Theodore Roosevelt

“ But we pay the penalty of this action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and possibly for others in the future, by forfeiting our right to do anything on behalf of peace for the Belgians in the present. We can maintain our neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid unoffending weak powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no fault of their own. Of course it would be folly to jump into the gulf ourselves to no good purpose; and very probably nothing that we could have done would have helped Belgium. ”

“ What was true of the personality of Washington and Lincoln was true of the policy they sought to impress upon our nation. They were just as hostile to the theory that virtue was to be confounded with weakness as to the theory that strength justified wrongdoing. No abundance of the milder virtues will save a nation that has lost the virile qualities; and, on the other hand, no admiration of strength must make us deviate from the laws of righteousness. The kind of “peace” advocated by the ultra-pacificists of 1776 would have meant that we never would have had a country ”

“ We of the United States have a twofold duty in this crisis. We must profit by reading aright the lesson writ in fire and steel before our eyes, and therefore we must safeguard our own future against the onfall of any similar disaster. Moreover, we must not only stand ready to act as an instrument for the achievement of a just peace if or when the opportunity arises, but also do whatever we can to formulate and secure adhesion to some kind of efficient international agreement whereby the chances of the recurrence of such world-wide disaster shall at least be minimized. ”

“ The men who shape German policy take the ground that in matters of vital national moment there are no such things as abstract right and wrong, and that when a great nation is struggling for its existence it can no more consider the rights of neutral powers than it can consider the rights of its own citizens as these rights are construed in times of peace, and that everything must bend before the supreme law of national self-preservation. ”

“ World peace will not come save in some such manner as that whereby we obtain peace within the borders of each nation; that is, by the creation of reasonably impartial judges and by putting an efficient police power—that is, by putting force in efficient fashion—behind the decrees of the judges. At present each nation must in the last resort trust to its own strength if it is to preserve all that makes life worth having. ”

“ No alliance, no treaty, and no easy good will of other nations will save us if we are not true to ourselves; and, on the other hand, if we wantonly give offense to others, if we excite hatred and fear, then some day we will pay a heavy penalty.
The most important lesson, therefore, for us to learn from Belgium's fate is that, as things in the world now are, we must in any great crisis trust for our national safety to our ability and willingness to defend ourselves by our own trained strength and courage. We must not wrong others ”

“ America should have a coherent policy of action toward foreign powers, and this should primarily be based on the determination never to give offense when it can be avoided, always to treat other nations justly and courteously, and, as long as present conditions exist, to be prepared to defend our own rights ourselves. No other nation will defend them for us. No paper guarantee or treaty will be worth the paper on which it is written if it becomes to the interest of some other power to violate it, unless we have strength, and courage and ability to use that strength, back of the treaty. ”

“ But this does not in the least mean that we must abandon hope of taking action which will lessen the chance of war and make it more possible to circumscribe the limits of war's devastation.
For this result we must largely trust to sheer growth in morality and intelligence among the nations themselves. For a hundred years peace has obtained between us and Great Britain. No frontier in Europe is as long as the frontier between Canada and ourselves, and yet there is not a fort, nor an armed force worthy of being called such, upon it. ”

“ I respect every sincere and upright man who with wisdom and proper sense of perspective does all he can at peace conferences, or by the negotiation of reasonable arbitration treaties, or by the utilization of the Hague International Court in proper cases, to minimize the chances of war among civilized nations, and to give the opportunity to use other means than war for the settlement of international disputes. ”

“ Not only are none of the belligerents thinking about its rights, but no neutral is thinking about its rights, and this simply because Luxemburg could not defend itself. It is our duty to be patient with every kind of folly, but it is hard for a good American, for a man to whom his country is dear, and who reveres the memories of Washington and Lincoln, to be entirely patient with the kind of folly that advocates reducing this country to the position of China and Luxemburg. ”

“ There is one nation, however, as to which there is no room for difference of opinion, whether we consider her wrongs or the justice of her actions. It seems to me impossible that any man can fail to feel the deepest sympathy with a nation which is absolutely guiltless of any wrong-doing, which has given proof of high valor, and yet which has suffered terribly, and which, if there is any meaning in the words “right” and “wrong,” has suffered wrongfully. ”

“ Every public man, every writer who speaks with wanton offensiveness of a foreign power or of a foreign people, whether he attacks England or France or Germany, whether he assails the Russians or the Japanese, is doing an injury to the whole American body politic. We have plenty of shortcomings at home to correct before we start out to criticise the shortcomings of others. Now and then it becomes imperatively necessary in the interests of humanity, or in our own vital interest, to act in a manner which will cause offense to some other power. ”

“ We must always weigh well our duties in such a case, and consider the rights of others as well as our own rights, in the interest of the world at large. If after such consideration it is evident that we are bound to act along a certain line of policy, then it is mere weakness to refrain from doing so because offense is thereby given. But we must never act wantonly or brutally, or without regard to the essentials of genuine morality—a morality considering our interests as well as the interests of others, and considering the interests of future generations as well as of the present generation. ”

