_In an address at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco,
delivered on July 21, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt said:_
I have a very strong feeling about the Panama Exposition. It was my
good fortune to take the action in 1903, failure to take which, in
exactly the shape I took it, would have meant that no Panama Canal
would have been built for half a century, and, therefore, that there
would have been no exposition to celebrate the building of the canal.
In everything we did in connection with the acquiring of the Panama
Zone we acted in a way to do absolute justice to all other nations, to
benefit all other nations, including especially the adjacent States,
and to render the utmost service, from the standpoint alike of honor
and of material interest, to the United States. I am glad that this is
the case, for if there were the slightest taint upon our title or our
conduct it would have been an improper and shameful thing to hold this
exposition.
The building of the canal nearly doubles the potential efficiency of
the United States Navy, as long as it is fortified and is in our
hands; but if left unfortified it would at once become a menace to us.
What is true as to our proper attitude in regard to the canal is no
less true as regards our proper attitude concerning the interests of
the United States taken as a whole. The canal is to be a great agency
for peace; it can be such only, and exactly in proportion as it
increased our potential efficiency in war.
Those men who like myself believe that the highest duty of this nation
is to prepare itself against war so that it may safely trust its honor
and interest to its own strength are advocating merely that we do as a
nation regarding our general interests what we have already done in
Panama. If, instead of acting as this nation did in the Fall of 1903,
we had confined ourselves to debates in Congress and diplomatic notes;
if, in other words, we had treated elocution as a substitute for
action, we would have done nobody any good, and for ourselves we would
have earned the hearty derision of all other nations--the canal would
not even have been begun at the present day, and there would have been
a general consensus of international opinion to the effect that we
were totally unfit to perform any of the duties of international life,
especially in connection with the Western hemisphere.
Unfortunately in the last few years we have as regards pretty much
everything not connected with the Isthmus of Panama so failed in our
duty of national preparedness that I fear there actually is a general
consensus of opinion to precisely this effect among the nations of the
world as regards the United States at the present day. This is
primarily due to our unpreparedness.
We have been culpably, well-nigh criminally, remiss as a nation in not
preparing ourselves, and if, with the lessons taught the world by the
dreadful tragedies of the last twelve months, we continue with soft
complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world, we shall
excite only contempt and derision if and when disaster ultimately
overwhelms us.
Preparedness against war does not invariably avert war any more than a
fire department in a city will invariably avert a fire; and there are
well-meaning foolish people who point out this fact as offering an
excuse for unpreparedness. It would be just as sensible if after the
Chicago fire Chicago had announced that it would abolish its fire
department as for our people to take the same view as regards
military preparedness. Some years ago I was looking over some very old
newspapers contemporaneous with the early establishment of paid fire
departments in this country, and to my amusement I came across a
letter which argued against a paid fire department upon the ground
that the knowledge of its existence would tend to make householders
careless, and therefore would encourage fires.
Greece was not prepared for war when she went to war with Turkey a
score of years ago. But this fact did not stop the war. It merely made
the war unsuccessful for Greece. China was not prepared for war with
Japan twenty-odd years ago, nor for war with the Allies who marched to
Peking fifteen years ago.
_Colonel Roosevelt then discussed in detail the cases of China and
Belgium, comparing Belgium with Switzerland, and asserting that
Switzerland would have met Belgium's fate if she had not been prepared
to oppose invasion. Then taking up the case of China, he said:_
She has acted on the theory that the worst peace was better than the
best war, and therefore she has suffered all the evils of the worst
war and the worst peace. The average Chinaman took the view that China
was too proud to fight and in practice made evident his hearty
approval of the sentiments of that abject pacifist song: "I Didn't
Raise My Boy to be a Soldier," a song which should have as a companion
piece one entitled: "I Didn't Raise my Girl to be a Mother," approval
of which of course deprives any men or women of all right of kinship
with the soldiers and with the mothers and wives of the soldiers,
whose valor and services we commemorate on the Fourth of July and on
Decoration Day; a song, the singing of which seems incredible to every
man and woman capable of being stirred to lofty and generous
enthusiasm by the tremendous surge of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn
of the Republic." China has steadily refused to prepare for war.
Accordingly China has had province after province lopped off her,
until one-half of her territory is now under Japanese, Russian,
English and French control.
The professional pacifists, the peace-at-any-price, non-resistance,
universal arbitration people are now seeking to Chinafy this country.
During the past year or so this nation has negotiated some thirty
all-inclusive peace treaties by which it is agreed that if any issue
arises, no matter of what kind, between itself and any other nation,
it would take no final steps about it until a commission of
investigation had discussed the matter for a year. This was an
explicit promise in each case that if American women were raped and
American men murdered, as has actually occurred in Mexico; or American
men, women, and children drowned on the high seas, as in the case of
the Gulflight and Lusitania; or if a foreign power secured and
fortified Magdalena Bay or the Island of St. Thomas, we would appoint
a commission and listen to a year's conversation on the subject before
taking action.
England and France entered into these treaties with us, and we begged
Germany to enter into one, and, although Germany refused, yet if we
were right in entering into them with England and France, we deprived
ourselves of moral justification in refusing to fulfill their spirit
as regards Germany. Personally I believe that it was absolutely
necessary when the concrete case arose to repudiate the principle to
which we had thus committed ourselves. But it was a shameful thing to
have put ourselves in such a position that it had to be repudiated,
and it was inexcusable of us to decline to follow the principle in the
case of the Lusitania without at the same time making frank confession
of our error and misconduct by notifying all the powers with whom we
had already made the treaties that they were withdrawn, because in
practice we had found it impossible and improper to follow out the
principle to which they committed us.