Crucible of Empire- Interview of Ambrose

7/30/2019 Crucible of Empire- Interview of Ambrose

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Stephen Ambrose InterviewBold = portions of the interview which were not filmed.

START INTERVIEWTAPE #016

DIRECTIONALAmbrose: Well, the Spanish-American War certainly was the

beginning of the American Century, but nobody thought to call it that until HenryLuce did in the 1940s. It propelled America onto the world stage, broughtAmerica a colonial empire that made American interests, already quite large in thePacific, even bigger and obviously so Puerto Rico and the new relationship withCuba. So it was this tremendous energy that had been built in the United Statesafter the Civil War with the Industrial Revolution and the movement West and the

immigration into the United States and the growth of the country. It was justbursting with energy, and it came out in 1898 as we extended American powersouth and to the West and became a world power.

INT: How is this in line with Frederick Jackson Turner?AMBROSE: It was very commonly felt that with the closing of the

frontier which had been announced by the census taker in 1890 and then made intoa whole theory of American history by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, that wehad to find some new outlet for our energy, for our dynamic nature, for this -- forthis coiled spring that was the United States. And the frontier gone was somethingakin to a panic among people. "Geez, if American institutions can't expand,

they're gonna shrink." And so there was a kind of an intellectual justification,rationalization'd be a better way to put it, for Let's get our power overseas.

INT: What sort of American institutions needed to expand?AMBROSE: Not military, no. The United States lagged far behind

the rest of the world in both naval and land power. But the output of the factories,the output of the farms, the need for new markets, the common wisdom that youeither expanded or you died, and that provided a justification for this impulse toimperialism that swept the country. By no means did everybody sign on to it.Many were very much afraid of it and opposed to it, but it provided a justification.And it came out of the hard work of the American people -- in the mines, in the

fields, in the factories and what they were able to produce and that commonknowledge wisdom that you've got to expand those markets or you're gonna die.

INT: How long had the Philippine conflicts been in the planningspecifically?

AMBROSE: There's a point ...DIRECTIONALA: There's a point of view on the taking of the Philippines that this

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was a conspiracy hatched by John Hay and Teddy Roosevelt and Alfred ThayerMahan and others who were going to use this crisis in Cuba as an excuse to getAmerica to go out, Puerto Rico, the protection for what was going to be an

American Panama Canal, Hawaii, and the Philippines. And the Philippines, in thisview -- there's some truth to this -- were just unknown to the great bulk of theAmerican people. President McKinley is reputed to have said -- this was verywidely believed -- I don't think it's true -- that when Dewey telegrammed him thathe had sunk the Spanish fleet at Manila, McKinley called for an atlas so he couldfigure out where the Philippines were. So there is this conspiracy kind ofarrangement to it that -- or as-- ahm, conspiracy kind of aspect to the thing. Andthat story takes on greater force when you look at Teddy Roosevelt as AssistantSecretary of the Navy sending orders off to Dewey, In the event war with Spain,which he expected momentarily, proceed to Manila and sink the Spanish fleet.Ahm ... ah, that came very close to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy making the

decision that We're going to take the Philippines as a part of this war againstSpain, not necessarily against the President's wishes, but without the President'sknowledge.

INT: What was Roosevelt's specific motivation regarding changingthe national character ...

AMBROSE: Roosevelt was born in 1857 and, like others born inthe 1850s, he had grown up listening to stories of his father's generation about theCivil War. And it was a very strong feeling among young men, and this wouldespecially apply to Roosevelt's class, the natural leaders, as they thought ofthemselves, the Harvards and the Yales, that they had been deprived of their

opportunity, that they hadn't been able to go out there with Oliver Wendell Holmesand stand at the battle front with Abraham Lincoln and follow Grant down intoPetersburg and then on into Richmond. They had missed all of that. It'ssomething that I feel myself. I was born in 1935 and I grew up listening to WorldWar II stories and I feel cheated that I wasn't a part of that. Well, these guys feltcheated and they wanted to prove their manhood. This was, as everyone knows,terribly important to Teddy Roosevelt, but to many others, too. And so there wasa feeling of "It's our turn. We want to get out there and be heroes." And that isthe origin really of the John Hay "splendid little war" line. It was exactly the warthey were lookin' for, a war that would give them a chance for glory, but, youknow, you're only gone for six months. Doesn't take all that long. You're not

disrupting your career all that badly. And you're not getting shot, or at least not inthe way that men got shot at Cold Harbor or Petersburg or in the Civil War battles.But you feel that whiz of the ball going by your ear, you hear that crack as it does,and you're a veteran. You're a man of war.

