d
advocates of peace.

The same reasoning applies in connection with what we did at the
Isthmus of Panama, and what we are doing in the Philippines. Our
colonial problems in the Philippines are not the same as the colonial
problems of other Powers. We have in the Philippines a people mainly
Asiatic in blood, but with a streak of European blood and with the
traditions of European culture, so that their ideals are largely the
ideals of Europe. At the moment when we entered the islands the people
were hopelessly unable to stand alone. If we had abandoned the
islands, we should have left them a prey to anarchy for some months,
and then they would have been seized by some other Power ready to
perform the task that we had not been able to perform. Now I hold that
it is not worth while being a big nation if you cannot do a big task;
I care not whether that task is digging the Panama Canal or handling
the Philippines. In the Philippines I feel that the day will
ultimately come when the Philippine people must settle for themselves
whether they wish to be entirely independent, or in some shape to keep
up a connection with us. The day has not yet come; it may not come for
a generation or two. One of the greatest friends that liberty has ever
had, the great British statesman Burke, said on one occasion that
there must always be government, and that if there is not government
from within, then it must be supplied from without. A child has to be
governed from without, because it has not yet grown to a point when it
can govern itself from within; and a people that shows itself totally
unable to govern itself from within must expect to submit to more or
less of government from without, because it cannot continue to exist
on other terms--indeed, it cannot be permitted permanently to exist as
a source of danger to other nations. Our aim in the Philippines is to
train the people so that they may govern themselves from within. Until
they have reached this point they cannot have self-government. I will
never advocate self-government for a people so long as their
self-government means crime, violence, and extortion, corruption
within, lawlessness among themselves and towards others. If that is
what self-government means to any people then they ought to be
governed by others until they can do better.

What I have related represents a measure of practical achievement in
the way of helping forward the cause of peace and justice, and of
givin