America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

During the preparation of this book the writer received from his uncle, a veteran army officer living in Dresden, a brief note containing the following laconic record:

“1793, your great-grandfather at Kostheim.

“1815, your grandfather at Liegnitz.

“1870, myself—all severely wounded by French bullets.

“1914, my son, captain in the 6th Regiment of Dragoons.

“Four generations obliged to fight the French!”

When the writer turns to his American friends of French descent, he finds there similar records, and often even greater sorrow, for death has come to many of them. In Europe their families and his have looked upon each other as enemies for generations, while a few years in the clarifying atmosphere of America have made friends of former Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, and Englishmen.

Jointly they pray that the present war may not be carried to such a pass that an early and honorable peace becomes impossible for any one of these great nations. Is it asking too much that America may be vouchsafed in not too distant a future to do for their respective native lands what the American institutions have done for them individually, help them to regard each other at their true worth, unblinded by traditional hatred or fiery passion?

It is in the spirit of this statement that we Americans should act. We are a people different from, but akin, to all the nations of Europe. We should feel a real friendship for each of the contesting powers and a real desire to work so as to secure justice for each. This cannot be done by preserving a tame and spiritless neutrality which treats good and evil on precisely the same basis. Such a neutrality never has enabled and never will enable any nation to do a great work for righteousness. Our true course should be to judge each nation on its conduct, unhesitatingly to antagonize every nation that does ill as regards the point on which it does ill, and equally without hesitation to act, as cool-headed and yet generous wisdom may dictate, so as disinterestedly to further the welfare of all.

One of the greatest of international duties ought to be the protection of small, highly civilized, well-behaved, and self-respecting states from oppression and conquest by their powerful military neighbors. Such nations as Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Uruguay, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden play a great and honorable part in the development of civilization. The subjugation of any one of them is a crime against, the destruction of any one of them is a loss to, mankind.

I feel in the strongest way that we should have interfered, at least to the extent of the most emphatic diplomatic protest and at the very outset—and then by whatever further action was necessary—in regard to the violation of the neutrality of Belgium; for this act was the earliest and the most important and, in its consequences, the most ruinous of all the violations and offenses against treaties committed by any combatant during the war. But it was not the only one. The Japanese and English forces not long after violated Chinese neutrality in attacking Kiao-Chau. It has been alleged and not denied that the British ship Highflyer sunk the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse in neutral Spanish waters, this being also a violation of the Hague conventions; and on October 10th the German government issued an official protest about alleged violations of the Geneva convention by the French. Furthermore, the methods employed in strewing portions of the seas with floating mines have been such as to warrant the most careful investigation by any neutral nations which treat neutrality pacts and Hague conventions as other than merely dead letters. Not a few offenses have been committed against our own people.

If, instead of observing a timid and spiritless neutrality, we had lived up to our obligations by taking action in all of these cases without regard to which power it was that was alleged to have done wrong, we would have followed the only course that would both have told for world righteousness and have served our own self-respect. The course actually followed by Messrs. Wilson, Bryan, and Daniels has been to permit our own power for self-defense steadily to diminish while at the same time refusing to do what we were solemnly bound to do in order to protest against wrong and to render some kind of aid to weak nations that had been wronged. Inasmuch as, in the first and greatest and the most ruinous case of violation of neutral rights and of international morality, this nation, under the guidance of Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, kept timid silence and dared not protest, it would be—and is—an act of deliberate bad faith to protest only as regards subsequent and less important violations. Of course, if, as a people, we frankly take the ground that our actions are based upon nothing whatever but our own selfish and short-sighted interest, it is possible to protest only against violations of neutrality that at the moment unfavorably affect our own interests. Inaction is often itself the most offensive form of action; the administration has persistently refused to live up to the solemn national obligations to strive to protect other unoffending nations from wrong; and this conduct adds a peculiar touch of hypocrisy to the action taken at the same time in signing a couple of score of all-inclusive arbitration treaties pretentiously heralded as serving world righteousness. If we had acted as we ought to have acted regarding Belgium we could then with a clear conscience have made effective protest regarding every other case of violation of the rights of neutrals or of offenses committed by the belligerents against one another or against us in violation of the Hague conventions. Moreover, the attitude of the administration has not even placated the powers it was desired to please. Thanks to its action, the United States during the last five months has gained neither the good-will nor the respect of any of the combatants. On the contrary, it has steadily grown rather more disliked and rather less respected by all of them.

