Roosevelt Corollary

6 December 1904 unrighteous war. The goal to set before us as a nation,

To the Senate and House of Representatives: the goal which should be set before all mankind, is the
attainment of the peace of justice, of the peace which
The Nation continues to enjoy noteworthy prosperity. comes when each nation is not merely safe-guarded in its
Such prosperity is of course primarily due to the high own rights, but scrupulously recognizes and performs its
individual average of our citizenship, taken together duty toward others. Generally peace tells for righteous-
with our great natural resources; but an important fac- ness; but if there is conflict between the two, then our
tor therein is the working of our long-continued govern- fealty is due first to the cause of righteousness. Unrigh-
mental policies. The people have emphatically expressed teous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare;
their approval of the principles underlying these policies, but both should be shunned. The right of freedom and
and their desire that these principles be kept substantially the responsibility for the exercise of that right can not be
unchanged, although of course applied in a progressive divorced. One of our great poets has well and finely said
spirit to meet changing conditions. that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of
.... cowards. Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those
too slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise
it. The eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty must
0.1 Foreign Policy be exercised, sometimes to guard against outside foes; al-
though of course far more often to guard against our own
In treating of our foreign policy and of the attitude that selfish or thoughtless shortcomings.
this great Nation should assume in the world at large, it is If these self-evident truths are kept before us, and only if
absolutely necessary to consider the Army and the Navy, they are so kept before us, we shall have a clear idea of
and the Congress, through which the thought of the Na- what our foreign policy in its larger aspects should be. It
tion finds its expression, should keep ever vividly in mind is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right
the fundamental fact that it is impossible to treat our for- to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak, than an
eign policy, whether this policy takes shape in the effort individual has to do injustice to another individual; that
to secure justice for others or justice for ourselves, save the same moral law applies in one case as in the other.
as conditioned upon the attitude we are willing to take But we must also remember that it is as much the duty
toward our Army, and especially toward our Navy. It is of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own inter-
not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for ests as it is the duty of the individual so to do. Within
an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim the Nation the individual has now delegated this right to
its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if the State, that is, to the representative of all the individ-
unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to pro- uals, and it is a maxim of the law that for every wrong
vide this force. If there is no intention of providing and there is a remedy. But in international law we have not
keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, advanced by any means as far as we have advanced in mu-
then it is far better not to assume such an attitude. nicipal law. There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing
The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened na- a right in international law. When one nation wrongs an-
tions, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when other or wrongs many others, there is no tribunal before
there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of jus- which the wrongdoer can be brought. Either it is neces-
tice. There are kinds of peace which are highly unde- sary supinely to acquiesce in the wrong, and thus put a
sirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any premium upon brutality and aggression, or else it is nec-
war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a essary for the aggrieved nation valiantly to stand up for
wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who its rights. Until some method is devised by which there
were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been en- shall be a degree of international control over offending
ervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, nations, it would be a wicked thing for the most civilized
have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was powers, for those with most sense of international obli-
stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to gations and with keenest and most generous appreciation
hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ig- of the difference between right and wrong, to disarm. If
noble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace the great civilized nations of the present day should com-
of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the pletely disarm, the result would mean an immediate re-
peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun crudescence of barbarism in one form or another. Under

1
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any circumstances a sufficient armament would have to tions, it need fear no interference from the United States.
be kept up to serve the purposes of international police; Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in
and until international cohesion and the sense of inter- a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may
national duties and rights are far more advanced than at in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention
present, a nation desirous both of securing respect for it- by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere
self and of doing good to others must have a force ade- the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doc-
quate for the work which it feels is allotted to it as its part trine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in
of the general world duty. Therefore it follows that a self- flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the
respecting, just, and far-seeing nation should on the one exercise of an international police power. If every coun-
hand endeavor by every means to aid in the development try washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress
of the various movements which tend to provide substi- in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the
tutes for war, which tend to render nations in their actions Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left
toward one another, and indeed toward their own peoples, the island, and which so many of the republics in both
more responsive to the general sentiment of humane and Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all ques-
civilized mankind; and on the other hand that it should tion of interference by this Nation with their affairs would
keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern
itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional cases to take neighbors are in reality identical. They have great nat-
action which in a more advanced stage of international re- ural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law
lations would come under the head of the exercise of the and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them.
international police. A great free people owes it to itself While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized soci-
and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the ety they may rest assured that they will be treated by us
powers of evil. in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would in-
terfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if
it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to
0.2 Arbitration Treaties--Second Hague do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of
Conference the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the
detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a
We are in every way endeavoring to help on, with cor- mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America
dial good will, every movement which will tend to bring or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom,
us into more friendly relations with the rest of mankind. its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of
In pursuance of this policy I shall shortly lay before the such independence can not be separated from the respon-
Senate treaties of arbitration with all powers which are sibility of making good use of it.
willing to enter into these treaties with us. It is not possi- In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as
ble at this period of the world’s development to agree to we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama,
arbitrate all matters, but there are many matters of pos- and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in
sible difference between us and other nations which can the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we
be thus arbitrated. Furthermore, at the request of the In- have acted in our own interest as well as in the inter-
terparliamentary Union, an eminent body composed of est of humanity at large. There are, however, cases in
practical statesmen from all countries, I have asked the which, while our own interests are not greatly involved,
Powers to join with this Government in a second Hague strong appeal is made to our sympathies. Ordinarily it is
conference, at which it is hoped that the work already so very much wiser and more useful for us to concern our-
happily begun at The Hague may be carried some steps selves with striving for our own moral and material bet-
further toward completion. This carries out the desire ex- terment here at home than to concern ourselves with try-
pressed by the first Hague conference itself. ing to better the condition of things in other nations. We
have plenty of sins of our own to war against, and under
ordinary circumstances we can do more for the general
0.3 Policy Toward Other Nations of the uplifting of humanity by striving with heart and soul to
Western Hemisphere put a stop to civic corruption, to brutal lawlessness and
violent race prejudices here at home than by passing res-
It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger olutions and wrongdoing elsewhere. Nevertheless there
or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of are occasional crimes committed on so vast a scale and
the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their wel- of such peculiar horror as to make us doubt whether it
fare. All that this country desires is to see the neighbor- is not our manifest duty to endeavor at least to show our
ing countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any coun- disapproval of the deed and our sympathy with those who
try whose people conduct themselves well can count upon have suffered by it. The cases must be extreme in which
our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how such a course is justifiable. There must be no effort made
to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social to remove the mote from our brother’s eye if we refuse to
and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obliga- remove the beam from our own. But in extreme cases
0.3 Policy Toward Other Nations of the Western Hemisphere 3

action may be justifiable and proper. What form the ac-

tion shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the
case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our
power to remedy it. The cases in which we could interfere
by force of arms as we interfered to put a stop to intol-
erable conditions in Cuba are necessarily very few. Yet
it is not to be expected that a people like ours, which in
spite of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless
as a whole shows by its consistent practice its belief in the
principles of civil and religious liberty and of orderly free-
dom, a people among whom even the worst crime, like the
crime of lynching, is never more than sporadic, so that in-
dividuals and not classes are molested in their fundamen-
tal rights--it is inevitable that such a nation should desire
eagerly to give expression to its horror on an occasion like
that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishenef, or when it
witnesses such systematic and long-extended cruelty and
oppression as the cruelty and oppression of which the Ar-
menians have been the victims, and which have won for
them the indignant pity of the civilized world.
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