AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN ADDRESSES

by

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

With an Introduction presenting a Description of the Conditions underwhich the Addresses were given during Mr. Roosevelt's Journey in 1910from Khartum through Europe to New York

by LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT

1910

FOREWORD

My original intention had been to return to the United States directfrom Africa, by the same route I took when going out. I altered thisintention because of receiving from the Chancellor of OxfordUniversity, Lord Curzon, an invitation to deliver the Romanes Lectureat Oxford. The Romanes Foundation had always greatly interested me, and I had been much struck by the general character of the annualaddresses, so that I was glad to accept. Immediately afterwards, Ireceived and accepted invitations to speak at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at the University of Berlin. In Berlin and at Oxford, my addresseswere of a scholastic character, designed especially for the learnedbodies which I was addressing, and for men who shared their interestsin scientific and historical matters. In Paris, after consultationwith the French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, through whom the invitationwas tendered, I decided to speak more generally, as the citizen ofone republic addressing the citizens of another republic. 

When, for these reasons, I had decided to stop in Europe on my wayhome, it of course became necessary that I should speak to the NobelPrize Committee in Christiania, in acknowledgment of the Committee'saward of the peace prize, after the Peace of Portsmouth had closed thewar between Japan and Russia. 

While in Africa, I became greatly interested in the work of theGovernment officials and soldiers who were there upholding the causeof civilization. These men appealed to me; in the first place, becausethey reminded me so much of our own officials and soldiers who havereflected such credit on the American name in the Philippines, inPanama, in Cuba, in Porto Rico; and, in the next place, because I wasreally touched by the way in which they turned to me, with thecertainty that I understood and believed in their work, and with theeagerly expressed hope that when I got the chance I would tell thepeople at home what they were doing and would urge that they besupported in doing it. 

In my Egyptian address, my endeavor was to hold up the hands of thesemen, and at the same time to champion the cause of the missionaries, of the native Christians, and of the advanced and enlightenedMohammedans in Egypt. To do this it was necessary emphatically todiscourage the anti-foreign movement, led, as it is, by a band ofreckless, foolish, and sometimes murderous agitators. In other words, I spoke with the purpose of doing good to Egypt, and with the hope ofdeserving well of the Egyptian people of the future, unwilling topursue the easy line of moral culpability which is implied in sayingpleasant things of that noisy portion of the Egyptian people ofto-day, who, if they could have their way, would irretrievably andutterly ruin Egypt's future. In the Guildhall address, I carried outthe same idea. 

I made a number of other addresses, some of which--those, forinstance, at Budapest, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and theUniversity of Christiania, --I would like to present here; butunfortunately they were made without preparation, and were not takendown in shorthand, so that with the exception of the address made atthe dinner in Christiania and the address at the Cambridge Union thesecan not be included. 

 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. SAGAMORE HILL, July 15, 1910. 

CONTENTS

 FOREWORD

 INTRODUCTION

 Mr. Roosevelt as an Orator. 

 PEACE AND JUSTICE IN THE SUDAN

 An Address at the American Mission in Khartum, March 16, 1910. 

 LAW AND ORDER IN EGYPT

 An Address before the National University in Cairo, March 28, 1910. 

 CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC

 An Address Delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910. 

 INTERNATIONAL PEACE

 An Address before the Nobel Prize Committee Delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910. 

 THE COLONIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES

 An Address Delivered at Christiania, Norway, on the Evening of May 5, 1910. 

 THE WORLD MOVEMENT

 An Address Delivered at the University of Berlin, May 12, 1910. 

 THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS

 An Address at the Cambridge Union, May 26, 1910. 

 BRITISH RULE IN AFRICA

 Address Delivered at the Guildhall, London, May 31, 1910. 

 BIOLOGICAL ANALOGIES IN HISTORY[1]

 Delivered at Oxford, June 7, 1910. 

 [1] The text of this lecture, which is the Romanes Lecture for 1910, is included in the present volume under the courteous permission of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. 

 APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Roosevelt as an Orator

In the tumult, on the one hand of admiration and praise and on theother of denunciation and criticism, which Mr. Roosevelt's tour inAfrica and Europe excited throughout the civilized world, there wasone--and I am inclined to think only one--note of common agreement. Friends and foes united in recognizing the surprising versatility oftalents and of ability which the activities of his tour displayed. Hunters and explorers, archæologists and ethnologists, soldiers andsailors, scientists and university doctors, statesmen and politicians, monarchs and diplomats, essayists and historians, athletes andhorsemen, orators and occasional speakers, met him on equal terms. Thepurpose of the present volume is to give to American readers, bycollecting a group of his transatlantic addresses and by relating someincidents and effects of their delivery, some impression of oneparticular phase of Mr. Roosevelt's foreign journey, --an impression ofthe influence on public thought which he exerted as an orator. 

No one would assert that Mr. Roosevelt possesses that persuasive graceof oratory which made Mr. Gladstone one of the greatest publicspeakers of modern times. For oratory as a fine art, he has no usewhatever; he is neither a stylist nor an elocutionist; what he has tosay he says with conviction and in the most direct and effectivephraseology that he can find through which to bring his hearers to hisway of thinking. Three passages from the Guildhall speech affordtypical illustrations of the incisiveness of his English and of itseffect on his audience. 

 Fortunately you have now in the Governor of East Africa, Sir Percy Girouard, a man admirably fitted to deal wisely and firmly with the many problems before him. He is on the ground and knows the needs of the country and is zealously devoted to its interests. All that is necessary is to follow his lead and to give him cordial support and backing. The principle upon which I think it is wise to act in dealing with far-away possessions is this: choose your man, change him if you become discontented with him, but while you keep him, back him up. 

 * * * * *

 I have met people who had some doubt whether the Sudan would pay. Personally, I think it probably will. But I may add that, in my judgment, this does not alter the duty of England to stay there. It is not worth while belonging to a big nation unless the big nation is willing, when the necessity arises, to undertake a big task. I feel about you in the Sudan just as I felt about us in Panama. When we acquired the right to build the Panama Canal, and entered on the task, there were worthy people who came to me and said they wondered whether it would pay. I always answered that it was one of the great world-works that had to be done; that it was our business as a nation to do it, if we were ready to make good our claim to be treated as a great World Power; and that as we were unwilling to abandon the claim, no American worth his salt ought to hesitate about performing the task. I feel just the same way about you in the Sudan. 

 * * * * *

 It was with this primary object of establishing order that you went into Egypt twenty-eight years ago; and the chief and ample justification for your presence in Egypt was this absolute necessity of order being established from without, coupled with your ability and willingness to establish it. Now, either you have the right to be in Egypt, or you have not; either it is, or it is not your duty to establish and keep order. If you feel that you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and keep order there, why then by all means get out of Egypt. If, as I hope, you feel that your duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own great traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the fact and the name agree, and show that you are ready to meet in very deed the responsibility which is yours. 

There may be little Ciceronian grace about these passages, but thereis unmistakable verbal power. So many words of one syllable and ofSaxon derivation are used as to warrant the opinion that the speakerpossesses a distinctive style. That it is an effective style wasproved by the response of the audience, which greeted these particularpassages (although they contain by implication frank criticisms of theBritish people) with cheers and cries of "Hear, hear!" It should beremembered, too, that the audience, a distinguished one, while neitherhostile nor antipathetic, came in a distinctly critical frame of mind. Like the man from Missouri, they were determined "to be shown" thevalue of Mr. Roosevelt's personality and views before they acceptedthem. That they did accept them, that the British people acceptedthem, I shall endeavor to show a little later. 

There are people who entertain the notion that it is characteristic ofMr. Roosevelt to speak on the spur of the moment, trusting to theoccasion to furnish him with both his ideas and his inspiration. Nothing could be more contrary to the facts. It is true that in hisEuropean journey he developed a facility in extemporaneousafter-dinner speaking or occasional addresses, that was a surpriseeven to his intimate friends. At such times, what he said was full ofapt allusions, witty comment (sometimes at his own expense), andbubbling good humor. The address to the undergraduates at theCambridge Union, and his remarks at the supper of the Institute ofBritish Journalists in Stationers' Hall, are good examples of thiskind of public speaking. But his important speeches are carefully andpainstakingly prepared. It is his habit to dictate the first draft toa stenographer. He then takes the typewritten original and works overit, sometimes sleeps over it, and edits it with the greatest care. Indoing this, he usually calls upon his friends, or upon experts in thesubject he is dealing with, for advice and suggestion. 

Of the addresses collected in this volume, three--the lectures at theSorbonne, at the University of Berlin, and at Oxford--were writtenduring the winter of 1909, before Mr. Roosevelt left the Presidency; afourth, the Nobel Prize speech, was composed during the hunting tripin Africa, and the original copy, written with indelible pencil onsheets of varying size and texture, and covered with interlineationsand corrections, bears all the marks of life in the wilderness. TheCairo and Guildhall addresses were written and rewritten with greatcare beforehand. The remaining three, "Peace and Justice in theSudan, " "The Colonial Policy of the United States, " and the speech atthe University of Cambridge were extemporaneous. The Cairo andGuildhall speeches are on the same subject, and sprang from the samesources, and although one was delivered at the beginning, and theother at the close of a three months' journey, they should, in orderto be properly understood, be read as one would read two chapters ofone work. 

When Mr. Roosevelt reached Egypt, he found the country in one of thoseperiods of political unrest and religious fanaticism which have duringthe last twenty-five years given all Europe many bad quarters of anhour. Technically a part of the Ottoman Empire and a province of theSultan of Turkey, Egypt is practically an English protectorate. Duringthe quarter of a century since the tragic death of General Gordon atKhartum, Egypt has made astonishing progress in prosperity, in theadministration of justice, and in political stability. All Europerecognizes this progress to be the fruit of English control andadministration. At the time of Mr. Roosevelt's visit, a faction, orparty, of native Egyptians, calling themselves Nationalists, had comeinto somewhat unsavory prominence; they openly urged the expulsion ofthe English, giving feverish utterance to the cry "Egypt for theEgyptians!" In Egypt, this cry means more than a political antagonism;it means the revival of the ancient and bitter feud betweenMohammedanism and Christianity. It is in effect a cry of "Egypt forthe Moslem!" The Nationalist party had by no means succeeded inaffecting the entire Moslem population, but it had succeeded inattracting to itself all the adventurers, and lovers of darkness anddisorder who cultivate for their own personal gain such movements ofnational unrest. The non-Moslem population, European and native, whoseability and intelligence is indicated by the fact that, while theyform less than ten per cent. Of the inhabitants, they own more thanfifty per cent. Of the property, were staunch supporters of theEnglish control which the Nationalists wished to overthrow. TheNationalists, however, appeared to be the only people who were notafraid to talk openly and to take definite steps. Just before Mr. Roosevelt's arrival, Boutros Pasha, the Prime Minister, a nativeEgyptian Christian, and one of the ablest administrative officers thatEgypt has ever produced, had been brutally assassinated by aNationalist. The murder was discussed everywhere with many shakings ofthe head, but in quiet corners, and low tones of voice. Military andcivil officers complained in private that the home government waspaying little heed to the assassination and to the spirit of disorderwhich brought it about. English residents, who are commonly courageousand outspoken in great crises, gave one the impression of speaking inwhispers in the hope that if it were ignored, the agitation might dieaway instead of developing into riot and bloodshed. 

Now this way of dealing with a law-breaker and political agitator istotally foreign to Mr. Roosevelt; even his critics admit that he bothtalks and fights in the open. In two speeches in Khartum, one at adinner given in his honor by British military and civil officers, andone at a reception arranged by native Egyptian military men andofficials, he pointed out in vigorous language the dangers ofreligious fanaticism and the kind of "Nationalism" that condonesassassination. Newspaper organs of the Nationalists attacked him forthese speeches when he arrived in Cairo. This made him all the moredetermined to say the same things in Cairo when the proper opportunitycame, especially as officials, both military and civil, of high rankand responsibility, had persistently urged him to do what he properlycould to arouse the attention of the British Government to theEgyptian situation. The opportunity came in an invitation to addressthe University of Cairo. His speech was carefully thought out and waswritten with equal care; some of his friends, both Egyptian, andEnglish, whom he consulted, were in the uncertain frame of mind ofhoping that he would mention the assassination of Boutros, butwondering whether he really ought to do so. Mr. Roosevelt spoke withall his characteristic effectiveness of enunciation and gesture. Hewas listened to with earnest attention and vigorous applause by arepresentative audience of Egyptians and Europeans, of Moslems andChristians. The address was delivered on the morning of March 28th; inthe afternoon the comment everywhere was, "Why haven't these thingsbeen said in public before?" Of course the criticisms of the extremeNationalists were very bitter. Their newspapers, printed in Arabic, devoted whole pages to denunciations of the speech. They protested tothe university authorities against the presentation of the honorarydegree which was conferred upon Mr. Roosevelt; they called him "atraitor to the principles of George Washington, " and "an advocate ofdespotism"; an orator at a Nationalist mass meeting explained that Mr. Roosevelt's "opposition to political liberty" was due to his Dutchorigin, "for the Dutch, as every one knows, have treated theircolonies more cruelly than any other civilized nation"; one paperannounced that the United States Senate had recorded its disapprovalof the speech by taking away Mr. Roosevelt's pension of five thousanddollars, in amusing ignorance of the fact that Mr. Roosevelt never hadany pension of any kind whatsoever. On the other hand, governmentofficers of authority united with private citizens of distinction(including missionaries, native Christians, and many progressiveMoslems) in expressing, personally and by letter, approval of thespeech as one that would have a wide influence in Egypt in supportingthe efforts of those who are working for the development of a stable, just, and enlightened form of government. In connection with the morewidely-known Guildhall address on the same subject it unquestionablyhas such an influence. 

Between the delivery of the Cairo speech and that of the next fixedaddress, the lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23d, there werea number of extemporaneous and occasional addresses of which nopermanent record has been, or can be made. Some of these wereresponses to speeches of welcome made by municipal officials onrailway platforms, or were replies to toasts at luncheons and dinners. In Rome, Mayor Nathan gave a dinner in his honor in the Campidoglio, or City Hall, which was attended by a group of about fifty menprominent in Italian official or private life. On this occasion theMayor read an address of welcome in French, to which Mr. Rooseveltmade a reply touching upon the history of Italy and some of thesocial problems with which the Italian people have to deal in commonwith the other civilized nations of the earth. He began his reply inFrench, but soon broke off, and continued in English, asking the Mayorto translate it, sentence by sentence, into Italian for the assembledguests, most of whom did not speak English. Both the speech itself andthe personality of the speaker made a marked impression upon hishearers; and after his retirement from the hall in which the dinnerwas held, what he said furnished almost the sole subject of animatedconversation, until the party separated. In Budapest, under the domeof the beautiful House of Parliament, Count Apponyi, one of the greatpolitical leaders of modern Hungary, on behalf of the Hungariandelegates to the Inter-Parliamentary Union presented to Mr. Rooseveltan illuminated address in which was recorded the latter's achievementsin behalf of human rights, human liberty, and international justice. Mr. Roosevelt in his reply showed an intimate familiarity with theHungarian history such as, Count Apponyi afterwards said, he had nevermet in any other public man outside of Hungary. Although entirelyextemporaneous, this reply may be taken as a fair exemplification ofthe spirit of all his speeches during his foreign journey. Briefly, inreferring to some allusions in Count Apponyi's speech to the greatleaders of liberty in the United States and in Hungary, he assertedthat the principles for which he had endeavored to struggle during hispolitical career were principles older than those of George Washingtonor Abraham Lincoln; older, indeed, than the principles of Kossuth, thegreat Hungarian leader; they were the principles enunciated in theDecalogue and the Golden Rule. One of the significant things aboutthese sermons by Mr. Roosevelt--I call them sermons because hefrequently himself uses the phrase, "I preach"--is that nobody spoke, or apparently thought the word cant in connection with them. They wereaccepted as the genuine and spontaneous expression of a man whobelieves that the highest moral principles are quite compatible withall the best social joys of life, and with dealing knockout blows whenit is necessary to fight in order to redress wrongs or to maintainjustice. 

The people of Paris are perhaps as quick to detect and to laugh atcant or moral platitudes as anybody of the modern world. And yet theSorbonne lecture, delivered by invitation of the officials of theUniversity of Paris, on April 23d, saturated as it was with moralideas and moral exhortation, was a complete success. The occasionfurnished an illustration of the power of moral ideas to interest andto inspire. The streets surrounding the hall were filled with anenormous crowd long before the hour announced for the opening of thedoors; and even ticket-holders had great difficulty in gainingadmission. The spacious amphitheatre of the Sorbonne was filled with arepresentative audience, numbering probably three thousand people. Around the hall, were statues of the great masters of Frenchintellectual life--Pascal, Descartes, Lavoisier, and others. On thewall was one of the Puvis de Chavannes's most beautiful muralpaintings. The group of university officials and academicians on thedais, from which Mr. Roosevelt spoke, lent to the occasion anappropriate university atmosphere. The simple but perfect arrangementof the French and American flags back of the speaker suggested itsinternational character. 

The speech was an appeal for moral rather than for intellectual ormaterial greatness. It was received with marked interest and approval;the passage ending with a reference to "cold and timid souls who knowneither victory nor defeat, " was delivered with real eloquence, andaroused a long-continued storm of applause. With characteristiccourage, Mr. Roosevelt attacked race suicide when speaking to a racewhose population is diminishing, and was loudly applauded. Occasionally with quizzical humor he interjected an extemporaneoussentence in French, to the great satisfaction of his audience. Apassage of peculiar interest was the statement of his creed regardingthe relation of property-rights to human rights; it was not in hisoriginal manuscript but was written on the morning of the lecture asthe result of a discussion of the subject of vested interests with oneor two distinguished French publicists. He first pronounced thispassage in English, and then repeated it in French, enforced bygestures which so clearly indicated his desire to have his hearersunmistakably understand him in spite of defective pronunciation of aforeign tongue that the manifest approval of the audience wasexpressed in a curious mingling of sympathetic laughter and prolongedand serious applause. 

A fortnight after the Sorbonne address, I received from a friend, anAmerican military officer living in Paris who knows well its generalhabit of mind, a letter from which I venture to quote here, because itso strikingly portrays the influence that Mr. Roosevelt exerted as anorator during his European journey:

 I find that Paris is still everywhere talking of Mr. Roosevelt. It was a thing almost without precedent that this _blasé_ city kept up its interest in him without abatement for eight days; but that a week after his departure should still find him the main topic of conversation is a fact which has undoubtedly entered into Paris history. The _Temps_ [one of the foremost daily newspapers of Paris] has had fifty-seven thousand copies of his Sorbonne address printed and distributed free to every schoolteacher in France and to many other persons. The Socialist or revolutionary groups and press had made preparations for a monster demonstration on May first. Walls were placarded with incendiary appeals and their press was full of calls to arms. Monsieur Briand [the Prime Minister] flatly refused to allow the demonstration, and gave orders accordingly to Monsieur Lépine [the Chief of Police]. For the first time since present influences have governed France, certainly in fifteen years, the police and the troops were authorized to _use their arms in self-defence_. The result of this firmness was that the leaders countermanded the demonstration, and there can be no doubt that many lives were saved and a new point gained in the possibility of governing Paris as a free city, yet one where order must be preserved, votes or no votes. Now this stiff attitude of M. Briand and the Conseil is freely attributed in intelligent quarters to Mr. Roosevelt. French people say it is a repercussion of his visit, of his Sorbonne lecture, and that going away he left in the minds of these people some of that intangible spirit of his--in other words, they felt what he would have felt in a similar emergency, and for the first time in their lives showed a disregard of voters when they were bent upon mischief. It is rather an extraordinary verdict, but it has seized the Parisian imagination, and I, for one, believe it is correct. 

Some of the English newspapers, while generally approving of theSorbonne address, expressed the feeling that it contained someplatitudes. Of course it did; for the laws of social and moral health, like the laws of hygiene, are platitudes. It was interesting to have aFrench engineer and mathematician of distinguished achievements, whodiscussed with me the character and effect of the Sorbonne address, rather hotly denounce those who affected to regard Mr. Roosevelt'srestatement of obvious, but too often forgotten truth, asplatitudinous. "The finest and most beautiful things in life, " saidthis scientist, "the most abstruse scientific discoveries, are basedupon platitudes. It is a platitude to say that the whole is greaterthan a part, or that the shortest distance between two points is astraight line, and yet it is upon such platitudes that astronomy, byaid of which we have penetrated some of the far-off mysteries of theuniverse, is based. The greatest cathedrals are built of single blocksof stone, and a single block of stone is a platitude. Tear thearchitectural structure to pieces, and you have nothing left but thesingle, common, platitudinous brick; but for that reason do you saythat your architectural structure is platitudinous? The effect of Mr. Roosevelt's career and personality, which rest upon the securefoundation of simple and obvious truths, is like that of a finearchitectural structure, and if a man can see only the single bricksor stones of which it is composed, so much the worse for him. "

Of the addresses included in this volume the next in chronologicalorder was that on "International Peace, " officially delivered beforethe Nobel Prize Committee, but actually a public oration spoken in theNational Theatre of Christiania, before an audience of two or threethousand people. The Norwegians did everything to make the occasion anotable one. The streets were almost impassable from the crowds ofpeople who assembled about the theatre, but who were unable to gainadmission. An excellent orchestra played an overture, especiallycomposed for the occasion by a distinguished Norwegian composer, inwhich themes from the _Star-Spangled Banner_ and from Norwegiannational airs and folk-songs were ingeniously intertwined. The day wasobserved as a holiday in Christiania, and the entire city wasdecorated with evergreens and flags. On the evening of the same day, the Nobel Prize Committee gave a dinner in honor of Mr. Rooseveltwhich was attended by two or three hundred guests, --both men andwomen. General Bratlie, at one time Norwegian Minister of War, made anaddress of welcome, reviewing with appreciation Mr. Roosevelt'squalities both as a man of war and as a man of peace. The address inthis volume, entitled, "Colonial Policy of the United States" was Mr. Roosevelt's reply to General Bratlie's personal tribute. It was whollyextemporaneous, but was taken down stenographically; and it adds toits interest to note the fact that on the evening of its delivery itwas the first public utterance on any question of American politicswhich Mr. Roosevelt had made since he left America a year previous. The Nobel Prize speech and this address taken together form a prettycomplete exposition of what may perhaps be called, for want of abetter term, Mr. Roosevelt's "peace with action" doctrine. 

