The same reasoning applies in connection with what we did at the Isthmus of Panama, and what we are doing in the Philippines.  Our colonial problems in the Philippines are not the same as the colonial problems of other Powers.  We have in the Philippines a people mainly Asiatic in blood, but with a streak of European blood and with the traditions of European culture, so that their ideals are largely the ideals of Europe.  At the moment when we entered the islands the people were hopelessly unable to stand alone.  If we had abandoned the islands, we should have left them a prey to anarchy for some months, and then they would have been seized by some other Power ready to perform the task that we had not been able to perform.  Now I hold that it is not worth while being a big nation if you cannot do a big task; I care not whether that task is digging the Panama Canal or handling the Philippines.  In the Philippines I feel that the day will ultimately come when the Philippine people must settle for themselves whether they wish to be entirely independent, or in some shape to keep up a connection with us.  The day has not yet come; it may not come for a generation or two.  One of the greatest friends that liberty has ever had, the great British statesman Burke, said on one occasion that there must always be government, and that if there is not government from within, then it must be supplied from without.  A child has to be governed from without, because it has not yet grown to a point when it can govern itself from within; and a people that shows itself totally unable to govern itself from within must expect to submit to more or less of government from without, because it cannot continue to exist on other terms—­indeed, it cannot be permitted permanently to exist as a source of danger to other nations.  Our aim in the Philippines is to train the people so that they may govern themselves from within.  Until they have reached this point they cannot have self-government.  I will never advocate self-government for a people so long as their self-government means crime, violence, and extortion, corruption within, lawlessness among themselves and towards others.  If that is what self-government means to any people then they ought to be governed by others until they can do better.

What I have related represents a measure of practical achievement in the way of helping forward the cause of peace and justice, and of giving to different peoples freedom of action according to the capacities of each.  It is not possible, as the world is now constituted, to treat every nation as one private individual can treat all other private individuals, because as yet there is no way of enforcing obedience to law among nations as there is among private individuals.  If in the streets of this city a man walks about with the intent to kill somebody, if he manages his house so that it becomes a source of infection to the neighborhood, the community, with its law officers, deals with him forthwith.  That is just what happened at Panama, and, as nobody else was able to deal with the matter, I dealt with it myself, on behalf of the United States Government, and now the Canal is being dug, and the people of Panama have their independence and a prosperity hitherto unknown in that country.