be found.

As it is with men, so it is with nations. Do you imagine that any nation
has a spotless history? Do you think that you can peer into our past,
turn over the back pages of our record, and never come upon a single
blot? Indeed you cannot. And it is better--a great deal better--that you
should be aware of these blots. Such knowledge may enlighten you, may
make you a better American. What we need is to be critics of ourselves,
and this is exactly what we have been taught not to be.

We are quite good enough to look straight at ourselves. Owing to one
thing and another we are cleaner, honester, humaner, and whiter than
any people on the continent of Europe. If any nation on the continent of
Europe has ever behaved with the generosity and magnanimity that we have
shown to Cuba, I have yet to learn of it. They jeered at us about Cuba,
did the Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck their tongues in
their cheeks. Of course our fine sentiments were all sham, they said.
Of course we intended to swallow Cuba, and never had intended anything
else. And when General Leonard Wood came away from Cuba, having made
Havana healthy, having brought order out of chaos on the island, and we
left Cuba independent, Europe jeered on. That dear old Europe!

Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation that returned to China
their share of the indemnity exacted in consequence of the Boxer
troubles; we alone returned our share to China--sixteen millions. It was
we who prevented levying a punitive indemnity on China. Read the whole
story; there is much more. We played the gentleman, Europe played the
bully. But Europe calls us "dollar chasers." That dear old Europe!
Again, if any conquering General on the continent of Europe ever behaved
as Grant did to Lee at Appomattox, his name has escaped me.

Again, and lastly--though I am not attempting to tell you here the whole
tale of our decencies: Whose hands came away cleanest from that Peace
Conference in Paris lately? What did we ask for ourselves? Everything
we asked, save some repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, yes! we
are quite good enough to keep quiet about these things. No need whatever
to brag. Bragging, moreover, inclines the listener to suspect you're not
so remarkable as you sound.

But all this virtue doesn't in the least alter the fact that we're like
everybody else in having some dirty pages in our History. These pages it
is a foolish mistake to conceal. I