let matters drift until Congress met, and then sent a message on the subject, shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders to those of the Congressmen. Secondly, he might have put down the rebellion and restored Panama to Colombia; but this would have been to subject them against their will to a foreign enemy - an enormity the Anti-Imperialists were still decrying in our holding the Philippines against the will of their inhabitants. Thirdly, he might have withdrawn American warships and left Colombia to fight it out with the Panamanians but this would have involved bloodshed, tumult, and interruption. of transit across the Isthmus, which the United States, by the agreement of 1846, were bound to prevent. Finally, he might recognize any de facto government ready and willing to transact business and this he did.1 That the Colombian politicians, who repudiated the treaty Herran had framed, were blackmailers of the lowest sort, is as indisputable as is the fact that whoever begins to compromise with a blackmailer is lured farther and farther into a bog until he is finally swallowed up. Americans should know also that during the summer and autumn of 1903, German agents were busy in Bogotá, and that, since German capitalists had openly announced their desire to buy up 1 Leupp, 10-11. the French Company's concession, we may guess that they did not urge Colombia to fulfill her obligation to the United States. Many years later I discussed the transaction with Mr. Roosevelt, chaffing him with being a wicked conspirator. He laughed, and replied: "What was the use? The other fellows in Paris and New York had taken all the risk and were doing all the work. Instead of trying to run a parallel conspiracy, I had only to sit still and profit by their plot if it succeeded." He said also that he had intended issuing a public announcement that, if Colombia by a given date refused to come to terms, he would seize the Canal Zone in behalf of civilization. I told him I rather wished that he had accomplished his purpose in that way; but he answered that events matured too quickly, and that, in any case, where swift action was required, the Executive and not Congress must decide. CHAPTER XII THE GREAT CRUSADE AT HOME HESE early diplomatic settlements in Roose TH velt's Administration showed the world that - the United States now had a President who did not seek quarrels, but who was not afraid of them, who never bluffed, because — unlike President Cleveland and Secretary Olney with their Venezuela Message in 1895 he never made a threat which he could not back up at the moment. There was no longer a bed of roses to stifle opposition; whosoever hit at the United States would encounter a barrier of long, sharp, and unbending thorns. These particular achievements in foreign affairs, and others which I shall mention later, gave Roosevelt and his country great prestige abroad and the admiration of a large part of his countrymen. But his truly significant work related to home affairs. Now at last, he, the young David of the New Ideals, was to go forth, if he dared, and do battle with the Goliath of Conservatism. With him there was no question of daring. He had been waiting for twenty years for this opportunity. Such a conflict or duel has rarely been witnessed, because it rarely happens that an individual who consciously embodies the aims of an epoch is accepted by that epoch as its champion. Looking backward, we see that Abraham Lincoln typified the ideals of Freedom and Union which were the supreme issues of his time; but this recognition has come chiefly since his death. In like fashion I believe that Roosevelt's significance as a champion of Liberty, little suspected by his contemporaries and hardly surmised even now, will require the lapse of another generation before it is universally understood. Many obvious reasons account for this. Most of the internal reforms which Roosevelt struggled for lacked the dramatic quality or the picturesqueness which appeals to average, dull, unimaginative men and women. The heroism of the medical experimenter who voluntarily contracts yellow fever and dies and thereby saves myriads of lives - makes little impression on the ordinary person, who can be roused only by stories of battle heroism, of soldiers and torpedoes. And yet the attacks which Roosevelt made, while they did not involve death, called for the highest kind of civic courage and fortitude. Then again a political combat with tongues and arguments seldom conveys the impression that through it irrevocable Fate gives its decision to the same extent that a contest by swords and volleys |