Theodore Roosevelt

“ If the worthy persons, who in the present Peace League movement have joined those most unworthy persons, the professional pacifists, have their way, there is grave danger that this nation will once more be lulled into the sleep of careless sloth and blindness and will not prepare. In that case, when it is too late to remedy our unpreparedness, the lives of the young Lowells of the future will be spent in vain; disaster will come to our people; we shall be unable to help others or to defend ourselves ”

“ We can never accomplish anything either for ourselves or for any one else by mere words, used to cover inaction, slackness and fear of effort, of risk and of danger. It is wicked at this time to press any movement which interferes with the all-essential movement for spiritual and material preparedness. We must make promises only after careful thought, and keep them, even to our own hurt, when made, and we must do this now —not promise to do it in the indefinite future. ”

“ The agitation of the "League to Enforce Peace" at this time is, therefore, a move against international morality, against our own national honor and vital interest, and in the real interest of international barbarity.
I abhor unjust or wanton war. I do not believe that under normal conditions even a just war should be begun until the nation has first tried by every honorable means to secure the righteous end, which can alone make the war just. Every sensible man desires peace ”

“ A movement good under certain circumstances may be most mischievous under other circumstances. Throughout the Civil War there was a succession of Peace Movements in the North. Many of the principles laid down in these Peace Movements were excellent under normal conditions; and in our internal relations we are now applying them, and ought to apply them. But at the time, these excellent principles were invoked—often by honorable but misguided men—in a cause the success of which spelled ruin to the nation. ”

“ Germany has just perpetrated a new and dreadful offense against that moral law which should govern nations even when they are at war with one another. She has deported thousands of civilian non-combat ants, men and women, from France, and tens of thousands from Belgium, and announces that she will deport hundreds of thousands more. These captured civilians are to serve as state-slaves in Germany, and by their toil to make easier the conquest by Germany of their fellow countrymen. ”

“ The most "scrupulous militarists abroad heartily—and naturally-engage pacifist movements in this country. Pacifism in this country is the strongest aid and encouragement to militarism in every military autocracy abroad. Germany is obviously anxious to end the War, so long as it can be ended to her advantage; and it seems likely that with this end in view she will encourage and praise her dupes on this side of the water in the movement for a League to Enforce Peace. ”

“ But the professional pacifists who now advocate the League to Enforce Peace did not bear such testimony. They do not bear it now. They have not dared to protest against triumphant wrong in the present. They pass by tortured Belgium with hurried steps and averted faces, and then seek to gratify their timid vanity, with safety to their bodies, by clamoring for visionary schemes under which, forsooth, they promise that they will do in the future what they lack the courage and high mindedness to do in the present. ”

“ Frequently, foolish persons, who meant well, have at the time said that it represented "militarism." Occasionally, knavish persons, who did not mean well, have, in retrospect, called it "pacifism." The first category unconsciously, the second consciously, said what was not true. I care for the facts of the matter, not for terminology. I am for righteousness. Ordinarily, I believe that peace serves righteousness. But if peace Serves unrighteousness, then I hold, with Washington and Lincoln, that it is our duty to stand for righteousness at the cost of war. ”

“ They have in the past opposed preparedness, or advocated the disarmament of this nation and of the other-free nations of the world—a disarmament which would leave all the free peoples at the mercy, of every militaristic despotism or barbarism. They have advocated all-inclusive arbitration treaties, to include the arbitration of all questions of national honor and vital interest. They have advocated the refusal to protect the lives of our men and the honor of our women in foreign lands. ”

“ Much has untruthfully been said as to munition manufacturers financing the movement for preparedness—a falsehood, with no foundation in fact. Speaking truthfully, it would be difficult to over estimate the harm done to this country by the pacifist movement financed by Mr. Carnegie. Capitalism has had no sinister influence whatever on behalf of Preparedness. Capitalism has been used against the honor and welfare of the country with the most sinister effect on behalf of professional pacifism. ”

“ These American pacifists promptly broke faith, and left Belgium and the allies of Belgium in the lurch. They did badly. The British pacifists who have supported them have done worse. Many public men and publicists in England, men more or less deeply tainted with the spirit of professional pacifism, have for at least a generation striven to make their native land impotent to defend itself. Millions of other Englishmen are now paying with their bodies for the past folly of these professional pacifists. ”

