part, impudently spoke for the very forces that had driven his people to the rebellion with which he had pretended to sympathize.  The men who overcame him and drove him out represent at least the fierce passion of reconstruction which lies at the very heart of liberty; and so long as they represent, however imperfectly, such a struggle for deliverance, I am ready to serve their ends when I can.  So long as the power of recognition rests with me the Government of the United States will refuse to extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains power in a sister republic by treachery and violence.  No permanency can be given the affairs of any republic by a title based upon intrigue and assassination.  I declared that to be the policy of this Administration within three weeks after I assumed the presidency.  I here again vow it.  I am more interested in the fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful women and children than in any property rights whatever.  Mistakes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, but not in purpose or object.

More is involved than the immediate destinies of Mexico and the relations of the United States with a distressed and distracted people.  All America looks on.  Test is now being made of us whether we be sincere lovers of popular liberty or not and are indeed to be trusted to respect national sovereignty among our weaker neighbors.  We have undertaken these many years to play big brother to the republics of this hemisphere.  This is the day of our test whether we mean, or have ever meant, to play that part for our own benefit wholly or also for theirs.  Upon the outcome of that test (its outcome in their minds, not in ours) depends every relationship of the United States with Latin America, whether in politics or in commerce and enterprise.  These are great issues and lie at the heart of the gravest tasks of the future, tasks both economic and political and very intimately inwrought with many of the most vital of the new issues of the politics of the world.  The republics of America have in the last three years been drawing together in a new spirit of accommodation, mutual understanding, and cordial cooeperation.  Much of the politics of the world in the years to come will depend upon their relationships with one another.  It is a barren and provincial statesmanship that loses sight of such things!

The future, the immediate future, will bring us squarely face to face with many great and exacting problems which will search us through and through whether we be able and ready to play the part in the world that we mean to play.  It will not bring us into their presence slowly, gently, with ceremonious introduction, but suddenly and at once, the moment the war in Europe is over.  They will be new problems, most of them; many will be old problems in a new setting and with new elements which we have never dealt with or reckoned the force and meaning of before.  They will require for their solution new thinking, fresh courage and resourcefulness, and in some matters radical reconsiderations of policy.  We must be ready to mobilize our resources alike of brains and of materials.