Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
man) told me that he sold more real walking shoes to naval
officers in three months than he had in the three preceding
years. I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails
after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in
practice with a pair of heavy walking shoes that were too
small and was laid up for three days--could not come to the
office. I know plenty of men who after the first test had to
borrow shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to
their normal size.
"This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts
(of men who had never taken any exercise), but it was
excellent as a matter of instruction and training of
handling feet--and in an emergency (such as we soon may have
in Mexico) sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't
stand.
"However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered
the same purpose, for the reason that 12.5 miles will
produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore feet and lame
muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice
marching.
"It was the necessity of doing 12.5 MORE MILES ON THE SECOND
DAY WITH SORE FEET AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and
take notice--made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid
street cars, buy proper shoes, show some curiosity about sox
and the care of the feet in general.
"All this passed out with the introduction of the last test
of 10 miles a month. As one fellow said: 'I can do that in
sneakers'--but he couldn't if the second day involved a
tramp on the sore feet.
"The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice
walking a bit and give some attention to proper footgear,
now they don't have to, and the natural consequence is that
they don't do it.
"There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than
is necessary to reach a street car that will carry them from
their residences to their offices. Some who have motors do
not do so much. They take no exercise. They take cocktails
instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something
should be done to remedy this state of affairs.
"It would not be necessary if service opinion required
officers so to order their lives that it would be common
knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid the
danger of being selected out.
"We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process
of formation. On the contrary, it is known that the
'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the Secretary to
abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough
not to take the advice.
"I would like to see a test established that would oblige
officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without
inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two
days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles
each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to
walk on 'next day' feet. As for the proposed test of so many
hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous
belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the
question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their
wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they
take out of doors.
"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would
at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at
the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that
sort of thing would be established."
These tests were kept during my administration. They were afterwards
abandoned; not through perversity or viciousness; but through weakness,
and inability to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the
emergencies of war are to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive.
In no country with an army worth calling such is there a chance for
a man physically unfit to stay in the service. Our countrymen should
understand that every army officer--and every marine officer--ought to
be summarily removed from the service unless he is able to undergo far
severer tests than those which, as a beginning, I imposed. To follow any
other course is to put a premium on slothful incapacity, and to do the
gravest wrong to the Nation.
I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could mention scores of
others, because out of them grew my philosophy--perhaps they were in
part caused by my philosophy--of bodily vigor as a method of getting
that vigor of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.
The dweller in cities has less chance than the dweller in the country to
keep his body sound and vigorous. But he can do so, if only he will take
the trouble. Any young lawyer, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant
can keep himself in good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who
have ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regiment were
former clerks or floor-walkers. Why, Johnny Hayes, the Marathon victor,
and at one time world champion, one of my valued friends and supporters,
was a floor-walker in Bloomingdale's big department store. Surely with
Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a city can hope to make his
body all that a vigorous man's body should be.
I once made a speech to which I gave the title "The Strenuous Life."
Afterwards I published a volume of essays with this for a title. There
were two translations of it which always especially pleased me. One was
by a Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had carried the
essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and later translated it for
the benefit of his countrymen. The other was by an Italian lady, whose
brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a
foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round
with him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as
_Vigor di Vita_. I thought this translation a great improvement on the
original, and have always wished that I had myself used "The Vigor of
Life" as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of
the heading I actually did use.
There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed
in the achievement of success. There is, first, the success either in
big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the
natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of
training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to
do. This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be
on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man
possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine
and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the
same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without
effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the
Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or
Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable
any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats. Of course the
proper performance of each implies much previous study or training,
but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether
exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the
ordinary man does not have.
This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only
by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no
less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner type of
success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that
which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of
quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has
given that quality. This kind of success is open to a large number of
persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the kind
of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind,
who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just
as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does
possess. It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us. Yet
some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second
class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the
least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first
class. To the average man it is probably more useful to study this
second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the
first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm.
From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win
a similar success himself.
I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won have been
of the second type. I never won anything without hard labor and the
exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in
advance. Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young
man at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to
train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but
as regards my soul and spirit.
When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books which always
impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British
man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of
fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened
when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man
to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not
frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense
to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint
of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own
language, not Marryat's.) This was the theory upon which I went. There
were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from
grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I
was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the
same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves
well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves
in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they
will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon
them unawares.
It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy
and respect the men who are naturally fearless. But it is a good
thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can
nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the
like efficiency, if he chooses to. Of course he must not let his
desire take the form merely of a day-dream. Let him dream about being
a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always
provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do
his part honorably and well provided only he sets fearlessness before
himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as
something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should
regard it, not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be
promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger
interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.
CHAPTER III
PRACTICAL POLITICS
When I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. If I had been
sufficiently fortunate to come under Professor Thayer, of the Harvard
Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer
can do a great work for justice and against legalism.