Mr. President, Members of the Association and Section, Ladies and Gentlemen:

You have heard ably discussed certain questions which arise out of the relationship between the American Union and the annexed Insular regions, viewed in its sociological and economic aspect. I now ask your attention to a question of immediate interest and importance growing out of this relationship viewed in its political, that is to say, its legal aspect. This question, which the Committee on Arrangements has called “The Question of Terminology,” is: What are the correct terms to use in describing the political and legal relationship between the American Union and its distant annexed regions, assuming that this relationship is to be permanent and is to be on terms which are just to all parties?

Commerce is in most cases the mainspring of the relationship between colonies and the governing country. Say what we may of benevolent assimilation and the government of colonies for the good of the governed, there can be no doubt that commerce has been and is the underlying motive in the acquisition and continued control of a large proportion of the world's area now known as colonies, dependencies, or protectorates. In a few cases, like our own Philippine Islands, the control of territory has been assumed as a necessary result of war waged for purposes other than territorial acquisition; but the expectation of commercial advantages, present or prospective, may be properly assigned as a leading cause for the control which a half-dozen temperate-zone nations now exercise over 25 million square miles of non-contiguous territory occupied by 500 million people, a territory lying largely within the Tropics and a people largely of habits different from those of the governing country.