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.
In the end, I firmly believe that some method will be devised by which
the people of the world, as a whole, will be able to insure peace, as
it cannot now be insured. How soon that end will come I do not know;
it may be far distant; and until it does come I think that, while we
should give all the support that we can to any possible feasible
scheme for quickly bringing about such a state of affairs, yet we
should meanwhile do the more practicable, though less sensational,
things.
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