INT: Did the war accomplish that?DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well, certainly the war made Americans proud. They

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had gone out and licked Spain that had been thought to be one of the world's greatpowers. Yeah, of course, it did. We'd gone out and licked Spain. This was one ofthe world's great powers, people thought at least up 'til that time. And we haddone it quickly and efficiently without a great deal of loss of life. And so it wasvery -- and very big gains in territory. So, of course, it was very popular. With --I mean but, you know, this the United States. We're a very diverse country. Therewere an awful lot of people who were very much opposed to this and thought thatthis was violating our own Constitution and certainly violating the wholeAmerican idea of self-determination and it was embarrassing to be the first colonyto revolt in the modern times and to establish its independence, it's now suddenlybecoming an imperialist nation. A lot of people were embarrassed by this. And,

in my own view, I must say rightly so.DIRECTIONAL, CUT, DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about Mahan's agenda regarding the Navy.AMBROSE: Well, Mahan was, as everyone knows -- Alfred

Mahan, everybody knows, was a great naval power advocate. He wrote the bookon the British had taken over so much of the world thanks to its sea policy. TheUnited States needed such a policy, that we were a two-ocean country, that we hadto have a fleet that could control both oceans and this was going to require coalingstations and outposts out there, and if America wanted to take her place as one ofthe great nations in the world, she had to get into the imperialist race and had to

acquire colonies. And this had a tremendous appeal to young men like TeddyRoosevelt and John Hay and -- and the others who were a part of that Mahancircle. It had a very big impact. Roosevelt, as President, of course, put the greatwhite fleet together and started America on the road to becoming the world'snumber one sea power and there's a direct line that needs from Mahan's study upin Newport, Rhode Island at the Naval War College, where he wrote this stuff,right on into action and on into then results and the acquisition of the Americancolonial empire.

INT: What about the unifying effect after the Civil War?AMBROSE: One of the features of the Spanish-American War was

an orgy of reconciliation between former Confederates and former Yankees, and it

was a great thing for the nation. Almost everybody agreed on this, that you'venow got kids from Alabama fighting alongside, instead of against, the kids fromMinnesota. You've got kids from Texas fighting with Teddy Roosevelt and hiscrowd from New York and the Rough Riders. And this was thought to be a verygreat thing. There's a cute little story that comes out of this. One of the generalsin the Spanish-American War named Wheeler had been a Confederate officer andhe was gettin' pretty old by this time, a little bit long in the tooth, and he was

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involved at San Juan Hill and is supposed to have said as the Spanish startedretreating and the charge up the hill was going with, "Go get 'em, guys. We gotthose Yankees on the run!"

DIRECTIONAL, CUT, DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about the disembarkation at Tampa.AMBROSE: They embarked at Tampa.DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well ...DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: The scene in Tampa was just chaotic with people

fighting to get on board ships and elbowing other guys aside to get on board shipsand no staff officers there to help and no plan or rhyme or reason to it and "Howare we gonna load this ship and what supplies do we need for that ship," and allthe things that go into an invasion. This was all brand new. Shafter was handling

problems that no American Army officer before had ever had to handle and theywere just terrible at it. This was a general staff that had been built to fight theIndian wars. This was an army that had been built to fight the Indian wars and allof a sudden they're going to undertake the most difficult of all military operations,an amphibious offensive against a defending shore line. Now in the packing up atat Tampa and in the disembarking from the ... in the packing up at Tampa Bay,chaos reigned and it was ... to put a perspective on the chaos that reigned atTampa, remember that at Galipoliin the First World War now -- now this is almosttwo decades after the Spanish-American War -- the British put ships ashore thathad troops on 'em and then other ships ashore that were carrying the rifles and the

cannons and the other weapons and then on other ships they had the powder. Soyou -- you've got to be a little bit more generous in looking at Shafter and his staffand their mistakes and realize, you know, guys, this is the first time this had everbeen done in the Modern Age. And, of course, they made terrible mistakes.

