60 Presidential Addresses 



upon the peaceable and law-abiding natives who are 

 friendly to us, can not be held to excuse any wrong 

 doers on our side. Determined and unswerving ef 

 fort must be made, and has been and is being made, 

 to find out every instance of barbarity on the part 

 of our troops, to punish those guilty of it, and to 

 take, if possible, even stronger measures than have 

 already been taken to minimize or prevent the oc 

 currence of all such acts in the future. 



Is it only in the army in the Philippines that 

 Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all 

 other Americans to regret? No! From time to 

 time there occur in our country, to the deep and 

 lasting shame of our people, lynchings carried on 

 under circumstances of inhuman cruelty and bar 

 barity cruelty infinitely worse than any that has 

 ever been committed by our troops in the Philip 

 pines; worse to the victims, and far more brutaliz 

 ing to those -guilty of it. The men who fail to con 

 demn these lynchings, and yet clamor about what 

 has been done in the Philippines, are indeed guilty 

 of neglecting the beam in their own eye while taunt 

 ing their brother about the mote in his. Under 

 stand me. These lynchings afford us no excuse for 

 failure to stop cruelty in the Philippines. But keep 

 in mind that these cruelties in the Philippines have 

 been wholly exceptional, and have been shamelessly 

 exaggerated. We deeply and bitterly regret that 

 they should have been committed, no matter how 

 rarely, no matter under what provocation, by Amer 

 ican troops. But they afford far less ground for 



