American Literature
S. to "take up the white man's burden" and help Britain spread western civilization around
the world, while Europeans sneered that the Americans, who had berated them for dividing Africa and Asia among themselves, had fallen at the first
temptation to get a colony of their own. Rubén Darío, speaking for Latin Americans, accused Teddy Roosevelt of believing "that progress is just
eruption,/ that wherever you put bullets,/ you put the future, too." And Apolinario Mabini, crafter of the Philippine constitution, warned the U.S. that
"force ... cannot annihilate the aspirations of eight million souls who are conscious of their own power, honor, and rights; blood will not drown them,
it will only nourish their great ideas, the eternal principles."Clearly, Mark Twain was not alone in thinking that the Americans had betrayed their
founding values for what he labeled a "backseat" in the community of imperialist nations
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