"The World Movement, " the address at the University of Berlin, was thefirst of two distinctively academic, or scholastic utterances, theother, of course, being the Romanes lecture. The Sorbonne speech wasalmost purely sociological and ethical. There are, to be sure, socialand moral applications made of the theories laid down at Berlin and atOxford; but these two university addresses are distinctly for auniversity audience. My own judgment is that the Sorbonne andGuildhall addresses were more effective in their human interest andtheir immediate political influence. But at both Berlin and Oxford, Mr. Roosevelt showed that he could deal with scholarly subjects in ascholarly fashion. It may be that he desired on these two occasions togive some indication that, although universally regarded as a man ofaction, he is entitled also to be considered as a man of thought. Thelecture at the University of Berlin was a brilliant and picturesqueacademic celebration in which doctors' gowns, military uniforms, andthe somewhat bizarre dress of the representatives of the undergraduatestudent corps, mingled in kaleidoscopic effect. One interestingfeature of the ceremony was the singing by a finely trained studentchorus without instrumental accompaniment, of _Hail Columbia_ and _TheStar-Spangled Banner_, harmonized as only the Germans can harmonizechoral music. The Emperor and the Empress, with several members of theImperial family, attended the lecture. Those who sat near the Emperorcould see that he followed the address with genuine interest, noddinghis head, or smiling now and then with approval at some incisivelyexpressed idea, or some phrase of interjected humor, or acharacteristic gesture on the part of the speaker. In one respect thelecture was a _tour de force_. On account of a sharp attack ofbronchitis, from which he was then recovering, it was not decided bythe physicians in charge until the morning of the lecture that Mr. Roosevelt could use his voice for one hour in safety. Arrangements hadbeen made to have some one else read the lecture if at the last momentit should be necessary; and the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was able todo it himself effectively under these circumstances indicates that hehas some of the physical as well as the intellectual attributes of thepractised orator. 

Mr. Roosevelt's first public speech in England was made at theUniversity of Cambridge on May 26th when he received the honorarydegree of LL. D. His address on this occasion was not, like the Romaneslecture at Oxford, a part of the academic ceremony connected with theconferring of the honorary degree. It was spoken to an audience ofundergraduates when, after the academic exercises in the Senate House, he was elected to honorary membership in the Union Society, thewell-known Cambridge debating club which has trained some of the bestpublic speakers of England. At Oxford the doctors and dignitariescracked the jokes--in Latin--while the undergraduates were highlydecorous. At Cambridge, on the other hand, the students indulged inthe traditional pranks which often lend a color of gaiety toUniversity ceremonies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Rooseveltentered heartily into the spirit of the undergraduates, and it wasevident that they, quite as heartily, liked his understanding of thefact that the best university and college life consists in a judiciousmixture of the grave and the gay. The honor which these undergraduatespaid to their guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned, and its genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note ofpleasantry. Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to universitystudents and what he said, although brief, extemporaneous, and evenunpremeditated, deserves to be included with his more importantaddresses, because it affords an excellent example of hischaracteristic habit of making an occasion of social gaiety also anoccasion of expressing his belief in the fundamental moral principlesof social and political life. The speech was frequently interrupted bythe laughter and applause of the audience, and the theory which Mr. Roosevelt propounded, that any man in any walk of life may achievegenuine success simply by developing ordinary qualities to a more thanordinary degree, was widely quoted and discussed by the press of GreatBritain. 

Next in chronological order comes the Guildhall speech. In thepicturesqueness of its setting, in the occasion which gave rise to it, in the extraordinary effect it had upon public opinion in GreatBritain, the continent of Europe, and America, and in the couragewhich it evinced on the part of the speaker, it is in my judgment themost striking of all Mr. Roosevelt's foreign addresses. 

The occasion was a brilliant and notable one. The ancient and splendidGuildhall--one of the most perfect Gothic interiors in England, whichhas historical associations of more than five centuries--was filledwith a representative gathering of English men and women. On the dais, or stage, at one end of the hall, sat the Lord Mayor and the LadyMayoress, and the special guests of the occasion were conducted byushers, in robes and carrying maces, down a long aisle flanked withspectators on either side and up the steps of the dais, where theywere presented. Their names were called out at the beginning of theaisle, and as the ushers and the guest moved along, the audienceapplauded, little or much, according to the popularity of thenewcomer. Thus John Burns and Mr. Balfour were greeted withenthusiastic hand-clapping and cheers, although they belong, ofcourse, to opposite parties. The Bishop of London, Lord Cromer, themaker of modern Egypt, Sargent, the painter, and Sir Edward Grey, theSecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, were among those greeted inthis way. In the front row on one side of the dais were seated thealdermen of the city in their red robes, and various officials in wigsand gowns lent to the scene a curiously antique aspect to the Americaneye. Happily, the City of London has carefully preserved thehistorical traditions connected with it and with the Guilds, or groupsof merchants, which in the past had so much to do with the managementof its affairs. Among the invited guests, for example, were theMaster of the Mercers' Company, the Master of the Grocers' Company, the Master of the Drapers' Company, the Master of the Skinners'Company, the Master of the Haberdashers' Company, the Master of theSalters' Company, the Master of the Ironmongers' Company, the Masterof the Vintners' Company, and the Master of the Clothworkers' Company. These various trades, of course, are no longer carried on by Guilds, but by private firms or corporations, and yet the Guild organizationis still maintained as a sort of social or semi-social recognition ofthe days when the Guildhall was not merely a great assembly-room, butthe place in which the Guilds actually managed the affairs of theircity. It was in such a place and amid such surroundings that Mr. Roosevelt was formally nominated and elected a Freeman of the ancientCity of London. 

Mr. Roosevelt's speech was far from being extemporaneous; it had beencarefully thought out beforehand, and was based upon his experiencesduring the previous March, in Egypt; it was really the desire ofinfluential Englishmen in Africa to have him say something aboutEgyptian affairs that led him to make a speech at all. He had hadample time to think, and he had thought a good deal, yet it wasplainly to be seen that the frankness of his utterance, hischaracteristic attitude and gestures, and the pungent quality of hisoratory at first startled his audience, accustomed to moreconventional methods of public speaking. But he soon captured andcarried his hearers with him, as is indicated by the exclamations ofapproval on the part of the audience which were incorporated in theverbatim report of the speech in the London _Times_. It is noexaggeration to say that his speech became the talk of England--inclubs, in private homes, and in the newspapers. Of course there wassome criticism, but, on the whole, it was received with commendation. The extreme wing of the Liberal party, whom we should callAnti-Imperialists, but who are in Great Britain colloquially spoken ofas "Little Englanders, " took exception to it, but even theirdisapproval, save in a few instances of bitter personal attack, wasmild. The London _Chronicle_, which is perhaps the most influential ofthe morning newspapers representing the Anti-Imperialist view, was ofthe opinion that the speech was hardly necessary, because it assertedthat the Government and the British nation have long been of Mr. Roosevelt's own opinion. The _Westminster Gazette_, the leadingevening Liberal paper, also asserted that "none of the broadconsiderations advanced by Mr. Roosevelt have been absent from theminds of Ministers, and of Sir Edward Grey in particular. We regretthat Mr. Roosevelt should have thought it necessary to speak outyesterday, not on the narrow ground of etiquette or precedent, butbecause we cannot bring ourselves to believe that his words arecalculated to make it any easier to deal with an exceedingly difficultproblem. "

The views of these two newspapers fairly express the rather mildopposition excited by the speech among those who regard Britishcontrol in Egypt as a question of partisan politics. On the otherhand, the best and most influential public opinion, while recognizingthe unconventionality of Mr. Roosevelt's course, heartily approved ofboth the matter and the manner of the speech. The London _Times_ said:"Mr. Roosevelt has reminded us in the most friendly way of what we areat least in danger of forgetting, and no impatience of outsidecriticism ought to be allowed to divert us from considering thesubstantial truth of his words. His own conduct of great affairs andthe salutary influence of his policy upon American public life ... Atleast give him a right, which all international critics do notpossess, to utter a useful, even if not wholly palatable, warning. "The _Daily Telegraph_, after referring to Mr. Roosevelt as "apractical statesman who combines with all his serious force a famoussense of humor, " expressed the opinion that his "candor is a tonic, which not only makes plain our immediate duty but helps us to do it. In Egypt, as in India, there is no doubt as to the alternative he hasstated so vigorously: we must govern or go; and we have no intentionof going. " The _Pall Mall Gazette's_ opinion was that Mr. Roosevelt"delivered a great and memorable speech--a speech that will be readand pondered over throughout the world. "

The London _Spectator_, which is one of the ablest and most thoughtfuljournals published in the English language, and which reflects themost intelligent, broad-minded, and influential public opinion in theBritish Empire, devoted a large amount of space to a consideration ofthe speech. The _Spectator's_ position in English journalism is suchthat I make no apology for a somewhat long quotation from its comment:

 Perhaps the chief event of the week has been Mr. Roosevelt's speech at the Guildhall. Timid, fussy, and pedantic people have charged Mr. Roosevelt with all sorts of crimes because he had the courage to speak out, and have even accused him of unfriendliness to this country because of his criticisms. Happily the British people as a whole are not so foolish. Instinctively they have recognized and thoroughly appreciated the good feeling of Mr. Roosevelt's speech. Only true friends speak as he spoke.... The barrel-organs, of course, grind out the old tune about Mr. Roosevelt's tactlessness. In reality he is a very tactful as well as a very shrewd man. It is surely the height of tactfulness to recognize that the British people are sane enough and sincere enough to like being told the truth. His speech is one of the greatest compliments ever paid to a people by a statesman of another country.... Mr. Roosevelt has made exactly the kind of speech we expected him to make--a speech strong, clear, fearless. He has told us something useful and practical, and has not lost himself in abstractions and platitudes.... The business of a trustee is not to do what the subject of the trust likes or thinks he likes, but to do, however much he may grumble, what is in his truest and best interests. Unless a trustee is willing to do that, and does not trouble about abuse, ingratitude, and accusations of selfishness, he had better give up his trust altogether.... We thank Mr. Roosevelt once again for giving us so useful a reminder of our duty in this respect. 

These notes of approval were repeated in a great number of letterswhich Mr. Roosevelt received from men and women in all walks of life, men in distinguished official position and "men in the street. " Therewere some abusive letters, chiefly anonymous, but the general tone ofthis correspondence is fairly illustrated by the following:

 Allow me, an old colonist in his eighty-fourth year, to thank you most heartily for your manly address at the Guildhall and for your life-work in the cause of humanity. If I ever come to the great Republic, I shall do myself the honor of seeking an audience of your Excellency. I may do so on my one hundredth birthday! With best wishes and profound respect. 

The envelope of this letter was addressed to "His Excellency'Govern-or-go' Roosevelt. " That the _Daily Telegraph_ and that the"man in the street" should independently seize upon this salient pointof the address--the "govern-or-go" theory--is significant. 

American readers are sufficiently familiar with Mr. Roosevelt'sprinciples regarding protectorate or colonial government; anyelaborate explanation or exposition of his views is unnecessary. Butit may be well to repeat that he has over and over again said that allsubject peoples, whether in colonies, protectorates, or insularpossessions like the Philippines and Porto Rico, should be governedfor their own benefit and development and should never be exploitedfor the mere profit of the controlling powers. It may be well, too, toadd Mr. Roosevelt's own explanation of his criticism ofsentimentality. "Weakness, timidity, and sentimentality, " he said inthe Guildhall address, "many cause even more far-reaching harm thanviolence and injustice. Of all broken reeds sentimentality is the mostbroken reed on which righteousness can lean. " Referring to thesephrases, a correspondent a day or two after the speech askedif the word "sentiment" might not be substituted for the word"sentimentality. " Mr. Roosevelt wrote the following letter in reply:

 DEAR SIR: I regard sentiment as the exact antithesis of sentimentality, and to substitute "sentiment" for "sentimentality" in my speech would directly invert its meaning. I abhor sentimentality, and, on the other hand, I think no man is worth his salt who is not profoundly influenced by sentiment, and who does not shape his life in accordance with a high ideal. 

 Faithfully yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 

The Romanes lecture at Oxford University was the last of Mr. Roosevelt's transatlantic speeches. I can think of no greaterintellectual honor that an English-speaking man can receive than tohave conferred upon him by the queen of all universities, the highesthonorary degree in her power to give, and in addition, to be invitedto address the dignitaries and dons and doctors of that university asa scholar speaking to scholars. There is no American university manwho may not feel entirely satisfied with the way in which the Americanuniversity graduate stood the Oxford test on that occasion. He took ingood part the jokes and pleasantries pronounced in Latin by theChancellor, Lord Curzon; but after the ceremonies of initiation werefinished, after the beadles had, in response to the order of theChancellor, conducted "_Doctorem Honorabilem ad Pulpitum_, " and afterthe Chancellor had, this time in very direct and beautiful English, welcomed him to membership in the University, he delivered an address, the serious scholarship of which held the attention of those who heardit and arrested the attention of many thousands of others who receivedthe lecture through the printed page. 

The foregoing review of the chief public addresses which Mr. Rooseveltmade during his foreign journey, I think justifies the assertion that, for variety of subject, variety of occasion, and variety of the fieldsof thought and action upon which his speeches had a direct andmanifest influence, he is entitled to be regarded as a public oratorof remarkable distinction and power. 

By way of explanation it may perhaps be permissible to add that I metMr. Roosevelt in Khartum on March 14, 1910, and travelled with himthrough the Sudan, Egypt, the continent of Europe and England, to NewYork; I heard all his important speeches, and most of the occasionaladdresses; much of the voluminous correspondence which the speechesgave rise to passed through my hands; and I talked with many men, bothin public and private life, in the various countries through whichthe journey was taken about the addresses themselves and their effectupon world-politics. If there is a failure in these pages to give anintelligent or an adequate impression of the oratorial features of Mr. Roosevelt's African and European journey, it is not because there wasany lack of opportunity to observe or learn the facts. 

LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT. 

 * * * * *

PEACE AND JUSTICE IN THE SUDAN

An Address at the American Mission[2] in Khartum, March 16, 1910

 [2] The American Mission at Khartum is under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church of America. The Rev. Dr. John Giffen introduced Mr. Roosevelt to the assembly. --L. F. A. 

I have long wished to visit the Sudan. I doubt whether in any otherregion of the earth there is to be seen a more striking instance ofthe progress, the genuine progress, made by the substitution ofcivilization for savagery than what we have seen in the Sudan for thepast twelve years. I feel that you here owe a peculiar duty to theGovernment under which you live--a peculiar duty in the direction ofdoing your full worth to make the present conditions perpetual. It isincumbent on every decent citizen of the Sudan to uphold the presentorder of things; to see that there is no relapse; to see that thereign of peace and justice continues. But you here have that dutyresting upon you to a peculiar degree, and your best efforts must begiven in all honor, and as a matter, not merely of obligation, but asa matter of pride on your part, towards the perpetuation of thecondition of things that has made this progress possible, of theGovernment as it now stands--as you represent it, Slatin Pasha. [3]

 [3] One of the most distinguished officers of the Anglo-Egyptian Army whose well-known book, _Fire and Sword in the Sudan_, gives a graphic picture of the conditions England has had to deal with in the Sudan. --L. F. A. 

I am exceedingly pleased to see here officers of the army, and youhave, of course, your oath. You are bound by every tie of loyalty, military and civil, to work to the end I have named. But, after all, you are not bound any more than are you, you civilians. And, anotherthing, do not think for a moment that when I say that you are bound touphold the Government I mean that you are bound to try to get anoffice under it. On the contrary, I trust, Dr. Giffen, that the workdone here by you, done by the different educational institutions withwhich you are connected or with which you are affiliated, will alwaysbe done, bearing in mind the fact that the most useful citizen to theGovernment may be a man who under no consideration would hold anyposition connected with the Government. I do not want to see anymissionary college carry on its educational scheme primarily with aview of turning out Government officials. On the contrary, I want tosee the average graduate prepared to do his work in some capacity incivil life, without any regard to any aid whatever received from orany salary drawn from the Government. If a man is a good engineer, agood mechanic, a good agriculturist, if he is trained so that hebecomes a really good merchant, he is, in his place, the best type ofcitizen. It is a misfortune in any country, American, European, orAfrican, to have the idea grow that the average educated man must findhis career only in the Government service. I hope to see good andvaluable servants of the Government in the military branch and in thecivil branch turned out by this and similar educational institutions;but, if the conditions are healthy, those Government servants, civilor military, will never be more than a small fraction of thegraduates, and the prime end and prime object of an educationalinstitution should be to turn out men who will be able to shift forthemselves, to help themselves, and to help others, fully independentof all matters connected with the Government. I feel very strongly onthis subject, and I feel it just as strongly in America as I do here. 

Another thing, gentlemen, and now I want to speak to you for a momentfrom the religious standpoint, to speak to you in connection with thework of this mission. I wish I could make every member of a Christianchurch feel that just in so far as he spends his time in quarrellingwith other Christians of other churches he is helping to discreditChristianity in the eyes of the world. Avoid as you would the plaguethose who seek to embroil you in conflict, one Christian sect withanother. Not only does what I am about to say apply to the behavior ofChristians towards one another, but of all Christians towards theirnon-Christian brethren, towards their fellow-citizens of anothercreed. You can do most for the colleges from which you come, you cando most for the creed which you profess, by doing your work in theposition to which you have been called in a way that brings therespect of your fellow-men to you, and therefore to those for whom youstand. Let it be a matter of pride with the Christian in the armythat in the time of danger no man is nearer that danger than he is. Let it be a matter of pride to the officer whose duty it is to fightthat no man, when the country calls on him to fight, fights betterthan he does. That is how you can do more for Christianity, for thename of Christians, you who are in the army. Let the man in a civilgovernmental position so bear himself that it shall be acceptable asaxiomatic that when you have a Christian, a graduate of a missionaryschool, in a public office, the efficiency and honesty of that officeare guaranteed. That is the kind of Christianity that counts in apublic official, that counts in the military official--theChristianity that makes him do his duty in war, or makes him do hisduty in peace. And you--who I hope will be the great majority--who arenot in Government service, can conduct yourselves so that yourneighbors shall have every respect for your courage, your honesty, your good faith, shall have implicit trust that you will dealreligiously with your brother as man to man, whether it be in businessor whether it be in connection with your relations to the community asa whole. The kind of graduate of a Christian school really worthcalling a Christian is the man who shows his creed practically by theway he behaves towards his wife and towards his children, towards hisneighbor, towards those with whom he deals in the business world, andtowards the city and Government. In no way can he do as much for theinstitution that trains him, in no way can he do as much to bringrespect and regard to the creed that he professes. And, remember, youneed more than one quality. I have spoken of courage; it is, ofcourse, the first virtue of the soldier, but every one of you who isworth his salt must have it in him too. Do not forget that the goodman who is afraid is only a handicap to his fellows who are strivingfor what is best. I want to see each Christian cultivate the manlyvirtues; each to be able to hold his own in the country, but in abroil not thrusting himself forward. Avoid quarrelling wherever youcan. Make it evident that the other man wants to avoid quarrellingwith you too. 

One closing word. Do not make the mistake, those of you who are youngmen, of thinking that when you get out of school or college youreducation stops. On the contrary, it is only about half begun. Now, Iam fifty years old, and if I had stopped learning, if I felt now thatI had stopped learning, had stopped trying to better myself, I feelthat my usefulness to the community would be pretty nearly at an end. And I want each of you, as he leaves college, not to feel, "Now I havehad my education, I can afford to vegetate. " I want you to feel, "Ihave been given a great opportunity of laying deep the foundations fora ripe education, and while going on with my work I am going to keeptraining myself, educating myself, so that year by year, decade bydecade, instead of standing still I shall go forward, and growconstantly fitter, and do good work and better work. "

I visited, many years ago, the college at Beirut. I have known atfirst hand what excellent work was being done there. Unfortunately, owing to my very limited time, it is not going to be possible for meto stop at the college at Assiut, which has done such admirable workin Egypt and here in the Sudan, whose graduates I meet in all kinds ofoccupations wherever I stop. I am proud, as an American, Dr. Giffen, of what has been done by men like you, like Mr. Young, like the otherAmericans who have been here, and, I want to say still further, by thewomen who have come with them. I always thought that the American wasa pretty good fellow. I think his wife is still better, and, greatthough my respect for the man from America has been, my respect forthe woman has been greater. 

I stopped a few days ago at the little mission at the Sobat. One ofthe things that struck me there was what was being accomplished by themedical side of that mission. From one hundred and twenty-five milesaround there were patients who had come in to be attended to by thedoctors in the mission. There were about thirty patients who wereunder the charge of the surgeon, the doctor, at that mission. I do notknow a better type of missionary than the doctor who comes out hereand does his work well and gives his whole heart to it. He is doingpractical work of the most valuable type for civilization, and forbringing the people of the country up to a realization of thestandards that you are trying to set. If you make it evident to a manthat you are sincerely concerned in bettering his body, he will bemuch more ready to believe that you are trying to better his soul. 

Now, gentlemen, it has been a great pleasure to see you. When I getback to the United States, this meeting is one of the things I shallhave to tell to my people at home, so that I may give them an idea ofwhat is being done in this country. I wish you well with all my heart, and I thank you for having received me to-day. 

 * * * * *

LAW AND ORDER IN EGYPT

An Address before the National University in Cairo, March 28, 1910

It is to me a peculiar pleasure to speak to-day under suchdistinguished auspices as yours, Prince Fouad, [4] before this NationalUniversity, and it is of good augury for the great cause of highereducation in Egypt that it should have enlisted the special interestof so distinguished and eminent a man. The Arabic-speaking worldproduced the great University of Cordova, which flourished a thousandyears ago, and was a source of light and learning when the rest ofEurope was either in twilight or darkness; in the centuries followingthe creation of that Spanish Moslem university, Arabic men of science, travellers, and geographers--such as the noteworthy African travellerIbn Batutu, a copy of whose book, by the way, I saw yesterday in thelibrary of the Alhazar[5]--were teachers whose works are still to beeagerly studied; and I trust that here we shall see the revival, andmore than the revival, of the conditions that made possible suchcontributions to the growth of civilization. 

 [4] Prince Fouad is the uncle of the Khedive, a Mohammedan gentleman of education and enlightened views. --L. F. A. 

 [5] The great Moslem University of Cairo, in which 9000 students study chiefly the Koran in mediæval fashion. --L. F. A. 

This scheme of a National University is fraught with literally untoldpossibilities for good to your country. You have many rocks ahead ofwhich you must steer clear; and because I am your earnest friend andwell-wisher, I desire to point out one or two of these which it isnecessary especially to avoid. In the first place, there is one pointupon which I always lay stress in my own country, in your country, inall countries--the need of entire honesty as the only foundation onwhich it is safe to build. It is a prime essential that all who are inany way responsible for the beginnings of the University shall make itevident to every one that the management of the University, financialand otherwise, will be conducted with absolute honesty. Very muchmoney will have to be raised and expended for this University in orderto make it what it can and ought to be made; for, if properly managed, I firmly believe that it will become one of the greatest influences, and perhaps the very greatest influence, for good in all that part ofthe world where Mohammedanism is the leading religion; that is, in allthose regions of the Orient, including North Africa and SouthwesternAsia, which stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the farther confines ofIndia and to the hither provinces of China. This University shouldhave a profound influence in all things educational, social, economic, industrial, throughout this whole region, because of the very fact ofEgypt's immense strategic importance, so to speak, in the world of theOrient; an importance due partly to her geographical position, partlyto other causes. Moreover, it is most fortunate that Egypt's presentposition is such that this University will enjoy a freedom hithertounparalleled in the investigation and testing out of all problemsvital to the future of the peoples of the Orient. 

