Theodore Roosevelt

“ I believe with all my heart that a great future remains for us; but whether it does or does not, our duty is not altered. However the battle may go, the soldier worthy of the name will with utmost vigour do his allotted task, and bear himself as valiantly in defeat as in victory. Come what will, we belong to peoples who have not yielded to the craven fear of being great. In the ages that have gone by, the great nations, the nations that have expanded and that have played a mighty part in the world, have in the end grown old and weakened and vanished ”

“ About the time that the first brilliant period of the leadership of the Iberian peoples was drawing to a close, at the other end of Europe, in the land of melancholy steppe and melancholy forest, the Slav turned in his troubled sleep and stretched out his hand to grasp leadership and dominion. Since then almost every nation of Europe has at one time or another sought a place in the movement of expansion; but for the last three centuries the great phenomenon of mankind has been the growth of the English-speaking peoples and their spread over the world's waste spaces. ”

“ We Americans and you people of the British Isles alike need ever to keep in mind that, among the many qualities indispensable to the success of a great democracy, and second only to a high and stern sense of duty, of moral obligation, are self-knowledge and self-mastery. You, my hosts, and I, may not agree in all our views; some of you would think me a very radical democrat—as, for the matter of that, I am—and my theory of imperialism would probably suit the anti-imperialists as little as it would suit a certain type of forcible-feeble imperialist. ”

“ In the end, the same fate may overwhelm all alike; but the memory of the one type perishes with it, while the other leaves its mark deep on the history of all the future of mankind.
A nation that seemingly dies may be born again; and even though in the physical sense it die utterly, it may yet hand down a history of heroic achievement, and for all time to come may profoundly influence the nations that arise in its place by the impress of what it has done. ”

“ So, the growth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes a national danger patent to all. Again, it needs but little of the vision of a seer to foretell what must happen in any community if the average woman ceases to become the mother of a family of healthy children, if the average man loses the will and the power to work up to old age and to fight whenever the need arises. If the homely, commonplace virtues die out, if strength of character vanishes in graceful self-indulgence, if the virile qualities atrophy, then the nation has lost what no material prosperity can offset. ”

“ When the Roman Empire that was really Roman went down in ruin, there followed an interval of centuries when the gloom was almost unrelieved. Every form of luxury and frivolity, of contemptuous repugnance for serious work, of enervating self-indulgence, every form of vice and weakness which we regard as most ominous in the civilization of to-day, had been at work throughout Italy for generations. The Nation had lost all patriotism. ”

“ Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of an impossible—and incidentally of a highly undesirable—social revolution, which in destroying individual rights—including property rights—and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in the advance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advance or the preservation of mankind is worth while. It is an evil and a dreadful thing to be callous to sorrow and suffering and blind to our duty to do all things possible for the betterment of social conditions. ”

“ Yet, while freely conceding all that can be said of the masters of literature, we must insist upon the historian of mankind working in the scientific spirit, and using the treasure-houses of science. He who would fully treat of man must know at least something of biology, of the science that treats of living, breathing things; and especially of that science of evolution which is inseparably connected with the great name of Darwin. ”

“ The nation can depend upon nothing of the kind; and therefore, as things are now, it is the highest duty of the most advanced and freest peoples to keep themselves in such a state of readiness as to forbid to any barbarism or despotism the hope of arresting the progress of the world by striking down the nations that lead in that progress. It would be foolish indeed to pay heed to the unwise persons who desire disarmament to be begun by the very peoples who, of all others, should not be left helpless before any possible foe. ”

“ As in war to pardon the coward is to do cruel wrong to the brave man whose life his cowardice jeopardizes, so in civil affairs it is revolting to every principle of justice to give to the lazy, the vicious, or even the feeble or dull-witted, a reward which is really the robbery of what braver, wiser, abler men have earned. The only effective way to help any man is to help him to help himself ”

“ In the long run there can be no justification for one race managing or controlling another unless the management and control are exercised in the interest and for the benefit of that other race. This is what our peoples have in the main done, and must continue in the future in even greater degree to do, in India, Egypt, and the Philippines alike. In the next place, as regards every race, everywhere, at home or abroad, we cannot afford to deviate from the great rule of righteousness which bids us treat each man on his worth as a man. ”

“ Moreover, these associations are no stronger in the men of English stock than in those who are not. My people have been for eight generations in America; but in one thing I am like the Americans of to-morrow, rather than like many of the Americans of to-day; for I have in my veins the blood of men who came from many different European races. The ethnic make-up of our people is slowly changing so that constantly the race tends to become more and more akin to that of those Americans who like myself are of the old stock but not mainly of English stock. ”

“ While freely admitting all of our follies and weaknesses of to-day, it is yet mere perversity to refuse to realize the incredible advance that has been made in ethical standards. I do not believe that there is the slightest necessary connexion between any weakening of virile force and this advance in the moral standard, this growth of the sense of obligation to one’s neighbour and of reluctance to do that neighbour wrong. ”

“ I am not now speaking of applied science; of the science, for instance, which, having revolutionized transportation on the earth and the water, is now on the brink of carrying it into the air; of the science that finds its expression in such extraordinary achievements as the telephone and the telegraph; of the sciences which have so accelerated the velocity of movement in social and industrial conditions—for the changes in the mechanical appliances of ordinary life during the last three generations have been greater than in all the preceding generations since history dawned. ”

“ I belong to a nation which is trying on a scale hitherto unexampled to work out the problems of government for, of, and by the people, while at the same time doing the international duty of a great power. ”

