nts following the war with Spain, and the prospective building of
the Isthmian Canal, render it certain that we must take in the future a
far greater interest than hitherto in what happens throughout the West
Indies, Central America, and the adjacent coasts and waters. We expect
Cuba to treat us on an exceptional footing politically, and we should
put her in the same exceptional position economically. The proposed
action is in line with the course we have pursued as regards all the
islands with which we have been brought into relations of varying
intimacy by the Spanish war. Puerto Rico and Hawaii have been included
within our tariff lines, to their great benefit as well as ours,
and without any of the feared detriment to our own industries. The
Philippines, which stand in a different relation, have been granted
substantial tariff concessions.

Cuba is an independent republic, but a republic which has assumed
certain special obligations as regards her international position in
compliance with our request. I ask for her certain special economic
concessions in return; these economic concessions to benefit us as well
as her. There are few brighter pages in American history than the page
which tells of our dealings with Cuba during the past four years. On her
behalf we waged a war of which the mainspring was generous indignation
against oppression; and we have kept faith absolutely. It is earnestly
to be hoped that we will complete in the same spirit the record so well
begun, and show in our dealings with Cuba that steady continuity of
policy which it is essential for our nation to establish in foreign
affairs if we desire to play well our part as a world power.

We are a wealthy and powerful nation; Cuba is a young republic, still
weak, who owes to us her birth, whose whole future, whose very life,
must depend on our attitude toward her. I ask that we help her as she
struggles upward along the painful and difficult road of self-governing
independence. I ask this aid for her, because she is weak, because she
needs it, because we have already aided her. I ask that open-handed
help, of a kind which a self-respecting people can accept, be given to
Cuba, for the very reason that we have given her such help in the past.
Our soldiers fought to give her freedom; and for three years our
representatives, civil and military, have toiled unceasingly, facing
disease of a peculiarly sinister and fatal type, with patient and
uncomplaini