PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
VOLUME III
NEW YORK
THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
MCMX
The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president Roosevelt
retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these
speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses
has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore,
not to be handled as copyrighted material from which
Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS
APRIL 7, 1904
TO
MAY 9, 1905
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
REMARKS AT THE DINNER OF THE PERIODICAL PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA. THE NEW WILLARD, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 7, 1904
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:
It is always a pleasure to a man in public life to meet the real governing classes. I wish to bid you welcome to Washington this evening, and to say but one word of greeting to you, and that word shall take the form of a warning. I did not speak in jest when I alluded to you as representatives of the governing classes. I think that we of the United States can not keep too fresh in our minds the fact that the men ultimately responsible for the Government are not the representatives of the people, but the people themselves, and that therefore heavy is the responsibility that lies upon the people and above all upon those who do the most toward shaping the thought of the people. In the days of my youth I was a literary man myself. In reading a book recently, a series of essays, I was immensely struck by one thought developed in it. The writer, one of our greatest scholars, was speaking of the fact that freedom could not exist unless there went with it a thorough appreciation of responsibility, and he used a phrase somewhat like this—that among all peoples there must be restraint; if there is no restraint the result is inevitably anarchy. That means the negation of all government, and the negation of all government of course means the negation of popular government; and that therefore there must be restraint, and that therefore a free people had merely substituted self-restraint for external restraint; and the permanence of our freedom as a people, the permanence of our liberties, depends upon the way in which we show and exercise that self-restraint.
There must be much more than good laws to make a good people. The man whose morality is expressed simply in the non-infringement of the law is a pretty poor creature. Unless our average citizenship is based upon a good deal more than the mere observance of the laws on the statute books—that, of course, is the preliminary—that, of course, is the beginning—but unless it is based on more than that then our average citizenship can never produce the kind of government which it must and will produce. So far from liberty, from freedom, from responsible self-government, being things that come easily and to any peoples, they are peculiarly things that can come only to the highly developed peoples. Only peoples capable, not merely of mastering others, but of mastering themselves, can achieve real liberty, can achieve real self-government; and for that self-mastery, for the cultivation of the spirit of self-restraint which is but another side of the spirit of self-reliance, we must rely to no small degree upon those who furnish us much of the thought of the great bulk of our people who think most. Therefore, gentlemen, in greeting you here to-night I wish not merely to welcome you, but to say that I trust every man of you feels the weight of the responsibility that rests upon him. The man who writes, the man who month in and month out, week in and week out, day in and day out, furnishes the material which is to do its part in shaping the thoughts of our people is fundamentally the man who, more than any other, determines what kind of character, and therefore ultimately what kind of government, this people shall possess. I believe in the future of this people; I believe in the growth and greatness of this country, because I believe that fundamentally you and those like you approach your task in the proper spirit. It seems to me that because of the very fact that we are so confident in the greatness of our country and in our country’s future, we should beware of any undue levity, of any spirit of mere boastfulness, of that most irritating of all qualities, not the most noxious, but the most irritating of all qualities—the tendency to depreciate others and thereby exalt ourselves.
Courtesy among individuals is a good thing, but international courtesy is quite as good a thing. If there is any one quality to be deprecated in a public man and in a public writer alike, it is the using of language which without any corresponding gain to ourselves tends to produce irritation among nations with whom we ought to be on friendly terms. Nations are now brought much nearer together than they formerly were. Steam, electricity, the immense spread of the newspaper press in all countries, the way in which so much of what is written in any country is translated into the language of another country, all of these facts have tended to bring peoples closer together now. That ought to and I think in the future will tell predominantly for good; but it does not help us in the least to be brought closer together with other peoples if they merely find our unamiable traits more strongly marked than they thought. We can rest assured that no man ever thinks better of us because we point out his salient defects; and no nation is ever won to a kindlier feeling toward us if we adopt toward it a tone which we would resent if adopted toward us.