Britain concerning the canal concluded on November 18, 1901. But I have
not come to urge upon you my personal views. I have come to state to you
a fact and a situation. Whatever may be our own differences of opinion
concerning this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated outside
the United States. Everywhere else the language of the treaty is given
but one interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the exemption
I am asking you to repeal. We consented to the treaty; its language we
accepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful,
too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or refined
reading the words of our own promises just because we have power enough
to give us leave to read them as we please. The large thing to do is the
only thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a position
everywhere questioned and misunderstood. We ought to reverse our action
without raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so once
more deserve our reputation for generosity and for the redemption of
every obligation without quibble or hesitation.

I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the
administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even
greater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in
ungrudging measure.




THE TAMPICO INCIDENT

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress,
April 20, 1914.]