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well, the staff studies were -- yes. What was impact

of the chaos that reigned in 1898? It was a creation of a modern army, beginningwith Elihu Root and the reforms at the War Department that came about underTeddy Roosevelt's Presidency, because Teddy had been there. And he'd seen howbad the American Army was. And had insisted that it had to be reformed and hadto be improved and had to be professionalized and had to be modernized and had

to be brought out of its Indian hunting mode. And he did it with Elihu Root andbrought in the general staff system into the US Army and great strides forwardwere made as a result of mistakes and the lessons learned from them in Tampa andin the disembarking at Daiquiri.

INT: What happened when they disembarked at Daiquiri?AMBROSE: Well, they ... it could hardly have been worse. One

thing was that the transports were civilian vessels. The navy had told Shafter,

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"You've got to get a naval officer on board those transports and you've got to givehim command or those guys aren't going to go anywhere near the shore linebecause that's their ships at risk." Well, the War Department decided, "No, we'renot gonna do that. It's cheaper to hire a civilian transport rather than turn theminto navy vessels," and then the War Department refused to buy marine hazardinsurance for them. So that these guys running these transports, a hodge-podge ofa fleet, refused to go closer than five miles inland, for fear of the Spanish guns,which in fact were not there on the shore line. So you get this scene in the D-Dayfor 1898. The guys come down off the ships into the rowboats that have to berowed five miles inland, a pretty heavy sea. Of course, they don't have theirweapons with them. They've got their rifles, but they don't have any artillery with

'em. And they're coming into a war where the sea is doing this on 'em and whenthey get on a rise, they have to throw their weapons up onto the wharf and thendown they go again and then they rise again and they grab up for guys that are upthere on top to help 'em to get out. And, of course, this didn't do any good withtheir mobility, which was horses and mules. You couldn't take them in inrowboats. What are you going do with 'em. Well, you throw 'em overboard andthey'll swim to shore and then you gather 'em up. But in the Rough RiderRegiment, the figures are something like of the 189 mules, three got ashore andwere recovered. Roosevelt had two horses, one of which swam out to sea and theycouldn't turn the horse around. So he -- he only had one horse for the campaign.

INT: What was the interaction between the Cubans and theAmericans at first and how did it change?AMBROSE: How the Americans and Cubans related to each other

-- how the Americans related with the Cuban rebels is a story of missedopportunities. There was some contact, but it really was minimal. No effort wasmade. I don't know quite how they would have done it either, come to that. Butno effort was made to get in contact with the -- the one things that rebels cansupply -- the two things that rebels can supply are, one, intelligence. They're thereon the scene. They can say, "There's a Spanish company over here and they gotsome artillery over here and that bridge isn't defended." And you can count onthat intelligence. It's the best intelligence of all. "I saw it." That was one thing

that the rebels could have given them. And the other was the harassing of supplylines. You know, you have in your mind now long trains of mules packin' bags ofrice goin' up to the Spanish positions. That's pretty easy to disrupt that kind of asupply line. And that could have been coordinated. But that's asking the men of1898 to be like the men of 1944, who had, of course, radios, airplanes forreconnaissance, all kind of ways to establish liaison with each other. None of thatwas available in 1898. And so the potential asset of the Cuban rebels was, in my

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view, not exploited to anywhere near the degree that it could have been.INT: Did the Cubans need American help?AMBROSE: You mean did the Cuban need American help?

INT: Yes.AMBROSE: Well, there's dispute about that, as you heard this

morning. Ah ... my own view is that the Spanish were not going to get out andthey were not on the run. The Cuban revolution had been going on since 1868.This is 30 years later, and they don't appear to have been any closer to achievingthe goal of getting the Spanish to march out of Havana and get on ships and go onhome and say, "You guys figure out how you want to run your lives. We're outtahere." Spain was not even close to that. This Spanish felt they could hold on andintended to hold on. There was also a fear in Spain that "If we give up this gem ofour empire," and, remember, the Spanish had been giving up over the years quite alot, I mean the whole of the Central and South America that they'd had to retreat

out of. And now they had to go out of the -- out of Cuba, the gem in theCaribbean, and out of the Philippines, the gem in the Pacific. There was a fear inSpain that this would lead to the overthrow of the monarchy, a revolution, and allkinds of terrible things were gonna happen. So there -- so the best that I can see it,the Spanish, in 1898, were somewhat like the Japanese in 1945. They had no hopeof winning, but they weren't about to quit.

