_To the President_

. . . The foregoing I wrote before this Mexican business took its
present place. I can't get away from the feeling that the English
simply do not and will not believe in any unselfish public
action--further than the keeping of order. They have a mania for
order, sheer order, order for the sake of order. They can't see how
anything can come in any one's thought before order or how anything
need come afterward. Even Sir Edward Grey jocularly ran me across
our history with questions like this:

"Suppose you have to intervene, what then?"

"Make 'em vote and live by their decisions."

"But suppose they will not so live?"

"We'll go in again and make 'em vote again."

"And keep this up 200 years?" asked he.

"Yes," said I. "The United States will he here two hundred years
and it can continue to shoot men for that little space till they
learn to vote and to rule themselves."

I have never seen him laugh so heartily. Shooting men into
self-government! Shooting them into orderliness--he comprehends
that; and that's all right. But that's as far as his habit of mind
goes. At Sheffield last night, when I had to make a speech, I
explained "idealism" (they always quote it) in Government. They
listened attentively and even eagerly. Then they came up and asked
if I really meant that Government should concern itself with
idealistic things--beyond keeping order. Ought they to do so in
India?--I assure you they don't think beyond order. A nigger
lynched in Mississippi offends them more than a tyrant in Mexico.

_To Edward M. House_

London, November 2, 1913.

DEAR HOUSE:

I've been writing to the President that the Englishman has a mania
for order, order for order's sake, and for--trade. He has reduced a
large part of the world to order. He is the best policeman in
creation; and--he has the policeman's ethics! Talk to him about
character as a basis of government or about a moral basis of
government in any outlying country, he'll think you daft. Bah! what
matter who governs or how he governs or where he got his authority
or how, so long as he keeps order. He won't see anything else. The
lesson of our dealing with Cuba is lost on him. He doesn't believe
_that_. We may bring this Government in line with us on Mexi