WORLD PEACE
While Roosevelt and Wilson were for the most part in opposition to each other, some have wrongly said, with regard to the proposal for a league of nations, that Roosevelt was backward and reactionary in his attitude. This is directly confuted by the prophetic speech he delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910, while on his world tour. His utterance there shows that fundamentally President Wilson and he were thinking alike on this subject:
“Something should be done as soon as possible to check the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments, by international agreement. No one power could or should act by itself; for it is eminently undesirable, from the standpoint of peace and righteousness, that a power which really does believe in peace should place itself at the mercy of some rival which may at bottom have no such belief and no intention of acting on it.
“But, granted sincerity of purpose, the great powers of the world should find no insurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put an end to the present costly and growing extravagances of expenditures on naval armaments. An agreement merely to limit the size of ships would have been very useful a few years ago, and would still be of use; but the agreement should go much further.
“Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a league of peace, not only to keep peace among themselves, but to prevent by force if necessary, its being broken by others.
“The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force; on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.
“In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself, and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community remain there. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down violence.
“So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. As things are now, such powers to command peace throughout the world could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.”
COPYRIGHT, WALTER SCOTT SHINN
ROOSEVELT AS A GRANDFATHER
XV
From White House to Jungle
“Oh, our manhood’s prime vigor! No spirit feels waste,
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
Oh, the wild joys of living! The leaping from rock to rock;
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-trees; the cool, silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool’s living water; the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is crouched in his lair.
* * * * *
How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!”
These splendid lines of Browning were Roosevelt’s outdoor creed. His exploits as a hunter in Africa were merely a development of his life as a naturalist and out-of-door man. At Harvard Roosevelt had devoted himself to a study of natural science, and had even thought seriously of making it his lifework. Politics claimed him then, but always underlying Roosevelt the statesman was Roosevelt the naturalist.
Francis Parkman—hunter, trapper, horticulturist and America’s most interesting historian—was Roosevelt’s example for his life in the open. There was a close relation between the careers of the two men. Parkman was handicapped in health and bad eyesight. Roosevelt, as a youth, had a weak frame and his sight was also poor. Parkman loved Nature and had a passion for writing. He had an indomitable will that enabled him to overcome his physical handicaps and to make a splendid mark in literature. Roosevelt possessed the same qualities.
It was with Parkman in mind that Roosevelt scaled the most difficult peaks of the Alps; plunged in the Canadian wilderness; took up prairie life. As a result of the trained eye and trained ear Roosevelt gained through these experiences, in his books will be found observations of animal life and bird life, and a knowledge of plants and trees that is enlightening to even the experienced naturalist.
John Burroughs, in his book “Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt,” states that when Roosevelt entered Yellowstone Park he wanted all the freedom and solitude possible. The Colonel craved to be alone with Nature. It was evident that he was hungry for the wild and the aboriginal. It was this hunger that came to him periodically and resulted in his going forth on hunting and exploring trips to the Far West, Africa and Brazil.
As an illustration of the fact that it was love of nature itself more than love of killing that drove Roosevelt into the wilds, Burroughs describes how, at their second camp, which they reached in mid-afternoon, their attention was attracted by a strange note in the spruce woods. The question arose as to whether it was a bird or a beast. Their guide thought it was an owl.
“Let’s run that bird down,” said the Colonel to Burroughs.
They ran across a small open plain and at last saw the bird on the peak of a spruce. Burroughs imitated its call, but they could not discern the species of the bird.
“Why did we not think to bring the glasses?” said Roosevelt.
“I will run and get them,” said Burroughs.
“No,” said Roosevelt, “you stay here and keep that bird treed and I will fetch them.”
Off the Colonel went like a boy, returning swiftly with the glasses. Then it was discovered that it was indeed an owl; a pigmy owl, not much larger than a bluebird. Roosevelt was as delighted as if he had slain a grizzly. He had never seen a bird like this before.
At one time Roosevelt and his companions camped at the Yellowstone Canyon, with the river four or five hundred feet below them. Mountain sheep appeared on the opposite side. The rules of the park forbade hunting, so the sheep showed no fear of them. Between the sheep and the riverbed there was a precipice. The question arose among the watchers as to whether these four-footed creatures could pass down this steep declivity to the riverbed. Roosevelt asserted that they could. Then he entered his tent to shave. When the shaving was half completed someone shouted that the sheep were going down. Roosevelt rushed out, with a towel around his throat and one side of his face white with lather. He watched the sure-footed sheep making their descent with great interest. Then he said: “I knew they could do it.”
While Roosevelt was on this trip in the Yellowstone he remarked:
“I heard a Bullock’s-oriole!”
“You may have heard one,” said a man familiar with the country, “but I doubt it. Those birds won’t come for two weeks yet.”
“I caught two bird notes which could not be those of any bird except an oriole,” the Colonel insisted.
“You may have the song twisted,” said another member of the party.
That evening at supper Roosevelt suddenly laid down his knife and fork, exclaiming, “Look! Look!”
On a shrub before the window was a Bullock’s-oriole. This vindication of his hearing pleased the Colonel immensely.
Burroughs, after visiting the Colonel at Sagamore Hill in 1907, wrote that the appearance of a new warbler in the woods “seemed an event that threw the affairs of state and the Presidential succession into the background.” He told a political visitor at that time that it would be impossible for him to discuss politics then as he wanted to talk and hunt birds, and for the purpose he took his visitor with him.
“Fancy,” said Burroughs, “a President of the United States stalking rapidly across bushy fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with the one idea of showing to his visitors the black-throated green warbler!”
Roosevelt told Burroughs that when he was President he would sometimes go on bird excursions in the White House grounds. People passing would stop and stare at him as he stood gazing up into the trees.
“No doubt they thought me insane,” he said.
“Yes,” added Mrs. Roosevelt, who was present, “and as I was always with him, they no doubt thought that I was the nurse that had him in charge.”
Roosevelt’s effective war on “nature fakirs” could not have been possible had he not known intimately the habits and nature of birds and animals, and never was he found wanting. Roosevelt’s intense interest in wild animals, it may be noted in passing, showed itself in his early boyhood. Of the minister of his church he demanded to know the nature of a “zeal.”
“What is a zeal?” repeated the puzzled parson.
“You read about him in the Psalms,” said Ted.
The minister picked up his Bible. There he found the answer: “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.”