Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/416

392 lamentably futile. In the first place, the cause of civilization is not promoted but hurt when a great Republic like ours breaks its solemn treaties and adopts the nefarious doctrine that the end justifies the means. And secondly, what right has President Roosevelt to say that the building of the canal would have been deferred “perhaps for a generation” if he had not acted as he did? Let us suppose it is true, as has been said, that the republic of Colombia tried to extort from us a higher price for what was asked of her—that she tried to blackmail us by rejecting the Hay-Herran Treaty. Was it not reasonable to expect that after a little further haggling she would yield, if with some more patience we had continued our diplomatic talks with her, convincing her that under no circumstances she would ever get more than we had offered, and especially if we had actually and ostentatiously begun negotiations, in obedience to existing law, about the Nicaragua Canal, thus letting Colombia know that she would have to yield quickly because there was danger for her in delay? Such yielding would, no doubt, have before long been the result. We might thus have had our canal without contemning our own law; without treading under foot principles we had maintained and fought for at a tremendous cost; without setting precedents which we pray may not come back to plague us; without the scandal of breaking a treaty—had we had a President possessing more patience and discretion, and a temperament less given to dramatic vehemence.

We should then have also avoided some other consequences. The governments of other nations have, indeed, promptly recognized the independence of the new republic of Panama after we had substantially created it and stamped it with our authority. Of course, out of deference to this great Republic, they accepted an accomplished fact fathered by it. But we should not