Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. IV.djvu/206

 166 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS struction plans were committed to a leading engineer officer of the army, and the sanitary super vision of the colony to a military surgeon who had won fame in pest-ridden Cuba. As a result, a population of about fifty thousand souls, four-fifths of whom belong to the laboring class, have been kept effectively employed in good health and com fort and under a reign of justice, for the ten years it has taken to bring the canal to completion. Meanwhile, other matters outside of the regular routine of his office had been forced upon the secre tary s attention, the most momentous being a crisis in Cuban affairs. It had always been a favorite saying of Mr. Taft s that the faculty of any people for civil self-government was not a natural instinct but the fruit of special training. The early break down of the Cuban experiment proved this true. At the cost of a war, the United States had set the island free, and enabled the people to form the republic they had so long craved; yet, within two years and six months of the end of the American occupation, the clash of parties, personal rivalries, and bad management had got the affairs of the infant government into such a snarl that civil war was imminent, and nothing was left for the United States, as protector and patron, but to intervene and restore order. To this undertaking the presi dent assigned Mr. Taft. In September, 1906, the secretary entered the