240 



National Duties 



ings with Cuba illustrate this, and should be forever 

 a subject of just national pride. We speak in no 

 spirit of arrogance when we state as a simple his 

 toric fact that never in recent times has any great 

 nation acted with such disinterestedness as we have 

 shown in Cuba. We freed the island from the Span 

 ish yoke. We then earnestly did our best to help the 

 Cubans in the establishment of free education, of law 

 and order, of material prosperity, of the cleanliness 

 necessary to sanitary well-being in their great cities. 

 We did all this at great expense of treasure, at some 

 expense of life ; and now we are establishing them in 

 a free and independent commonwealth, and have 

 asked in return nothing whatever save that at no 

 time shall their independence be prostituted to the 

 advantage of some foreign rival of ours, or so as 

 to menace our well-being. To have failed to ask this 

 would have amounted to national stultification on 

 our part. 



In the Philippines we have brought peace, and we 

 are at this moment giving them such freedom and 

 self-government as they could never under any con 

 ceivable conditions have obtained had we turned 

 them loose to sink into a welter of blood and con 

 fusion, or to become the prey of some strong tyr 

 anny without or within. The bare recital of the facts 

 is sufficient to show that we did our duty ; and what 

 prouder title to honor can a nation have than to have 



