410 Presidential Addresses 



sider the chance of such a temptation appealing 

 to them. 



Taft went to the Philippines to stay there; not 

 only forfeiting thereby the certainty of brilliant rise 

 in his profession on the bench or at the bar here 

 if he had stayed, but at imminent risk to his own 

 health ; because he felt that his duty as an American 

 made him go; that, as President McKinley told me 

 of him, he had been drafted into the service of the 

 country and he could not honorably refuse. We 

 have seen in consequence the Philippine Islands ad- 

 ministered by the American official who is at the 

 head of the government and by his colleagues in the 

 interest primarily of their people, and seeking to 

 obtain for the United States, for the dominant race, 

 that spent its' blood and its treasure in making firm 

 and stable the government of those islands, the re- 

 ward that comes from the consciousness of duty well 

 done. Under Taft, by and through his efforts, not 

 only have peace and material well-being come to 

 those islands to a degree never before known in their 

 recorded history, and to a degree infinitely greater 

 than had ever been dreamed possible by those who 

 knew them best, but more than that, a greater meas- 

 ure of self-government has been given to them than 

 is now given to any other Asiatic people under alien 

 rule, than to any other Asiatic people under their 

 own rulers, save Japan alone. That is an achieve- 

 ment of the past five years which I hold to be abso- 

 lutely unparalleled in history ; and when the debit and 

 credit side of our national life is finally made up a 



