Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
energy into business, into money-making, into the development, and above
all the exploitation and exhaustion at the most rapid rate possible, of
our natural resources--mines, forests, soil, and rivers. These men were
not weak men, but they permitted themselves to grow shortsighted
and selfish; and while many of them down at the bottom possessed the
fundamental virtues, including the fighting virtues, others were purely
of the glorified huckster or glorified pawnbroker type--which when
developed to the exclusion of everything else makes about as poor a
national type as the world has seen. This unadulterated huckster or
pawnbroker type is rarely keenly sympathetic in matters of social and
industrial justice, and is usually physically timid and likes to cover
an unworthy fear of the most just war under high-sounding names.
It was reinforced by the large mollycoddle vote--the people who are soft
physically and morally, or who have a twist in them which makes them
acidly cantankerous and unpleasant as long as they can be so with
safety to their bodies. In addition there are the good people with no
imagination and no foresight, who think war will not come, but that if
it does come armies and navies can be improvised--a very large element,
typified by a Senator I knew personally who, in a public speech, in
answer to a question as to what we would do if America were suddenly
assailed by a first-class military power, answered that "we would build
a battle-ship in every creek." Then, among the wise and high-minded
people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly
for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a
movement and always discrediting it--the men who form the lunatic fringe
in all reform movements.
All these elements taken together made a body of public opinion so
important during the decades immediately succeeding the Civil War as to
put a stop to any serious effort to keep the Nation in a condition of
reasonable military preparedness. The representatives of this opinion
then voted just as they now do when they vote against battle-ships or
against fortifying the Panama Canal. It would have been bad enough if
we had been content to be weak, and, in view of our weakness, not to
bluster. But we were not content with such a policy. We wished to enjoy
the incompatible luxuries of an unbridled tongue and an unready hand.
There was a very large element which was ignorant of our military
weakness, or, naturally enough, unable to understand it; and another
large element which liked to please its own vanity by listening to
offensive talk about foreign nations. Accordingly, too many of our
politicians, especially in Congress, found that the cheap and easy thing
to do was to please the foolish peace people by keeping us weak, and to
please the foolish violent people by passing denunciatory resolutions
about international matters--resolutions which would have been
improper even if we had been strong. Their idea was to please both the
mollycoddle vote and the vote of the international tail-twisters by
upholding, with pretended ardor and mean intelligence, a National policy
of peace with insult.
I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at
the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor
violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to
when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all
men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do
all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order
to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only
alternative to dishonor. I describe the folly of which so many of our
people were formerly guilty, in order that we may in our own day be on
our guard against similar folly.
We did not at the time of which I write take our foreign duties
seriously, and as we combined bluster in speech with refusal to make
any preparation whatsoever for action, we were not taken seriously in
return. Gradually a slight change for the better occurred, the writings
of Captain Mahan playing no small part therein. We built some modern
cruisers to start with; the people who felt that battle-ships were
wicked compromising with their misguided consciences by saying that the
cruisers could be used "to protect our commerce"--which they could not
be, unless they had battle-ships to back them. Then we attempted to
build more powerful fighting vessels, and as there was a section of
the public which regarded battle-ships as possessing a name immorally
suggestive of violence, we compromised by calling the new ships armored
cruisers, and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the defects
and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got to the point of
building battle-ships. But there still remained a public opinion, as old
as the time of Jefferson, which thought that in the event of war all
our problem ought to be one of coast defense, that we should do
nothing except repel attack; an attitude about as sensible as that of a
prize-fighter who expected to win by merely parrying instead of hitting.
To meet the susceptibilities of this large class of well-meaning people,
we provided for the battle-ships under the name of "coast defense
battle-ships"; meaning thereby that we did not make them quite as
seaworthy as they ought to have been, or with quite as much coal
capacity as they ought to have had. Then we decided to build real
battle-ships. But there still remained a lingering remnant of public
opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, and we met this
in beautiful fashion by providing for "sea-going coast defense
battle-ships"--the fact that the name was a contradiction in terms being
of very small consequence compared to the fact that we did thereby get
real battle-ships.
Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly and in fleet
formation, and they had to be trained to use the new weapons of
precision with which the ships were armed. Not a few of the older
officers, kept in the service under our foolish rule of pure seniority
promotion, were not competent for the task; but a proportion of the
older officers were excellent, and this was true of almost all the
younger officers. They were naturally first-class men, trained in the
admirable naval school at Annapolis. They were overjoyed that at last
they were given proper instruments to work with, and they speedily grew
to handle these ships individually in the best fashion. They were fast
learning to handle them in squadron and fleet formation; but when the
war with Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the principles
of modern scientific naval gunnery.
Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy I became
convinced that the war would come. The revolt in Cuba had dragged its
weary length until conditions in the island had become so dreadful as to
be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist. There is much
that I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there are few
men for whom I have felt greater respect than for certain gentlemen of
Spain whom I have known. But Spain attempted to govern her colonies on
archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with
the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind.
In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with
unspeakable horror, degradation, and misery. It was not "war" at all,
but murderous oppression. Cuba was devastated.
During those years, while we continued at "peace," several hundred times
as many lives were lost, lives of men, women, and children, as were lost
during the three months' "war" which put an end to this slaughter and
opened a career of peaceful progress to the Cubans. Yet there were
misguided professional philanthropists who cared so much more for names
than for facts that they preferred a "peace" of continuous murder to
a "war" which stopped the murder and brought real peace. Spain's
humiliation was certain, anyhow; indeed, it was more certain without
war than with it, for she could not permanently keep the island, and she
minded yielding to the Cubans more than yielding to us. Our own direct
interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and
especially because of Cuba's relation to the projected Isthmian Canal.
But even greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity.
Cuba was at our very doors. It was a dreadful thing for us to sit
supinely and watch her death agony. It was our duty, even more from
the standpoint of National honor than from the standpoint of National
interest, to stop the devastation and destruction. Because of these
considerations I favored war; and to-day, when in retrospect it is
easier to see things clearly, there are few humane and honorable men who
do not believe that the war was both just and necessary.
The big financiers and the men generally who were susceptible to touch
on the money nerve, and who cared nothing for National honor if it
conflicted even temporarily with business prosperity, were against
the war. The more fatuous type of philanthropist agreed with them. The
newspapers controlled by, or run in the interests of, these two classes
deprecated war, and did everything in their power to prevent any
preparation for war. As a whole the people in Congress were at that time
(and are now) a shortsighted set as regards international matters. There
were a few men, Senators Cushman K. Davis,[*] for instance, and John
Morgan, who did look ahead; and Senator H. C. Lodge, who throughout his
quarter of a century of service in the Senate and House has ever stood
foremost among those who uphold with farsighted fearlessness and strict
justice to others our national honor and interest; but most of the
Congressmen were content to follow the worst of all possible courses,
that is, to pass resolutions which made war more likely, and yet to
decline to take measures which would enable us to meet the war if it did
come.
[*] In a letter written me just before I became Assistant
Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of
the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; his letter
running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three
o'clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of
mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United
States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign
functions--for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . .
The
aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor
retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary
sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this
when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it,
for to do so does me good." After quoting one of Poe's
stories the letter continues: "The world will come out all
right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military
spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess
or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks
out from its rank and file and demands action or expression,
and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places
his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman
were about to disturb the game, and protests until American
patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to
do--why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be
with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment
together on the things we don't like, and together indulge
in hopes that I believe are prophetic."
However, in the Navy Department we were able to do a good deal, thanks