Nor will the importance of this University be confined to the Orient. Egypt must necessarily from now on always occupy a similar strategicposition as regards the peoples of the Occident, for she sits on oneof the highways of the commerce that will flow in ever-increasingvolume from Europe to the East. Those responsible for the managementof this University should set before themselves a very high ideal. Notmerely should it stand for the uplifting of all Mohammedan peoples andof all Christians and peoples of other religions who live inMohammedan lands, but it should also carry its teaching and practiceto such perfection as in the end to make it a factor in instructingthe Occident. When a scholar is sufficiently apt, sufficiently sincereand intelligent, he always has before him the opportunity ofeventually himself giving aid to the teachers from whom he hasreceived aid. 

Now, to make a good beginning towards the definite achievement ofthese high ends, it is essential that you should command respect andshould be absolutely trusted. Make it felt that you will not toleratethe least little particle of financial crookedness in the raising orexpenditure of any money, so that those who wish to give money to thisdeserving cause may feel entire confidence that their piasters will bewell and honestly applied. 

In the next place, show the same good faith, wisdom, and sincerity inyour educational plans that you do in the financial management of theinstitution. Avoid sham and hollow pretence just as you avoidreligious, racial, or political bigotry. You have much to learn fromthe universities of Europe and of my own land, but there is also inthem not a little which it is well to avoid. Copy what is good inthem, but test in a critical spirit whatever you take, so as to besure that you take only what is wisest and best for yourselves. Moreimportant even than avoiding any mere educational shortcoming is theavoidance of moral shortcoming. Students are already being sent toEurope to prepare themselves to return as professors. Such preparationis now essential, for it is of prime importance that the Universityshould be familiar with what is being done in the best universities ofEurope and America. But let the men who are sent be careful to bringback what is fine and good, what is essential to the highest kind ofmodern progress, and let them avoid what are the mere non-essentialsof the present-day civilization, and, above all, the vices of moderncivilized nations. Let these men keep open minds. It would be acapital blunder to refuse to copy, and thereafter to adapt to your ownneeds, what has raised the Occident in the scale of power and justiceand clean living. But it would be a no less capital blunder to copywhat is cheap or trivial or vicious, or even what is merelywrongheaded. Let the men who go to Europe feel that they have much tolearn and much also to avoid and reject; let them bring back the goodand leave behind the discarded evil. 

Remember that character is far more important than intellect, and thata really great university should strive to develop the qualities thatgo to make up character even more than the qualities that go to makeup a highly trained mind. No man can reach the front rank if he is notintelligent and if he is not trained with intelligence; but mereintelligence by itself is worse than useless unless it is guidedby an upright heart, unless there are also strength and couragebehind it. Morality, decency, clean living, courage, manliness, self-respect--these qualities are more important in the make-up of apeople than any mental subtlety. Shape this University's course sothat it shall help in the production of a constantly upward trend forall your people. 

You should be always on your guard against one defect in Westerneducation. There has been altogether too great a tendency in thehigher schools of learning in the West to train men merely forliterary, professional, and official positions; altogether too great atendency to act as if a literary education were the only realeducation. I am exceedingly glad that you have already startedindustrial and agricultural schools in Egypt. A literary education issimply one of many different kinds of education, and it is not wisethat more than a small percentage of the people of any country shouldhave an exclusively literary education. The average man must eithersupplement it by another education, or else as soon as he has left aninstitution of learning, even though he has benefited by it, he mustat once begin to train himself to do work along totally differentlines. His Highness the Khedive, in the midst of his activitiestouching many phases of Egyptian life, has shown conspicuous wisdom, great foresight, and keen understanding of the needs of the country inthe way in which he has devoted himself to its agriculturalbetterment, in the interest which he has taken in the improvement ofcattle, crops, etc. You need in this country, as is the case in everyother country, a certain number of men whose education shall fit themfor the life of scholarship, or to become teachers or publicofficials. But it is a very unhealthy thing for any country for morethan a small proportion of the strongest and best minds of the countryto turn into such channels. It is essential also to developindustrialism, to train people so that they can be cultivators of thesoil in the largest sense on as successful a scale as the mostsuccessful lawyer or public man, to train them so that they shall beengineers, merchants--in short, men able to take the lead in all thevarious functions indispensable in a great modern civilized state. Anhonest, courageous, and far-sighted politician is a good thing in anycountry. But his usefulness will depend chiefly upon his being able toexpress the wishes of a population wherein the politician forms but afragment of the leadership, where the business man and the landowner, the engineer and the man of technical knowledge, the men of a hundreddifferent pursuits, represent the average type of leadership. Nopeople has ever permanently amounted to anything if its only publicleaders were clerks, politicians, and lawyers. The base, thefoundation, of healthy life in any country, in any society, isnecessarily composed of the men who do the actual productive work ofthe country, whether in tilling the soil, in the handicrafts, or inbusiness; and it matters little whether they work with hands or head, although more and more we are growing to realize that it is a goodthing to have the same man work with both head and hands. These men, in many different careers, do the work which is most important to thecommunity's life; although, of course, it must be supplemented by thework of the other men whose education and activities are literary andscholastic, of the men who work in politics or law, or in literary andclerical positions. 

Never forget that in any country the most important activities are theactivities of the man who works with head or hands in the ordinarylife of the community, whether he be handicraftsman, farmer, orbusiness man--no matter what his occupation, so long as it is usefuland no matter what his position, from the guiding intelligence at thetop down all the way through, just as long as his work is good. Ipreach this to you here by the banks of the Nile, and it is theidentical doctrine I preach no less earnestly by the banks of theHudson, the Mississippi, and the Columbia. 

Remember always that the securing of a substantial education, whetherby the individual or by a people, is attained only by a process, notby an act. You can no more make a man really educated by giving him acertain curriculum of studies than you can make a people fit forself-government by giving it a paper constitution. The training of anindividual so as to fit him to do good work in the world is a matterof years; just as the training of a nation to fit it successfully tofulfil the duties of self-government is a matter, not of a decade ortwo, but of generations. There are foolish empiricists who believethat the granting of a paper constitution, prefaced by somehigh-sounding declaration, of itself confers the power ofself-government upon a people. This is never so. Nobody can "give" apeople "self-government, " any more than it is possible to "give" anindividual "self-help. " You know that the Arab proverb runs, "Godhelps those who help themselves. " In the long run, the only permanentway by which an individual can be helped is to help him to helphimself, and this is one of the things your University shouldinculcate. But it must be his own slow growth in character that isthe final and determining factor in the problem. So it is with apeople. In the two Americas we have seen certain commonwealths riseand prosper greatly. We have also seen other commonwealths start underidentically the same conditions, with the same freedom and the samerights, the same guarantees, and yet have seen them fail miserably andlamentably, and sink into corruption and anarchy and tyranny, simplybecause the people for whom the constitution was made did not developthe qualities which alone would enable them to take advantage of it. With any people the essential quality to show is, not haste ingrasping after a power which it is only too easy to misuse, but aslow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities, such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit ofself-reliance, of moderation, which alone enable a people to governthemselves. In this long and even tedious but absolutely essentialprocess, I believe your University will take an important part. When Iwas recently in the Sudan I heard a vernacular proverb, based on atext in the Koran, which is so apt that, although not an Arabicscholar, I shall attempt to repeat it in Arabic: "_Allah ma elsaberin, izza sabaru_"--God is with the patient, _if they know how towait_. [6]

 [6] This bit of Arabic, admirably pronounced by Mr. Roosevelt, surprised and pleased the audience as much as his acquaintance with the life and works of Ibn Batutu surprised and pleased the sheiks at the Moslem University two days before. Both Mr. Roosevelt's use of the Arabic tongue and his application of the proverb were greeted with prolonged applause. --L. F. A. 

One essential feature of this process must be a spirit which willcondemn every form of lawless evil, every form of envy and hatred, and, above all, hatred based upon religion or race. All good men, allthe men of every nation whose respect is worth having, have beeninexpressibly shocked by the recent assassination of Boutros Pasha. Itwas an even greater calamity for Egypt than it was a wrong to theindividual himself. The type of man which turns out an assassin is atype possessing all the qualities most alien to good citizenship; thetype which produces poor soldiers in time of war and worse citizens intime of peace. Such a man stands on a pinnacle of evil infamy; andthose who apologize for or condone his act, those who, by word ordeed, directly or indirectly, encourage such an act in advance, ordefend it afterwards, occupy the same bad eminence. It is of noconsequence whether the assassin be a Moslem or a Christian or a manof no creed; whether the crime be committed in political strife orindustrial warfare; whether it be an act hired by a rich man orperformed by a poor man; whether it be committed under the pretence ofpreserving order or the pretence of obtaining liberty. It is equallyabhorrent in the eyes of all decent men, and, in the long run, equallydamaging to the very cause to which the assassin professes to bedevoted. 

Your University is a National University, and as such knows no creed. This is as it should be. When I speak of equality between Moslem andChristian, I speak as one who believes that where the Christian ismore powerful he should be scrupulous in doing justice to the Moslem, exactly as under reverse conditions justice should be done by theMoslem to the Christian. In my own country we have in the PhilippinesMoslems as well as Christians. We do not tolerate for one moment anyoppression by the one or by the other, any discrimination by theGovernment between them or failure to mete out the same justice toeach, treating each man on his worth as a man, and behaving towardshim as his conduct demands and deserves. 

In short, gentlemen, I earnestly hope that all responsible for thebeginnings of the University, which I trust will become one of thegreatest and most powerful educational influences throughout the wholeworld, will feel it incumbent upon themselves to frown on every formof wrong-doing, whether in the shape of injustice or corruption orlawlessness, and to stand with firmness, with good sense, and withcourage, for those immutable principles of justice and mercifuldealing as between man and man, without which there can never be theslightest growth towards a really fine and high civilization. 

 * * * * *

CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC

An Address Delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from theNew World who speaks before this august body in this ancientinstitution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mightykings and warlike nobles, of great masters of law and theology;through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figuresthat tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; andhe sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkshipmeant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from thedark thraldom of the Middle Ages. 

This was the most famous university of mediæval Europe at a time whenno one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its services tothe cause of human knowledge already stretched far back into theremote past at the time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, plowmen, woodchoppers, andfisherfolk who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of theIndian-haunted land, were laying the foundations of what has nowbecome the giant republic of the West. To conquer a continent, to tamethe shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and thegenerations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the storesof garnered wisdom which once were theirs, and which are still in thehands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer thewilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces withwhich mankind struggled in the immemorial infancy of our race. Theprimeval conditions must be met by primeval qualities which areincompatible with the retention of much that has been painfullyacquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward towardcivilization. In conditions so primitive there can be but a primitiveculture. At first only the rudest schools can be established, for noothers would meet the needs of the hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrustforward the frontier in the teeth of savage man and savage nature; andmany years elapse before any of these schools can develop into seatsof higher learning and broader culture. 

The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vaststretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of log cabinschange into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rudefrontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all theirlives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of anoncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization forwhich they have prepared the way. The children of their successors andsupplanters, and then their children and children's children, changeand develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuatevices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities andall the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centred, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, andblind to its own shortcomings. To the hard materialism of the frontierdays succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even moreintense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although thesethemselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex andpredominantly industrial civilization. 

As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so manylines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and thespirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better towage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a newlife, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that thelife of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is ofvalue only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the upliftthat comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus soughtcan in part be developed afresh from what is round about in the NewWorld; but it can be developed in full only by freely drawing upon thetreasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in theancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this where I speakto-day. It is a mistake for any nation merely to copy another; but itis an even greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from another, and willing and able to adaptthat learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful andproductive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feetof the Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that, Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as ascholar. 

To-day I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me andmy countrymen, because you and we are citizens of great democraticrepublics. A democratic republic such as each of ours--an effort torealize in its full sense government by, of, and for thepeople--represents the most gigantic of all possible socialexperiments, the one fraught with greatest possibilities alike forgood and for evil. The success of republics like yours and like oursmeans the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for youand for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen issupreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man orof a very few men, the quality of the rulers is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, thenthe nation may for generations lead a brilliant career, and addsubstantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low thequality of the average citizen; because the average citizen is analmost negligible quantity in working out the final results of thattype of national greatness. 

But with you and with us the case is different. With you here, andwith us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will beconditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs oflife, and next in those great occasional crises which call for theheroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if ourrepublics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higherthan the main source; and the main source of national power andnational greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard ofthe average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept highunless the standard of the leaders is very much higher. 

It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, inany democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classesrepresented in this audience to-day; but only provided that thoseclasses possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and ofdevotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received specialadvantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mentaltraining; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chancefor the enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority ofyour fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from youmuch should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against whichit is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivatedintellect, and men of inherited wealth and position, should especiallyguard themselves, because to these failings they are especiallyliable; and if yielded to, their--your--chances of useful service areat an end. 

Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of thatqueer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as thecynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man towhom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to faceit with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pridein cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of theway others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is nomore unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he whoeither really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneeringdisbelief towards all that is great and lofty, whether in achievementor in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes second toachievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness tocriticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, anintellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life'srealities--all these are marks, not, as the possessor would fainthink, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit tobear their part manfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, inthe affectation of contempt for the achievements of others, to hidefrom others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy;there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alikeat both criticism and performance. 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how thestrong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done thembetter. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strivesvaliantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there isno effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually striveto do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions;who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in theend the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if hefails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shallnever be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nordefeat. Shame on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement todevelop into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough workof a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselvesthere is but a small field of usefulness open for the men ofcloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still lessroom is there for those who deride or slight what is done by those whoactually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others whoalways profess that they would like to take action, if only theconditions of life were not what they actually are. The man who doesnothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whetherhe be cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is little use for the beingwhose tepid soul knows nothing of the great and generous emotion, ofthe high pride, the stern belief, the lofty enthusiasm, of the men whoquell the storm and ride the thunder. Well for these men if theysucceed; well also, though not so well, if they fail, given only thatthey have nobly ventured, and have put forth all their heart andstrength. It is war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of themany errors and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns wouldhave been a soldier. "

France has taught many lessons to other nations; surely one of themost important is the lesson her whole history teaches, that a highartistic and literary development is compatible with notableleadership in arms and statecraft. The brilliant gallantry of theFrench soldier has for many centuries been proverbial; and duringthese same centuries at every court in Europe the "freemasons offashion" have treated the French tongue as their common speech; whileevery artist and man of letters, and every man of science able toappreciate that marvellous instrument of precision, French prose, hasturned towards France for aid and inspiration. How long the leadershipin arms and letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the factthat the earliest masterpiece in a modern tongue is the splendidFrench epic which tells of Roland's doom and the vengeance ofCharlemagne when the lords of the Frankish host were stricken atRoncesvalles. 

Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to attain, ahigh standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let us remember thatthese stand second to certain other things. There is need of a soundbody, and even more need of a sound mind. But above mind and abovebody stands character--the sum of those qualities which we mean whenwe speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense ofhonor. I believe in exercise for the body, always provided that wekeep in mind that physical development is a means and not an end. Ibelieve, of course, in giving to all the people a good education. Butthe education must contain much besides book-learning in order to bereally good. We must ever remember that no keenness and subtleness ofintellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way make up for the lackof the great solid qualities. Self-restraint, self-mastery, common-sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility and yetof acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution--theseare the qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them nopeople can control itself, or save itself from being controlled fromthe outside. I speak to a brilliant assemblage; I speak in a greatuniversity which represents the flower of the highest intellectualdevelopment; I pay all homage to intellect, and to elaborate andspecialized training of the intellect; and yet I know I shall have theassent of all of you present when I add that more important still arethe commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues. 

Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power towork, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children. Theneed that the average man shall work is so obvious as hardly towarrant insistence. There are a few people in every country so bornthat they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a useful function ifthey make it evident that leisure does not mean idleness; for some ofthe most valuable work needed by civilization is essentiallynon-remunerative in its character, and of course the people who dothis work should in large part be drawn from those to whomremuneration is an object of indifference. But the average man mustearn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he shouldbe trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he doesnot do so; that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, atwhichever end of the social scale he stands, but an object ofcontempt, an object of derision. 

In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a braveman; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to servehis country as a soldier, if the need arises. There are well-meaningphilosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness of war. They areright only if they lay all their emphasis upon the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is unjust, not because it is war. The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this whetherthe alternative be peace or whether the alternative be war. Thequestion must not be merely, Is there to be peace or war? The questionmust be, Is the right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousnessonce more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virilepeople must be, "Yes, " whatever the cost. Every honorable effortshould always be made to avoid war; just as every honorable effortshould always be made by the individual in private life to keep out ofa brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to wrong. 

Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more importantthan ability to fight at need, is it to remember that the chief ofblessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inheritthe land. It was the crown of blessings in Biblical times; and it isthe crown of blessings now. The greatest of all curses is the curse ofsterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be thatvisited upon wilful sterility. The first essential in any civilizationis that the man and the woman shall be father and mother of healthychildren, so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If this isnot so, if through no fault of the society there is failure toincrease, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due todeliberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it isone of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking frompain and effort and risk, which in the long run Nature punishes moreheavily than any other. If we of the great republics, if we, the freepeople who claim to have emancipated ourselves from the thraldom ofwrong and error, bring down on our heads the curse that comes uponthe wilfully barren, then it will be an idle waste of breath toprattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have done. Norefinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, nosordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art andliterature, can in any way compensate for the loss of the greatfundamental virtues; and of these great fundamental virtues, thegreatest is the race's power to perpetuate the race. Character mustshow itself in the man's performance both of the duty he owes himselfand of the duty he owes the State. The man's foremost duty is owed tohimself and his family; and he can do this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being; it is onlyafter this has been done that he can hope to build a highersuperstructure on the solid material foundation; it is only after thishas been done that he can help in movements for the generalwell-being. He must pull his own weight first, and only after this canhis surplus strength be of use to the general public. It is not goodto excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and contemptis what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to benefit mankind issuch that he is a burden to those nearest him; who wishes to do greatthings for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife incomfort or educate his children. 

Neverthless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merelyacknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basisof material well-being for the individual as for the nation, let uswith equal emphasis insist that this material well-being representsnothing but the foundation, and that the foundation, thoughindispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised thesuperstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline to recognizethe mere multi-millionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset ofvalue to any country; and especially as not an asset to my owncountry. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes himof real benefit, of real use, --and such is often the case, --why, thenhe does become an asset of worth. But it is the way in which it hasbeen earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitleshim to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other formsof human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their placescannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a goodthing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But wemust not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deedrewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the servicehaving been rendered, then admiration will come only from those whoare mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain measure oftangible material success or reward has been achieved, the question ofincreasing it becomes of constantly less importance compared to otherthings that can be done in life. It is a bad thing for a nation toraise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be nofalser standard than that set by the deification of materialwell-being in and for itself. The man who, for any cause for which heis himself accountable, has failed to support himself and those forwhom he is responsible, ought to feel that he has fallen lamentablyshort in his prime duty. But the man who, having far surpassed thelimit of providing for the wants, both of body and mind, of himselfand of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, forthe acquisition or retention of which he returns no correspondingbenefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being a desirable, he is an unworthy, citizen of thecommunity; that he is to be neither admired nor envied; that hisright-thinking fellow-countrymen put him low in the scale ofcitizenship, and leave him to be consoled by the admiration of thosewhose level of purpose is even lower than his own. 

My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a fewwords. In every civilized society property rights must be carefullysafeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, humanrights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long runidentical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflictbetween them, human rights must have the upper hand, for propertybelongs to man and not man to property. 

In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to understandthat there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone toadmire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judgedadmirable or the reverse solely from the standpoint of the use made ofthem. Foremost among these I should include two very distinctgifts--the gift of money-making and the gift of oratory. Money-making, the money touch, I have spoken of above. It is a quality which in amoderate degree is essential. It may be useful when developed to avery great degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by otherqualities; and without such control the possessor tends to developinto one of the least attractive types produced by a modern industrialdemocracy. So it is with the orator. It is highly desirable that aleader of opinion in a democracy should be able to state his viewsclearly and convincingly. But all that the oratory can do of value tothe community is to enable the man thus to explain himself; if itenables the orator to persuade his hearers to put false values onthings, it merely makes him a power for mischief. Some excellentpublic servants have not the gift at all, and must rely upon theirdeeds to speak for them; and unless the oratory does represent genuineconviction, based on good common-sense and able to be translated intoefficient performance, then the better the oratory the greater thedamage to the public it deceives. Indeed, it is a sign of markedpolitical weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to becarried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and forthemselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed tostand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, howevergreat his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, andright understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. Toadmire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behindthe gift is to do wrong to the republic. 

Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater forceto the orator's latter-day and more influential brother, thejournalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitledneither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it isused aright. He can do, and he often does, great good. He can do, andhe often does, infinite mischief. All journalists, all writers, forthe very reason that they appreciate the vast possibilities of theirprofession, should bear testimony against those who deeply discreditit. Offenses against taste and morals, which are bad enough in aprivate citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments fordebauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors forthe debauchery of the public mind and conscience. The excuse advancedfor vicious writing, that the public demands it and that the demandmust be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it were advanced bythe purveyors of food who sell poisonous adulterations. 

In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that he ought topossess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails without theother. He must have those qualities which make for efficiency; and hemust also have those qualities which direct the efficiency intochannels for the public good. He is useless if he is inefficient. There is nothing to be done with that type of citizen of whom all thatcan be said is that he is harmless. Virtue which is dependent upon asluggish circulation is not impressive. There is little place inactive life for the timid good man. The man who is saved by weaknessfrom robust wickedness is likewise rendered immune from the robustervirtues. The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able tohold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability whichwill make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard. The good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficientcitizen. 

But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moralsense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the moredangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the masterfulqualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they are used merelyfor that man's own advancement, with brutal indifference to the rightsof others. It speaks ill for the community if the community worshipsthese qualities and treats their possessors as heroes regardless ofwhether the qualities are used rightly or wrongly. It makes nodifference as to the precise way in which this sinister efficiency isshown. It makes no difference whether such a man's force and abilitybetray themselves in the career of money-maker or politician, soldieror orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil, then the more successful he is the more he should be despised andcondemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man merely bysuccess is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habituallyso judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wickedman triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the lastanalysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, andthat by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit forliberty. 

The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday virtueswhich make the woman a good housewife and house-mother, which make theman a hard worker, a good husband and father, a good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of course many others must beadded thereto if a State is to be not only free but great. Goodcitizenship is not good citizenship if exhibited only in the home. There remain the duties of the individual in relation to the State, and these duties are none too easy under the conditions which existwhere the effort is made to carry on free government in a complex, industrial civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinarycitizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has toremember in political life is that he must not be a sheer doctrinaire. The closet philosopher, the refined and cultured individual who fromhis library tells how men ought to be governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the mob leader, and the insincere man who to achievepower promises what by no possibility can be performed, are notmerely useless but noxious. 