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: General Lineares, on the Spanish side, in command at

Santiago, counted on disease as his ally. He knew, and he was certain -- and infact it did happen -- that after June came and you get into July, virtually all the

American troops are going to get malaria. And as many as 25 percent of 'emwould be down at any one time, and by "down" I mean flat on the back, unable tooperate at all. And then in July the yellow fever was going to start. And thesethings were certainly. I mean nobody knew what caused malaria. Nobody knewhow yellow fever was transmitted, much less what to do about it. And so Yankeesin Cuba at that time got malaria, period, and they got yellow fever and this was thepotential great ally of the Spanish. And it's why Shafter moved things forward asfast as he possibly could, to get a decisive campaign finished before the malariaand yellow fever hit.

DIRECTIONALINT: Talk about role of the press in SPAM.

AMBROSE: Sure, the New York press over ...DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: The New York and the national -- the New York and

the national press covered this -- I mean this was just wonderful for them. Comingout of the depression, all the news had been bad news. Now we're going to war.And these reporters were any different than Teddy Roosevelt and his buddies.They'd been reading about the Civil War. They'd been hearin' about the Civil War.

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They were dyin' to cover a war and here came a war and it was a glorious war tocover. Exotic place, an enemy that it was easy to despise, real heroes, all the colorof the Rough Riders and everything else that went into it. So in a lot of ways thewar was over-covered, as many wars are. The Spanish were able to use the NewYork newspapers to get information on the gathering of the fleet at Tampa and thedisembarking from Tampa and where the fleet was going and on and on and on,rather like in today's world Saddam Hussein watches CNN to find out what theAmericans are up to.

INT: Are there other ways the media guides foreign policydecisions?

AMBROSE: Well, the -- the Hearst press and the yellow press in

general in 1898 is generally given the credit, or the blame, for having started theSpanish-American War, that this was a war made up by the newspapers and in themore extreme charges, in order to increase newspaper circulation. And both thingshappened. We did go to war and newspaper circulation (Laughs) did increase verymuch. You know, you get a war, pulls the country together and it gets everybodyfascinated. We all glue to the tube nowadays to watch CNN if the war is comingon. Well, they got the -- the Hearst papers in 1898 to see what was happening inthe war coming on. And Hearst was certainly very much stirring all of this up andthere is a point of view that has got some validity to it that this was thenewspapermen's war, they created the war, foreign policy by the newspapers.

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well, not really, certainly not in World War II,because the press was so divided and -- and if you want to talk about a hundredyears later in 1998 ... ah, I suppose that you could make a case that the press isdriving us. I mean when you show this, it's going to be either we have done it orwe haven't done it. I don't know if we're gonna do it or not. Ah, if we -- if we dogo to war with Saddam, if it's even just air strikes, there will be a certain amount of"Clinton was pushed into this by the newspapers." I don't know that the media somuch -- the media today can make foreign policy in the same way that WilliamRandolph Hearst did by concentrating on a subject, that is, taking us to Somalia,taking us to Haiti and showing us what's going on there and making this a feature

of the evening news every night and having CNN roll it and roll it and roll it androll it. And you do get a media-driven foreign policy in some ways out of that. Sothere is that direct parallel between the yellow press of 1898 and the media hypethat goes on in 1998, except you're going to show this in 1999 ...

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well, that -- that talks to the media and war. Hearst

didn't create this out of a vacuum. There had to be a market out there that he could

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exploit before he could have an impact. And so which comes first? The desire forwar was felt very strongly by an awful lot of people for a lot of different reasons in1898 that ranged from sellin' more newspapers to establishing coaling stations all

around the world to civilizing and Christianizing the "heathen in the Philippines",as they thought of it, and straight economic motives of getting a bigger market orgetting access to raw materials. And all of these things played a part. I mean waris a very complex thing. When a great nation goes to war, even when it's so smalla saw as the Spanish-American War, there are just all kind of factors that go intowhy did it happen? Why did we go to war instead of finding a diplomatic solutionwith the Spanish? Now to come more directly on that question, by the time ofFebruary-March in 1898, any spark was gonna set this off because of the way inwhich the Spanish misrule, as we saw it and I certainly do today, too, of Cuba hadbeen played to the American people. And they had reached a point -- now if thiswere live TV, I could do this, but I can't do (Unintell.) -- but we had reached a

point in 1898 that rather like in February of 1998, that the build-up had been sogreat in 1898, much of it led by President Clinton himself (Unintell.) -- it doesn'tgive us a comparison with McKinley, who was not feeding the flames. Thatanything short of a Spanish withdrawal from Cuba was unacceptable to theAmerican people. And they weren't gonna pull out. So in that sense, war hadbecome inevitable by the creation of a climate of opinion that centered on Spanishmisrule in Cuba, but had very much more going to it, like Spanish misrule in thePhilippines and Spanish misrule in Puerto Rico.

