American ideals, and other essays, social and political

by Theodore Roosevelt

Mr. Pearson belongs to the melancholy or pessimist school, which has become so prominent in England during the last two or three decades, and which has been represented there for half a century. In fact, the note of despondency seems to be the dominant note among Englishmen of high cultivation at the present time. It is as marked among their statesmen and publicists as among their men of letters, Mr. Balfour being particularly happy in his capacity to express in good English, and with much genuine elevation of thought, a profound disbelief in nineteenth century progress, and an equally profound distrust of the future toward which we are all travelling.

For much of this pessimism and for many of the prophecies which it evokes, there is no excuse whatsoever. There may possibly be good foundation for the pessimism as to the future shown by men like Mr. Pearson; but hitherto the writers of the stamp of the late “Cassandra” Greg who have been pessimistic about the present, have merely betrayed their own weakness or their own incapacity to judge contemporary persons and events. The weakling, the man who cannot struggle with his fellow-men and with the conditions that surround him, is very apt to think these men and these conditions bad; and if he has the gift of writing, he puts these thoughts down at some length on paper. Very strong men, moreover, if of morose and dyspeptic temper, are apt to rail at the present, and to praise the past simply because they do not live in it. To any man who will consider the subject from a scientific point of view, with a desire to get at the truth, it is needless to insist on the fact that at no period of the world’s history has there been so much happiness generally diffused among mankind as now.

At no period of the world’s history has life been so full of interest and of possibilities of excitement and enjoyment as for us who live in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is not only true as far as the working classes are concerned, but it is especially true as regards the men of means, and above all of those men of means who also possess brains and ambition. Never before in the world’s history have there been such opportunities thrown open to men, in the way of building new commonwealths, exploring new countries, conquering kingdoms, and trying to adapt the governmental policy of old nations to new and strange conditions. The half-century which is now closing, has held out to the people who have dwelt therein, some of the great prizes of history. Abraham Lincoln and Prince Bismarck have taken their places among the world’s worthies. Mighty masters of war have arisen in America, in Germany, in Russia; Lee and Grant, Jackson and Farragut, Moltke, Skobeleff, and the Red Prince. The work of the chiefs of mechanical and electrical invention has never been equalled before, save perhaps by what was done in the first half of this same century. Never before have there been so many opportunities for commonwealth builders; new States have been pitched on the banks of the Saskatchewan, the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Colorado, on the seacoast of Australia, and in the interior of Central Africa. Vast regions have been won by the sword. Burmah and Turkestan, Egypt and Matabeleland, have rewarded the prowess of English and Russian conquerors, exactly as, when the glory of Rome was at its height, remote Mediterranean provinces furnished triumphs to the great military leaders of the Eternal City. English administrators govern subject empires larger than those conquered by Alexander. In letters no name has been produced that will stand with the first half-dozen of all literature, but there have been very many borne by men whose effect upon the literatures of their own countries has been profound, and whose works will last as long as the works of any men written in the same tongues. In science even more has been done; Darwin has fairly revolutionized thought; and many others stand but a step below him.

All this means only that the opportunities have been exceptionally great for the men of exceptionally great powers; but they have also been great for the men of ordinary powers. The workingman is, on the whole, better fed, better clothed, better housed, and provided with greater opportunities for pleasure and for mental and spiritual improvement than ever before. The man with ability enough to become a lawmaker has the fearful joy of grappling with problems as important as any the administrators and legislators of the past had to face. The ordinary man of adventurous tastes and a desire to get all out of life that can be gotten, is beyond measure better off than were his forefathers of one, two, or three centuries back. He can travel round the world; he can dwell in any country he wishes; he can explore strange regions; he can spend years by himself in the wilderness, hunting great game; he can take part in a campaign here and there. Withersoever his tastes lead him, he finds that he has far greater capacity conferred upon him by the conditions of nineteenth-century civilization to do something of note than ever a man of his kind had before. If he is observant, he notes all around him the play of vaster forces than have ever before been exerted, working, half blindly, half under control, to bring about immeasurable results. He sees going on before his eyes a great transfer of population and civilization, which is making America north of the Rio Grande, and Australia, English-speaking continents; which has filled Central and South America with States of uncertain possibilities; which is creating for the first time a huge Aryan nation across the entire north of Asia, and which is working changes in Africa infinitely surpassing in importance all those that have ever taken place there since the days when the Bantu peoples first built their beehive huts on the banks of the Congo and the Zambezi. Our century has teemed with life and interest.