The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achievethem in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations solofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible andindeed undesirable to realize. The impracticable visionary is far lessoften the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of thereal reformer, of the man who, with stumblings and shortcomings, yetdoes in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes anddesires of those who strive for better things. Woe to the emptyphrase-maker, to the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready theground for the man of action, turns against him when he appears andhampers him as he does the work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals mustremember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not himself, in hisown life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches forothers. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must belargely determined by the success with which it can in practice berealized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whosepracticality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which findsits expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard ofhigh standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worstenemy of the body politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is hisnominal opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makesthe impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good. 

We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extremeindividualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. Individualinitiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; andyet we should remember that, as society develops and grows morecomplex, we continually find that things which once it was desirableto leave to individual initiative can, under the changed conditions, be performed with better results by common effort. It is quiteimpossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard and fastline which shall always divide the two sets of cases. This every onewho is not cursed with the pride of the closet philosopher will see, if he will only take the trouble to think about some of our commonestphenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or inlittle hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainageand water supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a givenarea produces new problems which, because they differ in size, arefound to differ not only in degree but in kind from the old; and thequestions of drainage and water supply have to be considered from thecommon standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing todecide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested bypractical experiment. Much of the discussion about socialism andindividualism is entirely pointless, because of failure to agree onterminology. It is not good to be the slave of names. I am a strongindividualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but itis a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, thecommunity, the citizens acting together, can do a number of thingsbetter than if they were left to individual action. The individualismwhich finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checkedvery early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should inour turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism whichtriumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craftinstead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man inthe effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, toturn the tool user more and more into the tool owner, to shift burdensso that they can be more equitably borne. The deadening effect on anyrace of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system couldnot be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would producegrosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality, than any existingsystem. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantageadopt certain of the principles professed by some given set of men whohappen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid to do so would beto make a mark of weakness on our part. 

But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling alie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where itdoes not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurableequality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which isdue to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a man of the plain people, blood of their blood and bone of their bone, who all his life toiledand wrought and suffered for them, and at the end died for them, whoalways strove to represent them, who would never tell an untruth to orfor them, spoke of the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture ofidealism and sound common-sense. He said (I omit what was of merelylocal significance):

 I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but that they did not mean to declare all men equal _in all respects_. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal--equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all--constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere. 

We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would makeus desist from the effort to do away with the inequality which meansinjustice; the inequality of right, of opportunity, of privilege. Weare bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as faras is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal thateach man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is inhim by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far aspossible, be equality of opportunity to render service; but just solong as there is inequality of service there should and must beinequality of reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artist, the worker in any profession or of any kind, whosemisfortune rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the reward must go to the man who does his work well; for anyother course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege offolly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever formit takes. 

To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable, ought to have the reward given to those who are far-sighted, capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and cannot be true. Let us tryto level up, but let us beware of the evil of levelling down. If a manstumbles, it is a good thing to help him to his feet. Every one of usneeds a helping hand now and then. But if a man lies down, it is awaste of time to try to carry him; and it is a very bad thing forevery one if we make men feel that the same reward will come to thosewho shirk their work and to those who do it. 

Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life, and not bemisled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium, forre-creating the golden age, until we have subjected it to hard-headedexamination. On the other hand, it is foolish to reject a proposalmerely because it is advanced by visionaries. If a given scheme isproposed, look at it on its merits, and, in considering it, disregardformulas. It does not matter in the least who proposes it, or why. Ifit seems good, try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise rejectit. There are plenty of men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next stepis one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth step maydiffer. But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind that, though ithas been worth while to take one step, this does not in the leastmean that it may not be highly disadvantageous to take the next. It isjust as foolish to refuse all progress because people demanding itdesire at some points to go to absurd extremes, as it would be to goto these absurd extremes simply because some of the measures advocatedby the extremists were wise. 

The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter ofpride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thusclaims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty inany country is the way in which minorities are treated in thatcountry. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters ofreligion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead hislife as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wronghis neighbor. Persecution is bad because it is persecution, andwithout reference to which side happens at the moment to be thepersecutor and which the persecuted. Class hatred is bad in just thesame way, and without any regard to the individual who, at a giventime, substitutes loyalty to a class for loyalty to the nation, orsubstitutes hatred of men because they happen to come in a certainsocial category, for judgment awarded them according to theirconduct. Remember always that the same measure of condemnation shouldbe extended to the arrogance which would look down upon or crush anyman because he is poor, and to the envy and hatred which would destroya man because he is wealthy. The overbearing brutality of the man ofwealth or power, and the envious and hateful malice directed againstwealth or power, are really at root merely different manifestations ofthe same quality, merely the two sides of the same shield. The manwho, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his lessfortunate brethren, is at heart the same as the greedy and violentdemagogue who excites those who have not property to plunder those whohave. The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his countrymen divideprimarily on the line that separates class from class, occupation fromoccupation, men of more wealth from men of less wealth, instead ofremembering that the only safe standard is that which judges each manon his worth as a man, whether he be rich or poor, without regard tohis profession or to his station in life. Such is the only truedemocratic test, the only test that can with propriety be applied ina republic. There have been many republics in the past, both in whatwe call antiquity and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, andthe prime factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended todivide along the line that separates wealth from poverty. It made nodifference which side was successful; it made no difference whetherthe republic fell under the rule of an oligarchy or the rule of a mob. In either case, when once loyalty to a class had been substituted forloyalty to the republic, the end of the republic was at hand. There isno greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the factthat the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenshipand bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation andoccupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by hisposition instead of judging him by his conduct in that position. 

In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity ofconviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Widedifferences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and socialbelief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to bestunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. Bitter internecinehatreds, based on such differences, are signs, not of earnestness ofbelief, but of that fanaticism which, whether religious oranti-religious, democratic or anti-democratic, is itself but amanifestation of the gloomy bigotry which has been the chief factor inthe downfall of so many, many nations. 

Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens of arepublic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them tosupport him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of therepublic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape oranother, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. Itmakes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or classinterest, to religious or anti-religious prejudice. The man who makessuch an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake offurthering his own interest. The very last thing that an intelligentand self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is toreward any public man because that public man says he will get theprivate citizen something to which this private citizen is notentitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which thisprivate citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this by oneanecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I was engagedin cattle-ranching on the great plains of the western United States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free, the ownership of eachbeing determined by the brand; the calves were branded with the brandof the cows they followed. If on the round-up an animal was passed by, the following year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and wasthen called a maverick. By the custom of the country these maverickswere branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we cameupon a maverick. We roped and threw it; then we built a little fire, took out a cinch-ring, heated it at the fire; and the cowboy startedto put on the brand. I said to him, "It is So-and-so's brand, " namingthe man on whose range we happened to be. He answered: "That's allright, boss; I know my business. " In another moment I said to him, "Hold on, you are putting on my brand!" To which he answered, "That'sall right; I always put on the boss's brand. " I answered, "Oh, verywell. Now you go straight back to the ranch and get what is owing toyou; I don't need you any longer. " He jumped up and said: "Why, what'sthe matter? I was putting on your brand. " And I answered: "Yes, myfriend, and if you will steal _for_ me you will steal _from_ me. "

Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies also inpublic life. If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that hewill do something wrong _in_ your interest, you can be absolutelycertain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do somethingwrong _against_ your interest. 

So much for the citizenship of the individual in his relations to hisfamily, to his neighbor, to the State. There remain duties ofcitizenship which the State, the aggregation of all the individuals, owes in connection with other states, with other nations. Let me sayat once that I am no advocate of a foolish cosmopolitanism. I believethat a man must be a good patriot before he can be, and as the onlypossible way of being, a good citizen of the world. Experience teachesus that the average man who protests that his international feelingswamps his national feeling, that he does not care for his countrybecause he cares so much for mankind, in actual practice proveshimself the foe of mankind; that the man who says that he does notcare to be a citizen of any one country, because he is a citizen ofthe world, is in very fact usually an exceedingly undesirable citizenof whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in. Inthe dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change; but atpresent, if a man can view his own country and all other countriesfrom the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise to distrusthim, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can take the samedispassionate view of his wife and his mother. However broad and deepa man's sympathies, however intense his activities, he need have nofear that they will be cramped by love of his native land. 

Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should not wish to dogood outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I think thatthe man who loves his family is more apt to be a good neighbor thanthe man who does not, so I think that the most useful member of thefamily of nations is normally a strongly patriotic nation. So far frompatriotism being inconsistent with a proper regard for the rights ofother nations, I hold that the true patriot, who is as jealous of thenational honor as a gentleman is of his own honor, will be careful tosee that the nation neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as agentleman scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others to wronghim. I do not for one moment admit that political morality isdifferent from private morality, that a promise made on the stumpdiffers from a promise made in private life. I do not for one momentadmit that a man should act deceitfully as a public servant in hisdealings with other nations, any more than that he should actdeceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with other privatecitizens. I do not for one moment admit that a nation should treatother nations in a different spirit from that in which an honorableman would treat other men. 

In practically applying this principle to the two sets of cases thereis, of course, a great practical difference to be taken into account. We speak of international law; but international law is somethingwholly different from private or municipal law, and the capitaldifference is that there is a sanction for the one and no sanction forthe other; that there is an outside force which compels individuals toobey the one, while there is no such outside force to compelobedience as regards the other. International law will, I believe, asthe generations pass, grow stronger and stronger until in some way orother there develops the power to make it respected. But as yet it isonly in the first formative period. As yet, as a rule, each nation isof necessity obliged to judge for itself in matters of vitalimportance between it and its neighbors, and actions must ofnecessity, where this is the case, be different from what they arewhere, as among private citizens, there is an outside force whoseaction is all-powerful and must be invoked in any crisis ofimportance. It is the duty of wise statesmen, gifted with the power oflooking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every movement whichwill substitute or tend to substitute some other agency for force inthe settlement of international disputes. It is the duty of everyhonest statesman to try to guide the nation so that it shall not wrongany other nation. But as yet the great civilized peoples, if they areto be true to themselves and to the cause of humanity andcivilization, must keep ever in mind that in the last resort they mustpossess both the will and the power to resent wrong-doing from others. The men who sanely believe in a lofty morality preach righteousness;but they do not preach weakness, whether among private citizens oramong nations. We believe that our ideals should be high, but not sohigh as to make it impossible measurably to realize them. We sincerelyand earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, wescorn the man who would not stand for justice though the whole worldcame in arms against him. 

And now, my hosts, a word in parting. You and I belong to the only twoRepublics among the great powers of the world. The ancient friendshipbetween France and the United States has been, on the whole, a sincereand disinterested friendship. A calamity to you would be a sorrow tous. But it would be more than that. In the seething turmoil of thehistory of humanity certain nations stand out as possessing a peculiarpower or charm, some special gift of beauty or wisdom or strength, which puts them among the immortals, which makes them rank foreverwith the leaders of mankind. France is one of these nations. For herto sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons ofbrilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better thanany of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang ofMalbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took flightupward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven centuries ago, Froissart, writing of a time of dire disaster, said that the realm ofFrance was never so stricken that there were not left men who wouldvaliantly fight for it. You have had a great past. I believe that youwill have a great future. Long may you carry yourselves proudly ascitizens of a nation which bears a leading part in the teaching anduplifting of mankind. 

 * * * * *

INTERNATIONAL PEACE

An Address before the Nobel Prize Committee Delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910

It is with peculiar pleasure that I stand here to-day to express thedeep appreciation I feel of the high honor conferred upon me by thepresentation of the Nobel Peace Prize. [7] The gold medal which formedpart of the prize I shall always keep, and I shall hand it on to mychildren as a precious heirloom. The sum of money provided as part ofthe prize by the wise generosity of the illustrious founder of thisworld-famous prize system I did not, under the peculiar circumstancesof the case, feel at liberty to keep. I think it eminently just andproper that in most cases the recipient of the prize should keep forhis own use the prize in its entirety. But in this case, while I didnot act officially as President of the United States, it wasnevertheless only because I was President that I was enabled to act atall; and I felt that the money must be considered as having been givenme in trust for the United States. I therefore used it as a nucleusfor a foundation to forward the cause of industrial peace, as beingwell within the general purpose of your Committee; for in our complexindustrial civilization of to-day the peace of righteousness andjustice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessaryin the industrial world as it is among nations. There is at least asmuch need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the worldof capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the worldof labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism ininternational relationships. 

 [7] Awarded to Mr. Roosevelt for his acts as mediator between Russia and Japan which resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth and the ending of the Russo-Japanese war. --L. F. A. 

We must ever bear in mind that the great end in view is righteousness, justice as between man and man, nation and nation, the chance to leadour lives on a somewhat higher level, with a broader spirit ofbrotherly good-will one for another. Peace is generally good initself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as thehandmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if itserves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrumentto further the ends of despotism or anarchy. We despise and abhor thebully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life;but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worthcalling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or seethose that are dear to him suffer wrong. No nation deserves to existif it permits itself to lose the stern and virile virtues; and thiswithout regard to whether the loss is due to the growth of a heartlessand all-absorbing commercialism, to prolonged indulgence in luxury andsoft effortless ease, or to the deification of a warped and twistedsentimentality. 

Moreover, and above all, let us remember that words count only whenthey give expression to deeds or are to be translated into them. Theleaders of the Red Terror prattled of peace while they steeped theirhands in the blood of the innocent; and many a tyrant has called itpeace when he has scourged honest protest into silence. Our words mustbe judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must usepractical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we mustadvance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we doactually make some progress in the right direction. 

Now, having freely admitted the limitations to our work, and thequalifications to be borne in mind, I feel that I have the right tohave my words taken seriously when I point out where, in my judgment, great advance can be made in the cause of international peace. I speakas a practical man, and whatever I now advocate I actually tried to dowhen I was for the time being the head of a great nation, and keenlyjealous of its honor and interest. I ask other nations to do only whatI should be glad to see my own nation do. 

The advance can be made along several lines. First of all, there canbe treaties of arbitration. There are, of course, states so backwardthat a civilized community ought not to enter into an arbitrationtreaty with them, at least until we have gone much further than atpresent in securing some kind of international police action. But allreally civilized communities should have effective arbitrationtreaties among themselves. I believe that these treaties can coveralmost all questions liable to arise between such nations, if they aredrawn with the explicit agreement that each contracting party willrespect the other's territory and its absolute sovereignty withinthat territory, and the equally explicit agreement that (aside fromthe very rare cases where the nation's honor is vitally concerned) allother possible subjects of controversy will be submitted toarbitration. Such a treaty would insure peace unless one partydeliberately violated it. Of course, as yet there is no adequatesafeguard against such deliberate violation, but the establishment ofa sufficient number of these treaties would go a long way towardscreating a world opinion which would finally find expression in theprovision of methods to forbid or punish any such violation. 

Secondly, there is the further development of The Hague Tribunal, ofthe work of the conferences and courts at The Hague. It has been wellsaid that the first Hague Conference framed a Magna Charta for thenations; it set before us an ideal which has already to some extentbeen realized, and towards the full realization of which we can allsteadily strive. The second Conference made further progress; thethird should do yet more. Meanwhile the American Government has morethan once tentatively suggested methods for completing the Court ofArbitral Justice, constituted at the second Hague Conference, and forrendering it effective. It is earnestly to be hoped that the variousGovernments of Europe, working with those of America and of Asia, shall set themselves seriously to the task of devising some methodwhich shall accomplish this result. If I may venture the suggestion, it would be well for the statesmen of the world in planning for theerection of this world court, to study what has been done in theUnited States by the Supreme Court. I cannot help thinking that theConstitution of the United States, notably in the establishment of theSupreme Court and in the methods adopted for securing peace and goodrelations among and between the different States, offers certainvaluable analogies to what should be striven for in order to secure, through The Hague courts and conferences, a species of worldfederation for international peace and justice. There are, of course, fundamental differences between what the United States Constitutiondoes and what we should even attempt at this time to secure at TheHague; but the methods adopted in the American Constitution to preventhostilities between the States, and to secure the supremacy of theFederal Court in certain classes of cases, are well worth the studyof those who seek at The Hague to obtain the same results on a worldscale. 

In the third place, something should be done as soon as possible tocheck the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments, byinternational agreement. No one Power could or should act by itself;for it is eminently undesirable, from the standpoint of the peace ofrighteousness, that a Power which really does believe in peace shouldplace itself at the mercy of some rival which may at bottom have nosuch belief and no intention of acting on it. But, granted sincerityof purpose, the great Powers of the world should find noinsurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put anend to the present costly and growing extravagance of expenditure onnaval armaments. An agreement merely to limit the size of ships wouldhave been very useful a few years ago, and would still be of use; butthe agreement should go much further. 

Finally, it would be a master stroke if those great Powers honestlybent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peaceamong themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its beingbroken by others. The supreme difficulty in connection with developingthe peace work of The Hague arises from the lack of any executivepower, of any police power, to enforce the decrees of the court. Inany community of any size the authority of the courts rests uponactual or potential force; on the existence of a police, or on theknowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready andwilling to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies areput into effect. In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securinghis safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade himto surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the communityretain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself byhis own efforts until the community is so organized that it caneffectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting downviolence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well preparedto defend itself until the establishment of some form of internationalpolice power, competent and willing to prevent violence as betweennations. As things are now, such power to command peace throughout theworld could best be assured by some combination between those greatnations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselvesof committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only tosecure peace within certain definite limits and certain definiteconditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such acombination would have earned his place in history for all time andhis title to the gratitude of all mankind. 

 * * * * *

THE COLONIAL POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES

An Address Delivered at Christiania, Norway, on the Evening of May 5, 1910

When I first heard that I was to speak again this evening, my heartfailed me. But directly after hearing Mr. Bratlie[8] I feel that it isa pleasure to say one or two things; and before saying them, let meexpress my profound acknowledgment for your words. You have been notonly more than just but more than generous. Because I have been sokindly treated, I am going to trespass on your kindness still further, and say a word or two about my own actions while I was President. I donot speak of them, my friends, save to illustrate the thesis that Iespecially uphold, that the man who has the power to act is to bejudged not by his words but by his acts--by his words in so far asthey agree with his acts. All that I say about peace I wish to havejudged and measured by what I actually did as President. 

 [8] See the Introduction. --L. F. A. 

I was particularly pleased by what you said about our course, thecourse of the American people, in connection with the Philippines andCuba. I believe that we have the Cuban Minister here with us to-night?[A voice: "Yes. "] Well, then, we have a friend who can check off whatI am going to say. At the close of the war of '98 we found our army inpossession of Cuba, and man after man among the European diplomats ofthe old school said to me: "Oh, you will never go out of Cuba. Yousaid you would, of course, but that is quite understood; nations don'texpect promises like that to be kept. " As soon as I became President, I said, "Now you will see that the promise will be kept. " We appointeda day when we would leave Cuba. On that day Cuba began its existenceas an independent republic. Later there came a disaster, there came arevolution, and we were obliged to land troops again, while I wasPresident, and then the same gentlemen with whom I had conversedbefore said: "Now you are relieved from your promise; your promise hasbeen kept, and now you will stay in Cuba. " I answered: "No, we shallnot. We will keep the promise not only in the letter but in thespirit. We will stay in Cuba to help it on its feet, and then we willleave the island in better shape to maintain its permanent independentexistence. " And before I left the Presidency Cuba resumed its careeras a separate republic, holding its head erect as a sovereign stateamong the other nations of the earth. All that our people want is justexactly what the Cuban people themselves want--that is, a continuanceof order within the island, and peace and prosperity, so that thereshall be no shadow of an excuse for any outside intervention. 

We acted along the same general lines in the case of San Domingo. Weintervened only so far as to prevent the need of taking possession ofthe island. None of you will know of this, so I will just tell youbriefly what it was that we did. The Republic of San Domingo, in theWest Indies, had suffered from a good many revolutions. In oneparticular period when I had to deal with the island, while I wasPresident, it was a little difficult to know what to do, because therewere two separate governments in the island, and a revolution going onagainst each. A number of dictators, under the title of President, hadseized power at different times, had borrowed money at exorbitantrates of interest from Europeans and Americans, and had pledged thecustom-houses of the different towns to different countries; and thechief object of each revolutionary was to get hold of thecustom-houses. Things got to such a pass that it became evident thatcertain European Powers would land and take possession of parts of theisland. We then began negotiations with the Government of the island. We sent down ships to keep within limits various preposterous littlemanifestations of the revolutionary habit, and, after somenegotiations, we concluded an agreement. It was agreed that we shouldput a man in as head of the custom-houses, that the collection ofcustoms should be entirely under the management of that man, and thatno one should be allowed to interfere with the custom-houses. Revolutions could go on outside them without interference from us; butthe custom-houses were not to be touched. We agreed to turn over tothe San Domingo Government forty-five per cent. Of the revenue, keeping fifty-five per cent. As a fund to be applied to a settlementwith the creditors. The creditors also acquiesced in what we had done, and we started the new arrangement. I found considerable difficultyin getting the United States Senate to ratify the treaty, but I wentahead anyhow and executed it until it was ratified. Finally it wasratified, for the opposition was a purely factious opposition, representing the smallest kind of politics with a leaven of even basermotive. Under the treaty we have turned over to the San DomingoGovernment forty-five per cent. Of the revenues collected, and yet wehave turned over nearly double as much as they ever got when theycollected it _all_ themselves. In addition, we have collectedsufficient to make it certain that the creditors will receive everycent to which they are entitled. It is self-evident, therefore, thatin this affair we gave a proof of our good faith. We might have takenpossession of San Domingo. Instead of thus taking possession, we putinto the custom-houses one head man and half a dozen assistants, tosee that the revenues were honestly collected, and at the same timeserved notice that they should not be forcibly taken away; and theresult has been an extraordinary growth of the tranquillity andprosperity of the islands, while at the same time the creditors areequally satisfied, and all danger of outside interference has ceased. 

That incident illustrates two things: First, if a nation acts in goodfaith, it can often bring about peace without abridging the libertiesof another nation. Second, our experience emphasizes the fact (whichevery Peace Association should remember) that the hystericalsentimentalist for peace is a mighty poor person to follow. I wasactually assailed, right and left, by the more extreme members of thepeace propaganda in the United States for what I did in San Domingo;most of the other professional peace advocates took no interest in thematter, or were tepidly hostile; however, I went straight ahead anddid the job. The ultra-peace people attacked me on the ground that Ihad "declared war" against San Domingo, the "war" taking the shape ofthe one man put in charge of the custom-houses! This will seem to youincredible, but I am giving you an absolutely accurate account of whatoccurred. I disregarded those foolish people, as I shall alwaysdisregard sentimentalists of that type when they are guilty of folly. At the present we have comparative peace and prosperity in the island, in consequence of my action, and of my disregard of these self-styledadvocates of peace. 

