In speaking
to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State
which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently
and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American
character I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease,
but the doctrine of the strenuous life. the life of toil and
effort, of labor gold strife; to preach that highest form of
success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace,
but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship
or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid
ultimate triumph .
A life
of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely
from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great
things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.
I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands
from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American
nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that
case, that peace, is to be the first Consideration in their
eyes-to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men
of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have
done your share, and more than your share, in making America
great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine.
You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If
you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons
that though they ma have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness;
for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess
it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood,
are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative
work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical
research-work of the type we most need in this country, the
successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the
nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the
man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs
his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those
virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual
life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried
to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom
from effort in the present merely means that there has been
stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity
of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have
worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used
aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different
kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field
of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he
shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period
of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of
preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not
of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer
of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold
his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life,
and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits those who
follow it for serious work in the world.
In the
last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and
women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when
the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to
shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease,
but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man
must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor;
to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman
must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise
and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Daudet's
powerful and melancholy books he speaks of "the fear of maternity,
the haunting terror of the young wife of the present day." When
such words can be truthfully written of a nation, that nation
is rotten to the heart's core. When men fear work or fear righteous
war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of
doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth,
where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women
who are themselves strong and brave and highminded.
As it is
with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base
untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history.
Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far
better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those
poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because
they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace
was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all
things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved
hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds
of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood
and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak
of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we would have
spared the country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed
as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided
all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we
had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings,
and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the
earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the
men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle
in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who
proved themselves equal to the mighty days, let us, the children
of the men who carried the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion,
praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace
were rejected; that the suffering and loss, the blackness of
sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced, and the years
of strife endured; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union
restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more
as a helmeted queen among nations.
We of this
generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers
faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform
them! We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be
content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders,
taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling
commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration,
of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our
bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a
shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this
world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike
and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other
nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.
If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good
faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting
great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether
we shall meet them well or ill. In 1898 we could not help being
brought face to face with the problem of war with Spain. All
we could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from
the contest, or enter into it as beseemed a brave and highspirited
people; and, once in, whether failure or success should crown
our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities
that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines.
All we can decide is whether we shall meet them in a way that
will redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make
of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful
page in our history. To refuse to deal with them at all merely
amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem
to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course,
always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse
to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we
cannot possibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man,
the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who
has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant
man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling
the mighty lift that thrills "stern men with empires in their
brains"-all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation
undertake its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a navy
and an army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing l us do
our share of the world's work, by bringing order out of chaos
in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our
soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are
the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national
life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered
life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, as it saps them
in the individual; or else they are wedded to that base spirit
of gain and greed which recognizes in commercialism the be-all
and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though
an indispensable element, it is, after all, but one of the many
elements that go to make up true national greatness. No country
can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the
material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy
and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of
industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly
great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor
must lie paid to the architects of our material prosperity,
to the great captains of industry who have built our factories
and our railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with
brain or hand; for great is the debt of the nation to these
and their kind. But our debt is yet greater to the melt whose
highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier
like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized
the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence
for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized
that there were yet other and even loftier duties- duties to
the nation and duties to the race.
We cannot
sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely
an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what
happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end;
for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests,
and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to
hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy,
we must build up our Dower without our own borders. We must
build the isthmian canal, and we must Rasp the points of vantage
which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny
of the oceans of the East and the West.
So much
for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international
honor the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered
off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also
left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny
only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not have
begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we
have no duty to perform, and can leave to their fates the islands
we have conquered. Such a course would be the course of infamy.
It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched
islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have
to step in and do the work, and we would have shown ourselves
weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors
that great and high-spirited nations are eager to undertake.
The work
must be done; we cannot escape our responsibility; and if we
are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the
work-glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one of the
great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive
ourselves as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled
by vainglory into underestimating the strain it will put on
our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own self-respect,
face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage,
and high resolve. We must demand the highest order of integrity
and ability in our public men who are to grapple with these
new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public
servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation
or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon
our strength and our resources.