INT: What about Roosevelt's interaction with the media?AMBROSE: Well, ah ...

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: In the first place, Teddy Roosevelt was a professionalpolitician one of, if not the very best at it in the 20th century and a big part of thatbeing in knowing how to cultivate the press and how to manipulate the press. Andhe was an absolute master at that. He didn't suddenly learn this in Cuba, that youcan do this and do that for the guys in the press corps and then they're gonnareward you with good stories; he'd been doin' this for 17 years. And he was waybetter than the professional officers who had no idea in the world how to do PRwith the press. So Teddy had Richard Harding Davis and the other famouscorrespondents gathered around him. He was magnetic anyway. And he was ableto give the American people, through these correspondents, the view that he

wanted them to have of this war. And he was just the best that there was at this.INT: What's the image of Roosevelt that endures from the war?AMBROSE: Well, the overwhelming -- the number one image of

the Spanish-American War in the minds of the American people from the time thatit was fought right on down today is Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hillon his horse, standing out there all by himself, Spanish sharp shooters up thereshooting at him, obviously the most visible target, by far, on the battlefield, tellin'

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his guys not "Charge" -- "Follow me." He was out in front and the Rough Ridersdidn't have any horses. They were all on foot coming up behind him. And thatimage of Teddy Roosevelt propelled him right on into the White House.

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: (Laughs) One of the big differences in the Spanish-

American War is there were a lot of Harvards and Yales in the Spanish-AmericanWar, a big difference between America in the Vietnam War and America in WorldWar II. In World War II the American elite was out there and young members ofthe American elite were junior officers. And the kids from Harvard and Yale were-- were out there with the GIs, acting as second lieutenants commanding rifleplatoons. Do you know that every congressman in World War II who had a son,

that son was in the Army or the Navy in the Second World War? By the time ofthe Vietnam War, almost none were. That's a big difference.

INT: Characterize McKinley as a President.AMBROSE: McKinley is something of a cipher to me, but -- you

can't use this because I don't know enough about the Spanish-American War. ButMcKinley, ahm ... did not direct war operations in anything like the way evenWoodrow Wilson did, and he didn't take a very active role. McKinley had as hisexample before him, Abraham Lincoln, who took a very active role in directing thestrategy of the Civil War. McKinley, by contrast, had a very passive role asPresident and Commander-in-Chief in 1898. And McKinley in contrast, to

Franklin Roosevelt in the Second World War, played a passive role.INT: Talk the role of African American soldiers.AMBROSE: The two black regular Army regiments who were the

real heroes at Las Guasimas and again at San Juan Hill, they got no credit for it, ofcourse. Now partly that's 'cause they were black troopers. But it's more than that.It's because they were regular Army soldiers and they didn't have any PR guys intheir outfit. And Roosevelt had all the correspondents with him and Rooseveltstood out on the battlefield. Don't ever make any mistake about that. TeddyRoosevelt was a genuine hero who did put his life on the line and did great thingsand got men to follow him up the hill, but he also made sure that everybody saw it.And the black regiments, they just went about their business like regulars do and

nobody paid any attention and they never got the credit that they deserved.DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Well, McKinley -- depends -- in part, it depends how

you count century, but McKinley was the first President of the 20th century, notvery long into the 20th century. But he is very much a part of that bunch ofPresidents who came after the Civil War who are notable to us today becausenobody can remember their names. I mean they're so forgettable, and McKinley is

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almost in that category, as opposed to Teddy Roosevelt, who is the mostmemorable of Presidents, certainly one of them, and the first modern President inso many ways, not just that he became President in 1901 and was the youngest

President ever. He's a first President that we've got on film. He's the firstPresident we have recordings of. He's the first President who had a genuine worldpolicy and a strategy and who was very actively involved in the affairs of theworld, far more so than any previous American President had ever been.