In facing a difficult and critical situation, any administration is entitled to a free hand until it has had time to develop the action which it considers appropriate, for often there is more than one way in which it is possible to take efficient action. But when so much time has passed, either without action or with only mischievous action, as gravely to compromise both the honor and the interest of the country, then it becomes a duty for self-respecting citizens to whom their country is dear to speak out. From the very outset I felt that the administration was following a wrong course. But no action of mine could make it take the right course, and there was a possibility that there was some object aside from political advantage in the course followed. I kept silence as long as silence was compatible with regard for the national honor and welfare. I spoke only when it became imperative to speak under penalty of tame acquiescence in tame failure to perform national duty. It has become evident that the administration has had no plan whatever save the dexterous avoidance of all responsibility and therefore of all duty, and the effort to persuade our people as a whole that this inaction was for their interest—combined with other less openly expressed and less worthy efforts of purely political type.

There is therefore no longer any reason for failure to point out that if the President and Secretary of State had been thoroughly acquainted in advance, as of course they ought to have been acquainted, with the European situation, and if they had possessed an intelligent and resolute purpose squarely to meet their heavy responsibilities and thereby to serve the honor of this country and the interest of mankind, they would have taken action on July 29th, 30th, or 31st, certainly not later than August 1st. On such occasions there is a peculiar applicability in the old proverb: Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time. If those responsible for the management of our foreign affairs had been content to dwell in a world of fact instead of a world of third-rate fiction, they would have understood that at such a time of world crisis it was an unworthy avoidance of duty to fuss with silly little all-inclusive arbitration treaties when the need of the day demanded that they devote all their energies to the terrible problems of the day. They would have known that a German invasion of Switzerland was possible but improbable and a German invasion of Belgium overwhelmingly probable. They would have known that vigorous action by the United States government, taken with such entire good faith as to make it evident that it was in the interest of Belgium and not in the interest of France and England, and that if there was occasion it would be taken against France and England as quickly as against Germany, might very possibly have resulted in either putting a stop to the war or in localizing and narrowly circumscribing its area. It is, of course, possible that the action would have failed of its immediate purpose. But even in that case it cannot be doubted that it would have been efficient as a check upon the subsequent wrongs committed.

Nor was the opportunity for action limited in time. Even if the administration had failed thus to act at the outset of the war, the protests officially made both by the German Emperor and by the Belgian government to the President as to alleged misconduct in the prosecution of the war not only gave him warrant for action but required him to act. Meanwhile, from the moment when the war was declared, it became inexcusable of the administration not to take immediate steps to put the navy into efficient shape, and at least to make our military forces on land more respectable. It is possible not to justify but to explain the action of the administration in using the navy for the sixteen months prior to this war in such a way as greatly to impair its efficiency; for of course when the President selected Mr. Daniels as Secretary of the Navy he showed, on the supposition that he was not indifferent to its welfare, an entire ignorance of what that welfare demanded; and therefore the failure to keep the navy efficient may have been due at first to mere inability to exercise foresight. But with war impending, such failure to exercise foresight became inexcusable. None of the effective fighting craft are of any real use so far as Mexico is concerned. The navy should at once have been assembled in northern waters, either in the Atlantic or the Pacific, and immediate steps taken to bring it to the highest point of efficiency.

It is because I believe our attitude should be one of sincere good-will toward all nations that I so strongly feel that we should endeavor to work for a league of peace among all nations rather than trust to alliances with any particular group. Moreover, alliances are very shifty and uncertain. Within twenty years England has regarded France as her immediately dangerous opponent; within ten years she has felt that Russia was the one power against which she must at all costs guard herself; and during the same period there have been times when Belgium has hated England with a peculiar fervor. Alliances must be based on self-interest and must continually shift. But in such a world league as that of which we speak and dream, the test would be conduct and not merely selfish interest, and so there would be no shifting of policy.