Yet this is the very century at which Carlyle railed: and it is strange to think that he could speak of the men at that very moment engaged in doing such deeds, as belonging to a worn-out age. His vision was clear to see the importance and the true bearing of England’s civil war of the seventeenth century, and yet he remained mole-blind to the vaster and more important civil war waged before his very eyes in nineteenth-century America. The heroism of Naseby and Worcester and Minden hid from him the heroism of Balaklava and Inkerman, of Lucknow and Delhi. He could appreciate at their worth the campaigns of the Seven Year’s War, and yet could hardly understand those waged between the armies of the Potomac and of Northern Virginia. He was fairly inspired by the fury and agony and terror of the struggle at Kunnersdorf; and yet could not appreciate the immensely greater importance of the death-wrestle that reeled round Gettysburg. His eyes were so dazzled by the great dramas of the past that he could not see the even greater drama of the present. It is but the bare truth to say that never have the rewards been greater, never has there been more chance for doing work of great and lasting value, than this last half of the nineteenth century has offered alike to statesman and soldier, to explorer and commonwealth-builder, to the captain of industry, to the man of letters, and to the man of science. Never has life been more interesting to each to take part in. Never has there been a greater output of good work done both by the few and by the many.

Nevertheless, signs do not fail that we are on the eve of great changes, and that in the next century we shall see the conditions of our lives, national and individual, modified after a sweeping and radical fashion. Many of the forces that make for national greatness and for individual happiness in the nineteenth century will be absent entirely, or will act with greatly diminished strength, in the twentieth. Many of the forces that now make for evil will by that time have gained greatly in volume and power. It is foolish to look at the future with blind and careless optimism; quite as foolish as to gaze at it only through the dun-colored mists that surround the preachers of pessimism. It is always best to look facts squarely in the face, without blinking them, and to remember that, as has been well said, in the long run even the most uncomfortable truth is a safer companion than the pleasantest falsehood.

Whether the future holds good or evil for us does not, it is true, alter our duty in the present. We must stand up valiantly in the fight for righteousness and wisdom as we see them, and must let the event turn out as it may. Nevertheless, even though there is little use in pondering over the future, most men of intelligence do ponder over it at times, and if we think of it at all, it is well to think clearly.

Mr. Pearson writes a forecast of what he believes probably will, or at least very possibly may, happen in the development of national life and character during the era upon which we are now entering. He is a man who has had exceptional advantages for his work; he has studied deeply and travelled widely; he has been a diligent reader of books and a keen observer of men. To a careful training in one of the oldest of the world’s universities he has added long experience as an executive officer in one of the world’s youngest commonwealths. He writes with power and charm. His book is interesting in manner, and is still more interesting in matter, for he has thought deeply and faithfully over subjects of immense importance to the future of all the human race. He possesses a mind of marked originality. Moreover, he always faithfully tries to see facts as they actually are. He is, it seems to me, unduly pessimistic; but he is not pessimistic of set purpose, nor does he adopt pessimism as a cult. He tries hard, and often successfully, to make himself see and to make himself state forces that are working for good. We may or may not differ from him, but it behooves us, if we do, to state our positions guardedly; for we are dealing with a man who has displayed much research in getting at his facts and much honesty in arriving at his rather melancholy conclusions.

The introduction to Mr. Pearson’s book is as readable as the chapters that follow, and may best be considered in connection with the first of these chapters, which is entitled “The Unchangeable Limits of the Higher Races.” I am almost tempted to call this the most interesting of the six chapters of the book, and yet one can hardly do so when absorbed in reading any one of the other five. Mr. Pearson sees what ought to be evident to every one, but apparently is not, that what he calls the “higher races,” that is, the races that for the last twenty-five hundred years (but, it must be remembered, only during the last twenty-five hundred years) have led the world, can prosper only under conditions of soil and climate analogous to those obtaining in their old European homes. Speaking roughly, this means that they can prosper only in the temperate zones, north and south.

Four hundred years ago the temperate zones, were very thinly peopled indeed, while the tropical and sub-tropical regions were already densely populated. The great feature in the world’s history for the last four centuries has been the peopling of these vast, scantily inhabited regions by men of the European stocks; notably by men speaking English, but also by men speaking Russian and Spanish. During the same centuries these European peoples have for the first time acquired an enormous ascendency over all other races. Once before, during the days of the Greco-Macedonian and Roman supremacy, European peoples possessed a somewhat similar supremacy; but it was not nearly as great, for at that period America and Australia were unknown, Africa south of the Sahara was absolutely unaffected by either Roman or Greek, and all but an insignificant portion of Asia was not only without the pale of European influence, but held within itself immense powers of menace to Europe, and contained old and peculiar civilizations, still flourishing in their prime. All this has now been changed. Great English-speaking nations have sprung up in America north of the Rio Grande, and are springing up in Australia. The Russians, by a movement which has not yet fired the popular imagination, but which all thinking men recognize as of incalculable importance, are building a vast State in northern Asia, stretching from the Yellow Sea to the Ural Mountains. Tropical America is parcelled out among States partly of European blood, and mainly European in thought, speech and religion; while tropical Asia and Africa have been divided among European powers, and are held in more or less complete subjection by their military and civil agents. It is no wonder that men who are content to look at things superficially, and who think that the tendencies that have triumphed during the last two centuries are as immutable in their workings as great natural laws, should speak as if it were a mere question of time when the civilized peoples should overrun and occupy the entire world, exactly as they now do Europe and North America.