Excerpt from The Conquest of Nicaragua by the United States: Letter to President Taft You have broken all precedents of history and diplo macy in America. You have broken all sound rules of action in international policy. You have acted with unlimited power and personal discretion, and you are responsible to nobody. You profess to have acted in protection 'of American life and property, the native government having confessed itself incapable of fulfilling this primary function. But to do this you did not by any means need to make yourself a party to the civil war raging in the country, and much less the discharge of the duties of protection of life and property could by any possibility imply the meddling with the infernal hatred of the factions, and the taking upon yourself the direct and barbarous suppression of the revolution. Protect ing American and other foreign interests, you should have kept yourself within the bounds of strict neutrality, using the moral force of your great office to bring about an intelli gent and satisfactory settlement of the civil strife. In placeof this, you have invaded Nicaragua with an American army and you have subdued by brutal force the forces of the revolution and Nicaragua is to-day a subjugated nation. There was imminent danger of the fall of the govern ment into the hands of the 'soldiery of that new Zelaya, General Mena, which would 'have been indeed a great calamity. But the existence of a nominal government entirely controlled by you and absolutely dependent upon you is a calamity and a disgrace not less deplorable. You should have averted both dangers and you could easily have done so if your aim had been noble. But you chose to make impossible the formation of a strong government, because what you wanted was the destruc tion of the sovereignty of Nicaragua. It was sheer lust of land which moved you. I With all your judicial temperament you are evidently a believer in the manifest destiny boundaries of the United States, to wit, on the north by the aurora borealis, on the south by the pro cession of the equinoxes, on the east by the primeral chaos, and on the west the Day of Judgment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.