204 Presidential Addresses 



time ; and not the least of his titles to our regard is 

 the way in which he was able to work on terms of 

 cordial good-will with the head of the army, himself 

 a man who had honored the blue uniform as Wright 

 had honored the gray. 



General Wright's work has been as difficult as it 

 was important. The events of the last four years 

 have definitely decided that whether we wish to or 

 not we must hereafter play a great part in the 

 world. We can not escape facing the duties. We 

 may shirk them if we are built of poor stuff, or we 

 may take hold and do them if we are fit sons of our 

 sires but face them we must, whether we will or 

 not. Our duty in the Philippine Islands has simply 

 been one of the duties that thus have come upon us. 

 We are there, and we can no more haul down our 

 flag and abandon the islands than we could now 

 abandon Alaska. Whether we are glad or sorry 

 that events forced us to go there is aside from the 

 question; the point is that, as the inevitable result 

 of the war with Spain, we found ourselves in the 

 Philippines and that we could not leave the islands 

 without discredit. The islanders were wholly unfit 

 to govern themselves, and if we had left there 

 would have been a brief period of bloody chaos, and 

 then some other nation would have stepped in to 

 do the work which we had shirked. It can not be 

 too often repeated that there was no question that 

 the work had to be done. All the question was, 

 whether we would do it well or ill ; and, thanks to 

 the choice of men like Governor Wright, it has been 



