Theodore Roosevelt

“ We must win the war as speedily as possible. But we must set ourselves to fight it through no matter how long it takes with resolute determination to accept no peace until, no matter at what cost, we win the peace of overwhelming victory. ”

“ We Americans should abhor all wrongdoing to other nations. We ought always to act fairly and generously by other nations. But we must remember that our first duty is to be loyal and patriotic citizens of our own nation, of America. These two facts should always be in our minds in dealing with any proposal for a League of Nations. By all means let us be loyal to great ideals. ”

“ But during the last year Russia under the dominion of the Bolshevists has betrayed her allies, has become the tool of the German autocracy, and has shown such utter disregard of her national honor and plighted word and her international duties that she is now in external affairs the passive tool and ally of her brutal conqueror, Germany. What earthly use is it to pretend that the safety of the world would be secured by a League in which these four nations under the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, under the Sultan and the Bolshevists, would be among the nine leading partners ? ”

“ To substitute internationalism for nationalism means to do away with patriotism, and is as vicious and as profoundly demoralizing as to put promiscuous devotion to all other persons in the place of steadfast devotion to a man's own family. ”

“ Our army on the other side is now repaying in part our debt, and next year we have every reason to hope, and we must insist, that the fighting army in France from the United States shall surpass in numbers the fighting army in France, of either France or England. It is now time and it long has been time for America to bear her full share of the common burden borne by all the allies in this great war for liberty and justice. ”

“ Long years must pass before we can again trust any promises these four nations make. Any treaty of any kind or sort which we make with them should be made with the full understanding that they will cynically repudiate it whenever they think it to their interest to do so. ”

“ There will be no taint of Prussian militarism in such a system. It will merely mean prepared ability to fight for our own self-defense, and for a great democracy in which law, order and liberty are to prevail. ”

“ The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as the other. The professional pacifist and the professional internationalist are equally undesirable citizens. ”

“ Test the proposed future League of Nations so far as concerns proposals to disarm and to trust to anything except our own strength for our own defense, by what the Nations are actually doing at the present time. Any such League would have to depend for its success upon the adhesion of nine nations which are actually or potentially the most powerful military nations; and these nine nations include Germany, Austria, Turkey and Russia. ”

“ But the surest way to make them keep the peace in the future is to punish them heavily now. And don't forget that China is now useless as a prop to a League of Peace simply because she lacks effective military strength for her own defense. ”

“ Therefore, unless our folly is such that it will not depart from us until we are brayed in a mortar let us remember that any such treaty will be worthless unless our own prepared strength renders it unsafe to break it. ”

“ Poland as a genuinely independent commonwealth must receive back Austrian and Prussian Poland, as well as Russian Poland, and have her coast-line on the Baltic. Lithuania and Finland must be guaranteed their freedom and no part of the ancient Empire of Russia left under the German yoke. ”

“ The sound nationalist is the only type of really helpful internationalist, precisely as in private relations it is the man who is most devoted to his own wife and children who is apt in the long run to be the most satisfactory neighbor. ”

“ The American pacifist has in the actual fact shown himself to be the tool and ally of the German militarist. The professional internationalist is a man who under a pretense of diffuse attachment for everybody hides the fact that in reality he is incapable of doing his duty by anybody. ”

“ Northern Schlesswig should go back to the Danes. Britain and Japan should keep the colonies they have conquered. Armenia must be freed, Palestine made a Jewish state, and the Syrian Christians liberated. ”