Of course
we must remember not to judge any public servant by any one
act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who
are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster. Let
me illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. If twenty
years ago we had gone to war, we should have found the navy
as absolutely unprepared as the army. At that time our ships
could not have encountered with success the fleets of Spain
any more than nowadays we can put untrained soldiers, no matter
how brave, who are armed with archaic black-powder weapons,
against well-- drilled regulars armed with the highest type
of modern repeating rifle. But in the early eighties the attention
of the nation became directed to our naval needs. Congress most
wisely made a series of appropriations to build up a new navy,
and under a succession of able and patriotic secretaries, of
both political parties, the navy was gradually built up, until
its material became equal to its splendid personnel, with the
result that in the summer of 1898 it leaped to its proper place
as one of the most brilliant and formidable fighting navies
in the entire world. We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling
the navy at the time it won these great deeds, honor to Secretary
Long and Admiral Dewey, to the captains who handled the ships
in action, to the daring lieutenants who braved death in the
smaller craft, and to the heads of bureaus at Washington who
saw that the ships were so commanded, so armed, so equipped,
so well engined, as to insure the best results. But let us also
keep ever in mind that all of this would not have availed if
it had not been for the wisdom of the men who during the preceding
fifteen years had built up the navy. Keep in mind the secretaries
of the navy during those years; keep in mind the senators and
congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build
and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to
train the crews; remember also those who actually did build
the ships, the armor, and the guns; and remember the admirals
and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser, and torpedo-boat
on the high seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship,
the gunnery, and the power of acting together, which their successors
utilized so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen,
remember the converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides.
Be just to those who built up the navy, and, for the sake of
the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its
building up. Read the "Congressional Record." Find out the senators
and congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new
ships; who opposed the purchase of amour without which the ships
were worthless, who opposed any adequate maintenance for the
Navy Department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary
to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and
all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share
in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have
no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea-captains, of
the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been
good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. whey did
ill for the national honor, and we won in spite of their sinister
opposition.
Now, apply
all this to our public men of to-day. Our army has never been
built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with
an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of
seventy millions of freemen is in danger of losing its liberties
from the existence of an army of one hundred thousand men, three
fourths of whom will be employed in certain foreign islands,
in certain coast fortresses, and on Indian reservations. No
man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition
seriously. If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies,
then we are unworthy of freedom in any event. To no body of
men in the United States is the country so much indebted as
to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular army
and navy. There is no body from which the country has less to
fear, and none of which it should be prouder, none which it
should be more anxious to upbuild.
Our army
needs complete reorganization,-not merely enlarging,-and the
reorganization can only come as the result of legislation. A
proper general staff should be established, and the positions
of ordnance, commissary, and quartermaster officers should be
filled by detail from the line. Above all, the army must be
given the chance to exercise in large bodies. Never again should
we see, as we saw in the Spanish war, major-generals in command
of divisions who had never before commanded three companies
together in the field. Yet, incredible to relate, Congress has
shown a queer inability to learn some of the lessons of the
war. There were large bodies of men in both branches who opposed
the declaration of war, who opposed the ratification of peace,
who opposed the upbuilding of the army, and who even opposed
the purchase of amour at a reasonable price for the battle-ships
and cruisers, thereby putting an absolute stop to the building
of any new fighting-ships for the navy. If, during the years
to come, any disaster should befall our arms, afloat or ashore,
and thereby any shame come to the United States, remember that
the blame will lie upon the men whose names appear upon the
roll-calls of Congress on the wrong side of these great questions.
On them will lie the burden of any loss of our soldiers and
sailors, of any dishonor to the flag; and upon you and the people
of this country will lie the blame if you do not repudiate,
in no unmistakable way, what these men have done. The blame
will not rest upon the untrained commander of untried troops,
upon the civil officers of a department the organization of
which has been left utterly inadequate, or upon the admiral
with an insufficient number of ships; but upon the public men
who have so lamentably failed in forethought as to refuse to
remedy these evils long in advance, and upon the nation that
stands behind those public men.
