(_February, 1916_)
The English navy was mobilized with a rapidity and efficiency as great
as that of the German army. It has driven every warship except an
occasional submarine, and every merchant ship of Germany off the seas,
and has kept the ocean as a highway of life not only for England, but
for France, and largely also for Russia. In all history there has been
no such gigantic and successful naval feat accomplished as that which
the seamen and shipwrights of England have to their credit during the
last eighteen months. It was not originally expected that England
would have much to do on the continent; and although her wisest sons
emphatically desired that she should be ready to do more, yet this
desire represented only a recognition of the duty owed by England to
herself. To her Allies she has more than kept the promise she has made.
She has given Russia the financial assistance that none but she could
give; her money effort has been unparalleled in all previous history.
Eighteen months ago no Frenchman would have expected that in the event
of war England would do more than put a couple of hundred thousand
men in France. She has already put in a million, and is training and
arming more than double that number. Her soldiers have done their duty
fearlessly and well; they have won high honour on the fields of horror
and glory; they have shown the same gallantry and stubborn valour that
have been so evident in the armies of France and Russia. Her women are
working with all the steadfast courage and self-sacrifice that the
women of France have shown. Her men from every class have thronged
into the army. Her fisher folk, and her seafarers generally, have come
forward in such numbers that her fleet is nearly double as strong as it
was at the outset of the war. Her mines and war factories have steadily
enlarged their output, and it is now enormous, although many of the
factories had literally to build from the ground up, and the very plant
itself had to be created.
Coal, food, guns, munitions, are being supplied with sustained energy.
From across the sea the free Commonwealths of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa, and the Indian Empire, have responded with
splendid loyalty, and have sent their sons from the ends of the earth
to do battle for liberty and civilization. Of Canada I can speak from
personal knowledge. Canada has faced the time that tries men's souls,
and with gallant heroism she has risen level to the time's need.
Mighty days have come to her, and she has been equal to the mighty
days. Greatness comes only through labour and courage, through the
iron willingness to face sorrow and death, the tears of women and the
blood of men, if only thereby it is possible to serve a lofty ideal.
Canada has won that honourable place among the nations of the past and
the present which can only come to the people whose sons are willing
and able to dare and do and die at need. The spirit shown by her
sister-commonwealths is the same. High of heart and undaunted of soul
the men and women of the British Islands and of the whole British
Empire now front the crisis that is upon them.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
_From "Fear God and Take Your Own Part"--Copyright,
1916. By permission of George II. Doran Company_