The same reasoning applies in connection with what we did at theIsthmus of Panama, and what we are doing in the Philippines. Ourcolonial problems in the Philippines are not the same as the colonialproblems of other Powers. We have in the Philippines a people mainlyAsiatic in blood, but with a streak of European blood and with thetraditions of European culture, so that their ideals are largely theideals of Europe. At the moment when we entered the islands the peoplewere hopelessly unable to stand alone. If we had abandoned theislands, we should have left them a prey to anarchy for some months, and then they would have been seized by some other Power ready toperform the task that we had not been able to perform. Now I hold thatit is not worth while being a big nation if you cannot do a big task;I care not whether that task is digging the Panama Canal or handlingthe Philippines. In the Philippines I feel that the day willultimately come when the Philippine people must settle for themselveswhether they wish to be entirely independent, or in some shape to keepup a connection with us. The day has not yet come; it may not come fora generation or two. One of the greatest friends that liberty has everhad, the great British statesman Burke, said on one occasion thatthere must always be government, and that if there is not governmentfrom within, then it must be supplied from without. A child has to begoverned from without, because it has not yet grown to a point when itcan govern itself from within; and a people that shows itself totallyunable to govern itself from within must expect to submit to more orless of government from without, because it cannot continue to existon other terms--indeed, it cannot be permitted permanently to exist asa source of danger to other nations. Our aim in the Philippines is totrain the people so that they may govern themselves from within. Untilthey have reached this point they cannot have self-government. I willnever advocate self-government for a people so long as theirself-government means crime, violence, and extortion, corruptionwithin, lawlessness among themselves and towards others. If that iswhat self-government means to any people then they ought to begoverned by others until they can do better. 

What I have related represents a measure of practical achievement inthe way of helping forward the cause of peace and justice, and ofgiving to different peoples freedom of action according to thecapacities of each. It is not possible, as the world is nowconstituted, to treat every nation as one private individual can treatall other private individuals, because as yet there is no way ofenforcing obedience to law among nations as there is among privateindividuals. If in the streets of this city a man walks about with theintent to kill somebody, if he manages his house so that it becomes asource of infection to the neighborhood, the community, with its lawofficers, deals with him forthwith. That is just what happened atPanama, and, as nobody else was able to deal with the matter, I dealtwith it myself, on behalf of the United States Government, and now theCanal is being dug, and the people of Panama have their independenceand a prosperity hitherto unknown in that country. 

In the end, I firmly believe that some method will be devised by whichthe people of the world, as a whole, will be able to insure peace, asit cannot now be insured. How soon that end will come I do not know;it may be far distant; and until it does come I think that, while weshould give all the support that we can to any possible feasiblescheme for quickly bringing about such a state of affairs, yet weshould meanwhile do the more practicable, though less sensational, things. Let us advance step by step; let us, for example, endeavor toincrease the number of arbitration treaties and enlarge the methodsfor obtaining peaceful settlements. Above all, let us strive to awakenthe public international conscience, so that it shall be expected, andexpected efficiently, of the public men responsible for the managementof any nation's affairs that those affairs shall be conducted with allproper regard for the interests and well-being of other Powers, greator small. 

 * * * * *

THE WORLD MOVEMENT

An Address Delivered at the University of Berlin, May 12, 1910

I very highly appreciate the chance to address the University ofBerlin in the year that closes its first centenary of existence. It isdifficult for you in the Old World fully to appreciate the feelings ofa man who comes from a nation still in the making, to a country withan immemorial historic past; and especially is this the case when thatcountry, with its ancient past behind it, yet looks with proudconfidence into the future, and in the present shows all the aboundingvigor of lusty youth. Such is the case with Germany. More than athousand years have passed since the Roman Empire of the West becamein fact a German Empire. Throughout mediæval times the Empire and thePapacy were the two central features in the history of the Occident. With the Ottos and the Henrys began the slow rise of that Westernlife which has shaped modern Europe, and therefore ultimately thewhole modern world. Their task was to organize society and to keep itfrom crumbling to pieces. They were castle-builders, city-founders, road-makers; they battled to bring order out of the seethingturbulence around them; and at the same time they first beat backheathendom and then slowly wrested from it its possessions. 

After the downfall of Rome and the breaking in sunder of the RomanEmpire, the first real crystallization of the forces that were workingfor a new uplift of civilization in Western Europe was round theKarling House, and, above all, round the great Emperor, Karl theGreat, the seat of whose Empire was at Aachen. Under the Karlings theArab and the Moor were driven back beyond the Pyrenees; the last ofthe old heathen Germans were forced into Christianity, and the Avars, wild horsemen from the Asian steppes, who had long held tenteddominion in Middle Europe, were utterly destroyed. With the break-upof the Karling Empire came chaos once more, and a fresh inrush ofsavagery: Vikings from the frozen North, and new hordes of outlandishriders from Asia. It was the early Emperors of Germany proper whoquelled these barbarians; in their time Dane and Norseman and Magyarbecame Christians, and most of the Slav peoples as well, so thatEurope began to take on a shape which we can recognize to-day. Sincethen the centuries have rolled by, with strange alternations offortune, now well-nigh barren, and again great with German achievementin arms and in government, in science and the arts. The centre ofpower shifted hither and thither within German lands; the great houseof Hohenzollern rose, the house which has at last seen Germany springinto a commanding position in the very forefront among the nations ofmankind. 

To this ancient land, with its glorious past and splendid present, tothis land of many memories and of eager hopes, I come from a youngnation, which is by blood akin to, and yet different from, each of thegreat nations of Middle and Western Europe; which has inherited oracquired much from each, but is changing and developing everyinheritance and acquisition into something new and strange. The Germanstrain in our blood is large, for almost from the beginning there hasbeen a large German element among the successive waves of newcomerswhose children's children have been and are being fused into theAmerican nation; and I myself trace my origin to that branch of theLow Dutch stock which raised Holland out of the North Sea. Moreover, we have taken from you, not only much of the blood that runs throughour veins, but much of the thought that shapes our minds. Forgenerations American scholars have flocked to your universities, and, thanks to the wise foresight of his Imperial Majesty the presentEmperor, the intimate and friendly connection between the twocountries is now in every way closer than it has ever been before. 

Germany is pre-eminently a country in which the world movement ofto-day in all of its multitudinous aspects is plainly visible. Thelife of this University covers the period during which that movementhas spread until it is felt throughout every continent; while itsvelocity has been constantly accelerating, so that the face of theworld has changed, and is now changing, as never before. It istherefore fit and appropriate here to speak on this subject. 

When, in the slow procession of the ages, man was developed on thisplanet, the change worked by his appearance was at first slight. Further ages passed, while he groped and struggled by infinitesimaldegrees upward through the lower grades of savagery; for the generallaw is that life which is advanced and complex, whatever its nature, changes more quickly than simpler and less advanced forms. The life ofsavages changes and advances with extreme slowness, and groups ofsavages influence one another but little. The first rudimentarybeginnings of that complex life of communities which we callcivilization marked a period when man had already long been by far themost important creature on the planet. The history of the living worldhad become, in fact, the history of man, and therefore somethingtotally different in kind as well as in degree from what it had beenbefore. There are interesting analogies between what has gone on inthe development of life generally and what has gone on in thedevelopment of human society, and these I shall discuss elsewhere. [9]But the differences are profound, and go to the root of things. 

 [9] In the Romanes Lecture at Oxford. --L. F. A. 

Throughout their early stages the movements of civilization--for, properly speaking, there was no one movement--were very slow, werelocal in space, and were partial in the sense that each developedalong but few lines. Of the numberless years that covered these earlystages we have no record. They were the years that saw suchextraordinary discoveries and inventions as fire, and the wheel, andthe bow, and the domestication of animals. So local were theseinventions that at the present day there yet linger savage tribes, still fixed in the half-bestial life of an infinitely remote past, whoknow none of them except fire--and the discovery and use of fire mayhave marked, not the beginning of civilization, but the beginning ofthe savagery which separated man from brute. 

Even after civilization and culture had achieved a relatively highposition, they were still purely local, and from this fact subject toviolent shocks. Modern research has shown the existence in prehistoricor, at least, protohistoric times of many peoples who, in givenlocalities, achieved a high and peculiar culture, a culture that waslater so completely destroyed that it is difficult to say what, ifany, traces it left on the subsequent cultures out of which we havedeveloped our own; while it is also difficult to say exactly how muchany one of these cultures influenced any other. In many cases, aswhere invaders with weapons of bronze or iron conquered the neolithicpeoples, the higher civilization completely destroyed the lowercivilization, or barbarism, with which it came in contact. In othercases, while superiority in culture gave its possessors at thebeginning a marked military and governmental superiority over theneighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it acertain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk atthe mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savagesouls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people thathad been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling wavesof barbarism wash over them. But we are not yet in position to speakdefinitely on these matters. It is only the researches of recent yearsthat have enabled us so much as to guess at the course of events inprehistoric Greece; while as yet we can hardly even hazard a guess asto how, for instance, the Hallstadt culture rose and fell, or as tothe history and fate of the builders of those strange ruins of whichStonehenge is the type. 

The first civilizations which left behind them clear records rose inthat hoary historic past which geologically is part of the immediatepresent--and which is but a span's length from the present, even whencompared only with the length of time that man has lived on thisplanet. These first civilizations were those which rose in Mesopotamiaand the Nile valley some six or eight thousand years ago. As far as wecan see, they were well-nigh independent centres of culturaldevelopment, and our knowledge is not such at present as to enable usto connect either with the early cultural movements, in southwesternEurope on the one hand, or in India on the other, or with that Chinesecivilization which has been so profoundly affected by Indianinfluences. 

Compared with the civilizations with which we are best acquainted, thestriking features in the Mesopotamian and Nilotic civilizations werethe length of time they endured and their comparative changelessness. The kings, priests, and peoples who dwelt by the Nile or Euphrates arefound thinking much the same thoughts, doing much the same deeds, leaving at least very similar records, while time passes in tens ofcenturies. Of course there was change; of course there were action andreaction in influence between them and their neighbors; and themovement of change, of development, material, mental, spiritual, wasmuch faster than anything that had occurred during the æons of meresavagery. But in contradistinction to modern times the movement wasvery slow indeed, and, moreover, in each case it was stronglylocalized; while the field of endeavor was narrow. There were certainconquests by man over nature; there were certain conquests in thedomain of pure intellect; there were certain extensions which spreadthe area of civilized mankind. But it would be hard to speak of it asa "world movement" at all; for by far the greater part of thehabitable globe was not only unknown, but its existence unguessed at, so far as peoples with any civilization whatsoever were concerned. 

With the downfall of these ancient civilizations there sprang intoprominence those peoples with whom our own cultural history may besaid to begin. Those ideas and influences in our lives which we canconsciously trace back at all are in the great majority of instancesto be traced to the Jew, the Greek, or the Roman; and the ordinaryman, when he speaks of the nations of antiquity, has in mindspecifically these three peoples--although, judged even by the historyof which we have record, theirs is a very modern antiquity indeed. 

The case of the Jew was quite exceptional. His was a small nation, oflittle more consequence than the sister nations of Moab and Damascus, until all three, and the other petty states of the country, fell underthe yoke of the alien. Then he survived, while all his fellows died. In the spiritual domain he contributed a religion which has been themost potent of all factors in its effect on the subsequent history ofmankind; but none of his other contributions compare with the legaciesleft us by the Greek and the Roman. 

The Græco-Roman world saw a civilization far more brilliant, far morevaried and intense, than any that had gone before it, and one thataffected a far larger share of the world's surface. For the first timethere began to be something which at least foreshadowed a "worldmovement" in the sense that it affected a considerable portion of theworld's surface and that it represented what was incomparably the mostimportant of all that was happening in world history at the time. Inbreadth and depth the field of intellectual interest had greatlybroadened at the same time that the physical area affected by thecivilization had similarly extended. Instead of a civilizationaffecting only one river valley or one nook of the Mediterranean, there was a civilization which directly or indirectly influencedmankind from the Desert of Sahara to the Baltic, from the AtlanticOcean to the westernmost mountain chains that spring from theHimalayas. Throughout most of this region there began to work certaininfluences which, though with widely varying intensity, didnevertheless tend to affect a large portion of mankind. In many of theforms of science, in almost all the forms of art, there was greatactivity. In addition to great soldiers there were greatadministrators and statesmen whose concern was with the fundamentalquestions of social and civil life. Nothing like the width and varietyof intellectual achievement and understanding had ever before beenknown; and for the first time we come across great intellectualleaders, great philosophers and writers, whose works are a part of allthat is highest in modern thought, whose writings are as alive to-dayas when they were first issued; and there were others of even moredaring and original temper, a philosopher like Democritus, a poet likeLucretius, whose minds leaped ahead through the centuries and saw whatnone of their contemporaries saw, but who were so hampered by theirsurroundings that it was physically impossible for them to leave tothe later world much concrete addition to knowledge. The civilizationwas one of comparatively rapid change, viewed by the standard ofBabylon and Memphis. There was incessant movement; and, moreover, thewhole system went down with a crash to seeming destruction after aperiod short compared with that covered by the reigns of a score ofEgyptian dynasties, or with the time that elapsed between a Babyloniandefeat by Elam and a war sixteen centuries later which fully avengedit. 

This civilization flourished with brilliant splendor. Then it fell. Inits northern seats it was overwhelmed by a wave of barbarism fromamong those half-savage peoples from whom you and I, my hearers, traceour descent. In the south and east it was destroyed later, but farmore thoroughly, by invaders of an utterly different type. Bothconquests were of great importance; but it was the northern conquestwhich in its ultimate effects was of by far the greatest importance. 

With the advent of the Dark Ages the movement of course ceased, and itdid not begin anew for many centuries; while a thousand years passedbefore it was once more in full swing, so far as Europeancivilization, so far as the world civilization of to-day, isconcerned. During all those centuries the civilized world, in ouracceptation of the term, was occupied, as its chief task, in slowlyclimbing back to the position from which it had fallen after the ageof the Antonines. Of course a general statement like this must beaccepted with qualifications. There is no hard and fast line betweenone age or period and another, and in no age is either progress orretrogression universal in all things. There were many points in whichthe Middle Ages, because of the simple fact that they were Christian, surpassed the brilliant pagan civilization of the past; and there aresome points in which the civilization that succeeded them has sunkbelow the level of the ages which saw such mighty masterpieces ofpoetry, of architecture--especially cathedral architecture--and ofserene spiritual and forceful lay leadership. But they were centuriesof violence, rapine, and cruel injustice; and truth was so littleheeded that the noble and daring spirits who sought it, especially inits scientific form, did so in deadly peril of the fagot and thehalter. 

During this period there were several very important extra-Europeanmovements, one or two of which deeply affected Europe. Islam arose, and conquered far and wide, uniting fundamentally different races intoa brotherhood of feeling which Christianity has never been able torival, and at the time of the Crusades profoundly influencing Europeanculture. It produced a civilization of its own, brilliant and here andthere useful, but hopelessly limited when compared with thecivilization of which we ourselves are the heirs. The great culturedpeoples of southeastern and eastern Asia continued their checkereddevelopment totally unaffected by, and without knowledge of, anyEuropean influence. 

Throughout the whole period there came against Europe, out of theunknown wastes of central Asia, an endless succession of strange andterrible conqueror races whose mission was mere destruction--Hun andAvar, Mongol, Tartar, and Turk. These fierce and squalid tribes ofwarrior horsemen flailed mankind with red scourges, wasted anddestroyed, and then vanished from the ground they had overrun. But inno way worth noting did they count in the advance of mankind. 

At last, a little over four hundred years ago, the movement towards aworld civilization took up its interrupted march. The beginning of themodern movement may roughly be taken as synchronizing with thediscovery of printing, and with that series of bold sea ventures whichculminated in the discovery of America; and after these two epochalfeats had begun to produce their full effects in material andintellectual life, it became inevitable that civilization shouldthereafter differ not only in degree but even in kind from all thathad gone before. Immediately after the voyages of Columbus and Vascoda Gama there began a tremendous religious ferment; the awakening ofintellect went hand in hand with the moral uprising; the great namesof Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo show that the mind of manwas breaking the fetters that had cramped it; and for the first timeexperimentation was used as a check upon observation and theorization. Since then, century by century, the changes have increased in rapidityand complexity, and have attained their maximum in both respectsduring the century just past. Instead of being directed by one or twodominant peoples, as was the case with all similar movements of thepast, the new movement was shared by many different nations. Fromevery standpoint it has been of infinitely greater moment thananything hitherto seen. Not in one but in many different peoples therehas been extraordinary growth in wealth, in population, in power oforganization, and in mastery over mechanical activity and naturalresources. All of this has been accompanied and signalized by animmense outburst of energy and restless initiative. The result is asvaried as it is striking. 

In the first place, representatives of this civilization, by theirconquest of space, were enabled to spread into all the practicallyvacant continents, while at the same time, by their triumphs inorganization and mechanical invention, they acquired an unheard-ofmilitary superiority as compared with their former rivals. To thesetwo facts is primarily due the further fact that for the first timethere is really something that approaches a world civilization, aworld movement. The spread of the European peoples since the days ofFerdinand the Catholic and Ivan the Terrible has been across every seaand over every continent. In places the conquests have been ethnic;that is, there has been a new wandering of the peoples, and newcommonwealths have sprung up in which the people are entirely ormainly of European blood. This is what happened in the temperate andsub-tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, in Australia, inportions of northern Asia and southern Africa. In other places theconquest has been purely political, the Europeans representing for themost part merely a small caste of soldiers and administrators, as inmost of tropical Asia and Africa and in much of tropical America. Finally, here and there instances occur where there has been noconquest at all, but where an alien people is profoundly and radicallychanged by the mere impact of Western civilization. The mostextraordinary instance of this, of course, is Japan; for Japan'sgrowth and change during the last half-century has been in many waysthe most striking phenomenon of all history. Intensely proud of herpast history, intensely loyal to certain of her past traditions, shehas yet with a single effort wrenched herself free from all hamperingancient ties, and with a bound has taken her place among the leadingcivilized nations of mankind. 

There are of course many grades between these different types ofinfluence, but the net outcome of what has occurred during the lastfour centuries is that civilization of the European type now exercisesa more or less profound effect over practically the entire world. There are nooks and corners to which it has not yet penetrated; butthere is at present no large space of territory in which the generalmovement of civilized activity does not make itself more or less felt. This represents something wholly different from what has ever hithertobeen seen. In the greatest days of Roman dominion the influence ofRome was felt over only a relatively small portion of the world'ssurface. Over much the larger part of the world the process of changeand development was absolutely unaffected by anything that occurred inthe Roman Empire; and those communities the play of whose influencewas felt in action and reaction, and in inter-action, amongthemselves, were grouped immediately around the Mediterranean. Now, however, the whole world is bound together as never before; the bondsare sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but they are bondsnevertheless. 

Frowning or hopeful, every man of leadership in any line of thought oreffort must now look beyond the limits of his own country. The studentof sociology may live in Berlin or St. Petersburg, Rome or London, orhe may live in Melbourne or San Francisco or Buenos Aires; but inwhatever city he lives, he must pay heed to the studies of men wholive in each of the other cities. When in America we study laborproblems and attempt to deal with subjects such as life insurance forwage-workers, we turn to see what you do here in Germany, and we alsoturn to see what the far-off commonwealth of New Zealand is doing. When a great German scientist is warring against the most dreadedenemies of mankind, creatures of infinitesimal size which themicroscope reveals in his blood, he may spend his holidays of study incentral Africa or in eastern Asia; and he must know what isaccomplished in the laboratories of Tokyo, just as he must know thedetails of that practical application of science which has changed theIsthmus of Panama from a death-trap into what is almost a healthresort. Every progressive in China is striving to introduce Westernmethods of education and administration, and hundreds of European andAmerican books are now translated into Chinese. The influence ofEuropean governmental principles is strikingly illustrated by the factthat admiration for them has broken down the iron barriers of Moslemconservatism, so that their introduction has become a burning questionin Turkey and Persia; while the very unrest, the impatience ofEuropean or American control, in India, Egypt, or the Philippines, takes the form of demanding that the government be assimilated moreclosely to what it is in England or the United States. The deeds andworks of any great statesman, the preachings of any great ethical, social, or political teacher, now find echoes in both hemispheres andin every continent. From a new discovery in science to a new method ofcombating or applying Socialism, there is no movement of note whichcan take place in any part of the globe without powerfully affectingmasses of people in Europe, America, and Australia, in Asia andAfrica. For weal or for woe, the peoples of mankind are knit togetherfar closer than ever before. 

So much for the geographical side of the expansion of moderncivilization. But only a few of the many and intense activities ofmodern civilization have found their expression on this side. Themovement has been just as striking in its conquest over naturalforces, in its searching inquiry into and about the soul of things. 

The conquest over Nature has included an extraordinary increase inevery form of knowledge of the world we live in, and also anextraordinary increase in the power of utilizing the forces ofNature. In both directions the advance has been very great during thepast four or five centuries, and in both directions it has gone onwith ever-increasing rapidity during the last century. After the greatage of Rome had passed, the boundaries of knowledge shrank, and inmany cases it was not until well-nigh our own times that her domainwas once again pushed beyond the ancient landmarks. About the year 150A. D. , Ptolemy, the geographer, published his map of central Africa andthe sources of the Nile, and this map was more accurate than any whichwe had as late as 1850 A. D. More was known of physical science, andmore of the truth about the physical world was guessed at, in the daysof Pliny, than was known or guessed until the modern movement began. The case was the same as regards military science. At the close of theMiddle Ages the weapons were what they had always been--sword, shield, bow, spear; and any improvement in them was more than offset by theloss in knowledge of military organization, in the science of war, andin military leadership since the days of Hannibal and Cæsar. A hundredyears ago, when this University was founded, the methods oftransportation did not differ in the essentials from what they hadbeen among the highly civilized nations of antiquity. Travellers andmerchandise went by land in wheeled vehicles or on beasts of burden, and by sea in boats propelled by sails or by oars; and news wasconveyed as it always had been conveyed. What improvements there hadbeen had been in degree only and not in kind; and in some respectsthere had been retrogression rather than advance. There were manyparts of Europe where the roads were certainly worse than the oldRoman post-roads; and the Mediterranean Sea, for instance, was by nomeans as well policed as in the days of Trajan. Now steam andelectricity have worked a complete revolution; and the resultingimmensely increased ease of communication has in its turn completelychanged all the physical questions of human life. A voyage from Egyptto England was nearly as serious an affair in the eighteenth centuryas in the second; and the news communications between the two landswere not materially improved. A graduate of your University to-day cango to mid-Asia or mid-Africa with far less consciousness of performinga feat of note than would have been the case a hundred years ago witha student who visited Sicily and Andalusia. Moreover, the inventionand use of machinery run by steam or electricity have worked arevolution in industry as great as the revolution in transportation;so that here again the difference between ancient and moderncivilization is one not merely of degree but of kind. In many vitalrespects the huge modern city differs more from all preceding citiesthan any of these differed one from the other; and the giant factorytown is of and by itself one of the most formidable problems of modernlife. 

