While Roosevelt and Wilson were for the most part in opposition to
each other, some have wrongly said, with regard to the proposal for
a league of nations, that Roosevelt was backward and reactionary in
his attitude. This is directly confuted by the prophetic speech he
delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910, while on his world tour.
His utterance there shows that fundamentally President Wilson and he
were thinking alike on this subject:
“Something should be done as soon as possible to check the growth of
armaments, especially naval armaments, by international agreement.
No one power could or should act by itself; for it is eminently
undesirable, from the standpoint of peace and righteousness, that a
power which really does believe in peace should place itself at the
mercy of some rival which may at bottom have no such belief and no
intention of acting on it.
“But, granted sincerity of purpose, the great powers of the world
should find no insurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which
would put an end to the present costly and growing extravagances of
expenditures on naval armaments. An agreement merely to limit the size
of ships would have been very useful a few years ago, and would still
be of use; but the agreement should go much further.
“Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great powers honestly
bent on peace would form a league of peace, not only to keep peace
among themselves, but to prevent by force if necessary, its being
broken by others.
“The supreme difficulty in connection with developing the peace work of
The Hague arises from the lack of any executive power, of any police
power to enforce the decrees of the court. In any community of any size
the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force; on
the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men
of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of
judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.
“In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man
must protect himself, and until other means of securing his safety are
devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his
arms while the men who are dangerous to the community remain there. He
should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts
until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the
individual of the duty of putting down violence.
“So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend
itself until the establishment of some form of international police
power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. As
things are now, such powers to command peace throughout the world could
best be assured by some combination between those great nations which
sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing
aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace
within certain definite limits and certain definite conditions; but the
ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have
earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude
of all mankind.”
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, WALTER SCOTT SHINN