America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

Affairs in the international world are at this time in analogous condition. There is no central police power, and not the least likelihood of its being created. Well-meaning enthusiasts have tried their hands to an almost unlimited extent in the way of devising all-inclusive arbitration treaties, neutrality treaties, disarmament proposals, and the like, with no force back of them, and the result has been stupendous and discreditable failure. Preparedness for war on the part of individual nations has sometimes but not always averted war. Unpreparedness for war, as in the case of China, Korea, and Luxembourg, has invariably invited smashing disaster, and sometimes complete conquest. Surely these conditions should teach a lesson that any man who runs may read unless his eyes have been blinded by folly or his heart weakened by cowardice.

The immediately vital lesson for each individual nation is that as things are now it must in time of crisis rely on its own stout hearts and ready hands for self-defense. Existing treaties are utterly worthless so far as concerns protecting any free, well-behaved people from one of the great aggressive military monarchies of the world. The all-inclusive arbitration treaties such as those recently negotiated by Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, when taken in connection with our refusal to act under existing treaties, represent about the highest point of slightly mischievous fatuity which can be attained in international matters. Inasmuch as we ourselves are the power that initiated their negotiation, we can do our plain duty to ourselves and our neighbors only by ourselves proceeding from the outset on the theory, and by warning our neighbors, that these treaties in any time of crisis will certainly not be respected by any serious adversary, and probably will of necessity be violated by ourselves. They do not in even the very smallest degree relieve us of the necessity of preparedness for war. To this point of our duty to be prepared I will return later.

But we ought not to and must not rest content merely with working for our own defense. The utterly appalling calamity that has befallen the civilized world during the last five months, and, above all, the horrible catastrophe that has overwhelmed Belgium without Belgium’s having the smallest responsibility in the matter, must make the least thoughtful realize how unsatisfactory is the present basis of international relations among civilized powers. In order to make things better several things are necessary. We must clearly grasp the fact that mere selfish avoidance of duty to others, even although covered by such fine words as “peace” and “neutrality,” is a wretched thing and an obstacle to securing the peace of righteousness throughout the world. We must recognize clearly the old common-law doctrine that a right without a remedy is void. We must firmly grasp the fact that measures should be taken to put force back of good faith in the observance of treaties. The worth of treaties depends purely upon the good faith with which they are executed; and it is mischievous folly to enter into treaties without providing for their execution and wicked folly to enter into them if they ought not to be executed.

It is necessary to devise means for putting the collective and efficient strength of all the great powers of civilization back of any well-behaved power which is wronged by another power. In other words, we must devise means for executing treaties in good faith, by the establishment of some great international tribunal, and by securing the enforcement of the decrees of this tribunal through the action of a posse comitatus of powerful and civilized nations, all of them being bound by solemn agreement to coerce any power that offends against the decrees of the tribunal. That there will be grave difficulties in successfully working out this plan I would be the first to concede, and I would be the first to insist that to work it out successfully would be impossible unless the nations acted in good faith. But the plan is feasible, and it is the only one which at the moment offers any chance of success. Ever since the days of Henry IV of France there has been a growth, slow and halting to be sure but yet evidently a growth, in recognition by the public conscience of civilized nations that there should be a method of making the rules of international morality obligatory and binding among the powers. But merely to trust to public opinion without organized force back of it is silly. Force must be put back of justice, and nations must not shrink from the duty of proceeding by any means that are necessary against wrong-doers. It is the failure to recognize these vital truths that has rendered the actions of our government during the last few years impotent to preserve world peace and fruitful only in earning for us the half-veiled derision of other nations.

The attitude of the present administration during the last five months shows how worthless the present treaties, unbacked by force, are, and how utterly ineffective mere passive neutrality is to secure even the smallest advance in world morality. I have been very reluctant in any way to criticise the action of the present administration in foreign affairs; I have faithfully, and in some cases against my own deep-rooted personal convictions, sought to justify what it has done in Mexico and as regards the present war; but the time has come when loyalty to the administration’s action in foreign affairs means disloyalty to our national self-interest and to our obligations toward humanity at large. As regards Belgium the administration has clearly taken the ground that our own selfish ease forbids us to fulfil our explicit obligations to small neutral states when they are deeply wronged. It will never be possible in any war to commit a clearer breach of international morality than that committed by Germany in the invasion and subjugation of Belgium. Every one of the nations involved in this war, and the United States as well, have committed such outrages in the past. But the very purpose of the Hague conventions and of all similar international agreements was to put a stop to such misconduct in the future.

