America and the World War

by Theodore Roosevelt

It is not yet opportune to discuss in detail the exact method by which the nations of the world shall put the collective strength of civilization behind the purpose of civilization to do right, using as an instrumentality for peace such a world league. I have in the last chapter given the bare outline of such a plan. Probably at the outset it would be an absolute impossibility to devise a non-national or purely international police force which would be effective in a great crisis. The prime necessity is that all the great nations should agree in good faith to use their combined warlike strength to coerce any nation, whichever one it may be, that declines to abide the decision of some competent international tribunal.

Our business is to create the beginnings of international order out of the world of nations as these nations actually exist. We do not have to deal with a world of pacificists and therefore we must proceed on the assumption that treaties will never acquire sanctity until nations are ready to seal them with their blood. We are not striving for peace in heaven. That is not our affair. What we were bidden to strive for is “peace on earth and good-will toward men.” To fulfil this injunction it is necessary to treat the earth as it is and men as they are, as an indispensable pre-requisite to making the earth a better place in which to live and men better fit to live in it. It is inexcusable moral culpability on our part to pretend to carry out this injunction in such fashion as to nullify it; and this we do if we make believe that the earth is what it is not and if our professions of bringing good-will toward men are in actual practice shown to be empty shams. Peace congresses, peace parades, the appointment and celebration of days of prayer for peace, and the like, which result merely in giving the participants the feeling that they have accomplished something and are therefore to be excused from hard, practical work for righteousness, are empty shams. Treaties such as the recent all-inclusive arbitration treaties are worse than empty shams and convict us as a nation of moral culpability when our representatives sign them at the same time that they refuse to risk anything to make good the signatures we have already affixed to the Hague conventions.

Moderate and sensible treaties which mean something and which can and will be enforced mark a real advance for the human race. As has been well said: “It is our business to make no treaties which we are not ready to maintain with all our resources, for every such ‘scrap of paper’ is like a forged check—an assault on our credit in the world.” Promises that are idly given and idly broken represent profound detriment to the morality of nations. Until no promise is idly entered into and until promises that have once been made are kept, at no matter what cost of risk and effort and positive loss, just so long will distrust and suspicion and wrong-doing rack the world. No honest lawyer will hesitate to advise his client against signing a contract either detrimental to his interests or impossible of fulfilment; and the individual who signs such a contract at once makes himself either an object of suspicion to sound-headed men or else an object of derision to all men. One of the stock jokes in the comic columns of the newspapers refers to the man who swears off or takes the pledge, or makes an indefinite number of good resolutions on New Year’s Day, and fails to keep his pledge or promise or resolution; this was one of Mark Twain’s favorite subjects for derision. The man who continually makes new promises without living up to those he has already made, and who takes pledges which he breaks, is rightly treated as an object for contemptuous fun. The nation which behaves in like manner deserves no higher consideration.

The conduct of President Wilson and Secretary Bryan in signing these all-inclusive treaties at the same time that they have kept silent about the breaking of the Hague conventions has represented the kind of wrong-doing to this nation that would be represented in private life by the conduct of the individuals who sign such contracts as those mentioned. The administration has looked on without a protest while the Hague conventions have been torn up and thrown to the wind. It has watched the paper structure of good-will collapse without taking one step to prevent it; and yet foolish pacificists, the very men who in the past have been most vociferous about international morality, have praised it for this position. The assertion that our neutrality carries with it the obligation to be silent when our own Hague conventions are destroyed represents an active step against the peace of righteousness. The only way to show that our faith in public law was real was to protest against the assault on international morality implied in the invasion of Belgium.

Unless some one at some time is ready to take some chance for the sake of internationalism, that is of international morality, it will remain what it is to-day, an object of derision to aggressive nations. Even if nothing more than an emphatic protest had been made against what was done in Belgium—it is not at this time necessary for me to state exactly what, in my judgment, ought to have been done—the foundations would have been laid for an effective world opinion against international cynicism. Pacificists claim that we have acted so as to preserve the good-will of Europe and to exercise a guiding influence in the settlement of the war. This is an idea which appeals to the thoughtless, for it gratifies our desire to keep out of trouble and also our vanity by the hope that we shall do great things with small difficulty. It may or may not be that the settlement will finally be made by a peace congress in which the President of the United States will hold titular position of headship. But under conditions as they are now the real importance of the President in such a peace congress will be comparable to the real importance of the drum-major when he walks at the head of a regiment. Small boys regard the drum-major as much more important than the regimental commander; and the pacificist grown-ups who applaud peace congresses sometimes show as regards the drum-majors of these congresses the same touching lack of insight which small boys show toward real drum-majors. As a matter of fact, if the United States enters such a congress with nothing but a record of comfortable neutrality or tame acquiescence in violated Hague conventions, plus an array of vague treaties with no relation to actual facts, it will be allowed to fill the position of international drum-major and of nothing more; and even this position it will be allowed to fill only so long as it suits the convenience of the men who have done the actual fighting. The warring nations will settle the issues in accordance with their own strength and position. Under such conditions we shall be treated as we deserve to be treated, as a nation of people who mean well feebly, whose words are not backed by deeds, who like to prattle about both their own strength and their own righteousness, but who are unwilling to run the risks without which righteousness cannot be effectively served, and who are also unwilling to undergo the toil of intelligent and hard-working preparation without which strength when tested proves weakness.

In this world it is as true of nations as of individuals that the things best worth having are rarely to be obtained in cheap fashion. There is nothing easier than to meet in congresses and conventions and pass resolutions in favor of virtue. There is also nothing more futile unless those passing the resolutions are willing to make them good by labor and endurance and active courage and self-denial. Readers of John Hay’s poems will remember the scorn therein expressed for those who “resoloot till the cows come home,” but do not put effort back of their words. Those who would teach our people that service can be rendered or greatness attained in easy, comfortable fashion, without facing risk, hardship, and difficulty, are teaching what is false and mischievous. Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life. As a rule, the slothful ease of life is in inverse proportion to its true success. This is true of the private lives of farmers, business men, and mechanics. It is no less true of the life of the nation which is made up of these farmers, business men, and mechanics.

As yet, as events have most painfully shown, there is nothing to be expected by any nation in a great crisis from anything except its own strength. Under these circumstances it is criminal in the United States not to prepare. Critics have stated that in advocating universal military service on the Swiss plan in this country, I am advocating militarism. I am not concerned with mere questions of terminology. The plan I advocate would be a corrective of every evil which we associate with the name of militarism. It would tend for order and self-respect among our people. Not the smallest evil among the many evils that exist in America is due to militarism. Save in the crisis of the Civil War there has been no militarism in the United States and the only militarist President we have ever had was Abraham Lincoln. Universal service of the Swiss type would be educational in the highest and best sense of the word. In Switzerland, as compared with the United States, there are, relatively to the population, only one tenth the number of murders and of crimes of violence. Doubtless other causes have contributed to this, but doubtless also the intelligent collective training of the Swiss people in habits of obedience, of self-reliance, self-restraint and endurance, of applied patriotism and collective action, has been a very potent factor in producing this good result.

As I have already said, I know of my own knowledge that two nations which on certain occasions were obliged, perhaps as much by our fault as by theirs, to take into account the question of possible war with the United States, planned in such event to seize the Panama Canal and to take and ransom or destroy certain of our great coast cities. They planned this partly in the belief that our navy would intermittently be allowed to become extremely inefficient, just as during the last twenty months it has become inefficient, and partly in the belief that our people are so wholly unmilitary, and so ridden to death on the one hand by foolish pacificists and on the other by brutal materialists whose only God is money, that we would not show ourselves either resolutely patriotic or efficient even in what belated action our utter lack of preparation permitted us to take. I believe that these nations were and are wrong in their estimate of the underlying strength of the American character. I believe that if war did really come both the ultrapacificists, the peace-at-any-price men, and the merely brutal materialists, who count all else as nothing compared to the gratification of their greed for gain or their taste for ease, for pleasure, and for vacuous excitement, would be driven before the gale of popular feeling as leaves are driven through the fall woods. But such aroused public feeling in the actual event would be wholly inadequate to make good our failure to prepare.

We should in all humility imitate not a little of the spirit so much in evidence among the Germans and the Japanese, the two nations which in modern times have shown the most practical type of patriotism, the greatest devotion to the common weal, the greatest success in developing their economic resources and abilities from within, and the greatest far-sightedness in safeguarding the country against possible disaster from without. In the Journal of the Military Service Institution for the months of November and December of the present year will be found a quotation from a Japanese military paper, The Comrades’ Magazine, which displays an amount of practical good sense together with patriotism and devotion to the welfare of the average man which could well be copied by our people and which is worthy of study by every intelligent American. Germany’s success in industrialism has been as extraordinary and noteworthy as her success in securing military efficiency, and fundamentally has been due to the development of the same qualities in the nation.

At present the United States does not begin to get adequate return in the way of efficient preparation for defense from the amount of money appropriated every year. Both the executive and Congress are responsible for this—and of course this means that the permanent and ultimate responsibility rests on the people. It is really less a question of spending more money than of knowing how to get the best results for the money that we do spend. Most emphatically there should be a comprehensive plan both for defense and for expenditure. The best military and naval authorities—not merely the senior officers but the best officers—should be required to produce comprehensive plans for battle-ships, for submarines, for air-ships, for proper artillery, for a more efficient regular army, and for a great popular reserve behind the army. Every useless military post should be forthwith abandoned; and this cannot be done save by getting Congress to accept or reject plans for defense and expenditure in their entirety. If each congressman or senator can put in his special plea for the erection or retention of a military post for non-military reasons, and for the promotion or favoring of some given officer or group of officers also for non-military reasons, we can rest assured that good results can never be obtained. Here, again, what is needed is not plans by outsiders but the insistence by outsiders upon the army and navy officers being required to produce the right plans, being backed up when they do produce the right plans, and being held to a strict accountability for any failure, active or passive, in their duty.