INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1905
My Fellow-Citizens:
No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours, and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.
Much has been given to us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great Nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth; and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly desirous of securing their goodwill by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.
Our relations with the other Powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this Nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fibre of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centres. Upon the success of our experiment much depends; not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations; and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children’s children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
White House, Washington
March 6, 1905
To the Senate:
I wish to call the attention of the Senate at this executive session to the treaty with Santo Domingo. I feel that I ought to state to the Senate that the condition of affairs in Santo Domingo is such that it is very much for the interest of that Republic that action on the treaty should be had at as early a moment as the Senate, after giving the matter full consideration, may find practicable.
I call attention to the following facts:
1. This treaty was entered into at the earnest request of Santo Domingo itself, and is designed to afford Santo Domingo relief and assistance. Its primary benefit will be to Santo Domingo. It offers the method most likely to secure peace and to prevent war in the island.
2. The benefit to the United States will consist chiefly in the tendency under the treaty to secure stability, order, and prosperity in Santo Domingo, and the removal of the apprehension lest foreign powers make aggressions on Santo Domingo in the course of collecting claims due their citizens; for it is greatly to our interest that all the islands in the Caribbean Sea should enjoy peace and prosperity and feel goodwill toward this country. The benefit to honest creditors will come from the fact that for the first time under this treaty a practicable method of attempting to settle the debts due them will be inaugurated.
3. Many of the debts alleged to be due from Santo Domingo to outside creditors unquestionably on their face represent far more money than ever was actually given Santo Domingo. The proposed treaty provides for a process by which impartial experts will determine what debts are valid and what are in whole or in part invalid, and will apportion accordingly the surplus revenue available for the payment of the debts. This treaty offers the only method for preventing the collection of fraudulent debts, whether owed to Americans or to citizens of other nations.
4. This treaty affords the most practicable means of obtaining payment for the just claims of American citizens.
5. If the treaty is ratified creditors belonging to other nations will have exactly as good treatment as creditors who are citizens of the United States, and at the same time Santo Domingo will be protected against unjust and exorbitant claims. If it is not ratified the chances are that American creditors will fare ill as compared with those of other nations; for foreign nations, being denied the opportunity to get what is rightfully due their citizens under the proposed arrangement, will be left to collect debts due their citizens as they see fit, provided, of course, there is not permanent occupancy of Dominican territory. As in such case the United States will have nothing to say as to what debts should or should not be collected, and as Santo Domingo will be left without aid, assistance, or protection, it is impossible to state that the sums collected from it will not be improper in amount. In such event, whatever is collected by means of forcible intervention will be applied to the creditors of foreign nations in preference to creditors who are citizens of the United States.
6. The correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Minister of Haiti, submitted to the Senate several days ago, shows that our position is explicitly and unreservedly that under no circumstances do we intend to acquire territory in or possession of either Haiti or Santo Domingo; it being stated in these letters that even if the two republics desired to become a part of the United States the United States would certainly refuse its assent.
7. Santo Domingo grievously needs the aid of a powerful and friendly nation. This aid we are able, and I trust that we are willing, to bestow. She has asked for this aid, and the expressions of friendship repeatedly sanctioned by the people and the Government of the United States warrant her in believing that it will not be withheld in the hour of her need.
Theodore Roosevelt.