I have met people who had some doubt whether the Sudan would pay.
Personally, I think it probably will. But I may add that, in my
judgment, this does not alter the duty of England to stay there.
It is not worth while belonging to a big nation unless the big
nation is willing, when the necessity arises, to undertake a big
task. I feel about you in the Sudan just as I felt about us in
Panama. When we acquired the right to build the Panama Canal, and
entered on the task, there were worthy people who came to me and
said they wondered whether it would pay. I always answered that it
was one of the great world-works that had to be done; that it was
our business as a nation to do it, if we were ready to make good
our claim to be treated as a great World Power; and that as we
were unwilling to abandon the claim, no American worth his salt
ought to hesitate about performing the task. I feel just the same
way about you in the Sudan.
* * * * *
It was with this primary object of establishing order that you
went into Egypt twenty-eight years ago; and the chief and ample
justification for your presence in Egypt was this absolute
necessity of order being established from without, coupled with
your ability and willingness to establish it. Now, either you have
the right to be in Egypt, or you have not; either it is, or it is
not your duty to establish and keep order. If you feel that you
have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish
and keep order there, why then by all means get out of Egypt. If,
as I hope, you feel that your duty to civilized mankind and your
fealty to your own great traditions alike bid you to stay, then
make the fact and the name agree, and show that you are ready to
meet in very deed the responsibility which is yours.
There may be little Ciceronian grace about these passages, but there
is unmistakable verbal power. So many words of one syllable and of
Saxon derivation are used as to warrant the opinion that the speaker
possesses a distinctive style. That it is an effective style was
proved by the response of the audience, which greeted these particular
passages (although they contain by implication frank criticisms of the
British people) with cheers and cries of "Hear, hear!" It should be
remembered, too, that the audience, a distinguished one, while neither
hostile nor antipathetic, came in a distinctly critical frame of mind.
Like the man from Missouri, they were determined "to be shown" the
value of Mr. Roosevelt's personality and views before they accepted
them. That they did accept them, that the British people accepted
them, I shall endeavor to show a little later.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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