CHAPTER XII

WAR AND PEACE

A much misunderstood philosophy-Manly sports as a life preparation-Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward Spain-The Monroe doctrine, the Hague court, and the Kishenev petition.

"WHENEVER on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power. Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not prepared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always moderate we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people."

Without these words, publicly uttered, to support me, I should doubtless have astonished

many readers when I said that Theodore Roosevelt, whose lips frame the word "war" so frequently, is not a lover of war for war's own sake. No one realizes the horrors, the demoralization, the nameless cruelties, attendant on an armed conflict between nations and parts of nations, more than he. To go to Cuba he tore himself away from a convalescent wife and a young babe. None loves his home and family more dearly, or appreciates more keenly what it means when husbands and lovers, fathers, sons and brothers are cut off in their ripe manhood, and the women and little ones dependent on them are thrown upon the mercies of the world. Yet multitudes of Americans shudder at his philosophy, because often it treats peace with scorn and places war among the most important levers of civilization-nay, in a sense, the supreme test of the worth of a people. Analysis could reduce it to certain elementary propositions, which may be roughly stated thus:

(1) Were human nature perfect, a state of perpetual and wholly honorable peace would be possible, because no one group of human beings would force any other group into a position from which there is no peaceful escape without dishonor.

PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

(2) Human nature being still very imperfect, strong nations continue to prey upon weak ones, bullying nations to impose upon those which will submit to such treatment, and dissatisfied elements within a nation to rebel without reason against the constituted authority.

(3) Peace, bought at the price of concessions to force which has only injustice behind it, is as unrighteous as war waged for the deliberate purpose of imposing injustice upon others.

(4) The nation which falls into the habit of valuing peace above all other things and of purchasing it at any price, has its moral vitality so sapped thereby, and its instinct of right and wrong so dulled, that it soon drops out of the van of the higher civilization.

(5) This habit is easily formed by overlooking one and another case where the exercise of force would right a wrong, and resorting to diplomacy when that will afford only a palliative.

(6) A nation which acquires a reputation for avoiding war at any cost comes to be recognized as an easy mark, and invites indignities and even outrages which no other nation would think of visiting upon it if it were famous for its prompt punishment of such offenses.

(7) In order to be always in a position to defend itself and assert its rights, a nation must maintain an army and navy in a condition of efficiency at all times, and this means constant practise of the arts of war in times of peace.

There is the whole matter in a nutshell. Those of us who can not assent to all Mr. Roosevelt's philosophy think it leaves out of account the train of moral evils which follow in the physical wake of war: the enlarged sense, in illbalanced minds, of the value of violence, and the diminished sense of the value of selfrestraint; the distorted popular view of what constitutes justice in emergencies; the widespread notion that honesty and responsibility are elastic ideals, to be measured by the remoteness or the imminence of a crisis. But he would say no; all these things are discounted, not ignored. His theory is that they are outweighed in importance by the larger interests in the opposite scale.

War and the chase are occupations inseparably associated in the activities of primitive man. Mr. Roosevelt does not believe in getting too far away from primitive man. His theory of human progress involves not the wholesale surrender of the old order as prelim

IMPORTANCE OF EXERCISE

inary to taking up the new, but the retention of all that is best in the old as a foundation for the new to build upon. Yet no one ever saw Theodore Roosevelt shooting at pigeons let out of a trap at so many paces. No one ever knew him to leave a wounded beast suffering in the tracks where he had shot it down. No one ever found in him the least trace of cruelty, as he sees it, in dealing with an animal either wild or tame. His home swarms with pets of all sorts, from horses and dogs to tropical birds of prey; his children are brought up among them, and encouraged to play with them fearlessly; but the father's mandate, back of everything, is unchangeable: "Be kind."

Where Mr. Roosevelt differs from most men who call themselves sportsmen is that sport with him is only a means to an end. He does not ride and hunt to kill time, but to prepare himself for the larger things of his career. Physical soundness he puts at the basis of all effective effort in the world. The man who lets his bodily force be dissipated by idleness he regards as almost as criminal as one who wrecks his system by a deliberate course of vice. President McKinley's friends used to attribute his ability to endure worry and abuse as well as he