“ The professional pacifists who have engineered the Peace League movement are more than any other people responsible for the fact that our country has not effectively protested against this hideous wrongdoing. ”

“ Germany's act is one of infamy; and the act of any nation, or set of men, or individual man who fails to protest as strongly as possible against it, or whose conduct tends to distract attention from it, is in the interest of the wrongdoer and is itself infamous. ”

“ When a deserted town was burned by black troops—an act which during the last two years in Belgium would have passed without notice, for American troops have never under any circumstances been guilty of conduct even remotely resembling the organized and official Schrecklichkeit of present day German militarism–Lowell wrote to the War Department: "If burning and pillaging is to be the work of our black troops, no first-rate officers will be found to accept promotion in them-it is not war, it is piracy . ”

“ Among other things, it does us moral harm by still further encouraging our people to make grand iloquent promises, with no consideration as to how they are to be kept and no serious intention of keeping them. More evil still is the unquestioned fact that the agitation is adroitly used as a means for defeating the movement for thorough military preparedness. To adopt it will divert men's minds from their real duty of soberly and with foresight and with self-dedication to make effort, preparing this country for its own defense. ”

“ We must resolutely face the fact that the true ideal of service to ourselves and for others can only be achieved when with forethought and vision we have fitted our souls an our bodies for labor and danger. ”

“ Expeditions in which pillaging is attempted by order will infallibly degenerate and instead of finding ourselves at the end of the season with an army of disciplined blacks, we shall have a horde of savages. ”

“ It was natural and proper that people should support the President up to the very limit that it was possible to do so, and not prove false to America and humanity; and it was far better to err by supporting him too long than by not giving him the chance to work out his policy—if he had one. ”

“ No man who has not raised his voice in specific and emphatic protest against the brutal wrong done to Belgium, and in specific andb emphatic denunciation of the wrong-doer, Germany, and of our own Government for refusing to take any action in reference thereto, is entitled to speak on behalf of any proposal to prevent such wrongs in the future.
At the time the wrong was committed it was natural and proper that our people should wait as long as possible in order to let the American President speak; for only the American President could speak with authority for the American people. ”

“ To urge it at this time necessarily means a halt in the vitally necessary effort to prepare our own strength for the protection of our own hearthstones.
Those foremost in the movement, and the adroit, unprincipled politicians who with loud insincerity appear as its frothing champions, may, and very probably will, gain some temporary acclaim or advantage. But they will gain it at the expense, possibly the heavy expense, of this country and to the slight detriment of mankind. ”

“ The survival in our civilization of the barbaric system of warfare among nations means appalling cruelty and suffering in time of war; and also, to the extent that it represents the professional spirit of caste militarism which treats war and conquest as in themselves desirable ends ”

“ He was also an extremely efficient soldier. He was a born leader and commander of men. He rose to be a brigadier-general. He habitually fought hand-to-hand with the saber. He had fourteen horses shot under him. In his last fight, when hurt to death, he was helped on his horse again, and was killed charging at the head of his troops. He despised the weakness of silly sentimentality. He killed a mutineer with his own hand. He had a deserter shot without waiting for orders from Washington when he found that desertion was encouraged by a ruinous clemency at Washington. ”

“ The efficient fighting spirit, in its highest form, may be evoked as the peacemaker, and as the only enemy dreaded by Schrecklichkeit. Let Americans turn for a moment to the "Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell," who fought and died in the Civil War. ”

“ It is not only immoral, but represents an enormous waste of resources and impoverishment of workers in time of peace—this being the reverse of what happens under the admirable system of universal military training and service as practised in peace-loving, self-respecting democratic commonwealths like Australia, Switzerland and Argentina. ”

“ Within the last few weeks the Germans have inflicted on regions in northern France, but specially in Belgium, wholesale depopulation of workers, mostly men, but sometimes women; these persons being taken to labor as serfs for their conquerors, and thus to make it easier for their fellow countrymen, who still are free, to be conquered in their turn. ”

“ They explicitly guarantee in the present the rights which these proposals of the League to Enforce Peace are supposed to guarantee for the future. They make this guarantee in the specific case of Belgium to-day as strongly as it can be made to apply to any small, well-behaved, civilized nation when brutally wronged by a stronger neighbor in the future. ”