Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 1 (of 7)

by Theodore Roosevelt

Leonard Wood four years ago went down to Cuba, has served there ever since, has rendered her literally invaluable service; a man who through those four years thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save to try to bring up the standard of political and social life in that island, to clean it physically and morally, to make justice even and fair in it, to found a school system which should be akin to our own, to teach the people after four centuries of misrule that there were such things as governmental righteousness and honesty and fair play for all men on their merits as men. He did all this. He is a man of slender means. He did this on his pay as an army officer. As Governor of the island sixty millions of dollars passed through his hands, and he came out having been obliged to draw on his slender capital in order that he might come out even when he left the island. Credit to him? Yes, in a way. In another, no particular credit, because he was built so that he could do nothing else. He devoted himself as disinterestedly to the good of the Cuban people in all their relations as man could. He has come back here, and has been attacked, forsooth, by people who are not merely unworthy of having their names coupled with his but who are incapable of understanding the motives that have spurred him on to bring honor to this republic.

And Taft, Judge Taft, Governor Taft, who has been the head of the Philippine Commission, and who has gone back there—Taft, the most brilliant graduate of his year at Yale, the youngest Yale man upon whom Yale ever conferred a degree of LL.D., a man who, having won high position at the bar, and then served as Solicitor-General at Washington, was appointed to the United States bench. He was then asked to sacrifice himself, to give up his position in order to go to the other side of the world to take up an infinitely difficult, an infinitely dangerous problem, and do his best to solve it. He has done his best. He came back here the other day. The man has always had the honorable ambition to get upon the Supreme Court, and he knew that I had always hoped that he would be put on the Supreme Court, and when he was back here a few months ago, and there was a question of a vacancy arising, I said to him: “Governor, I think I ought to tell you that if a vacancy comes in the Supreme Court” (which I knew would put him for life in a position which he would especially like to have), “I do not see how I could possibly give it to you, for I need you where you are.” He said to me: “Mr. President, it has always been my ambition to be on the Supreme Court, but if you should offer me a justiceship now, and at the same time Congress should take away entirely my salary as Governor, I should go straight back to the Philippines, nevertheless, for those people need me, and expect me back, and believe I will not desert them.” He has gone back, gone back as a strong friend among weaker friends to help that people upward along the difficult path of self-government. He has gone to do his part—and a great part—in making the American name a symbol of honor and good faith in the Philippine Islands; to govern with justice, and with that firmness, that absence of weakness, which is only another side of justice. He has gone back to do all of that because it is his duty as he sees it. We are to be congratulated, we Americans, that we have a fellow-American like Taft.

And now Elihu Root, who, unlike myself, Mr. President Eliot, but like most of you present, comes of the old New England stock, whose great-grandfather stood beside Leonard Wood’s great-grandfather among the “embattled farmers” at Concord Bridge; Elihu Root, who had worked his way up from being a poor and unknown country boy in New York, to the leadership of the bar of the great city—he gave it up, made the very great pecuniary sacrifice implied in giving it up, and accepted the position of Secretary of War, a position which, for the last three years and at present amounts to being not only the Secretary of War, but the Secretary for the islands, the Secretary for the colonies at the same time. He has done the most exhausting and the most responsible work of any man in the administration, more exhausting and more responsible work than the work of the President, because circumstances have been such that with a man of Root’s wonderful ability, wonderful industry and wonderful conscientiousness, the President could not help but devolve upon him work that made his task one under which almost any other man would have staggered. He has done all this absolutely, disinterestedly. Nothing can come to Root in the way of reward save the reward that is implied in the knowledge that he has done something of incalculable importance which hardly another man in the Union—no other man that I know of—could have done as well as he has done it. He has before him continually questions of the utmost intricacy to decide, questions upon which life and death hang, questions the decision of which will affect our whole future world policy, questions which affect the welfare of the millions of people with whom we have been brought into such intimate contact by the events of the Spanish War, whose welfare must be a prime consideration from now on with every American public man worthy to serve his country. Root has done this work with the certainty of attack, with the certainty of misunderstanding, with the certainty of being hampered by ignorance (and worse than ignorance). And yet he has created, not for himself but for the nation also, a wonderful triumph from all these adverse forces.

Those three men have rendered inestimable service to the American people. I can do nothing for them. I can show my appreciation of them in no way save the wholly insufficient one of standing up for them, and for their work; and that I will do as long as I have tongue to speak!

AT THE COLISEUM, HARTFORD, CONN., AUGUST 22, 1902

Mr. Chairman, and you, my Fellow-Americans, men and women of Hartford:

I thank you, Senator Platt; through you I thank the State of Connecticut; Mayor Sullivan, through you I thank the city of Hartford for the greeting extended to me.

Before beginning the speech that I had intended, and still intend, to make to you to-night, I wish to allude to an incident that happened this afternoon. In being driven around your beautiful city, I was taken through Pope Park, and stopped at a platform where I was presented with a great horseshoe of flowers, the gift of the workingmen of Hartford to the President of the United States. In Father Sullivan’s speech he laid primary stress upon the fact that it was a gift of welcome from the wage-workers, upon whom ultimately this government depends. And he coupled the words of giving with certain sentences in which he expressed his belief that I would do all that I could to show myself a good representative of the wage-workers. I should be utterly unfit for the position that I occupy if I failed to do all that in me lies to act, as light is given me to act, so as to represent the best thought and purpose of the wage-worker of the United States. At the outset of the twentieth century we are facing difficult and complex problems—problems social and economic—which will tax the best energies of all of us to solve aright, and which we can only solve at all if we approach them in a spirit not merely of common-sense, but of generous desire to act each for all and all for each. While there are occasions when through legislative or administrative action the governmental representatives of the people can do especial service to one set of our citizens, yet I think you will agree with me that in the long run the best way in which to serve any one set of our citizens is to try to serve all alike well, to try to act in a spirit of fairness and justice to all—to give to each man his rights—to safeguard each man in his rights; and so far as in me lies, while I hold my present position I will be true to that conception of my duty.

I want to speak to you to-night, not on our internal problems as a nation, but on some of the external problems which we have had to face during the last four years. The internal problems are the most important. Keeping our own household straight is our first duty; but we have other duties. Just exactly as each man who is worth his salt must first of all be a good husband, a good father, a good bread winner, a good man of business, and yet must in addition to that be a good citizen for the State at large—so a nation must first take care to do well its duties within its own borders, but must not make of that fact an excuse for failing to do those of its duties the performance of which lies without its own borders.

The events of the last few years have forced the American Republic to take a larger position in the world than ever before, and therefore more than ever to concern itself with questions of policy coming without its own borders. As a people we have new duties and new opportunities both in the tropical seas and islands south of us and in the furthest Orient. Much depends upon the way in which we meet those duties, the way in which we take advantage of those opportunities. And remember this, you never can meet any duty, and after you have met it say that your action only affected that duty. If you meet it well you face the next duty a stronger man, and if you meet it ill you face your next duty a weaker man.