under all circumstances and provocations an altruistic regard for the rights of others. Those who hold this view are blind indeed to all that has gone on before their eyes in the world at large. They are blind to what has happened in China, in Turkey, in the Spanish possessions, in Central and South Africa, during the last dozen years. For centuries China has cultivated the very spirit which our own peace-at-any-price men wish this country to adopt. For centuries China has refused to provide military forces and has treated the career of the soldier as inferior in honor and regard to the career of the merchant or of the man of letters. There never has been so large an empire which for so long a time has so resolutely proceeded on the theory of doing away with what is called "militarism." Whether the result has been happy in internal affairs I need not discuss; all the advanced reformers and farsighted patriots in the Chinese Empire are at present seeking (I may add, with our hearty good will) for a radical and far-reaching reform in internal affairs. In external affairs the policy has resulted in various other nations now holding large portions of Chinese territory, while there is a very acute fear in China lest the Empire, because of its defenselessness, be exposed to absolute dismemberment, and its well-wishers are able to help it only in a small measure, because no nation can help any other unless that other can help itself.

The State Department is continually appealed to to interfere on behalf of peoples and nationalities who insist that they are suffering from oppression; now Jews in one country, now Christians in another; now black men said to be oppressed by white men in Africa. Armenians, Koreans, Finns, Poles, representatives of all appeal at times to this Government. All of this oppression is alleged to exist in time of profound peace, and frequently, although by no means always. it is alleged to occur at the hands of people who are not very formidable in a military sense. In some cases the accusations of oppression and wrongdoing are doubtless ill-founded. In others they are well founded, and in certain cases the most appalling loss of life is shown. to have occurred, accompanied with frightful cruelty. It is not our province to decide which side has been right and which has been wrong in all or any of these controversies. I am merely referring to the loss of life. It is probably a conservative statement to say that within the last twelve years, at periods of profound peace, and not as the result of war, massacres and butcheries have occurred in which more lives of men, women, and children have been lost than in any single great war since the close of the Napoleonic struggles. To any public man who knows of the complaints continually made to the State Department there is an element of grim tragedy in the claim that the time has gone by when weak nations or peoples can be oppressed by those that are stronger, without arousing effective protest from other strong

interests. Events still fresh in the mind of every thinking man show that neither arbitration nor any other device can as yet be invoked to prevent the gravest and most terrible wrongdoing to peoples who are either few in numbers, or who, if numerous, have lost the first and most important of national virtues-the capacity for self-defense. When a nation is so happily situated as is ours-that is, when it has no reason to fear or to be feared by its land neighbors-the fleet is all the more necessary for the preservation of peace. Great Britain has been saved by its fleet from the necessity of facing one of the two alternatives of submission to conquest by a foreign power or of itself becoming a great military power. The United States can hope for a permanent career of peace on only one condition, and that is, on condition of building and maintaining a first-class navy; and the step to be taken toward this end at this time is to provide for the building of four additional battle ships. I earnestly wish that the Congress would pass the measures for which I have asked for strengthening and rendering more efficient the Army as well as the Navy; all of these measures as affecting every branch and detail of both services are sorely needed, and it would be the part of farsighted wisdom to enact them all into laws, but the most vital and immediate need is that of the four battle ships.

To carry out this policy is but to act in the spirit of George Washington; is but to continue the policies which he outlined when he said, "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. *Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated.

*

"I can not recommend to your notice measures for the fulfillment of our duties to the rest of the world without again pressing upon you the necessity of placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense and of exacting from them the fulfillment of their duties toward us. The United States ought not to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of human events, they will forever keep at a distance those painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other nation abounds. There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

THE WHITE HOUSE, April 14, 1908.

VETO MESSAGES

To the House of Representatives:

I return herewith without my approval House bill 17707 to authorize William H. Standish to construct a dam across James River, in Stone County, Mo., and divert a portion of its waters through a tunnel into the said river again to create electric power. My reasons for not signing the bill are:

The bill gives to the grantee a valuable privilege, which by its very nature is monopolistic, and does not contain the conditions essential to protect the public interest.

In pursuance of a policy declared in my message of February 26, 1908 (S. Doc. No. 325), transmitting the report of the Inland Waterways Commission to Congress, I wrote on March 13, 1908, the following letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce:

Numerous bills granting water rights in conformity with the general act of June 21, 1906, have been introduced during the present session of Congress, and some of these have already passed. While the general act authorizes the limitation and restriction of water rights in the public interest and would seem to warrant making a reasonable charge for the benefits conferred, those bills which have come to my attention do not seem to guard the public interests adequately in these respects. The effect of granting privileges such as are conferred by these bills, as I said in a recent message, "taken together with rights already acquired under state laws, would be to give away properties of enormous value. Through lack of foresight we have formed the habit of granting without compensation extremely valuable rights, amounting to monopolies, on navigable streams and on the public domain. The repurchase at great expense of water rights thus carelessly given away without return has already begun in the East, and before long will be necessary in the West also. No rights involving water power should be granted to any corporation in perpetuity, but only for a length of time sufficient to allow them to conduct their business profitably. A reasonable charge should, of course, be made for valuable rights and privileges which they obtain from the National Government. The values for which this charge is made will ultimately, through the natural growth and orderly development of our population and industries, reach enormous amounts. A fair share of the increase should be safeguarded for the benefit of the people, from whose labor it springs. The proceeds thus secured, after the cost of administration and improvement has been met, should naturally be devoted to the development of our inland waterways." Accordingly I have decided to sign no bills hereafter which do not provide specifically for the right to fix and make a charge and for a definite limitation in time of the rights conferred.

