ey will know what ought
to be done in Mexico. I hear a great deal said about the loss of
property in Mexico and the loss of the lives of foreigners, and I
deplore these things with all my heart. Undoubtedly, upon the conclusion
of the present disturbed conditions in Mexico those who have been
unjustly deprived of their property or in any wise unjustly put upon
ought to be compensated. Men's individual rights have no doubt been
invaded, and the invasion of those rights has been attended by many
deplorable circumstances which ought sometime, in the proper way, to be
accounted for. But back of it all is the struggle of a people to come
into its own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foreground
let us not forget the great tragic reality in the background which
towers above the whole picture.

A patriotic American is a man who is not niggardly and selfish in the
things that he enjoys that make for human liberty and the rights of man.
He wants to share them with the whole world, and he is never so proud of
the great flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to other
people as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty. I would be
ashamed of this flag if it ever did anything outside America that we
would not permit it to do inside of America.

The world is becoming more complicated every day, my fellow-citizens. No
man ought to be foolish enough to think that he understands it all. And,
therefore, I am glad that there are some simple things in the world. One
of the simple things is principle. Honesty is a perfectly simple thing.
It is hard for me to believe that in most circumstances when a man has a
choice of ways he does not know which is the right way and which is the
wrong way. No man who has chosen the wrong way ought even to come into
Independence Square; it is holy ground which he ought not to tread upon.
He ought not to come where immortal voices have uttered the great
sentences of such a document as this Declaration of Independence upon
which rests the liberty of a whole nation.

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes to prefer the honor of the
country to its material interest. Would you rather be deemed by all the
nations of the world incapable of keeping your treaty obligations in
order that you might have free tolls for American ships? The treaty
under which we gave up that right may have been a mistaken treaty, but
there was no mistake about its meaning.

When I have made a promise