Steam and electricity have given the race dominion over land and watersuch as it never had before; and now the conquest of the air isdirectly impending. As books preserve thought through time, so thetelegraph and the telephone transmit it through the space theyannihilate, and therefore minds are swayed one by another withoutregard to the limitations of space and time which formerly forced eachcommunity to work in comparative isolation. It is the same with thebody as with the brain. The machinery of the factory and the farmenormously multiplies bodily skill and vigor. Countless trainedintelligences are at work to teach us how to avoid or counteract theeffects of waste. Of course some of the agents in the modernscientific development of natural resources deal with resources ofsuch a kind that their development means their destruction, so thatexploitation on a grand scale means an intense rapidity of developmentpurchased at the cost of a speedy exhaustion. The enormous andconstantly increasing output of coal and iron necessarily means theapproach of the day when our children's children, or their children'schildren, shall dwell in an ironless age--and, later on, in an agewithout coal--and will have to try to invent or develop new sourcesfor the production of heat and use of energy. But as regards manyanother natural resource, scientific civilization teaches us how topreserve it through use. The best use of field and forest will leavethem decade by decade, century by century, more fruitful; and we havebarely begun to use the indestructible power that comes from harnessedwater. The conquests of surgery, of medicine, the conquests in theentire field of hygiene and sanitation, have been literallymarvellous; the advances in the past century or two have been overmore ground than was covered during the entire previous history of thehuman race. 

The advances in the realm of pure intellect have been of equal note, and they have been both intensive and extensive. Great virgin fieldsof learning and wisdom have been discovered by the few, and at thesame time knowledge has spread among the many to a degree neverdreamed of before. Old men among us have seen in their own generationthe rise of the first rational science of the evolution of life. Theastronomer and the chemist, the psychologist and the historian, andall their brethren in many different fields of wide endeavor, workwith a training and knowledge and method which are in effectinstruments of precision, differentiating their labors from the laborsof their predecessors as the rifle is differentiated from the bow. 

The play of new forces is as evident in the moral and spiritual worldas in the world of the mind and the body. Forces for good and forcesfor evil are everywhere evident, each acting with a hundred- or athousand-fold the intensity with which it acted in former ages. Overthe whole earth the swing of the pendulum grows more and more rapid, the main-spring coils and spreads at a rate constantly quickening, thewhole world movement is of constantly accelerating velocity. 

In this movement there are signs of much that bodes ill. Themachinery is so highly geared, the tension and strain are so great, the effort and the output have alike so increased, that there is causeto dread the ruin that would come from any great accident, from anybreakdown, and also the ruin that may come from the mere wearing outof the machine itself. The only previous civilization with which ourmodern civilization can be in any way compared is that period ofGræco-Roman civilization extending, say, from the Athens ofThemistocles to the Rome of Marcus Aurelius. Many of the forces andtendencies which were then at work are at work now. Knowledge, luxury, and refinement, wide material conquests, territorial administration ona vast scale, an increase in the mastery of mechanical appliances andin applied science--all these mark our civilization as they marked thewonderful civilization that flourished in the Mediterranean landstwenty centuries ago; and they preceded the downfall of the oldercivilization. Yet the differences are many, and some of them are quiteas striking as the similarities. The single fact that the oldcivilization was based upon slavery shows the chasm that separates thetwo. Let me point out one further and very significant difference inthe development of the two civilizations, a difference so obvious thatit is astonishing that it has not been dwelt upon by men of letters. 

One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendencyto cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there isalways danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manlinessof fibre. The barbarian, because of the very conditions of his life, is forced to keep and develop certain hardy qualities which the man ofcivilization tends to lose, whether he be clerk, factory hand, merchant, or even a certain type of farmer. Now I will not assert thatin modern civilized society these tendencies have been whollyovercome; but there has been a much more successful effort to overcomethem than was the case in the early civilizations. This is curiouslyshown by the military history of the Græco-Roman period as comparedwith the history of the last four or five centuries here in Europe andamong nations of European descent. In the Grecian and Roman militaryhistory the change was steadily from a citizen army to an army ofmercenaries. In the days of the early greatness of Athens, Thebes, and Sparta, in the days when the Roman Republic conquered what worldit knew, the armies were filled with citizen soldiers. But graduallythe citizens refused to serve in the armies, or became unable torender good service. The Greek states described by Polybius, with butfew exceptions, hired others to do their fighting for them. The Romansof the days of Augustus had utterly ceased to furnish any cavalry, andwere rapidly ceasing to furnish any infantry, to the legions andcohorts. When the civilization came to an end, there were no longercitizens in the ranks of the soldiers. The change from the citizenarmy to the army of mercenaries had been completed. 

Now, the exact reverse has been the case with us in modern times. Afew centuries ago the mercenary soldier was the principal figure inmost armies, and in great numbers of cases the mercenary soldier wasan alien. In the wars of religion in France, in the Thirty Years' Warin Germany, in the wars that immediately thereafter marked thebeginning of the break-up of the great Polish Kingdom, the regimentsand brigades of foreign soldiers formed a striking and leading featurein every army. Too often the men of the country in which the fightingtook place played merely the ignoble part of victims, the burghers andpeasants appearing in but limited numbers in the mercenary armies bywhich they were plundered. Gradually this has all changed, until nowpractically every army is a citizen army, and the mercenary has almostdisappeared, while the army exists on a vaster scale than ever beforein history. This is so among the military monarchies of Europe. In ourown Civil War of the United States the same thing occurred, peacefulpeople as we are. At that time more than two generations had passedsince the War of Independence. During the whole of that period thepeople had been engaged in no life-and-death struggle; and yet, whenthe Civil War broke out, and after some costly and bitter lessons atthe beginning, the fighting spirit of the people was shown to betteradvantage than ever before. The war was peculiarly a war for aprinciple, a war waged by each side for an ideal, and while faults andshortcomings were plentiful among the combatants, there wascomparatively little sordidness of motive or conduct. In such a giantstruggle, where across the warp of so many interests is shot the woofof so many purposes, dark strands and bright, strands sombre andbrilliant, are always intertwined; inevitably there was corruptionhere and there in the Civil War; but all the leaders on both sides, and the great majority of the enormous masses of fighting men, whollydisregarded, and were wholly uninfluenced by, pecuniaryconsiderations. There were of course foreigners who came over to serveas soldiers of fortune for money or for love of adventure; but theforeign-born citizens served in much the same proportion, and from thesame motives, as the native-born. Taken as a whole, it was, even morethan the Revolutionary War, a true citizens' fight, and the armies ofGrant and Lee were as emphatically citizen armies as Athenian, Theban, or Spartan armies in the great age of Greece, or as a Roman army inthe days of the Republic. 

Another striking contrast in the course of modern civilization ascompared with the later stages of the Græco-Roman or classiccivilization is to be found in the relations of wealth and politics. In classic times, as the civilization advanced toward its zenith, politics became a recognized means of accumulating great wealth. Cæsarwas again and again on the verge of bankruptcy; he spent an enormousfortune; and he recouped himself by the money which he made out ofhis political-military career. Augustus established Imperial Rome onfirm foundations by the use he made of the huge fortune he hadacquired by plunder. What a contrast is offered by the careers ofWashington and Lincoln! There were a few exceptions in ancient days;but the immense majority of the Greeks and the Romans, as theircivilizations culminated, accepted money-making on a large scale asone of the incidents of a successful public career. Now all of this isin sharp contrast to what has happened within the last two or threecenturies. During this time there has been a steady growth away fromthe theory that money-making is permissible in an honorable publiccareer. In this respect the standard has been constantly elevated, andthings which statesmen had no hesitation in doing three centuries ortwo centuries ago, and which did not seriously hurt a public careereven a century ago, are now utterly impossible. Wealthy men stillexercise a large, and sometimes an improper, influence in politics, but it is apt to be an indirect influence; and in the advanced statesthe mere suspicion that the wealth of public men is obtained or addedto as an incident of their public careers will bar them from publiclife. Speaking generally, wealth may very greatly influence modernpolitical life, but it is not acquired in political life. The colonialadministrators, German or American, French or English, of thisgeneration lead careers which, as compared with the careers of othermen of like ability, show too little rather than too much regard formoney-making; and literally a world scandal would be caused by conductwhich a Roman proconsul would have regarded as moderate, and whichwould not have been especially uncommon even in the administration ofEngland a century and a half ago. On the whole, the great statesmen ofthe last few generations have been either men of moderate means, or, if men of wealth, men whose wealth was diminished rather thanincreased by their public services. 

I have dwelt on these points merely because it is well to emphasize inthe most emphatic fashion the fact that in many respects there is acomplete lack of analogy between the civilization of to-day and theonly other civilization in any way comparable to it, that of theancient Græco-Roman lands. There are, of course, many points in whichthe analogy is close, and in some of these points the resemblancesare as ominous as they are striking. But most striking of all is thefact that in point of physical extent, of wide diversity of interest, and of extreme velocity of movement, the present civilization can becompared to nothing that has ever gone before. It is now literally aworld movement, and the movement is growing ever more rapid and isever reaching into new fields. Any considerable influence exerted atone point is certain to be felt with greater or less effect at almostevery other point. Every path of activity open to the human intellectis followed with an eagerness and success never hitherto dreamed of. We have established complete liberty of conscience, and, inconsequence, a complete liberty for mental activity. All free anddaring souls have before them a well-nigh limitless opening forendeavor of any kind. 

Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to developonly a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavorhas been limited in kind as well as in locality. There have, ofcourse, been great movements, but they were of practically only oneform of activity; and although usually this set in motion other kindsof activities, such was not always the case. The great religiousmovements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type. But theyare not the only ones. Such peoples as the Mongols and thePhoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have representedmovements in which one element, military or commercial, soovershadowed all other elements that the movement died out chieflybecause it was one-sided. The extraordinary outburst of activity amongthe Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a militarymovement, without even any great administrative side; and it wastherefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction. The individualprowess and hardihood of the Mongols, and the perfection of theirmilitary organization, rendered their armies incomparably superior tothose of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day. Theyconquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic;they seized the Imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph inBagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism ofChristianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerlessagainst them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe wasimpotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneaththe hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction acrossPoland and Hungary; they overthrew with ease any force from westernEurope that dared encounter them. Yet they had no root of permanence;their work was mere evil while it lasted, and it did not last long;and when they vanished they left hardly a trace behind them. So theextraordinary Phoenician civilization was almost purely a mercantile, a business civilization, and though it left an impress on the lifethat came after, this impress was faint indeed compared to that left, for instance, by the Greeks with their many-sided development. Yet theGreek civilization itself fell, because this many-sided developmentbecame too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character, at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to governboth themselves and others. When the Greek lost the sterner virtues, when his soldiers lost the fighting edge, and his statesmen grewcorrupt, while the people became a faction-torn and pleasure-lovingrabble, then the doom of Greece was at hand, and not all theircultivation, their intellectual brilliancy, their artisticdevelopment, their adroitness in speculative science, could save theHellenic peoples as they bowed before the sword of the iron Roman. 

What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the oldercivilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activityto-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; theimmense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; theimmense increase in the velocity of the world movement--are all theseto mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete andterrible when it comes? We cannot be certain that the answer will bein the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not godown in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessityfor us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only wehave the wit and the courage and the honesty. 

Personally, I do not believe that our civilization will fall. I thinkthat on the whole we have grown better and not worse. I think that onthe whole the future holds more for us than even the great past hasheld. But, assuredly, the dreams of golden glory in the future willnot come true unless, high of heart and strong of hand, by our ownmighty deeds we make them come true. We cannot afford to develop anyone set of qualities, any one set of activities, at the cost of seeingothers, equally necessary, atrophied. Neither the military efficiencyof the Mongol, the extraordinary business ability of the Phoenician, nor the subtle and polished intellect of the Greek availed to avertdestruction. 

We, the men of to-day and of the future, need many qualities if we areto do our work well. We need, first of all and most important of all, the qualities which stand at the base of individual, of family life, the fundamental and essential qualities--the homely, every-day, all-important virtues. If the average man will not work, if he has notin him the will and the power to be a good husband and father; if theaverage woman is not a good housewife, a good mother of many healthychildren, then the State will topple, will go down, no matter what maybe its brilliance of artistic development or material achievement. Butthese homely qualities are not enough. There must, in addition, bethat power of organization, that power of working in common for acommon end, which the German people have shown in such signal fashionduring the last half-century. Moreover, the things of the spirit areeven more important than the things of the body. We can well dowithout the hard intolerance and and barrenness of what was worstin the theological systems of the past, but there has never beengreater need of a high and fine religious spirit than at thepresent time. So, while we can laugh good-humoredly at some of thepretensions of modern philosophy in its various branches, it would beworse than folly on our part to ignore our need of intellectualleadership. Your own great Frederick once said that if he wished topunish a province he would leave it to be governed by philosophers;the sneer had in it an element of justice; and yet no one better thanthe great Frederick knew the value of philosophers, the value of menof science, men of letters, men of art. It would be a bad thing indeedto accept Tolstoy as a guide in social and moral matters; but it wouldalso be a bad thing not to have Tolstoy, not to profit by the loftyside of his teachings. There are plenty of scientific men whose hardarrogance, whose cynical materialism, whose dogmatic intolerance, putthem on a level with the bigoted mediæval ecclesiasticism which theydenounce. Yet our debt to scientific men is incalculable, and ourcivilization of to-day would have reft from it all that which mosthighly distinguishes it if the work of the great masters of scienceduring the past four centuries were now undone or forgotten. Never hasphilanthropy, humanitarianism, seen such development as now; andthough we must all beware of the folly, and the viciousness no worsethan folly, which marks the believer in the perfectibility of man whenhis heart runs away with his head, or when vanity usurps the place ofconscience, yet we must remember also that it is only by working alongthe lines laid down by the philanthropists, by the lovers of mankind, that we can be sure of lifting our civilization to a higher and morepermanent plane of well-being than was ever attained by any precedingcivilization. Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation thatdoes not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all whowould harm it! And woe thrice over to the nation in which the averageman loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier ifthe day of need should arise!

It is no impossible dream to build up a civilization in whichmorality, ethical development, and a true feeling of brotherhood shallall alike be divorced from false sentimentality, and from therancorous and evil passions which, curiously enough, so oftenaccompany professions of sentimental attachment to the rights of man;in which a high material development in the things of the body shallbe achieved without subordination of the things of the soul; in whichthere shall be a genuine desire for peace and justice without loss ofthose virile qualities without which no love of peace or justice shallavail any race; in which the fullest development of scientificresearch, the great distinguishing feature of our presentcivilization, shall yet not imply a belief that intellect can evertake the place of character--for, from the standpoint of the nation asof the individual, it is character that is the one vital possession. 

Finally, this world movement of civilization, this movement which isnow felt throbbing in every corner of the globe, should bind thenations of the world together while yet leaving unimpaired that loveof country in the individual citizen which in the present stage of theworld's progress is essential to the world's well-being. You, myhearers, and I who speak to you, belong to different nations. Undermodern conditions the books we read, the news sent by telegraph to ournewspapers, the strangers we meet, half of the things we hear and doeach day, all tend to bring us into touch with other peoples. Eachpeople can do justice to itself only if it does justice to others; buteach people can do its part in the world movement for all only if itfirst does its duty within its own household. The good citizen must bea good citizen of his own country first before he can with advantagebe a citizen of the world at large. I wish you well. I believe in youand your future. I admire and wonder at the extraordinary greatnessand variety of your achievements in so many and such widely differentfields; and my admiration and regard are all the greater, and not theless, because I am so profound a believer in the institutions and thepeople of my own land. 

 * * * * *

THE CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS

An Address at the Cambridge Union, May 26, 1910

Mr. President and gentlemen, it is a very great pleasure for me to behere to-day and to address you and to wear what the Secretary[10] hascalled the gilded trappings which show that I am one of the youngestliving graduates of Cambridge. Something in the nature of a tract washanded to me before I came up here. It was an issue of the _Gownsman_[holding up, amid laughter, a copy of an undergraduate publication]with a poem portraying the poet's natural anxiety lest I should preachat him. Allow me to interpose an anecdote taken from your own huntingfield. A one-time Master of Foxhounds strongly objected to thepresence of a rather near-sighted and very hard-riding friend who attimes insisted on riding in the middle of the pack; and on oneoccasion he earnestly addressed him as follows: "Mr. So and So, wouldyou mind looking at those two dogs, Ploughboy and Melody. They arevery valuable, and I really wish you would not jump on them. " To whichhis friend replied, with great courtesy: "My dear sir, I should bedelighted to oblige you, but unfortunately I have left my glasses athome, and I am afraid they must take their chance. " I will promise topreach as little as I can, but you must take your chance, for it isimpossible to break the bad habit of a lifetime at the bidding of acomparative stranger. I was deeply touched by the allusion to the lionand the coat-of-arms. Before I reached London I was given tounderstand that it was expected that when I walked through TrafalgarSquare, I should look the other way as I passed the lions. 

 [10] The Cambridge Union is the home of the well-known debating society of the undergraduates of Cambridge University. To the Vice-President, a member of Emmanuel College, the college of John Harvard who founded Harvard University, was appropriately assigned the duty of proposing the resolution admitting Mr. Roosevelt to honorary membership in the Union Society. In supporting the resolution the Vice-President referred to the peculiar relation which unites the English Cambridge and the American Cambridge in a common bond and touched upon Mr. Roosevelt's African exploits by jocosely expressing anxiety for the safety of "the crest of my own college, the Emmanuel Lion, which I see before me well within range. " There had just appeared in _Punch_, at the time of Mr. Roosevelt's arrival in England, a full-page cartoon showing the lions of the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square guarded by policemen and protected by a placard announcing that "these lions are not to be shot. " The Secretary, in seconding the resolution, humorously alluded to the doctor's gown, hood, and cap, in which Mr. Roosevelt received his degree, as a possible example of what America sometimes regards as the gilded trappings of a feudal and reactionary Europe. --L. F. A. 

Now I thank you very much for having made me an honorary member. Harvard men feel peculiarly at home when they come to Cambridge. Wefeel we are in the domain of our spiritual forefathers, and I doubt ifyou yourselves can appreciate what it is to walk about the courts, tosee your buildings, and your pictures and statues of the innumerablemen whose names we know so well, and who have been brought closer tous by what we see here. That would apply not alone to men of the past. The Bishop of Ely to you is the Bishop of to-day; but I felt likeasking him when I met him this morning, "Where is Hereward the Wake?"It gives an American university man a peculiar feeling to come hereand see so much that tells of the ancient history of the University. 

The tie between Harvard and Cambridge has always been kept up. Iremember when you sent over Mr. Lehmann to teach us how to row. Hefound us rather refractory pupils, I am afraid. In the course of thestruggle, the captain of the Harvard crew was eliminated. Heafterwards came down to Cuba and was one of the very best captains inmy regiment. At that time, however, he was still too close to hiscollege days--he was separated from them only by about two weeks whenhe joined me--to appreciate what I endeavored to instil into him, thatwhile winning a boat-race was all very well, to take part in avictorious fight, in a real battle, was a good deal better. Sport is afine thing as a pastime, and indeed it is more than a mere pastime;but it is a very poor business if it is permitted to become the oneserious occupation of life. 

One of the things I wish we could learn from you is how to make thegame of football a rather less homicidal pastime. (Laughter. ) I do notwish to speak as a mere sentimentalist; but I do not think thatkilling should be a normal accompaniment of the game, and while wedevelop our football from Rugby, I wish we could go back and undevelopit, and get it nearer your game. I am not qualified to speak as anexpert on the subject, but I wish we could make it more open andeliminate some features that certainly tend to add to the danger ofthe game as it is played in America now. On the Pacific slope we havebeen going back to your type of Rugby football. I would not havefootball abolished for anything, but I want to have it changed, justbecause I want to draw the teeth of the men who always clamor for theabolition of any manly game. I wish to deprive those whom I put in themollycoddle class, of any argument against good sport. I thoroughlybelieve in sport, but I think it is a great mistake if it is madeanything like a profession, or carried on in a way that gives justcause for fault-finding and complaint among people whose objection isnot really to the defects, but to the sport itself. 

Now I am going to disregard your poet and preach to you for just onemoment, but I will make it as little obnoxious as possible. (Laughter. ) The Secretary spoke of me as if I were an athlete. I amnot, and never have been one, although I have always been very fond ofoutdoor amusement and exercise. There was, however, in my class atHarvard, one real athlete who is now in public life. I made himSecretary of State, or what you call Minister of Foreign Affairs, andhe is now Ambassador in Paris. If I catch your terminology straight, he would correspond to your triple blue. He was captain of thefootball eleven, played on the base-ball team, and rowed in the crew, and in addition to that he was champion heavy-weight boxer andwrestler, and won the 220-yard dash. His son was captain of theHarvard University crew that came over here and was beaten by Oxfordtwo years ago. [Voices: "Cambridge. "] Well, I never took a greatinterest in defeats. (Loud laughter and applause. ) Now, as I saidbefore, I never was an athlete, although I have always led an outdoorlife, and have accomplished something in it, simply because my theoryis that almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting theutmost possible service out of the qualities that he actuallypossesses. 

There are two kinds of success. One is the very rare kind that comesto the man who has the power to do what no one else has the power todo. That is genius. I am not discussing what form that genius takes;whether it is the genius of a man who can write a poem that no oneelse can write, _The Ode on a Grecian Urn_, for example, or _Helen, thy beauty is to me_; or of a man who can do 100 yards in nine andthree-fifths seconds. Such a man does what no one else can do. Only avery limited amount of the success of life comes to persons possessinggenius. The average man who is successful, --the average statesman, theaverage public servant, the average soldier, who wins what we callgreat success--is not a genius. He is a man who has merely theordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who hasdeveloped those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree. 

Take such a thing as hunting or any form of vigorous bodily exercise. Most men can ride hard if they choose. Almost any man can kill a lionif he will exercise a little resolution in training the qualities thatwill enable him to do it. [Taking a tumbler from the table, Mr. Roosevelt held it up. ] Now it is a pretty easy thing to aim straightat an object about that size. Almost any one, if he practises with therifle at all, can learn to hit that tumbler; and he can hit the lionall right if he learns to shoot as straight at its brain or heart asat the tumbler. He does not have to possess any extraordinarycapacity, not a bit, --all he has to do is to develop certain ratherordinary qualities, but develop them to such a degree that he willnot get flustered, so that he will press the trigger steadily insteadof jerking it--and then he will shoot at the lion as well as he willat that tumbler. It is a perfectly simple quality to develop. Youdon't need any remarkable skill; all you need is to possess ordinaryqualities, but to develop them to a more than ordinary degree. 

It is just the same with the soldier. What is needed is that the manas soldier should develop certain qualities that have been known forthousands of years, but develop them to such a point that in anemergency he does, as a matter of course, what a great multitude ofmen can do but what a very large proportion of them don't do. And inmaking the appeal to the soldier, if you want to get out of him thestuff that is in him, you will have to use phrases which theintellectual gentlemen who do not fight will say are platitudes. (Laughter and applause. )

It is just so in public life. It is not genius, it is notextraordinary subtlety, or acuteness of intellect, that is important. The things that are important are the rather commonplace, the ratherhumdrum, virtues that in their sum are designated as character. If youhave in public life men of good ability, not geniuses, but men ofgood abilities, with character, --and, gentlemen, you must include asone of the most important elements of character commonsense--if youpossess such men, the Government will go on very well. 