In my veto message of April 13, 1908, returning House bill 15444, to extend the time for the construction of a dam across Rainy River, I said:

We are now at the beginning of great development in water power. Its use through electrical transmission is entering more and more largely into every element of the daily life of the people. Already the evils of monopoly are becoming manifest; already the experience of the past shows the necessity of caution in making unrestricted grants of this great power.

The present policy pursued in making these grants is unwise in giving away the property of the people in the flowing waters to individuals or organizations practically unknown, and granting in perpetuity these valuable privileges in advance of the formulation of definite plans as to their use. In some cases the grantees apparently have little or no financial or other ability to utilize the gift, and have sought it merely because it could be had for the asking.

The Rainy River Company, by an agreement in writing, approved by the War Department, subsequently promised to submit to and abide by such conditions as may be imposed by the Secretary of War, including a time limit and a reasonable charge. Only because of its compliance in this way with these conditions did the bill extending the time limit for that project finally become a law.

An amendment to the present bill expressly authorizing the Government to fix a limitation of time and impose a charge was proposed by the War Department. The letter, veto message, and amendment above referred to were considered by the Senate Committee on Commerce, as appears by the committee's report on the present bill, and the proposed amendment was characterized by the committee as a "new departure from the policy heretofore pursued in respect to legislation authorizing the construction of such dams." Their report set forth an elaborate legal argument intended to show that the Federal Government has no power to impose any charge whatever for such a privilege.

The fact that the proposed policy is new is in itself no sufficient argument against its adoption. As we are met with new conditions. of industry seriously affecting the public welfare, we should not hesitate to adopt measures for the protection of the public merely because those measures are new. When the public welfare is involved, Congress should resolve any reasonable doubt as to its legislative power in favor of the people and against the seekers for a special privilege.

My reason for believing that the Federal Government, in granting a license to dam a navigable river, has the power to impose any conditions it finds necessary to protect the public, including a charge and a limitation of the time, is that its consent is legally essential to an enterprise of this character. It follows that Congress can impose conditions upon its consent. This principle was clearly stated in the House of Representatives on March 28, 1908, by Mr. Williams, of Mississippi, when he said:

* There can be no doubt in the mind of any man seeking merely the public good and public right, independently of any desire for local legislation, of this general proposition: that whenever any sovereignty, state or federal, is required to issue a charter or a license or a consent, in order to confer powers upon individuals or corpora · tions, it is the duty of that sovereignty in the interests of the people so to condition the grant of that power as that it shall redound to the interest of all the people, and that utilities of vast value should not be gratuitously granted to individuals or corporations and perpetually alienated from the people or the state or the government.

*** It is admitted that this power to erect dams in navigable streams can not be exercised by anybody except by an act of Congress. Now, then, if it require an act of Congress to permit any man to put a dam in a navigable stream, then two things follow: Congress should so exercise the power in making that grant as, first, to prevent any harm to the navigability of the stream itself, and, secondly, so as to prevent any individual or any private corporation from securing through the act of Congress any uncompensated advantage of private profit.

The authority of Congress in this matter was asserted by Secretary Taft on April 17, 1908, in his report on Senator Newlands's Inland Waterways Commission bill (S. 500), where he said:

In the execution of any project and as incidental to and inseparably connected with the improvement of navigation, the power of Congress extends to the regulation of the use and development of the waters for purposes subsidiary to navigation.

And by the Solicitor-General in a memorandum prepared after a careful investigation of the subject.

Believing that the National Government has this power, I am convinced that its power ought to be exercised. The people of the country are threatened by a monopoly far more powerful, because in far closer touch with their domestic and industrial life, than anything known to our experience. A single generation will see the exhaustion of our natural resources of oil and gas and such a rise in the price of coal as will make the price of electrically transmitted water power a controlling factor in transportation, in manufacturing, and in household lighting and heating. Our water power alone, if fully developed and wisely used, is probably sufficient for our present transportation, industrial, municipal, and domestic needs. Most of it is undeveloped and is still in national or state control.

To give away, without conditions, this, one of the greatest of our resources, would be an act of folly. If we are guilty of it, our children will be forced to pay an annual return upon a capitalization based upon the highest prices which "the traffic will bear." They will find themselves face to face with powerful interests intrenched behind the doctrine of "vested rights" and strengthened by every defense which money can buy and the ingenuity of able corporation lawyers