America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

These sapient statements (which have been paralleled by hundreds of utterances in the many peace congresses of the last couple of decades) were delivered in 1787, the year in which the French Assembly of Notables ushered in the greatest era of revolution, domestic turmoil, and international war in all history—an era which still continues and which shows not the smallest sign of coming to an end. Never before have there been wars on so great a scale as during this century and a quarter; and the greatest of all these wars is now being waged. Never before, except for the ephemeral conquests of certain Asiatic barbarians, have there been subjugations of civilized peoples on so great a scale.

During this period here and there something has been done for peace, much has been done for liberty, and very much has been done for reform and advancement. But the professional pacificists, taken as a class throughout the entire period, have done nothing for permanent peace and less than nothing for liberty and for the forward movement of mankind. Hideous things have been done in the name of liberty, in the name of order, in the name of religion; and the victories that have been gained against these iniquities have been gained by strong men, armed, who put their strength at the service of righteousness and who were hampered and not helped by the futility of the men who inveighed against all use of armed strength.

The effective workers for the peace of righteousness were men like Stein, Cavour, and Lincoln; that is, men who dreamed great dreams, but who were also pre-eminently men of action, who stood for the right, and who knew that the right would fail unless might was put behind it. The prophets of pacificism have had nothing whatever in common with these great men; and whenever they have preached mere pacificism, whenever they have failed to put righteousness first and to advocate peace as the handmaiden of righteousness, they have done evil and not good.

After the exhaustion of the Napoleonic struggles there came thirty-five years during which there was no great war, while what was called “the long peace” was broken only by minor international wars or short-lived revolutionary contests. Good, but not far-sighted, men in various countries, but especially in England, Germany, and our own country, forthwith began to dream dreams—not of a universal peace that should be founded on justice and righteousness backed by strength, but of a universal peace to be obtained by the prattle of weaklings and the outpourings of amiable enthusiasts who lacked the fighting edge. About 1850, for instance, the first large peace congress was held. There were numbers of kindly people who felt that this congress, and the contemporary international exposition, also the first of its kind, heralded the beginning of a régime of universal peace. As a matter of fact, there followed twenty years during which a number of great and bloody wars took place—wars far surpassing in extent, in duration, in loss of life and property, and in importance anything that had been seen since the close of the Napoleonic contest.

Then there came another period of nearly thirty years during which there were relatively only a few wars, and these not of the highest importance. Again upright and intelligent but uninformed men began to be misled by foolish men into the belief that world peace was about to be secured, on a basis of amiable fatuity all around and under the lead of the preachers of the diluted mush of make-believe morality. A number of peace congresses, none of which accomplished anything, were held, and also certain Hague conferences, which did accomplish a certain small amount of real good but of a strictly limited kind. It was well worth going into these Hague conferences, but only on condition of clearly understanding how strictly limited was the good that they accomplished. The hysterical people who treated them as furnishing a patent peace panacea did nothing but harm, and partially offset the real but limited good the conferences actually accomplished. Indeed, the conferences undoubtedly did a certain amount of damage because of the preposterous expectations they excited among well-meaning but ill-informed and unthinking persons. These persons really believed that it was possible to achieve the millennium by means that would not have been very effective in preserving peace among the active boys of a large Sunday-school—let alone grown-up men in the world as it actually is. A pathetic commentary on their attitude is furnished by the fact that the fifteen years that have elapsed since the first Hague conference have seen an immense increase of war, culminating in the present war, waged by armies, and with bloodshed, on a scale far vaster than ever before in the history of mankind.

All these facts furnish no excuse whatever for our failing to work zealously for peace, but they absolutely require us to understand that it is noxious to work for a peace not based on righteousness, and useless to work for a peace based on righteousness unless we put force back of righteousness. At present this means that adequate preparedness against war offers to our nation its sole guarantee against wrong and aggression.

Emerson has said that in the long run the most uncomfortable truth is a safer travelling companion than the most agreeable falsehood. The advocates of peace will accomplish nothing except mischief until they are willing to look facts squarely in the face. One of these facts is that universal military service, wherever tried, has on the whole been a benefit and not a harm to the people of the nation, so long as the demand upon the average man’s life has not been for too long a time. The Swiss people have beyond all question benefited by their system of limited but universal preparation for military service. The same thing is true of Australia, Chile, and Argentina. In every one of these countries the short military training given has been found to increase in marked fashion the social and industrial efficiency, the ability to do good industrial work, of the man thus trained. It would be well for the United States from every standpoint immediately to provide such strictly limited universal military training.

But it is well also for the United States to understand that a system of military training which from our standpoint would be excessive and unnecessary in order to meet our needs, may yet work admirably for some other nation. The two nations that during the last fifty years have made by far the greatest progress are Germany and Japan; and they are the two nations in which preparedness for war in time of peace has been carried to the highest point of scientific development. The feat of Japan has been something absolutely without precedent in recorded history. Great civilizations, military, industrial, and artistic, have arisen and flourished in Asia again and again in the past. But never before has an Asiatic power succeeded in adopting civilization of the European or most advanced type and in developing it to a point of military and industrial efficiency equalled only by one power of European blood.

As for Germany, we believers in democracy who also understand, as every sound-thinking democrat must, that democracy cannot succeed unless it shows the same efficiency that is shown by autocracy (as Switzerland on a small scale has shown it) need above all other men carefully to study what Germany has accomplished during the last half century. Her military efficiency has not been more astounding than her industrial and social efficiency; and the essential thing in her career of greatness has been the fact that this industrial and social efficiency is in part directly based upon the military efficiency and in part indirectly based upon it, because based upon the mental, physical, and moral qualities developed by the military efficiency. The solidarity and power of collective action, the trained ability to work hard for an end which is afar off in the future, the combination of intelligent forethought with efficient and strenuous action—all these together have given her her extraordinary industrial pre-eminence; and all of these have been based upon her military efficiency.

The Germans have developed patriotism of the most intense kind, and although this patriotism expresses itself in thunderous songs, in speeches and in books, it does not confine itself to these methods of expression, but treats them merely as incitements to direct and efficient action. After five months of war, Germany has on the whole been successful against opponents which in population outnumber her over two to one, and in natural resources are largely superior. Russian and French armies have from time to time obtained lodgement on German soil; but on the whole the fighting has been waged by German armies on Russian, French, and Belgian territory. On her western frontier, it is true, she was checked and thrown back after her first drive on Paris, and again checked and thrown slightly back when, after the fall of Antwerp, she attempted to advance along the Belgian coast. But in the west she has on the whole successfully pursued the offensive, and her battle lines are in the enemies’ territory, although she has had to face the entire strength of France, England, and Belgium.