Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1904-07-04
JOHN s. WILLIAMS
CRITiCISES LETTER WRITTEN BY
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.
National Collections Of Obligations by Bonn.
bardment Must Cease. A Reckless State.
ment Of President Roosevelt Rsbuked bv
the Democratic Congressional Leader.

An extract fioa. letter written by
Hon. John Sharp Williams to the New
York World. published in the World Of
June 3. The World has called Mr.,
Williams attention to the following
quotation from letter written by Presi.
dent Roosevelt under date of the White
House, May 20, and read at the Cuban
banquet by Mr.. Root:
"Any country whose people conduct
themselves well can count upon our
hearty friendliness. Ii nation shows
that it knows how to act with decency in
industrial and political matters, if 1t
keeps order and pays its obligations, then
it need fear no interference from the
United States. Brutal wrongdoing, or
an impotence which results in general
loosening OF the ties of civilized society,
may finally require intervention by
some civilized nation, and in the western
hemisphere the United States cannot
ignore this duty"
John Sharp Williams writes: The
mos absolutely indefensible thing which
the president says, in the quotation
which you send me is this: eff nation
pays its obligations, then It need fear no
interference from the United States"
The necessary inference is that if a
nation does not pay it's obligations, then
1t must "fear interference from the
United States"
This is the most absolutely reckless,
unsafe, and had almost said, insane,
utterance that has ever been attrit uted
to president OF the United States.
cannot believe that the president said it.
You must have misquotcd him.
AS far as individuals are concerned
criminal procedure for the collection of
debts has been abolished in all civilized
countries. Dickens made the people OF
England and Of the world ashamed of
imprisonment for debt. Now comes
along the president of the most enlight-
ened nation of the world and iutimates
that it is the duty OF that nation to resort
TO interference whenever nation in the
Western Hemisphere refuses to obey its
obligations.
What would the interference be? Why,
ii serious and resisted, it would result in
tina bombardment of cities, landing OF
troops and killing of men, besides rem.
dering women and children houseless.
''Imagination OF poet, mailman or lover"
never went further than the imaginati
OF the acting president, when he says, if
he does say, that it is the duty of the
United States to make OF itself unver-
sal national collecting agency; if he
meant the same simply to apply to peo-
pile of the Western Hemisphere, then an
American hemisphere collecting agency.
The truth is that commercialism ought
to be taught valuable lesson, towit,
that if it chooses to do business in unsafe
countries, without stable institutions
and among sem-barbarous peoples, it
does it with it's eyes open it takes it's own
risk, an the armies and the ravies OF
the world, especially those OF the United
States maintained by taxing the people,
cannot be used as constables, without
warrant or other process, for debt collec-
tion purposes.
Ii choose to buy Dominican or Vene-
zuelan securities or permit Hayti or
either Of the countries to run in debt to
me, it may be that am a fool from a
business standpoint, but my folly does
not entitle me to have my debts collect
ed by the navy and army of the United
States, and the government OF the
United States ought not only not to
place itself in that attitude, but it ought
to 60 further and announce to the world
that, go far as the hemisphere OF America
is concerned, at any rate, collection Of
money obligations by bombardment
must cease. If private individual
killed another because that other had
fraudulently incurred debt which he
refused to pay, we would hang the indi.
vidual who did the killing.