Teddy Roosevelt was one of our more pugnacious presidents. In 1904, to take just one example of his high-handed executive style, TR backed a coup in Panama (then ruled by Columbia) to create country that would consent to America’s digging the Panama Canal.

In a speech he made later, Teddy boasted: “I took Panama and let Congress debate that while I went ahead and built the canal.”

Following Teddy’s sensational disclosure, Secretary of War Elihu Root chided him: “Mr. President, you have shown that you were accused of seduction … and proved that you were guilty of rape.”

Yet the same president who could bend international law to build a vital waterway had no tolerance for torture. The Panamanian revolution had been bloodless. Not so a rebellion against American rule over the Philippines, which the U.S. had acquired in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.

The Spanish occupiers had used “the water cure” as a technique for interrogation and punishment. American forces adopted the practice and used it liberally against captured Filipino insurgents. This was probably the first instance where Americans made use of what we now know as “waterboarding.”

According to Talbot D'Alemberte, president emeritus of Florida State University and a past president of the American Bar Association, TR was outraged when he learned that American soldiers were engaging in such atrocities. In an article published last week in the Miami Herald, Mr. D’Alemberte quotes a cable that Roosevelt shot off to American military commanders in the Philippines. The cable read as follows:

THE PRESIDENT DESIRES TO KNOW IN THE FULLEST AND MOST CIRCUMSTANTIAL MANNER ALL THE FACTS . . . FOR THE VERY REASON THAT THE PRESIDENT INTENDS TO BACK UP THE ARMY IN THE HEARTIEST FASHION IN EVERY LAWFUL AND LEGITIMATE METHOD OF DOING ITS WORK. HE ALSO INTENDS TO SEE THAT THE MOST VIGOROUS CARE IS EXERCISED TO DETECT AND PREVENT ANY CRUELTY OR BRUTALITY AND THAT MEN WHO ARE GUILTY THEREOF ARE PUNISHED. GREAT AS THE PROVOCATION HAS BEEN . . . NOTHING CAN JUSTIFY . . . THE USE OF TORTURE OR INHUMAN CONDUCT OF ANY KIND ON THE PART OF THE AMERICAN ARMY.

Mr. D’Alemberte goes on to say, “At Roosevelt's insistence, military men implicated in torture and abuse, including even those of high rank, were prosecuted and sanctioned.”

This was a hundred years ago. It is a pity that our current president doesn’t read more history.