“ For a period covering a little more than the seventeenth century, Holland, like some of the Italian city states at an earlier period, stood on the dangerous heights of greatness, beside nations so vastly her superior in territory and population as to make it inevitable that sooner or later she must fall from the glorious and perilous eminence to which she had been raised by her own indomitable soul. ”

“ Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to solve within its own borders, problems that arise not merely from juxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from the self-consciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must deal with these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which the problem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same. ”

“ Now as to all of these phenomena in the evolution of species, there are, if not homologies, at least certain analogies, in the history of human societies, in the history of the rise to prominence, of the development and change, of the temporary dominance, and death or transformation, of the groups of varying kind which form races or nations. Here, as in biology, it is necessary to keep in mind that we use each of the words 'birth' and 'death,' 'youth' and 'age,' often very loosely, and sometimes as denoting either one of two totally different conceptions. ”

“ The first exception of any consequence is the wonderful rise of Japan within the last generation—a phenomenon unexampled in history; for both in blood and in culture the Japanese line of ancestral descent is as remote as possible from ours, and yet Japan, while hitherto keeping most of what was strongest in her ancient character and traditions, has assimilated with curious completeness most of the characteristics that have given power and leadership to the West. ”

“ Yet even in these cases it is curious to see how some of the phenomena in the growth and disappearance of these complex, artificial groups of human beings resemble what has happened in myriads of instances in the history of life on this planet.
Why do great artificial empires, whose citizens are knit by a bond of speech and culture much more than by a bond of blood, show periods of extraordinary growth, and again of sudden or lingering decay? ”

“ Now I am willing that history shall be treated as a branch of science, but only on condition that it also remains a branch of literature; and, furthermore, I believe that as the field of science encroaches on the field of literature there should be a corresponding encroachment of literature upon science; and I hold that one of the great needs, which can only be met by very able men whose culture is broad enough to include literature as well as science, is the need of books for scientific laymen. We need a literature of science which shall be readable. ”

“ The other type of duty is the international duty, the duty owed by one nation to another. I hold that the laws of morality which should govern individuals in their dealings one with the other, are just as binding concerning nations in their dealings one with the other. The application of the moral law must be different in the two cases, because in one case it has, and in the other it has not, the sanction of a civil law with force behind it. The individual can depend for his rights upon the courts, which themselves derive their force from the police power of the State. ”

“ A further analogy is supplied by a very curious tendency often visible in cases of intense and extreme specialization. When an animal form becomes highly specialized, the type at first, because of its specialization, triumphs over its allied rivals and its enemies, and attains a great development; until in many cases the specialization becomes so extreme that from some cause unknown to us, or at which we merely guess, it disappears. The new species which mark a new era commonly come from the less specialized types, the less distinctive, dominant, and striking types, of the preceding era. ”

“ Throughout this immense period form succeeds form, type succeeds type, in obedience to laws of evolution, of progress and retrogression, of development and death, which we as yet understand only in the most imperfect manner. As knowledge increases our wisdom is often turned into foolishness, and many of the phenomena of evolution, which seemed clearly explicable to the learned master of science who founded these lectures, to us nowadays seem far less satisfactorily explained. ”

“ This is the type of Timoleon, of Hampden, of Washington and Lincoln. These were as good men, as disinterested and unselfish men, as ever served a State; and they were also as strong men as ever founded or saved a State. Surely such examples prove that there is nothing Utopian in our effort to combine justice and strength in the same nation. The really high civilizations must themselves supply the antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease which they tend to produce. ”

“ National unity is far more apt than race unity to be a fact to reckon with; until indeed we come to race differences as fundamental as those which divide from one another the half-dozen great ethnic divisions of mankind, when they become so important that differences of nationality, speech, and creed sink into littleness.
An ethnological map of Europe in which the peoples were divided according to their physical and racial characteristics, such as stature, coloration, and shape of head, would bear no resemblance whatever to a map giving the political divisions, the nationalities, of Europe ”

“ But there are plenty of other phenomena wholly or partially inexplicable. It is easy to see why Rome trended downward when great slave-tilled farms spread over what had once been a country-side of peasant proprietors, when greed and luxury and sensuality ate like acids into the fibre of the upper classes, while the mass of the citizens grew to depend not upon their own exertions, but upon the state, for their pleasures and their very livelihood. ”

“ The phenomena of national growth and decay, both of those which can and those which cannot be explained, have been peculiarly in evidence during the four centuries that have gone by since the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These have been the four centuries of by far the most intense and constantly accelerating rapidity of movement and development that the world has yet seen. The movement has covered all the fields of human activity. ”

“ Another feature of the change, of the growth in the position of science in the eyes of every one, and of the greatly increased respect naturally resulting for scientific methods, has been a certain tendency for scientific students to encroach on other fields. This is particularly true of the field of historical study. Not only have scientific men insisted upon the necessity of considering the history of man, especially in its early stages, in connexion with what biology shows to be the history of life, but furthermore there has arisen a demand that history shall itself be treated as a science. ”

“ There are in each case very real differences between the new and the old nation; differences both for good and for evil; but in each case there is the same ancestral history to reckon with, the same type of civilization, with its attendant benefits and shortcomings; and, after the pioneer stages are passed, the problems to be solved, in spite of superficial differences, are in their essence the same; they are those that confront all civilized peoples, not those that confront only peoples struggling from barbarism into civilization. ”

“ If in any such case the centrifugal forces overcome the centripetal, the nation will of course fly to pieces, and the reason for its failure to become a dominant force is patent to every one. The minute that the spirit which finds its healthy development in local self-government, and is the antidote to the dangers of an extreme centralization, develops into mere particularism, into inability to combine effectively for achievement of a common end, then it is hopeless to expect great results. ”