Fear God and Take Your Own Part by Theodore Roosevelt

Author:Theodore Roosevelt [Roosevelt, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411436466
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

THE SOUND OF LAUGHTER AND OF PLAYING CHILDREN HAS BEEN STILLED IN MEXICO

AN astonishing proof of the readiness of many persons to pay heed exclusively to words and not at all to deeds is supplied by the statement of the defenders of this Administration that President Wilson has “kept us out of war with Mexico” and has “avoided interference in Mexico.” These are the words. The deeds have been: first, an unbroken course of more or less furtive meddling in the internal affairs of Mexico carried to a pitch which imposes on this nation a grave responsibility for the wrong-doing of the victorious factions; and, second, the plunging of this country into what was really a futile and inglorious little war with Mexico, a war entered into with no adequate object, and abandoned without the achievement of any object whatever, adequate or inadequate.

To say that we did not go to war with Mexico is a mere play upon words. A quarter of the wars of history have been entered into and carried through without any preliminary declaration of war and often without any declaration of war at all. The seizure of the leading seaport city of another country, the engagement and defeat of the troops of that country, and the retention of the territory thus occupied for a number of months, constitute war; and denial that it is war can only serve to amuse the type of intellect which would assert that Germany has not been at war with Belgium because Germany did not originally declare war on Belgium. President Wilson‘s war only resulted in the sacrifice of a score of American lives and a hundred or two of the lives of Mexicans; it was entirely purposeless, has served no good object, has achieved nothing and has been abandoned by Mr. Wilson without obtaining the object because of which it was nominally entered into; it can therefore rightly be stigmatized as a peculiarly unwise, ignoble and inefficient war; but it was war nevertheless.

This has been bad enough. But the general course of the Administration toward Mexico has been worse and even more productive of wide and far-reaching harm. Here again, word-splitters may, if they desire, endeavor to show that the President did not “intervene” in Mexico; but if so they would be obliged to male a fine discrimination between intervention and officious and mischievous intermeddling. Whether it is said that President Wilson “intervened” in Mexican affairs, or that he merely intermeddled, so as to produce much evil and no good and to make us responsible for the actions of a peculiarly lawless, ignorant and blood-thirsty faction, is of small importance. The distinction is one merely of words. The simple fact is that thanks to President Wilson‘s action — and at times his inaction has been the most effective and vicious form of action — this country has become partially (and guiltily) responsible for some of the worst acts ever committed even in the civil wars of Mexico.

When Mr. Wilson

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