Throughout the seven and a half years that I was President, I pursued
without faltering one consistent foreign policy, a policy of genuine
international good will and of consideration for the rights of others,
and at the same time of steady preparedness. The weakest nations knew
that they, no less than the strongest, were safe from insult and injury
at our hands; and the strong and the weak alike also knew that we
possessed both the will and the ability to guard ourselves from wrong or
insult at the hands of any one.
It was under my administration that the Hague Court was saved from
becoming an empty farce. It had been established by joint international
agreement, but no Power had been willing to resort to it. Those
establishing it had grown to realize that it was in danger of becoming a
mere paper court, so that it would never really come into being at all.
M. d'Estournelles de Constant had been especially alive to this danger.
By correspondence and in personal interviews he impressed upon me the
need not only of making advances by actually applying arbitration--not
merely promising by treaty to apply it--to questions that were up
for settlement, but of using the Hague tribunal for this purpose.
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