DIRECTIONALTape #017

INT: US policy with Cuba after 1898.AMBROSE: Oh, that's way too big a question and I don't want to

get into all of that, but there is a little piece in there that is always -- struck me.The reason we didn't -- I mean the whole point of war was to take over Cuba fromthe perspective of many of the people who were advocating war. It was nat-- I

mean the United States had lusted for Cuba for a long time and with the PanamaCanal in the offing, it was even more important. But in this excess of pattingourselves on the back and how wonderful we are, 'cause we're going off not toconquer Cuba, but to free her from the Spanish oppressors, in the excitement ofthe vote for war, Teller of New York put in an amendment saying that none of themoney -- this was to the expenditure bill -- none of this money is to be used toconquer Cuba; it's only to be used to free -- and nobody dared vote against it, eventhough an awful lot of 'em would have wished that they could have voted againstit. So we went into the war saying, "We're not gonna take over Cuba." I've oftenthought that ... it's worth contemplating what would have happened if Cuba had

been annexed by the United States and made a part of the American colonialempire. It's possible that Cuba in the 1950s would have followed Alaska andHawaii and become a state in the Union. And that would have meant that all ofthe minimum wage laws and the regulation of corporation laws and all the rest thatwas a part of the American system would have applied to Cuba. And it's temptingat least to think that the Cubans would have been better off if that had happened.But it didn't.

DIRECTIONALAMBROSE: Too general.CUT, DIRECTIONALA: I mean as America became a greater and greater nation, as the

industrial capacity and the agriculture capacity increased and the populationincreased, of course America was going to be extending herself out further into theworld than just beyond the area covered by the Monroe Doctrine -- out into thePacific, out into the Atlantic, come to that. I mean in 1917 we were going to go towar in Europe big time as a part of this whole extension of American power. Justby becoming big, we necessarily assumed responsibilities in the world. We werefeeding so much of the world. We were importing. We were exporting. We were

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a part of the world and what happened in the political realm and the military realmwas going along parallel with what was happening in the economic realm.

CUTDIRECTIONALAMBROSE: I don't want to get into the open door of China.INT: Do you see any parallels between the Philippines and

Vietnam?AMBROSE: Yeah, there are a lot of parallels. There are a lot of

parallels between the Philippines and Vietnam in the way the fighting went on, inthe sending of American kids out into the jungles and out into these rice paddiesand out into these villages. These were American kids who had had no

introduction to the culture, couldn't understand the people, first of all, the languageand then, beyond that, the way in which they lived and their mores and theirreligion and everything else that goes into making a culture was just all utterlyalien to the American kids in the beginning of the 20th century in the Philippinesjust as it was for the American kids in the late 1960s in Vietnam. And wheneveryou send an 18 or a 19 year-old out into the world and give him a gun and tell himto go and kill the enemy and hate the enemy, you're gonna have problems. You'regonna have the kind of thing that happened at Wounded Knee, or the kind of thingthat happened in the Philippines with the American troops torturing their prisonersin the most you don't want to ever even think about it ways. And -- and just as you

have American kids lighting those lighters, those Ronsons, and setting thosethatched huts on fire in Vietnam, well, that happened also in the Philippines, thesame sort of thing for the same general reasons. Throwing these way too youngkids without really good officers into a situation in which they're scared all thetime, they can't tell who's the enemy and who's a friend, they don't know who'sgoing to lay a booby trap here or who's going to put one over there, they don'tknow that that kid goin' into that hut is just an innocent 12 year-old kid or if he infact is a very active guerrilla who just killed your buddy yesterday. Yeah, thereare very definite parallels.

INT: What about Roosevelt's turn-around on the Philippines?AMBROSE: (Laughs) Well, insofar as Roosevelt deciding that that

might not be the best idea in the world, we have the Philippines, he should havelistened harder in 1898 to a lot of people who were saying at that time, "We'regoing to acquire these foreign people about whom we know very little or nothin',who are way, way far away, who have a culture that is not a part of ours. It's justsouth of Japan. If we have those islands, it's gonna draw us into a war in thePacific that we're not going to have any great national interest in and it's gonna bea very bloody and very tough war to fight." And in some ways that's exactly what

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happened in 1941.(END INTERVIEW)

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Crucible of Empire- Interview of Ambrose

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