The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

214 SWINGING AROUND THE CIRCLE
and turned a shovelful of earth for the McKinley monument
in Golden Gate Park. In his address upon the latter occasion
the President uttered these words:
When in iSgS the war, which President McKinley in all honesty and with all
sincerity sought to avoid, became inevitable and was pressed upon him, he met it as
he and you had met the crisis of 1861. He did his best to prevent the war. Once it
became evident it had to come, he did his best to see that it was ended as quickly
and as thoroughly as possible. It is a good lesson for nations and individuals to
learn never to hit if it can be helped, but never to hit soft; and I think it is getting
to be fairly well understood that is our foreign policy. We do not want to threaten
certainly we do not desire to wrong any man. We are going to keep out of trouble
if we possibly can, but if it becomes necessary for our honor and our interest to assert
a given position, we shall assert it with every intention of making the assertion
good.
At the Mechanics' Pavilion, Wednesday evening, President
Roosevelt spoke to an enormous audience on the subject of
EXPANSION AND TRADE DEVELOPMENT
Before I saw the Pacific slope I was an expansionist, and after having seen it I
fail to understand how any man, confident of his country's greatness, and glad that
his country should challenge with proud confidence our mighty future, can be any-
thing but an expansionist. In the century that is opening, the commerce and the
progress of the Pacific will be factors of incalculable moment in the history of the
world. Now in our day the greatest of all the oceans, of all the seas, and the last
to be used on a large scale by civilized man, bids fair to become in its turn the first
in point of importance. Our mighty republic has stretched across the Pacific, and
now in California, Oregon and Washington, in Alaska and Hawaii and the Philip-
pines, holds an extent of coast line which makes it of necessity a power of the first
class on the Pacific.
The extension in the area of our domain has been immense ; the extension in the
area of our influence even greater. America's geographical position on the Pacific
is such as to insure our peaceful domination of its waters in the future, if only we
grasp with su65cient resolution the advantages of this position. We are taking long
strides in this direction; witness the cables we are laying down and the great
steamship lines we are starting—steamship lines some of whose vessels are larger
than any freight carriers the world has yet seen. We have taken the first steps
toward digging an isthmian canal, which will make our Atlantic and Pacific coast