The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-01
ROOSEVELT'S ADDRESS AT
 EXPOSITION'S DEDICATION

answering them; but the great feat of our forefathers of those generations was the deed of the men who. with pack train or wagon train. on horseback. on foot. of by boat upon the waters. pushed the from tier ever westward across the continent.
 Never before had the world seen the kind of national expansion which gave our people all that part of the Americsn continent lying west of the thirteen origi- nal States; the greatest landmark in which was the Louisiana Purchase Our triumph in this process of expansion was indissolubly bound up with the success of our peculiar kind of federal governments; and this success has been complete that because of its very completeness we now sometimes fall to appreciate not only the all-importance but the tremendous diff ficulty of the problem which. our nation was originally faced
 The Fate of Greece.
 When our forefathers joined to call into being this nation, they undertook a task Tor which there was but little encourag- Ing precedent. Development of civiliza- ton from the earliest pered seemed to show the truth of two propositions: In the first place, it had always proved ex- ceedingly difficult to secure both freedom and strength in any government; and in the second place it had always proved well-nigh impossible for a nation to eX- pand without either breaking up or be- coming a centralized tyranny. With the success of our effort to combine a strong and efficient national union, able to put down disorder at home and to maintain our honor and interest abroad I have not now to deal. This success was signal and all-important, but 1t was by no means unprecedented in the same sense that our type of expansion was unprece- dented. The history of Rome and of Greece illustrates very we'll the two types of expansion which had taken place in ancient time and which had been uni versally accepted as the only possible types up to the period when as a nation we ourselves began to take possession of this continent. The Grecian states per- formed remarkable feats of colonization, but each colony as soon as created be- came entirely independent of the mother state, and in after years was almost as apt 10 prove its enemy as it's friend
 Local self-government, local independ- ence, was secured, but only by the abso- lute sacrifice of anything resembling national unity: In consequence, the lianey and the extraordinary artistic, literary, and philosophical development which has made all mankind it's debtors Tor the ages, was yet wholly unable to wlenstand formidable foreign foe. save spasmodically. As soon as powerful per- manent empires arose on its outskirts, the Grek states in the neighborhood of such empires fell under their sway. National power ana greatness were completely sacrificed to local liberty.
 Precedent of Rome.
 With Rome the exact opposite occurred
 The imperial city rose to absolute domin- ion over all the peoples of Italy and then expanded her rule over the entire ciVlhzed world by process which kept the nation strong and united, but gave no room whatever for local liberty and seh-goyernment. All other cities and countries were subeject to Rome. In con sequence this great and masterful race Of warriors. rulers. road-builders and administrators stamped their indeIibIe inn press upon all the after life of our race and yet let an ovor-centralization eat out the Vitals of their empire until it became an empty shell; so that when the har- barians came they destroyed only what had already become worthless to the world.
 The underlying viciousness of each tyne or expansion was plain enough and the remedy now seems simple enough But when the fathers of the republic first for mulated the Constitution under which We live this remedy was untried and no one could toretell how it would work. They themselves began the experiment almost immediately by adding new States to the original Thirteen. Excellent people in the East viewed this initial expansion of the country with great alarm. Exactly as during the colonial period many good people In the mother country thought it highly important that settlers should be kept out of the Ohio Valley in the inter- est of the fur companies, so after we had oSSOAiS HdtlOn many EOOu people on the Atlantic coast felt grave apprehen- sion lest they might somehow be hurt by the westward growth of the nation. These good people shook their heads over the formation of States in the fertile Ohio Valley which now forms part of the heart of our nation: and they declared that the destruction of the republic had been ac- complished when through the Louisiana Purchase we acquired nearly half of what is now that same republics present terri tory. Nor was their feeling unnatural. Only the adventurous and the far-seeing | can be expected heartily to welcome the | process of expansion. for the nation that | expands is a nation which is entering l upon a great career. and with greatness there must of necessity come perils which | daunt all save the most stout-hearted. Territories Into States.
 We expanded by carving the wilderness into Territories and out of these Territo- ries building new States when once they had received as permanent settlers a suf- ncent number of our own people Being