Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
When the election has been held and the new government inaugurated in
peaceful and orderly fashion the provisional government will come to an
end. I take this opportunity of expressing upon behalf of the American
people, with all possible solemnity, our most earnest hope that the
people of Cuba will realize the imperative need of preserving justice
and keeping order in the Island. The United States wishes nothing of
Cuba except that it shall prosper morally and materially, and wishes
nothing of the Cubans save that they shall be able to preserve order
among themselves and therefore to preserve their independence. If the
elections become a farce, and if the insurrectionary habit becomes
confirmed in the Island, it is absolutely out of the question that the
Island should continue independent; and the United States, which has
assumed the sponsorship before the civilized world for Cuba's career as
a nation, would again have to intervene and to see that the government
was managed in such orderly fashion as to secure the safety of life and
property. The path to be trodden by those who exercise self-government
is always hard, and we should have every charity and patience with the
Cubans as they tread this difficult path. I have the utmost sympathy
with, and regard for, them; but I most earnestly adjure them solemnly
to weigh their responsibilities and to see that when their new
government is started it shall run smoothly, and with freedom from
flagrant denial of right on the one hand, and from insurrectionary
disturbances on the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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