America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

Now, it is quite useless for me to write with any view to convincing gentlemen like Mr. Bryan and the writer in question. If they really do represent our fellow countrymen, then they are right in holding up China as our ideal; not the modern China, not the China that is changing and moving forward, but old China. In such event Americans ought frankly to class themselves with the Chinese. That is where, on this theory, they belong. If this is so, then let us fervently pray that the Japanese or Germans or some other virile people that does not deify moral, mental, and physical impotence, may speedily come to rule over us.

I am, however, writing on the assumption that Americans are still on the whole like their forefathers who followed Washington, and like their fathers who fought in the armies of Grant and Lee. I am writing on the assumption that, even though temporarily misled, they will not permanently and tamely submit to oppression, and that they will ultimately think intelligently as to what they should do to safeguard themselves against aggression. I abhor unjust war, and I deplore that the need even for just war should ever occur. I believe we should set our faces like flint against any policy of aggression by this country on the rights of any other country. But I believe that we should look facts in the face. I believe that it is unworthy weakness to fear to face the truth. Moreover, I believe that we should have in us that fibre of manhood which will make us follow duty whithersoever it may lead. Unquestionably, we should render all the service it is in our power to render to righteousness. To do this we must be able to back righteousness with force, to put might back of right. It may well be that by following out this theory we can in the end do our part in conjunction with other nations of the world to bring about, if not—as I hope—a world peace, yet at least an important minimizing of the chances for war and of the areas of possible war. But meanwhile it is absolutely our duty to prepare for our own defense.

This country needs something like the Swiss system of war training for its young men. Switzerland is one of the most democratic governments in the world, and it has given its young men such an efficient training as to insure entire preparedness for war, without suffering from the least touch of militarism. Switzerland is at peace now primarily because all the great military nations that surround it know that its people have no intention of making aggression on anybody and yet that they are thoroughly prepared to hold their own and are resolute to fight to the last against any invader who attempts either to subjugate their territory or by violating its neutrality to make it a battle-ground.

A bishop of the Episcopal Church recently wrote me as follows:

How lamentable that we should stand idle, making no preparations to enforce peace, and crying “peace” when there is none! I have scant sympathy for the short-sightedness of those who decry preparation for war as a means of preventing it.

The manager of a land company in Alabama writes me urging that some one speak for reasonable preparedness on the part of the nation. He states that it is always possible that we shall be engaged in hostilities with some first-class power, that he hopes and believes that war will never come, but adds:

I may not believe that my home will burn down or that I am going to die within the period of my expectancy, but nevertheless I carry fire and life insurance to the full insurable value on my property and on my life to the extent of my ability. The only insurance of our liberties as a people is full preparation for a defense adequate against any attack and made in time to fully meet any attack. We do not know the attack is coming; but to wait until it does come will be too late. Our present weakness lies in the wide-spread opinion among our people that this country is invincible because of its large population and vast resources. This I believe is true if, and only if, we use these resources or a small part of them to protect the major part, and if we train at least a part of our people how to defend the nation. Under existing conditions we can hardly hope to have an effective army in the field in less time than eight or ten months. To-day not one per cent of our people know anything about rifle shooting.

I quote these two out of many letters, because they sum up the general feeling of men of vision. Both of my correspondents are most sincerely for peace. No man can possibly be more anxious for peace than I am. I ask those individuals who think of me as a firebrand to remember that during the seven and a half years I was President not a shot was fired at any soldier of a hostile nation by any American soldier or sailor, and there was not so much as a threat of war. Even when the state of Panama threw off the alien yoke of Colombia and when this nation, acting as was its manifest duty, by recognizing Panama as an independent state stood for the right of the governed to govern themselves on the Isthmus, as well as for justice and humanity, there was not a shot fired by any of our people at any Colombian. The blood recently shed at Vera Cruz, like the unpunished wrongs recently committed on our people in Mexico, had no parallel during my administration. When I left the presidency there was not a cloud on the horizon—and one of the reasons why there was not a cloud on the horizon was that the American battle fleet had just returned from its sixteen months’ trip around the world, a trip such as no other battle fleet of any power had ever taken, which it had not been supposed could be taken, and which exercised a greater influence for peace than all the peace congresses of the last fifty years. With Lowell I most emphatically believe that peace is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards; and the fool and the weakling are no improvement on the coward.

Nineteen centuries ago in the greatest of all books we were warned that whoso loses his life for righteousness shall save it and that he who seeks to save it shall lose it. The ignoble and abject gospel of those who would teach us that it is preferable to endure disgrace and discredit than to run any risk to life or limb would defeat its own purpose; for that kind of submission to wrong-doing merely invites further wrong-doing, as has been shown a thousand times in history and as is shown by the case of China in our own days. Moreover, our people, however ill-prepared, would never consent to such abject submission; and indeed as a matter of fact our publicists and public men and our newspapers, instead of being too humble and submissive, are only too apt to indulge in very offensive talk about foreign nations. Of all the nations of the world we are the one that combines the greatest amount of wealth with the smallest ability to defend that wealth. Surely one does not have to read history very much or ponder over philosophy a great deal in order to realize the truth that the one certain way to invite disaster is to be opulent, offensive, and unarmed. There is utter inconsistency between the ideal of making this nation the foremost commercial power in the world and of disarmament in the face of an armed world. There is utter inconsistency between the ideal of making this nation a power for international righteousness and at the same time refusing to make us a power efficient in anything save empty treaties and emptier promises.

I do not believe in a large standing army. Most emphatically I do not believe in militarism. Most emphatically I do not believe in any policy of aggression by us. But I do believe that no man is really fit to be the free citizen of a free republic unless he is able to bear arms and at need to serve with efficiency in the efficient army of the republic. This is no new thing with me. For years I have believed that the young men of the country should know how to use a rifle and should have a short period of military training which, while not taking them for any length of time from civil pursuits, would make them quickly capable of helping defend the country in case of need. When I was governor of New York, acting in conjunction with the administration at Washington under President McKinley, I secured the sending abroad of one of the best officers in the New York National Guard, Colonel William Cary Sanger, to study the Swiss system. As President I had to devote my attention chiefly to getting the navy built up. But surely the sight of what has happened abroad ought to awaken our people to the need of action, not only as regards our navy but as regards our land forces also.