We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk
neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its
greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we
must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all
other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and
sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our
deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by
acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all
their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an
individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.
While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no
less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we
wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it
because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak
nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us,
and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject
for insolent aggression.

Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but
still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in
wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the
century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by
a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that
rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and
danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We
now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible
that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and
the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial
development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our
social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and