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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: thing and another we are cleaner, honester, humaner, and whiter than any
people on the continent of Europe. If any nation on the continent of
Europe has ever behaved with the generosity and magnanimity that we have
shown to Cuba, I have yet to learn of it. They jeered at us about Cuba,
did the Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck their tongues in
their cheeks. Of course our fine sentiments were all sham, they said. Of
course we intended to swallow Cuba, and never had intended anything else.
And when General Leonard Wood came away from Cuba, having made Havana
healthy, having brought order out of chaos on the island, and we left
Cuba independent, Europe jeered on. That dear old Europe!
Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation that returned to China
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