Grant 187 



interest of the peoples who have come under our 

 guardianship, then we had best never to have begun 

 the effort at all. As a nation we shall have to choose 

 our representatives in these islands as carefully as 

 Grant chose the generals who were to serve at the 

 vital points under him. Fortunately, so far the 

 choice has been most wise. No nation has ever sent 

 a better man than we sent to Cuba when President 

 McKinley appointed as governor-general of that isl 

 and Leonard Wood; and now, in sending Judge 

 Taft at the head of the Commission to the Philip 

 pines, the President has again chosen the very best 

 man to be found in all the United States for the 

 purpose in view. 



Part of Grant's great strength lay in the fact that 

 he faced facts as they were, and not as he wished 

 they might be. He was not originally an abolition 

 ist, and he probably could not originally have de 

 fined his views as to State sovereignty; but when 

 the Civil War was on, he saw that the only thing 

 to do was to fight it to a finish and establish by force 

 of arms the Constitutional right to put down rebel 

 lion. It is just the same thing nowadays with expan 

 sion. It has come, and it has come to stay, whether 

 we wish it or not. Certain duties have fallen to us 

 as a legacy of the war with Spain, and we can not 

 avoid performing them. All we can decide is whether 

 we will perform them well or ill. We can not leave 



