was one who
sought liberty for our country and I still seek it. But as a
first step I insisted upon the development of the people in
order that, by means of education and of labor, they might
acquire the proper individual character and force which would
make them worthy of it. In my writings I have commended
to you study and civic virtue, without which our redemption
does not exist. . . . I cannot do less than condemn this
which dishonors us before the Filipinos and discredits us with
those who otherwise would argue in our behalf. I abominate
its cruelties and disavow any kind of connection with it, regretting
with all the sorrow of my soul that these reckless men
have allowed themselves to be deceived. Let them return,
then, to their homes, and may God pardon those who have
acted in bad faith.
This message embodied precisely and exactly the
avowed policy upon which the American Government has
acted in the Philippines. What the patriot Rizal said
with such force in speaking of the insurrection before we
came to the islands applies with tenfold greater force to
those who foolishly or wickedly opposed the mild and
beneficent government we were instituting in the islands.
The judgment of the martyred public servant, Rizal,
whose birthday the Philippine people celebrate, and
whom they worship as their hero and ideal, sets forth
the duty of American sovereignty,—a duty from which
the American people will never flinch.
While we have been doing these great and beneficent
works in the islands, we have yet been steadily reducing
the cost at which they are done. The last Congress repealed
the law for the war taxes, and the War Department
has reduced the army from the maximum number
of one hundred thousand allowed under the law to very
nearly the minimum of sixty thousand.
Moreover, the last Congress enacted some admirable
legislation affecting the army, passing first of all the
militia bill and then the bill to create a general staff.
The militia bill represents the realization of a reform
which had been championed ineffectively by Washington,
and had been fruitlessly agitated ever since. At last we
have taken from the statute books the obsolete militia
law of the Revolutionary days and have provided for efficient
aid to the National Guard of the States. I believe
for volunteer soldiers as we have, and it is the obvious
duty of the Nation and of the States to make such provision
as will enable this volunteer soldiery to be organized
with all possible rapidity and efficiency in time of
war; and, furthermore, to help in every way the National
Guard in time of peace. The militia law enacted by the
Congress marks the first long step ever taken in this
direction by the National Government. The general-staff
law is of immense importance and benefit to the
regular army. Individually, I would not admit that
the American regular, either officer or enlisted man, is
inferior to any other regular soldier in the world. In
fact, if it were worth while to boast, I should be tempted
to say that he was the best. But there must be proper
training, proper organization, and administration, in
order to get the best service out of even the best troops.
This is particularly the case with such a small army as
ours, scattered over so vast a country. We do not need
a large regular army, but we do need to have our small
regular army the very best that can possibly be produced.
Under the worn-out and ineffective organization
which has hitherto existed, a sudden strain is absolutely
certain to produce the dislocation and confusion we saw
at the outbreak of the war with Spain; and when such
dislocation and confusion occur it is easy and natural,
but entirely improper, to blame the men who happen to
be in office, instead of the system which is really responsible.
Under the law just enacted by Congress this system
will be changed immensely for the better, and every
patriotic American ought to rejoice; for when we come
to the army and the navy we deal with the honor and
interests of all our people; and when such is the case
party lines are as nothing, and we all stand shoulder to
shoulder as Americans, moved only by pride in and love
for our common country.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |