American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

We must therefore make up our minds once for all to the fact that it is too late to make ready for war when the fight has once begun. The preparation must come before that. In the case of the Civil War none of these conditions applied. In 1861 we had a good fleet, and the Southern Confederacy had not a ship. We were able to blockade the Southern ports at once, and we could improvise engines of war more than sufficient to put against those of an enemy who also had to improvise them, and who labored under even more serious disadvantages. The Monitor was got ready in the nick of time to meet the Merrimac, because the Confederates had to plan and build the latter while we were planning and building the former; but if ever we have to go to war with a modern military power we shall find its Merrimacs already built, and it will then be altogether too late to try to build Monitors to meet them.

If this point needs any emphasis surely the history of the war of 1812 applies to it. For twelve years before that war broke out even the blindest could see that we were almost certain to be drawn into hostilities with one or the other of the pair of combatants whose battle royal ended at Waterloo. Yet we made not the slightest preparation for war. The authorities at Washington contented themselves with trying to build a flotilla of gunboats which could defend our own harbors without making it necessary to take the offensive ourselves. We already possessed a dozen first-class cruisers, but not a battle-ship of any kind. With almost incredible folly the very Congress that declared war voted down the bill to increase the Navy by twenty battle-ships; though it was probably too late then, anyhow, for even under the simpler conditions of that day such a fleet could not have been built and put into first-class order in less than a couple of years. Bitterly did the nation pay for its want of foresight and forethought. Our cruisers won a number of striking victories, heartening and giving hope to the nation in the face of disaster; but they were powerless to do material harm to the gigantic naval strength of Great Britain. Efforts were made to increase our little Navy, but in the face of a hostile enemy already possessing command of the seas this was impossible. Two or three small cruisers were built; but practically almost all the fighting on the ocean was done by the handful of frigates and sloops which we possessed when the war broke out. Not a battle-ship was able to put to sea until after peace was restored. Meanwhile our coast was blockaded from one end to the other and was harried at will by the hostile squadrons. Our capital city was burned, and the ceaseless pressure of the blockade produced such suffering and irritation as nearly to bring about a civil war among ourselves. If in the first decade of the present century the American people and their rulers had possessed the wisdom to provide an efficient fleet of powerful battle-ships there would probably have been no war of 1812; and even if war had come, the immense loss to, and destruction of, trade and commerce by the blockade would have been prevented. Merely from the monetary standpoint the saving would have been incalculable; and yet this would have been the smallest part of the gain.

It can therefore be taken for granted that there must be adequate preparation for conflict, if conflict is not to mean disaster. Furthermore, this preparation must take the shape of an efficient fighting navy. We have no foe able to conquer or overrun our territory. Our small army should always be kept in first-class condition, and every attention should be paid to the National Guard; but neither on the North nor the South have we neighbors capable of menacing us with invasion or long resisting a serious effort on our part to invade them. The enemies we may have to face will come from over sea; they may come from Europe, or they may come from Asia. Events move fast in the West; but this generation has been forced to see that they move even faster in the oldest East. Our interests are as great in the Pacific as in the Atlantic, in the Hawaiian Islands as in the West Indies. Merely for the protection of our own shores we need a great navy; and what is more, we need it to protect our interests in the islands from which it is possible to command our shores and to protect our commerce on the high seas.

In building this navy, we must remember two things: First, that our ships and guns should be the very best of their kind; and second, that no matter how good they are, they will be useless unless the man in the conning tower and the man behind the guns are also the best of their kind. It is mere folly to send men to perish because they have arms with which they cannot win. With poor ships, were an Admiral Nelson and Farragut rolled in one, he might be beaten by any first-class fleet; and he surely would be beaten if his opponents were in any degree his equals in skill and courage; but without this skill and courage no perfection of material can avail, and with them very grave shortcomings in equipment may be overcome. The men who command our ships must have as perfect weapons ready to their hands as can be found in the civilized world, and they must be trained to the highest point in using them. They must have skill in handling the ships, skill in tactics, skill in strategy, for ignorant courage can not avail; but without courage neither will skill avail. They must have in them the dogged ability to bear punishment, the power and desire to inflict it, the daring, the resolution, the willingness to take risks and incur responsibility which have been possessed by the great captains of all ages, and without which no man can ever hope to stand in the front rank of fighting men.

Tame submission to foreign aggression of any kind is a mean and unworthy thing; but it is even meaner and more unworthy to bluster first, and then either submit or else refuse to make those preparations which can alone obviate the necessity for submission. I believe with all my heart in the Monroe Doctrine, and, I believe also that the great mass of the American people are loyal to it; but it is worse than idle to announce our adherence to this doctrine and yet to decline to take measures to show that ours is not mere lip loyalty. We had far better submit to interference by foreign powers with the affairs of this continent than to announce that we will not tolerate such interference, and yet refuse to make ready the means by which alone we can prevent it. In public as in private life, a bold front tends to insure peace and not strife. If we possess a formidable navy, small is the chance indeed that we shall ever be dragged into a war to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. If we do not possess such a navy, war may be forced on us at any time.

It is certain, then, that we need a first-class navy. It is equally certain that this should not be merely a navy for defense. Our chief harbors should, of course, be fortified and put in condition to resist the attack of an enemy’s fleet; and one of our prime needs is an ample force of torpedo boats to use primarily for coast defense. But in war the mere defensive never pays, and can never result in anything but disaster. It is not enough to parry a blow. The surest way to prevent its repetition is to return it. No master of the prize ring ever fought his way to supremacy by mere dexterity in avoiding punishment. He had to win by inflicting punishment. If the enemy is given the choice of time and place to attack, sooner or later he will do irreparable damage, and if he is at any point beaten back, why, after all, it is merely a repulse, and there are no means of following it up and making it a rout. We cannot rely upon coast protection alone. Forts and heavy land guns and torpedo boats are indispensable, and the last, on occasion, may be used for offensive purposes also. But in the present state of naval and military knowledge we must rely mainly, as all great nations always have relied, on the battle-ship, the fighting ship of the line. Gunboats and light cruisers serve an excellent purpose, and we could not do without them. In time of peace they are the police of the seas; in time of war they would do some harrying of commerce, and a great deal of scouting and skirmishing; but our main reliance must be on the great armored battle-ships with their heavy guns and shot-proof vitals. In the last resort we most trust to the ships whose business it is to fight and not to run, and who can themselves go to sea and strike at the enemy when they choose, instead of waiting peacefully to receive his blow when and where he deems it best to deliver it. If in the event of war our fleet of battle-ships can destroy the hostile fleet, then our coasts are safe from the menace of serious attack; even a fight that ruined our fleet would probably so shatter the hostile fleet as to do away with all chance of invasion; but if we have no fleet wherewith to meet the enemy on the high seas, or to anticipate his stroke by our own, then every city within reach of the tides must spend men and money in preparation for an attack that may not come, but which would cause crushing and irredeemable disaster if it did come.

Still more is it necessary to have a fleet of great battle-ships if we intend to live up to the Monroe Doctrine, and to insist upon its observance in the two Americas and the islands on either side of them. If a foreign power, whether in Europe or Asia, should determine to assert its position in those lands wherein we feel that our influence should be supreme, there is but one way in which we can effectively interfere. Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier. The prosperity of peace, commercial and material prosperity, gives no weight whatever when the clash of arms comes. Even great naked strength is useless if there is no immediate means through which that strength can manifest itself. If we mean to protect the people of the lands who look to us for protection from tyranny and aggression; if we mean to uphold our interests in the teeth of the formidable Old World powers, we can only do it by being ready at any time, if the provocation, is sufficient, to meet them on the seas, where the battle for supremacy must be fought. Unless we are prepared so to meet them, let us abandon all talk of devotion to the Monroe Doctrine or to the honor of the American name.

This nation cannot stand still if it is to retain its self-respect, and to keep undimmed the honorable traditions inherited from the men who with the sword founded it and by the sword preserved it. We ask that the work of upbuilding the Navy, and of putting the United States where it should be put among maritime powers, go forward without a break. We ask this not in the interest of war, but in the interest of peace. No nation should ever wage war wantonly, but no nation should ever avoid it at the cost of the loss of national honor. A nation should never fight unless forced to; but it should always be ready to fight. The mere fact that it is ready will generally spare it the necessity of fighting. If this country now had a fleet of twenty battle-ships their existence would make it all the more likely that we should not have war. It is very important that we should, as a race, keep the virile fighting qualities and should be ready to use them at need; but it is not at all important to use them unless there is need. One of the surest ways to attain these qualities is to keep our Navy in first-class trim. There never is, and never has been, on our part a desire to use a weapon because of its being well-tempered. There is not the least danger that the possession of a good navy will render this country overbearing toward its neighbors. The direct contrary is the truth.

An unmanly desire to avoid a quarrel is often the surest way to precipitate one; and utter unreadiness to fight is even surer. If at the time of our trouble with Chili, six years ago, we had not already possessed the nucleus of the new navy we should almost certainly have been forced into fighting, and even as it was trouble was only averted because of the resolute stand then taken by the President and by the officers of the Navy who were on the spot. If at that time the Chilians had been able to get ready the battle-ship which was building for them, a war would almost certainly have followed, for we had no battle-ship to put against it.

If in the future we have war, it will almost certainly come because of some action, or lack of action, on our part in the way of refusing to accept responsibilities at the proper time, or failing to prepare for war when war does not threaten. An ignoble peace is even worse than an unsuccessful war; but an unsuccessful war would leave behind it a legacy of bitter memories which would hurt our national development for a generation to come. It is true that no nation could actually conquer us, owing to our isolated position; but we would be seriously harmed, even materially, by disasters that stopped far short of conquest; and in these matters, which are far more important than things material, we could readily be damaged beyond repair. No material loss can begin to compensate for the loss of national self-respect. The damage to our commercial interests by the destruction of one of our coast cities would be as nothing compared to the humiliation which would be felt by every American worthy of the name if we had to submit to such an injury without amply avenging it. It has been finely said that “a gentleman is one who is willing to lay down his life for little things”; that is for those things which seem little to the man who cares only whether shares rise or fall in value, and to the timid doctrinaire who preaches timid peace from his cloistered study.