No. XXXIII.
(_From Theodore Roosevelt, U.S.A._)
It's bully to live in a country where you can say what you like about
the bosses, and that, Sir, is what I've been doing and mean to go on
doing to you. There's no manner of question about it, you're the biggest
boss and the most dangerous that we in this country have ever come up
against, and if our Government had only got a right idea of its bounden
duty we should have protested against your conduct, yes, and backed our
protest by our deeds long before this; but the fact is there's too much
milk and water in the blood of some of our big fellows. They whine when
they ought to be up and denouncing, and they crouch and crawl instead of
standing upright like free and fearless men, and giving the devil's
agent the straightest eye-puncher of which the human arm is capable. I
thank Heaven, Sir, that I'm not made on that plan. I'm out to fight
humbug and hypocrisy, even when they masquerade as friendship and
benevolence; and when I see a fellow coming along with hundreds of pious
texts in his mouth, and his hands dripping with the blood of innocent
women and children, why, I've got to say what I think of him or die. For
my own part--
"On Bible stilts I don't affect to stalk,
Nor lard with Scripture my familiar talk;
For man may pious texts repeat
And yet religion have no inward seat."
A man called HOOD wrote that nearly eighty years ago, but it's quite
true still. I wonder what he would have written if he'd had the bad luck
to know about you and your disgusting appeals to the Almighty, whom you
treat as if He were always waiting round the corner to be decorated with
the Iron Cross.
Now mind, I don't want you to deceive yourself. If I dislike you and
feel as if I'd sooner kick you than shake hands with you, it isn't
because I'm a peace-at-any-price man. No man can say that about me
without qualifying for a place within easy reach of ANANIAS; but when I
decide to take part in a scrap--and there's few scraps going that I
don't butt into sooner or later--I like to feel that I've got a bit of
right on my side. But how can _you_ feel that when you over-run Belgium
and burn down Louvain--that's the place that made your heart bleed,
bah!--and when you shoot down Belgian hostages and do to death an
English nurse? All that never seems to strike you. You go on thinking of
yourself as a holy humble man whom everybody wilfully mistakes for a
bully and a tyrant. Well, you can't fool everybody all the time, you
know, and in this case it happens that everybody has got some sound
horse-sense in his head. Who wanted to hurt you? You'd put together a
great army and your commercial prosperity was a pretty good business
proposition. You'd got a navy and you'd got a very meek and submissive
people, which didn't prevent them from being harsh and domineering and
cruel so far as other peoples were concerned. If you wanted to have folk
afraid of you there were plenty to humour you by pretending to tremble
when you frowned and shook your head. But you weren't going to be
satisfied. You must have a war so as to show what a great general you
were, and you shoved on the old man FRANCIS JOSEPH and kept urging him
from behind until everyone got tired by the impossibility of making you
come out fair and square on the side of peace.
Well, you've got your war, and I hope you like it. This isn't one of
your military promenades. This is hard, long fighting against men whose
only wish was to be left alone. You've forced them to form a trust for
the purpose of trust-busting, and in the end they'll wear you out and
have you beaten to a frazzle in spite of all you can do. You've lost
millions of men and millions of money, and you don't seem to get on with
your final and decisive victory, and you're still the vainest and the
loudest man on earth. Isn't it just about time you saw yourself as the
rest of us see you, an irritable lime-light hero, whose favourite effort
is to sink a _Lusitania_ and pretend he had to do it because he didn't
think she'd go down or because there were too many women and just enough
children in the world? All I can say is that I've had more than enough
of you.