I do not want to see any foreign power take possession permanently or temporarily of the custom-houses of an American republic in order to enforce its obligations, and the alternative may at any time be that we shall be forced to do so ourselves. Finally, and what is in my view really the most important thing of all, it is our duty, so far as we are able, to try to help upward our weaker brothers. Just as there has been a gradual growth of the ethical element in the relations of one individual to another, so that with all the faults of our Christian civilization it yet remains true that we are, no matter how slowly, more and more coming to recognize the duty of bearing one another’s burdens, similarly I believe that the ethical element is by degrees entering into the dealings of one nation with another. Under strain of emotion caused by sudden disaster this feeling is very evident. A famine or a plague in one country brings much sympathy and some assistance from other countries. Moreover, we are now beginning to recognize that weaker peoples have a claim upon us, even when the appeal is made, not to our emotions by some sudden calamity, but to our consciences by a long-continuing condition of affairs. I do not mean to say that nations have more than begun to approach the proper relationship one to another, and I fully recognize the folly of proceeding upon the assumption that this ideal condition can now be realized in full—for, in order to proceed upon such an assumption, we would first require some method of forcing recalcitrant nations to do their duty, as well as of seeing that they are protected in their rights. In the interest of justice, it is as necessary to exercise the police power as to show charity and helpful generosity. But something can even now be done toward the end in view. That something, for instance, this Nation has already done as regards Cuba, and is now trying to do as regards Santo Domingo. There are few things in our history in which we should take more genuine pride than the way in which we liberated Cuba, and then, instead of instantly abandoning it to chaos, stayed in direction of the affairs of the island until we had put it on the right path, and finally gave it freedom and helped it as it started on the life of an independent republic.