In my own judgment, very fully considered and maturely formed, that exemption constitutes a mistaken economic policy from every point of view, and is, moreover, in plain contravention of the treaty with Great Britain concerning the canal concluded on November 18, 1901.  But I have not come to urge upon you my personal views.  I have come to state to you a fact and a situation.  Whatever may be our own differences of opinion concerning this much debated measure, its meaning is not debated outside the United States.  Everywhere else the language of the treaty is given but one interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the exemption I am asking you to repeal.  We consented to the treaty; its language we accepted, if we did not originate it; and we are too big, too powerful, too self-respecting a nation to interpret with a too strained or refined reading the words of our own promises just because we have power enough to give us leave to read them as we please.  The large thing to do is the only thing we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal from a position everywhere questioned and misunderstood.  We ought to reverse our action without raising the question whether we were right or wrong, and so once more deserve our reputation for generosity and for the redemption of every obligation without quibble or hesitation.

I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the administration.  I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure.

THE TAMPICO INCIDENT

[Address delivered at a joint session of the two Houses of Congress, April 20, 1914.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS: 

It is my duty to call your attention to a situation which has arisen in our dealings with General Victoriano Huerta at Mexico City which calls for action, and to ask your advice and cooeperation in acting upon it.  On the 9th of April a paymaster of the U.S.S. Dolphin landed at the Iturbide Bridge landing at Tampico with a whaleboat and boat’s crew to take off certain supplies needed by his ship, and while engaged in loading the boat was arrested by an officer and squad of men of the army of General Huerta.  Neither the paymaster nor anyone of the boat’s crew was armed.  Two of the men were in the boat when the arrest took place and were obliged to leave it and submit to be taken into custody, notwithstanding the fact that the boat carried, both at her bow and at her stern, the flag of the United States.  The officer who made the arrest was proceeding up one of the streets of the town with his prisoners when met by an officer of higher authority, who ordered him to return to the landing and await orders; and within an hour and a half from the time of the arrest orders were received from the commander of the Huertista forces at Tampico for the release of the paymaster