So, at
the present hour, no small share of the responsibility for the
blood shed in the Philippines, the blood of our brothers, and
the blood of their wild and ignorant foes, lies at the thresholds
of those who so long delayed the adoption of the treaty of peace,
and of those who by their worse than foolish words deliberately
invited a savage people to plunge into a war fraught with sure
disaster for them-a war, too, in which our own brave men who
follow the flag must pay with their blood for the silly, mock
humanitarianism of the prattlers who sit at home in peace.
The army
and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation
must carry if she is to do her duty among the nations of the
earth-if she is not to stand merely as the China of the western
hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we
have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has
taken at the moment. Of course we are bound to handle the affairs
of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty,
civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration
of city, State, and nation. We must strive for honesty in office,
for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual;
for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible,
and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it
is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our
own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing
our part in the great affairs of the world. A man's first duty
is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing
his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it
is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman. In the same
way, while a nations first duty is within its own borders, it
is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world
as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its
right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the
destiny of mankind.
In the
West Indies and the Philippines alike we are confronted by most
difficult problems. It is cowardly to shrink from solving them
in the proper way; for solved they must be, if not by us, then
by some stronger and more manful race. If we are too weak, too
selfish, or too foolish to solve them, some bolder and abler
people must undertake the solution. Personally, I am far too
firm a believer in the greatness of my country and the power
of my countrymen to admit for one moment that we shall ever
be driven to the ignoble alternative.
The problems
are different for the different islands. Porto Rico is not large
enough to stand alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily
in the interest of its own people. Cuba is, in my judgment,
entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be
an independent state or an integral portion of the mightiest
of republics. But until order and stable liberty are secured,
we must remain in the island to insure them, and infinite tact,
judgment, moderation, and courage must be shown by our military
and civil representatives in keeping the island pacified, in
relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in protecting all alike,
and yet in showing proper recognition to the men who have fought
for Cuban liberty. The Philippines offer a yet graver problem.
their population includes halfcaste and native Christians, warlike
Moslems, and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit
for self-government, and show no signs of becoming fit. Others
may in time become fit but at present can only take part in
self- government under a wise supervision, at once firm and
beneficent. We have driven Spanish tyranny from the islands.
If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has
been for harm and not for good. I have scant patience with those
who fear to undertake the task of governing the Philippines,
and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake it, or that
they shrink from it because of the expense and trouble; but
I have even scanter patience with those who make a pretense
of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity and who
cant about "liberty" and the "consent of the governed," in order
to excuse themselves for their unwillingness to play the part
of men. Their doctrines, if carried out, would make it incumbent
upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own
salvation, and to decline to interfere in a single Indian reservation.
Their doctrines condemn your forefathers and mine for ever having
settled in these United States.
England's
rule in India and Egypt has been of great benefit to England,
for it has trained up generations of men accustomed to look
at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of
even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally, and most
of all, it has advanced the cause of civilization. So, if we
do our duty aright in the Philippines, we will add to that national
renown which is the highest and finest part of national life,
will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands, and,
above all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting
mankind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must
show in a very high degree the qualities of courage, of honesty,
and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The first
and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy
of our flag. We must put down armed resistance before we call
accomplish anything else, and there should be no parleying,
no faltering, in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own
country who encourage the foe, we can afford contemptuously
to disregard them; but it must be remembered that their utterances
are not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that
they are despicable.
When once
we have put down armed resistance, when once our rule is acknowledged,
then an even more difficult task will begin, for then we must
see to it that the islands are administered with absolute honesty
and with good judgment. If we let the public service of the
islands be turned into the prey of the spoils politician, we
shall have begun to tread the path which Spain trod to her own
destruction. We must send out there only good and able men,
chosen for their fitness, and not because of their partisan
service, and those men must not only administer impartial justice
to the natives and serve their own government with honesty and
fidelity, but must show the utmost tact and firmness, remembering
that, with such people as those with whom we are to deal, weakness
is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lack
of consideration for their principles and prejudices.
I preach
to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for
the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The
twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many
nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful
ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests
where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk
of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples
will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination
of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife,
resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold
righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest
and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods.
Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical,
within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the
strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through
hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the
goal of true national greatness.