At the outset I ask our people to remember that what I say is based on the assumption that we are bound in good faith to fulfil our treaty obligations; that we will neither favor nor condemn any other nation except on the ground of its behavior; that we feel as much good-will to the people of Germany or Austria as to the people of England, of France, or of Russia; that we speak for Belgium only as we could speak for Holland or Switzerland or one of the Scandinavian or Balkan nations; and that if the circumstances as regards Belgium had been reversed we would have protested as emphatically against wrong action by England or France as we now protest against wrong action by Germany.

The United States and the great powers now at war were parties to the international code created in the regulations annexed to the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907. As President, acting on behalf of this government, and in accordance with the unanimous wish of our people, I ordered the signature of the United States to these conventions. Most emphatically I would not have permitted such a farce to have gone through if it had entered my head that this government would not consider itself bound to do all it could to see that the regulations to which it made itself a party were actually observed when the necessity for their observance arose. I cannot imagine any sensible nation thinking it worth while to sign future Hague conventions if even such a powerful neutral as the United States does not care enough about them to protest against their open breach. Of the present neutral powers the United States of America is the most disinterested and the strongest, and should therefore bear the main burden of responsibility in this matter.

It is quite possible to make an argument to the effect that we never should have entered into the Hague conventions, because our sole duty is to ourselves and not to others, and our sole concern should be to keep ourselves at peace, at any cost, and not to help other powers that are oppressed, and not to protest against wrong-doing. I do not myself accept this view; but in practice it is the view taken by the present administration, apparently with at the moment the approval of the mass of our people. Such a policy, while certainly not exalted, and in my judgment neither far-sighted nor worthy of a high-spirited and lofty-souled nation, is yet in a sense understandable, and in a sense defensible.

But it is quite indefensible to make agreements and not live up to them. The climax of absurdity is for any administration to do what the present administration during the last five months has done. Mr. Wilson’s administration has shirked doing the duty plainly imposed on it by the obligations of the conventions already entered into; and at the same time it has sought to obtain cheap credit by entering into a couple of score new treaties infinitely more drastic than the old ones, and quite impossible of honest fulfilment. When the Belgian people complained of violations of the Hague tribunal, it was a mockery, it was a timid and unworthy abandonment of duty on our part, for President Wilson to refer them back to the Hague court, when he knew that the Hague court was less than a shadow unless the United States by doing its clear duty gave the Hague court some substance. If the Hague conventions represented nothing but the expression of feeble aspirations toward decency, uttered only in time of profound peace, and not to be even expressed above a whisper when with awful bloodshed and suffering the conventions were broken, then it was idle folly to enter into them. If, on the other hand, they meant anything, if the United States had a serious purpose, a serious sense of its obligations to world righteousness, when it entered into them, then its plain duty as the trustee of civilization is to investigate the charges solemnly made as to the violation of the Hague conventions. If such investigation is made, and if the charges prove well founded, then it is the duty of the United States to take whatever action may be necessary to vindicate the principles of international law set forth in these conventions.

I am not concerned with the charges of individual atrocity. The prime fact is that Belgium committed no offense whatever, and yet that her territory has been invaded and her people subjugated. This prime fact cannot be left out of consideration in dealing with any matter that has occurred in connection with it. Her neutrality has certainly been violated, and this is in clear violation of the fundamental principles of the Hague conventions. It appears clear that undefended towns have been bombarded, and that towns which were defended have been attacked with bombs at a time when no attack was made upon the defenses. This is certainly in contravention of the Hague agreement forbidding the bombardment of undefended towns. Illegal and excessive contributions are expressly condemned under Articles 49 and 52 of the conventions. If these articles do not forbid the levying of such sums as $40,000,000 from Brussels and $90,000,000 from the province of Brabant, then the articles are absolutely meaningless. Articles 43 and 50 explicitly forbid the infliction of a collective penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, on a population on account of acts of individuals for which it cannot be regarded as collectively responsible. Either this prohibition is meaningless or it prohibits just such acts as the punitive destruction of Visé, Louvain, Aerschot, and Dinant. Furthermore, a great deal of the appalling devastation of central and eastern Belgium has been apparently terrorizing and not punitive in its purpose, and this is explicitly forbidden by the Hague conventions.