I have spoken only of the great successes; but what I have saidapplies just as much to the success that is within the reach of almostevery one of us. I think that any man who has had what is regarded inthe world as a great success must realize that the element of chancehas played a great part in it. Of course a man has to take advantageof his opportunities; but the opportunities have to come. If there isnot the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a greatoccasion you don't get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived intimes of peace no one would have known his name now. The great crisismust come, or no man has the chance to develop great qualities. 

There are exceptional cases, of course, where there is a man who cando just one thing, such as a man who can play a dozen games of chessor juggle with four rows of figures at once--and as a rule he can donothing else. A man of this type can do nothing unless in the onecrisis for which his powers fit him. But normally the man who makesthe great success when the emergency arises is the man who would havemade a fair success in any event. I believe that the man who is reallyhappy in a great position--in what we call a career--is the man whowould also be happy and regard his life as successful if he had neverbeen thrown into that position. If a man lives a decent life and doeshis work fairly and squarely so that those dependent on him andattached to him are better for his having lived, then he is a success, and he deserves to feel that he has done his duty and he deserves tobe treated by those who have had greater success as neverthelesshaving shown the fundamental qualities that entitle him to respect. Wehave in the United States an organization composed of the men whoforty-five years ago fought to a finish the great Civil War. One thingthat has always appealed to me in that organization is that all of themen admitted are on a perfect equality provided the records show thattheir duty was well done. Whether a man served as a lieutenant-generalor an eighteen-year-old recruit, so long as he was able to serve forsix months and did his duty in his appointed place, then he is calledComrade and stands on an exact equality with the other men. The sameprinciple should shape our associations in ordinary civil life. 

I am not speaking cant to you. I remember once sitting at a table withsix or eight other public officials, and each was explaining* how heregarded being in public life, how only the sternest sense of dutyprevented him from resigning his office, and how the strain of workingfor a thankless constituency was telling upon him, and nothing but thefact that he felt he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare ofhis country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship. It wentround the table until it came to my turn. This was during my firstterm of office as President of the United States. I said: "Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding. I like myjob, and I want to keep it for four years longer. " (Loud laughter andapplause. ) I don't think any President ever enjoyed himself more thanI did. Moreover, I don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himselfmore. I have enjoyed my life and my work because I thoroughly believethat success--the real success--does not depend upon the position youhold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position. There is noman here to-day who has not the chance so to shape his life after heleaves this university that he shall have the right to feel, when hislife ends, that he has made a real success of it; and his making areal success of it does not in the least depend upon the prominence ofthe position he holds. Gentlemen, I thank you, and I am glad I haveviolated the poet's hope and have preached to you. 

*Transcriber's Note: Original "explaning"

 * * * * *

BRITISH RULE IN AFRICA

Address Delivered at the Guildhall, London, May 31, 1910[11]

 [11] The occasion of this address was the ceremony in the Guildhall in which Mr. Roosevelt was presented by the Corporation of the City of London (the oldest corporation in the world), with the Freedom of the City. Sir Joseph Dimsdale, on behalf of the Lord Mayor and the Corporation, made the address of presentation. --L. F. A. 

It is a peculiar pleasure to me to be here. And yet I cannot butappreciate, as we all do, the sadness of the fact that I come herejust after the death of the Sovereign whom you so mourn, and whosedeath caused such an outburst of sympathy for you throughout thecivilized world. One of the things I shall never forget is theattitude of that great mass of people, assembled on the day of thefuneral, who in silence, in perfect order, and with uncovered heads, saw the body of the dead King pass to its last resting-place. I hadthe high honor of being deputed to come to the funeral as therepresentative of America, and by my presence to express the deep anduniversal feeling of sympathy which moves the entire American peoplefor the British people in their hour of sadness and trial. 

I need hardly say how profoundly I feel the high honor that you conferupon me; an honor great in itself, and great because of the ancienthistoric associations connected with it, with the ceremonies incidentto conferring it, and with the place in which it is conferred. I amvery deeply appreciative of all that this ceremony means, all thatthis gift implies, and all the kind words which Sir Joseph Dimsdalehas used in conferring it. I thank you heartily for myself. I thankyou still more because I know that what you have done is to be takenprimarily as a sign of the respect and friendly good-will which moreand more, as time goes by, tends to knit together the English-speakingpeoples. 

I shall not try to make you any extended address of mere thanks, stillless of mere eulogy. I prefer to speak, and I know you would prefer tohave me speak, on matters of real concern to you, as to which I happenat this moment to possess some first-hand knowledge; for recently Itraversed certain portions of the British Empire under conditionswhich made me intimately cognizant of their circumstances and needs. Ihave just spent nearly a year in Africa. While there I saw fourBritish protectorates. I grew heartily to respect the men whom I theremet, settlers and military and civil officials; and it seems to methat the best service I can render them and you is very briefly totell you how I was impressed by some of the things that I saw. Yourmen in Africa are doing a great work for your Empire, and they arealso doing a great work for civilization. This fact and my sympathyfor and belief in them are my reasons for speaking. The people athome, whether in Europe or in America, who live softly, often failfully to realize what is being done for them by the men who areactually engaged in the pioneer work of civilization abroad. Ofcourse, in any mass of men there are sure to be some who are weak orunworthy, and even those who are good are sure to make occasionalmistakes--that is as true of pioneers as of other men. Nevertheless, the great fact in world history during the last century has been thespread of civilization over the world's waste spaces. The work isstill going on; and the soldiers, the settlers, and the civicofficials who are actually doing it are, as a whole, entitled to theheartiest respect and the fullest support from their brothers whoremain at home. 

At the outset, there is one point upon which I wish to insist with allpossible emphasis. The civilized nations who are conquering forcivilization savage lands should work together in a spirit of heartymutual good-will. I listened with special interest to what Sir JosephDimsdale said about the blessing of peace and good-will among nations. I agree with that in the abstract. Let us show by our actions and ourwords in specific cases that we agree with it also in the concrete. Ill-will between civilized nations is bad enough anywhere, but it ispeculiarly harmful and contemptible when those actuated by it areengaged in the same task, a task of such far-reaching importance tothe future of humanity, the task of subduing the savagery of wild manand wild nature, and of bringing abreast of our civilization thoselands where there is an older civilization which has somehow gonecrooked. Mankind as a whole has benefited by the noteworthy successthat has attended the French occupation of Algiers and Tunis, just asmankind as a whole has benefited by what England has done in India;and each nation should be glad of the other nation's achievements. Inthe same way, it is of interest to all civilized men that a similarsuccess shall attend alike the Englishman and the German as they workin East Africa; exactly as it has been a benefit to every one thatAmerica took possession of the Philippines. Those of you who know LordCromer's excellent book in which he compares modern and ancientimperialism need no words from me to prove that the dominion of moderncivilized nations over the dark places of the earth has been fraughtwith widespread good for mankind; and my plea is that the civilizednations engaged in doing this work shall treat one another withrespect and friendship, and shall hold it as discreditable to permitenvy and jealousy, backbiting and antagonism among themselves. Ivisited four different British protectorates or possessions inAfrica--namely, East Africa, Uganda, the Sudan, and Egypt. About thefirst three, I have nothing to say to you save what is pleasant, aswell as true. About the last, I wish to say a few words because theyare true, without regard to whether or not they are pleasant. 

In the highlands of East Africa you have a land which can be made atrue white man's country. While there I met many settlers on intimateterms, and I felt for them a peculiar sympathy, because they sostrikingly reminded me of the men of our own western frontier ofAmerica, of the pioneer farmers and ranch-men who built up the Statesof the great plains and the Rocky Mountains. It is of high importanceto encourage these settlers in every way, remembering--I say that herein the City--remembering that the prime need is not for capitalists toexploit the land, but for settlers who shall make their permanenthomes therein. Capital is a good servant, but a mighty poor master. Noalien race should be permitted to come into competition with thesettlers. Fortunately you have now in the Governor of East Africa, SirPercy Girouard, a man admirably fitted to deal wisely and firmly withthe many problems before him. He is on the ground and knows the needsof the country, and is zealously devoted to its interests. All that isnecessary is to follow his lead, and to give him cordial support andbacking. The principle upon which I think it is wise to act in dealingwith far-away possessions is this--choose your man, change him if youbecome discontented with him, but while you keep him back him up. 

In Uganda the problem is totally different. Uganda cannot be made awhite man's country, and the prime need is to administer the land inthe interest of the native races, and to help forward theirdevelopment. Uganda has been the scene of an extraordinary developmentof Christianity. Nowhere else of recent times has missionary effortmet with such success; the inhabitants stand far above most of theraces in the Dark Continent in their capacity for progress towardscivilization. They have made great strides, and the English officialshave shown equal judgment and disinterestedness in the work they havedone; and they have been especially wise in trying to develop thenatives along their own lines, instead of seeking to turn them intoimitation or make-believe Englishmen. In Uganda all that is necessaryis to go forward on the paths you have already marked out. 

The Sudan is peculiarly interesting because it affords the bestpossible example of the wisdom--and when I say that I speak withhistorical accuracy--of disregarding the well-meaning but unwisesentimentalists who object to the spread of civilization at theexpense of savagery. I remember a quarter of a century ago when youwere engaged in the occupation of the Sudan that many of your peopleat home and some of ours in America said that what was demanded in theSudan was the application of the principles of independence andself-government to the Sudanese, coupled with insistence upon completereligious toleration and the abolition of the slave trade. Unfortunately, the chief reason why the Mahdists wanted independenceand self-government was that they could put down all religions buttheir own and carry on the slave trade. I do not believe that in thewhole world there is to be found any nook of territory which has shownsuch astonishing progress from the most hideous misery to well-beingand prosperity as the Sudan has shown during the last twelve yearswhile it has been under British rule. Up to that time it wasindependent, and it governed itself; and independence andself-government in the hands of the Sudanese proved to be much whatindependence and self-government would have been in a wolf pack. Greatcrimes were committed there, crimes so dark that their veryhideousness protects them from exposure. During a decade and a half, while Mahdism controlled the country, there flourished a tyranny whichfor cruelty, blood-thirstiness, unintelligence, and wantondestructiveness surpassed anything which a civilized people can evenimagine. The keystones of the Mahdist party were religious intoleranceand slavery, with murder and the most abominable cruelty as the methodof obtaining each. 

During those fifteen years at least two-thirds of the population, probably seven or eight millions of people, died by violence or bystarvation. Then the English came in; put an end to the independenceand self-government which had wrought this hideous evil; restoredorder, kept the peace, and gave to each individual a liberty which, during the evil days of their own self-government, not one human beingpossessed, save only the blood-stained tyrant who at the moment wasruler. I stopped at village after village in the Sudan, and in many ofthem I was struck by the fact that, while there were plenty ofchildren, they were all under twelve years old; and inquiry alwaysdeveloped that these children were known as "Government children, "because in the days of Mahdism it was the literal truth that in a verylarge proportion of the communities every child was either killed ordied of starvation and hardship, whereas under the peace brought byEnglish rule families are flourishing, men and women are no longerhunted to death, and the children are brought up under more favorablecircumstances, for soul and body, than have ever previously obtainedin the entire history of the Sudan. In administration, in education, in police work, the Sirdar[12] and his lieutenants, great and small, have performed to perfection a task equally important and difficult. The Government officials, civil and military, who are responsible forthis task, and the Egyptian and Sudanese who have worked with andunder them, and as directed by them, have a claim upon all civilizedmankind which should be heartily admitted. It would be a crime not togo on with the work, a work which the inhabitants themselves arehelpless to perform, unless under firm and wise guidance from outside. I have met people who had some doubt as to whether the Sudan wouldpay. Personally, I think it probably will. But I may add that, in myjudgment, this fact does not alter the duty of England to stay there. It is not worth while belonging to a big nation unless the big nationis willing when the necessity arises to undertake a big task. I feelabout you in the Sudan just as I felt about us in Panama. When weacquired the right to build the Panama Canal, and entered on the task, there were worthy people who came to me and said they wondered whetherit would pay. I always answered that it was one of the great worldworks which had to be done; that it was our business as a nation to doit, if we were ready to make good our claim to be treated as a greatworld Power; and that as we were unwilling to abandon the claim, noAmerican worth his salt ought to hesitate about performing the task. Ifeel just the same way about you in the Sudan. 

 [12] Sir Reginald Wingate, who at the time of this address was both Sirdar of the Anglo-Egyptian Army and Governor-General of the Sudan. --L. F. A. 

Now as to Egypt. It would not be worth my while to speak to you atall, nor would it be worth your while to listen, unless on conditionthat I say what I deeply feel ought to be said. I speak as anoutsider, but in one way this is an advantage, for I speak withoutnational prejudice. I would not talk to you about your own internalaffairs here at home; but you are so very busy at home that I am notsure whether you realize just how things are, in some places at least, abroad. At any rate, it can do you no harm to hear the view of one whohas actually been on the ground, and has information at first hand; ofone, moreover, who, it is true, is a sincere well-wisher of theBritish Empire, but who is not English by blood, and who is impelledto speak mainly because of his deep concern in the welfare of mankindand in the future of civilization. Remember also that I who addressyou am not only an American, but a Radical, a real--not amock--democrat, and that what I have to say is spoken chiefly becauseI am a democrat, a man who feels that his first thought is bound to bethe welfare of the masses of mankind, and his first duty to waragainst violence and injustice and wrong-doing, wherever found; and Iadvise you only in accordance with the principles on which I havemyself acted as American President in dealing with the Philippines. 

In Egypt you are not only the guardians of your own interests; you arealso the guardians of the interests of civilization; and the presentcondition of affairs in Egypt is a grave menace to both your Empireand the entire civilized world. You have given Egypt the bestgovernment it has had for at least two thousand years--probably abetter government than it has ever had before; for never in historyhas the poor man in Egypt, the tiller of the soil, the ordinarylaborer, been treated with as much justice and mercy, under a rule asfree from corruption and brutality, as during the last twenty-eightyears. Yet recent events, and especially what has happened inconnection with and following on the assassination of Boutros Pashathree months ago, have shown that, in certain vital points, you haveerred; and it is for you to make good your error. It has been an errorproceeding from the effort to do too much and not too little in theinterests of the Egyptians themselves; but unfortunately it isnecessary for all of us who have to do with uncivilized peoples, andespecially with fanatical peoples, to remember that in such asituation as yours in Egypt weakness, timidity, and sentimentality maycause even more far-reaching harm than violence and injustice. Of allbroken reeds, sentimentality[13] is the most broken reed on whichrighteousness can lean. 

 [13] In the Introduction will be found Mr. Roosevelt's differentiation of sentimentality from sentiment. --L. F. A. 

In Egypt you have been treating all religions with studied fairnessand impartiality; and instead of gratefully acknowledging this, anoisy section of the native population takes advantage of what yourgood treatment has done to bring about an anti-foreign movement, amovement in which, as events have shown, murder on a large or a smallscale is expected to play a leading part. Boutros Pasha[14] was thebest and most competent Egyptian official, a steadfast upholder ofEnglish rule, and an earnest worker for the welfare of his countrymen;and he was murdered simply and solely because of these facts, andbecause he did his duty wisely, fearlessly, and uprightly. Theattitude of the so-called Egyptian Nationalist Party in connectionwith this murder has shown that they were neither desirous nor capableof guaranteeing even that primary justice the failure to supply whichmakes self-government not merely an empty but a noxious farce. Suchare the conditions; and where the effort made by your officials tohelp the Egyptians towards self-government is taken advantage of bythem, not to make things better, not to help their country, but to tryto bring murderous chaos upon the land, then it becomes the primaryduty of whoever is responsible for the government in Egypt toestablish order, and to take whatever measures are necessary to thatend. 

 [14] Compare the address at the University of Cairo. --L. F. A. 

It was with this primary object of establishing order that you wentinto Egypt twenty-eight years ago; and the chief and amplejustification for your presence in Egypt was this absolute necessityof order being established from without, coupled with your ability andwillingness to establish it. Now, either you have the right to be inEgypt or you have not; either it is or it is not your duty toestablish and keep order. If you feel that you have not the right tobe in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and to keep order there, why, then, by all means get out of Egypt. If, as I hope, you feel thatyour duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own greattraditions alike bid you to stay, then make the fact and the nameagree and show that you are ready to meet in very deed theresponsibility which is yours. It is the thing, not the form, which isvital; if the present forms of government in Egypt, established by youin the hope that they would help the Egyptians upward, merely serve toprovoke and permit disorder, then it is for you to alter the forms;for if you stay in Egypt it is your first duty to keep order, andabove all things also to punish murder and to bring to justice all whodirectly or indirectly incite others to commit murder or condone thecrime when it is committed. When a people treats assassination as thecorner-stone of self-government, it forfeits all right to be treatedas worthy of self-government. You are in Egypt for several purposes, and among them one of the greatest is the benefit of the Egyptianpeople. You saved them from ruin by coming in, and at the presentmoment, if they are not governed from outside, they will again sinkinto a welter of chaos. Some nation must govern Egypt. I hope andbelieve that you will decide that it is your duty to be that nation. 

 * * * * *

BIOLOGICAL ANALOGIES IN HISTORY[15]

 [15] The text of this Lecture, which is the Romanes Lecture for 1910, is included in the present volume under the courteous permission of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. --L. F. A. 

Delivered at Oxford, June 7, 1910

An American who in response to such an invitation as I have receivedspeaks in this University of ancient renown, cannot but feel withpeculiar vividness the interest and charm of his surroundings, fraughtas they are with a thousand associations. Your great universities, andall the memories that make them great, are living realities in theminds of scores of thousands of men who have never seen them and whodwell across the seas in other lands. Moreover, these associations areno stronger in the men of English stock than in those who are not. Mypeople have been for eight generations in America; but in one thing Iam like the Americans of to-morrow, rather than like many of theAmericans of to-day; for I have in my veins the blood of men who camefrom many different European races. The ethnic make-up of our peopleis slowly changing, so that constantly the race tends to become moreand more akin to that of those Americans who like myself are of theold stock but not mainly of English stock. Yet I think that as timegoes by, mutual respect, understanding, and sympathy among theEnglish-speaking peoples grow greater and not less. Any of myancestors, Hollander or Huguenot, Scotchman or Irishman, who had cometo Oxford in "the spacious days of great Elizabeth, " would have feltfar more alien than I, their descendant, now feel. Common heirship inthe things of the spirit makes a closer bond than common heirship inthe things of the body. 

More than ever before in the world's history we of to-day seek topenetrate the causes of the mysteries that surround not only mankindbut all life, both in the present and the past. We search, we peer, wesee things dimly; here and there we get a ray of clear vision, as welook before and after. We study the tremendous procession of the ages, from the immemorial past when in "cramp elf and saurian forms" thecreative forces "swathed their too-much power, " down to the yesterday, a few score thousand years distant only, when the history of manbecame the overwhelming fact in the history of life on this planet;and studying, we see strange analogies in the phenomena of life anddeath, of birth, growth, and change, between those physical groups ofanimal life which we designate as species, forms, races, and thehighly complex and composite entities which rise before our minds whenwe speak of nations and civilizations. 

It is this study which has given science its present-day prominence. In the world of intellect, doubtless, the most marked features in thehistory of the past century have been the extraordinary advances inscientific knowledge and investigation, and in the position held bythe men of science with reference to those engaged in other pursuits. I am not now speaking of applied science; of the science, forinstance, which, having revolutionized transportation on the earth andthe water, is now on the brink of carrying it into the air; of thescience that finds its expression in such extraordinary achievementsas the telephone and the telegraph; of the sciences which have soaccelerated the velocity of movement in social and industrialconditions--for the changes in the mechanical appliances of ordinarylife during the last three generations have been greater than in allthe preceding generations since history dawned. I speak of the sciencewhich has no more direct bearing upon the affairs of our everyday lifethan literature or music, painting or sculpture, poetry or history. Ahundred years ago the ordinary man of cultivation had to knowsomething of these last subjects; but the probabilities were ratheragainst his having any but the most superficial scientific knowledge. At present all this has changed, thanks to the interest taken inscientific discoveries, the large circulation of scientific books, andthe rapidity with which ideas originating among students of the mostadvanced and abstruse sciences become, at least partially, domiciledin the popular mind. 

Another feature of the change, of the growth in the position ofscience in the eyes of every one, and of the greatly increased respectnaturally resulting for scientific methods, has been a certaintendency for scientific students to encroach on other fields. This isparticularly true of the field of historical study. Not only havescientific men insisted upon the necessity of considering the historyof man, especially in its early stages, in connection with whatbiology shows to be the history of life, but furthermore there hasarisen a demand that history shall itself be treated as a science. Both positions are in their essence right; but as regards eachposition the more arrogant among the invaders of the new realm ofknowledge take an attitude to which it is not necessary to assent. Asregards the latter of the two positions, that which would treathistory henceforth merely as one branch of scientific study, we mustof course cordially agree that accuracy in recording facts andappreciation of their relative worth and inter-relationship are justas necessary in historical study as in any other kind of study. Thefact that a book, though interesting, is untrue, of course removes itat once from the category of history, however much it may stilldeserve to retain a place in the always desirable group of volumeswhich deal with entertaining fiction. But the converse also holds, atleast to the extent of permitting us to insist upon what would seem tobe the elementary fact that a book which is written to be read shouldbe readable. This rather obvious truth seems to have been forgotten bysome of the more zealous scientific historians, who apparently holdthat the worth of a historical book is directly in proportion to theimpossibility of reading it, save as a painful duty. Now I am willingthat history shall be treated as a branch of science, but only oncondition that it also remains a branch of literature; and, furthermore, I believe that as the field of science encroaches on thefield of literature there should be a corresponding encroachment ofliterature upon science; and I hold that one of the great needs, whichcan only be met by very able men whose culture is broad enough toinclude literature as well as science, is the need of books forscientific laymen. We need a literature of science which shall bereadable. So far from doing away with the school of great historians, the school of Polybius and Tacitus, Gibbon and Macaulay, we needmerely that the future writers of history, without losing thequalities which have made these men great, shall also utilize the newfacts and new methods which science has put at their disposal. Drynessis not in itself a measure of value. No "scientific" treatise aboutSt. Louis will displace Joinville, for the very reason thatJoinville's place is in both history and literature; no minute studyof the Napoleonic wars will teach us more than Marbot--and Marbot isas interesting as Walter Scott. Moreover, certain at least of thebranches of science should likewise be treated by masters in the artof presentment, so that the layman interested in science, no less thanthe layman interested in history, shall have on his shelves classicswhich can be read. Whether this wish be or be not capable ofrealization, it assuredly remains true that the great historian of thefuture must essentially represent the ideal striven after by the greathistorians of the past. The industrious collector of facts occupies anhonorable, but not an exalted, position, and the scientific historianwho produces books which are not literature must rest content with thehonor, substantial, but not of the highest type, that belongs to himwho gathers material which some time some great master shall arise touse. 

Yet, while freely conceding all that can be said of the masters ofliterature, we must insist upon the historian of mankind working inthe scientific spirit, and using the treasure-houses of science. Hewho would fully treat of man must know at least something of biology, of the science that treats of living, breathing things; andespecially of that science of evolution which is inseparably connectedwith the great name of Darwin. Of course there is no exact parallelismbetween the birth, growth, and death of species in the animal world, and the birth, growth, and death of societies in the world of man. Yetthere is a certain parallelism. There are strange analogies; it may bethat there are homologies. 