“ If a nation does not in this sense speak softly, then sooner or later the policy of the big stick is certain to result in war. But what befell Luxemburg six weeks ago, what has befallen China again and again during the past quarter of a century, shows that no amount of speaking softly will save any people which does not carry a big stick. I earnestly believe in peace. ”

“ Neutrality may be of prime necessity in order to preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in so much of the world as is not affected by the war, and to conserve our influence for helping toward the re-establishment of general peace when the time comes; for if any outside Power is able at such time to be the medium for bringing peace, it is more likely to be the United States than any other. ”

“ Moreover, the horror that right-thinking citizens feel over the awful tragedies of this war can hardly fail to make sensible men take an interest in genuine peace movements and try to shape them so that they shall be more practical than at present. I most earnestly believe in every rational movement for peace. My objection is only to movements that do not in very fact tell in favor of peace or else that sacrifice righteousness to peace. ”

“ If any Old World military power, European or Asiatic, were engaged in war, and deemed such action necessary and safe, it would at once seize the Panama Canal, or the Danish or Dutch West Indies, or Magdalena Bay, exactly as Belgium and Luxemburg have been overrun by Germany, as Korea has been seized by Japan. They would certainly so act if they thought we would in any real crisis pay heed to the political theories resulting in the all-inclusive arbitration treaties that have just been negotiated in Washington. ”

“ A little good can come from all these movements, but only on condition that there is no attempt made to erect shams and say they are truths or to pretend to be doing what we are not doing. A little good can come, but only on condition that nations remember that as yet arbitration treaties, neutrality treaties, treaties for the erection of independent tribunals, treaties of all kinds, can do nothing to save a nation in great crises unless that nation is able to defend its own honor, its own vital interests. ”

“ Disarmament of the free and liberty-loving nations would mean merely insuring the triumph of some barbarism or despotism, and if logically applied would mean the extinction of liberty and of all that makes civilization worth having throughout the world. But in view of what has occurred in this war, surely the time ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a great world agreement among all the civilized military powers to back righteousness by force. Such an agreement would establish an efficient World League for the Peace of Righteousness. ”

“ Let each man think of his neighbors—of the carpenter, the statio nagent, the day laborer, the farmer, the grocer— who are round about him, and think of these men deprived of their all, their homes destroyed, their sons dead or prisoners, their wives and children half starved, overcome with fatigue and horror, stumbling their way to some city of refuge, and when they have reached it, finding air-ships wrecking the houses with bombs and destroying women and children. ”

“ When a nation feels that the issue of a contest in which, from whatever reason, it finds itself engaged will be national life or death, it is inevitable that it should act so as to save itself from death and to perpetuate its life. What has occurred to Belgium is precisely what would occur under similar conditions to us, unless we were able to show that the action would be dangerous. ”

“ There can be no higher international duty than to safeguard the existence and independence of industrious, orderly states, with a high personal and national standard of conduct, but without the military force of the Great Powers; states, for instance, such as Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, Uruguay, and others. A peace which left Belgium's wrongs unredressed and which did not provide against the recurrence of such wrongs as those from which she has suffered would not be a real peace. ”

“ Belgium is not in the smallest degree responsible for any of the conditions that during the last half-century have been at work to impress a certain fatalistic stamp upon those actions of Austria, Russia, Germany, and France which have rendered this war inevitable. No European nation has had anything whatever to fear from Belgium. ”

“ As regards the actions of most of the combatants in the hideous world-wide war now raging, it is possible sincerely to take and defend either of the opposite views concerning their actions. The causes of any such great and terrible contest almost always lie far back in the past, and the seeming immediate cause is usually itself in major part merely an effect of many preceding causes. ”

“ At this very moment the utter worthlessness of even the rational treaties drawn to protect Belgium and Luxemburg has been shown. To suppose that under such conditions a bundle of bits of paper representing mere verbiage, with no guarantee, would count for anything whatever in a great crisis is to show ourselves unfit to control the destinies of a great, just, and self-respecting people. ”

“ It should ever be our honorable effort to serve one of the world's most vital needs by doing all in our power to bring about conditions which will give some effective protection to weak or small nations which themselves keep order and act with justice toward the rest of mankind. ”

“ Until some method is devised of putting effective force behind arbitration and neutrality treaties neither these treaties nor the vague and elastic body of custom which is misleadingly termed international law will have any real effect in any serious crisis between us and any save perhaps one or two of the Great Powers. The average great military power looks at these matters purely from the standpoint of its own interests. At this moment, for instance, Japan has declared war on Germany. She has paid scrupulous regard to our own rights and feelings in the matter. ”

“ The rights and wrongs of these cases where nations violate the rules of abstract morality in order to meet their own vital needs can be precisely determined only when all the facts are known and when men's blood is cool. I am not at this time striving to lay down a general law, although I believe that it is imperative, in the interest of civilization, to create international conditions which shall neither require nor permit such action in the future. ”