The following is extracted from the inaugural
address of President Roosevelt, delivered March 4,
1905. It is of special interest to read it in
connection with Mr. Hughes's speech (page 356) and
to compare the ideas of citizenship and of our
country as expressed in the two. In reading this
speech you should bear in mind that the era was one
of peace, long undisturbed by war. Our problems
then were the ordinary problems of everyday living.
Modern life is both complex and intense, and the
tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary
industrial development of the half century are felt in every
fiber of our social and political being. Never before have
men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of 5
administering the affairs of a continent under the form of a
democratic republic. The conditions which have told for
our marvelous material well-being, which have developed
to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual
initiative, also have brought the care and anxiety 10
inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in
industrial centers.
Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not
only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare
of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government 15
throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and
therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the
world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.
There is no good reason why we should fear the future,
but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, 20
neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems
before us, nor fearing to approach these problems with the
unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Yet after all, though the problems are new, though the
tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our 5
fathers who founded and preserved this republic, the
spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these
problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains
essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is
difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits 10
of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs
aright through the freely expressed will of the free men who
compose it.
But we have faith that we shall not prove false to memories
of the men of the mighty past. They did their work; 15
they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our
turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave
this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children's children.
To do so, we must show, not merely in great crises, but
in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical 20
intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, of endurance, and
above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which
made great the men who founded this republic in the days
of Washington; which made great the men who preserved
this republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln. 25
1. Give a full report of Roosevelt's life and
activities--political, literary, personal. Try to
describe the kind of man you think he was.
2. Find in this section of your Reader expressions
similar to lines 10-13, page 355.
3. What qualities does Roosevelt say we must
display if our country is to survive? Why does he
speak of our form of government as an experiment?