How far the resemblances between the two sets of phenomena are morethan accidental, how far biology can be used as an aid in theinterpretation of human history, we cannot at present say. Thehistorian should never forget, what the highest type of scientific manis always teaching us to remember, that willingness to admit ignoranceis a prime factor in developing wisdom out of knowledge. Wisdom isadvanced by research which enables us to add to knowledge; and, moreover, the way for wisdom is made ready when men who record factsof vast but unknown import, if asked to explain their fullsignificance, are willing frankly to answer that they do not know. Theresearch which enables us to add to the sum of complete knowledgestands first; but second only stands the research which, whileenabling us clearly to pose the problem, also requires us to say thatwith our present knowledge we can offer no complete solution. 

Let me illustrate what I mean by an instance or two taken from one ofthe most fascinating branches of world-history, the history of thehigher forms of life, of mammalian life, on this globe. 

Geologists and astronomers are not agreed as to the length of timenecessary for the changes that have taken place. At any rate, manyhundreds of thousands of years, some millions of years, have passed bysince in the eocene, at the beginning of the tertiary period, we findthe traces of an abundant, varied, and highly developed mammalian lifeon the land masses out of which have grown the continents as we seethem to-day. The ages swept by, until, with the advent of mansubstantially in the physical shape in which we now know him, we alsofind a mammalian fauna not essentially different in kind, thoughwidely differing in distribution, from that of the present day. Throughout this immense period form succeeds form, type succeeds type, in obedience to laws of evolution, of progress and retrogression, ofdevelopment and death, which we as yet understand only in the mostimperfect manner. As knowledge increases our wisdom is often turnedinto foolishness, and many of the phenomena of evolution which seemedclearly explicable to the learned master of science who founded theselectures, to us nowadays seem far less satisfactorily explained. Thescientific men of most note now differ widely in their estimates ofthe relative parts played in evolution by natural selection, bymutation, by the inheritance of acquired characteristics; and we studytheir writings with a growing impression that there are forces at workwhich our blinded eyes wholly fail to apprehend; and where this is thecase the part of wisdom is to say that we believe we have such andsuch partial explanations, but that we are not warranted in sayingthat we have the whole explanation. In tracing the history of thedevelopment of faunal life during this period, the age of mammals, there are some facts which are clearly established, some great andsweeping changes for which we can with certainty ascribe reasons. There are other facts as to which we grope in the dark, and vastchanges, vast catastrophes, of which we can give no adequateexplanation. 

Before illustrating these types, let us settle one or two matters ofterminology. In the changes, the development and extinction, of specieswe must remember that such expressions as "a new species, " or as "aspecies becoming extinct, " are each commonly and indiscriminatelyused to express totally different and opposite meanings. Of coursethe "new" species is not new in the sense that its ancestorsappeared later on the globe's surface than those of any oldspecies tottering to extinction. Phylogenetically, each animal nowliving must necessarily trace its ancestral descent back throughcountless generations, through æons of time, to the early stages ofthe appearance of life on the globe. All that we mean by a "new"species is that from some cause, or set of causes, one of theseancestral stems slowly or suddenly develops into a form unlike anythat has preceded it; so that while in one form of life the ancestraltype is continuously repeated and the old species continues to exist, in another form of life there is a deviation from the ancestral typeand a new species appears. 

Similarly, "extinction of species" is a term which has two entirelydifferent meanings. The type may become extinct by dying out andleaving no descendants. Or it may die out because as the generationsgo by there is change, slow or swift, until a new form is produced. Thus in one case the line of life comes to an end. In the other caseit changes into something different. The huge titanothere, and thesmall three-toed horse, both existed at what may roughly be called thesame period of the world's history, back in the middle of themammalian age. Both are extinct in the sense that each has completelydisappeared and that nothing like either is to be found in the worldto-day. But whereas all the individual titanotheres finally died out, leaving no descendants, a number of the three-toed horses did leavedescendants, and these descendants, constantly changing as the ageswent by, finally developed into the highly specialized one-toedhorses, asses, and zebras of to-day. 

The analogy between the facts thus indicated and certain facts in thedevelopment of human societies is striking. A further analogy issupplied by a very curious tendency often visible in cases of intenseand extreme specialization. When an animal form becomes highlyspecialized, the type at first, because of its specialization, triumphs over its allied rivals and its enemies, and attains a greatdevelopment; until in many cases the specialization becomes soextreme that from some cause unknown to us, or at which we merelyguess, it disappears. The new species which mark a new era commonlycome from the less specialized types, the less distinctive, dominant, and striking types, of the preceding era. 

When dealing with the changes, cataclysmic or gradual, which divideone period of palæontological history from another, we can sometimesassign causes, and again we cannot even guess at them. In the case ofsingle species, or of faunas of very restricted localities, theexplanation is often self-evident. A comparatively slight change inthe amount of moisture in the climate, with the attendant change invegetation, might readily mean the destruction of a group of hugeherbivores with a bodily size such that they needed a vast quantity offood, and with teeth so weak or so peculiar that but one or two kindsof plants could furnish this food. Again, we now know that the mostdeadly foes of the higher forms of life are various lower forms oflife, such as insects, or microscopic creatures conveyed into theblood by insects. There are districts in South America where manylarge animals, wild and domestic, cannot live because of the presenceeither of certain ticks or of certain baleful flies. In Africa thereis a terrible genus of poison fly, each species acting as the host ofmicroscopic creatures which are deadly to certain of the highervertebrates. One of these species, though harmless to man, is fatal toall domestic animals, and this although harmless to theclosely-related wild kinsfolk of these animals. Another is fatal toman himself, being the cause of the "sleeping sickness" which in manylarge districts has killed out the entire population. Of course thedevelopment or the extension of the range of any such insects, and anyone of many other causes which we see actually at work around us, would readily account for the destruction of some given species oreven for the destruction of several species in a limited area ofcountry. 

When whole faunal groups die out over large areas, the question isdifferent, and may or may not be susceptible of explanation with theknowledge we actually possess. In the old arctogæal continent, forinstance, in what is now Europe, Asia, and North America, the glacialperiod made a complete, but of course explicable, change in the faunallife of the region. At one time the continent held a rich and variedfauna. Then a period of great cold supervened, and a different faunasucceeded the first. The explanation of the change is obvious. 

But in many other cases we cannot so much as hazard a guess at why agiven change occurred. One of the most striking instances of theseinexplicable changes is that afforded by the history of South Americatowards the close of the tertiary period. For ages South America hadbeen an island by itself, cut off from North America at the very timethat the latter was at least occasionally in land communication withAsia. During this time a very peculiar fauna grew up in South America, some of the types resembling nothing now existing, while others arerecognizable as ancestral forms of the ant-eaters, sloths, andarmadillos of to-day. It was a peculiar and diversified mammalianfauna, of, on the whole, rather small species, and without anyrepresentatives of the animals with which man has been most familiarduring his career on this earth. 

Towards the end of the tertiary period there was an upheaval of landbetween this old South American island and North America, near what isnow the Isthmus of Panama, thereby making a bridge across which theteeming animal life of the northern continent had access to this queersouthern continent. There followed an inrush of huge, or swift, orformidable creatures which had attained their development in thefierce competition of the arctogæal realm. Elephants, camels, horses, tapirs, swine, sabre-toothed tigers, big cats, wolves, bears, deer, crowded into South America, warring each against the other incomersand against the old long-existing forms. A riot of life followed. Notonly was the character of the South American fauna totally changed bythe invasion of these creatures from the north, which soon swarmedover the continent, but it was also changed through the developmentwrought in the old inhabitants by the severe competition to which theywere exposed. Many of the smaller or less capable types died out. Others developed enormous bulk or complete armor protection, andthereby saved themselves from the new beasts. In consequence, SouthAmerica soon became populated with various new species of mastodons, sabre-toothed tigers, camels, horses, deer, cats, wolves, hoovedcreatures of strange shapes and some of them of giant size, all ofthese being descended from the immigrant types; and side by side withthem there grew up large autochthonous [TR: original autochthonus]ungulates, giant ground sloths well-nigh as large as elephants, andarmored creatures as bulky as an ox but structurally of the armadilloor ant-eater type; and some of these latter not only held their own, but actually in their turn wandered north over the isthmus and invadedNorth America. A fauna as varied as that of Africa to-day, as abundantin species and individuals, even more noteworthy, because of its hugesize or odd type, and because of the terrific prowess of the moreformidable flesh-eaters, was thus developed in South America, andflourished for a period which human history would call very longindeed, but which geologically was short. 

Then, for no reason that we can assign, destruction fell on thisfauna. All the great and terrible creatures died out, the same fatebefalling the changed representatives of the old autochthonous faunaand the descendants of the migrants that had come down from the north. Ground sloth and glyptodon, sabre-tooth, horse and mastodon, and allthe associated animals of large size, vanished, and South America, though still retaining its connection with North America, once againbecame a land with a mammalian life small and weak compared to thatof North America and the Old World. Its fauna is now marked, forinstance, by the presence of medium-sized deer and cats, fox-likewolves, and small camel-like creatures, as well as by the presence ofsmall armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters. In other words, it includesdiminutive representatives of the giants of the preceding era, both ofthe giants among the older forms of mammalia, and of the giants amongthe new and intrusive kinds. The change was widespread andextraordinary, and with our present means of information it is whollyinexplicable. There was no ice age, and it is hard to imagine anycause which would account for the extinction of so many species ofhuge or moderate size, while smaller representatives, and here andthere medium-sized representatives, of many of them were left. 

Now as to all of these phenomena in the evolution of species, thereare, if not homologies, at least certain analogies, in the history ofhuman societies, in the history of the rise to prominence, of thedevelopment and change, of the temporary dominance, and death ortransformation, of the groups of varying kind which form races ornations. Here, as in biology, it is necessary to keep in mind that weuse each of the words "birth" and "death, " "youth" and "age, " oftenvery loosely, and sometimes as denoting either one of two totallydifferent conceptions. Of course, in one sense there is no such thingas an "old" or a "young" nation, any more than there is an "old" or"young" family. Phylogenetically, the line of ancestral descent mustbe of exactly the same length for every existing individual, and forevery group of individuals, whether forming a family or a nation. Allthat can properly be meant by the terms "new" and "young" is that in agiven line of descent there has suddenly come a period of rapidchange. This change may arise either from a new development ortransformation of the old elements, or else from a new grouping ofthese elements with other and varied elements; so that the words "new"nation or "young" nation may have a real difference of significance inone case from what they have in another. 

As in biology, so in human history, a new form may result from thespecialization of a long-existing, and hitherto very slowly changing, generalized or non-specialized form; as, for instance, occurs when abarbaric race from a variety of causes suddenly develops a morecomplex cultivation and civilization. This is what occurred, forinstance, in Western Europe during the centuries of the Teutonic and, later, the Scandinavian ethnic overflows from the north. All themodern countries of Western Europe are descended from the statescreated by these northern invaders. When first created they would becalled "new" or "young" states in the sense that part or all of thepeople composing them were descended from races that hitherto had notbeen civilized, and that therefore, for the first time, entered on thecareer of civilized communities. In the southern part of WesternEurope the new states thus formed consisted in bulk of the inhabitantsalready in the land under the Roman Empire; and it was here that thenew kingdoms first took shape. Through a reflex action their influencethen extended back into the cold forests from which the invaders hadcome, and Germany and Scandinavia witnessed the rise of communitieswith essentially the same civilization as their southern neighbors;though in those communities, unlike the southern communities, therewas no infusion of new blood, so that the new civilized nations whichgradually developed were composed entirely of members of the sameraces which in the same regions had for ages lived the life of aslowly changing barbarism. The same was true of the Slavs and theslavonized Finns of Eastern Europe, when an infiltration ofScandinavian leaders from the north, and an infiltration of Byzantineculture from the south, joined to produce the changes which havegradually, out of the little Slav communities of the forest and thesteppe, formed the mighty Russian Empire of to-day. 

Again, the new form may represent merely a splitting off from a longestablished, highly developed, and specialized nation. In this casethe nation is usually spoken of as a "young, " and is correctly spokenof as a "new, " nation; but the term should always be used with a clearsense of the difference between what is described in such case, andwhat is described by the same term in speaking of a civilized nationjust developed from barbarism. Carthage and Syracuse were new citiescompared to Tyre and Corinth; but the Greek or Phoenician race was inevery sense of the word as old in the new city as in the old city. So, nowadays, Victoria or Manitoba is a new community compared withEngland or Scotland; but the ancestral type of civilization andculture is as old in one case as in the other. I of course do not meanfor a moment that great changes are not produced by the mere fact thatthe old civilized race is suddenly placed in surroundings where it hasagain to go through the work of taming the wilderness, a work finishedmany centuries before in the original home of the race; I merely meanthat the ancestral history is the same in each case. We can rightlyuse the phrase "a new people, " in speaking of Canadians orAustralians, Americans or Afrikanders. But we use it in an entirelydifferent sense from that in which we use it when speaking of suchcommunities as those founded by the Northmen and their descendantsduring that period of astonishing growth which saw the descendants ofthe Norse sea-thieves conquer and transform Normandy, Sicily, and theBritish Islands; we use it in an entirely different sense from that inwhich we use it when speaking of the new states that grew up aroundWarsaw, Kief, Novgorod, and Moscow, as the wild savages of the steppesand the marshy forests struggled haltingly and stumblingly upward tobecome builders of cities and to form stable governments. The kingdomsof Charlemagne and Alfred were "new, " compared to the empire on theBosphorus; they were also in every way different; their lines ofancestral descent had nothing in common with that of the polyglotrealm which paid tribute to the Cæsars of Byzantium; their socialproblems and after-time history were totally different. This is nottrue of those "new" nations which spring direct from old nations. Brazil, the Argentine, the United States, are all "new" nations, compared with the nations of Europe; but, with whatever changes indetail, their civilization is nevertheless of the general Europeantype, as shown in Portugal, Spain, and England. The differencesbetween these "new" American and these "old" European nations are notas great as those which separate the "new" nations one from another, and the "old" nations one from another. There are in each case veryreal differences between the new and the old nation; differences bothfor good and for evil; but in each case there is the same ancestralhistory to reckon with, the same type of civilization, with itsattendant benefits and shortcomings; and, after the pioneer stages arepassed, the problems to be solved, in spite of superficialdifferences, are in their essence the same; they are those thatconfront all civilized peoples, not those that confront only peoplesstruggling from barbarism into civilization. 

So, when we speak of the "death" of a tribe, a nation, or acivilization, the term may be used for either one of two totallydifferent processes, the analogy with what occurs in biologicalhistory being complete. Certain tribes of savages--the Tasmanians, forinstance, and various little clans of American Indians--have withinthe last century or two completely died out; all of the individualshave perished, leaving no descendants, and the blood has disappeared. Certain other tribes of Indians have as tribes disappeared or are nowdisappearing; but their blood remains, being absorbed into the veinsof the white intruders, or of the black men introduced by those whiteintruders; so that in reality they are merely being transformed intosomething absolutely different from what they were. In the UnitedStates, in the new State of Oklahoma, the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Delawares, and other tribes, are in process of absorptioninto the mass of the white population; when the State was admitted acouple of years ago, one of the two Senators, and three of the fiveRepresentatives in Congress, were partly of Indian blood. In but afew years these Indian tribes will have disappeared as completely asthose that have actually died out; but the disappearance will be byabsorption and transformation into the mass of the Americanpopulation. 

A like wide diversity in fact may be covered in the statement that acivilization has "died out. " The nationality and culture of thewonderful city-builders of the lower Mesopotamian Plain havecompletely disappeared, and, though doubtless certain influencesdating therefrom are still at work, they are in such changed andhidden form as to be unrecognizable. But the disappearance of theRoman Empire was of no such character. There was complete change, far-reaching transformation, and at one period a violent dislocation;but it would not be correct to speak either of the blood or theculture of Old Rome as extinct. We are not yet in a position todogmatize as to the permanence or evanescence of the various strainsof blood that go to make up every civilized nationality; but it isreasonably certain that the blood of the old Roman still flows throughthe veins of the modern Italian; and though there has been muchintermixture, from many different foreign sources--from foreignconquerors and from foreign slaves--yet it is probable that theItalian type of to-day finds its dominant ancestral type in theancient Latin. As for the culture, the civilization of Rome, this iseven more true. It has suffered a complete transformation, partly bynatural growth, partly by absorption of totally alien elements, suchas a Semitic religion, and certain Teutonic governmental and socialcustoms; but the process was not one of extinction, but one of growthand transformation, both from within and by the accretion of outsideelements. In France and Spain the inheritance of Latin blood is small;but the Roman culture which was forced on those countries has beentenaciously retained by them, throughout all their subsequent ethnicaland political changes, as the basis on which their civilizations havebeen built. Moreover, the permanent spreading of Roman influence wasnot limited to Europe. It has extended to and over half of that NewWorld which was not even dreamed of during the thousand years ofbrilliant life between the birth and the death of Pagan Rome. This NewWorld was discovered by one Italian, and its mainland first reachedand named by another; and in it, over a territory many times the sizeof Trajan's empire, the Spanish, French, and Portuguese adventurersfounded, beside the St. Lawrence and the Amazon, along the flanks ofthe Andes and in the shadow of the snow-capped volcanoes of Mexico, from the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan, communities, nowflourishing and growing apace, which in speech and culture, and evenas regards one strain in their blood, are the lineal heirs of theancient Latin civilization. When we speak of the disappearance, thepassing away, of ancient Babylon or Nineveh, and of ancient Rome, weare using the same terms to describe totally different phenomena. 

The anthropologist and historian of to-day realize much more clearlythan their predecessors of a couple of generations back how artificialmost great nationalities are, and how loose is the terminology usuallyemployed to describe them. There is an element of unconscious andrather pathetic humor in the simplicity of half a century ago whichspoke of the Aryan and the Teuton with reverential admiration, as ifthe words denoted, not merely something definite, but somethingethnologically sacred; the writers having much the same pride andfaith in their own and their fellow-countrymen's purity of descentfrom these imaginary Aryan or Teutonic ancestors that was felt a fewgenerations earlier by the various noble families who traced theirlineage direct to Odin, Æneas, or Noah. Nowadays, of course, allstudents recognize that there may not be, and often is not, theslightest connection between kinship in blood and kinship in tongue. In America we find three races, white, red, and black, and threetongues, English, French, and Spanish, mingled in such a way that thelines of cleavage of race continually run at right angles to the linesof cleavage of speech; there being communities practically of pureblood of each race found speaking each language. Aryan and Teutonicare terms having very distinct linguistic meanings; but whether theyhave any such ethnical meanings as were formerly attributed to them isso doubtful, that we cannot even be sure whether the ancestors of mostof those we call Teutons originally spoke an Aryan tongue at all. Theterm Celtic, again, is perfectly clear when used linguistically; butwhen used to describe a race it means almost nothing until we find outwhich one of several totally different terminologies the writer orspeaker is adopting. If, for instance, the term is used to designatethe short-headed, medium-sized type common throughout middle Europe, from east to west, it denotes something entirely different from whatis meant when the name is applied to the tall, yellow-haired opponentsof the Romans and the later Greeks; while if used to designate anymodern nationality, it becomes about as loose and meaningless as theterm Anglo-Saxon itself. 

Most of the great societies which have developed a high civilizationand have played a dominant part in the world have been--andare--artificial; not merely in social structure, but in the sense ofincluding totally different race types. A great nation rarely belongsto any one race, though its citizens generally have one essentiallynational speech. Yet the curious fact remains that these greatartificial societies acquire such unity that in each one all the partsfeel a subtle sympathy, and move or cease to move, go forward or goback, all together, in response to some stir or throbbing, verypowerful, and yet not to be discerned by our senses. National unity isfar more apt than race unity to be a fact to reckon with; until indeedwe come to race differences as fundamental as those which divide fromone another the half-dozen great ethnic divisions of mankind, whenthey become so important that differences of nationality, speech, andcreed sink into littleness. 

An ethnological map of Europe in which the peoples were dividedaccording to their physical and racial characteristics, such asstature, coloration, and shape of head, would bear no resemblancewhatever to a map giving the political divisions, the nationalities, of Europe; while on the contrary a linguistic map would show a generalcorrespondence between speech and nationality. The northern Frenchmanis in blood and physical type more nearly allied to hisGerman-speaking neighbor than to the Frenchman of the Mediterraneanseaboard; and the latter, in his turn, is nearer to the Catalan thanto the man who dwells beside the Channel or along the tributaries ofthe Rhine. But in essential characteristics, in the qualities thattell in the make-up of a nationality, all these kinds of Frenchmenfeel keenly that they are one, and are different from all outsiders, their differences dwindling into insignificance, compared with theextraordinary, artificially produced, resemblances which bring themtogether and wall them off from the outside world. The same is truewhen we compare the German who dwells where the Alpine springs of theDanube and the Rhine interlace, with the physically different Germanof the Baltic lands. The same is true of Kentishman, Cornishman, andYorkshireman in England. 

In dealing, not with groups of human beings in simple and primitiverelations, but with highly complex, highly specialized, civilized, orsemi-civilized societies, there is need of great caution in drawinganalogies with what has occurred in the development of the animalworld. Yet even in these cases it is curious to see how some of thephenomena in the growth and disappearance of these complex, artificialgroups of human beings resemble what has happened in myriads ofinstances in the history of life on this planet. 

Why do great artificial empires, whose citizens are knit by a bond ofspeech and culture much more than by a bond of blood, show periods ofextraordinary growth, and again of sudden or lingering decay? In somecases we can answer readily enough; in other cases we cannot as yeteven guess what the proper answer should be. If in any such case thecentrifugal forces overcome the centripetal, the nation will of coursefly to pieces, and the reason for its failure to become a dominantforce is patent to every one. The minute that the spirit which findsits healthy development in local self-government, and is the antidoteto the dangers of an extreme centralization, develops into mereparticularism, into inability to combine effectively for achievementof a common end, then it is hopeless to expect great results. Polandand certain republics of the Western Hemisphere are the standardexamples of failure of this kind; and the United States would haveranked with them, and her name would have become a byword of derision, if the forces of union had not triumphed in the Civil War. So, thegrowth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes anational danger patent to all. Again, it needs but little of thevision of a seer to foretell what must happen in any community if theaverage woman ceases to become the mother of a family of healthychildren, if the average man loses the will and the power to work upto old age and to fight whenever the need arises. If the homelycommonplace virtues die out, if strength of character vanishes ingraceful self-indulgence, if the virile qualities atrophy, then thenation has lost what no material prosperity can offset. 

But there are plenty of other phenomena wholly or partiallyinexplicable. It is easy to see why Rome trended downward when greatslave-tilled farms spread over what had once been a country-side ofpeasant proprietors, when greed and luxury and sensuality ate likeacids into the fibre of the upper classes, while the mass of thecitizens grew to depend not upon their own exertions, but upon theState, for their pleasures and their very livelihood. But this doesnot explain why the forward movement stopped at different times, sofar as different matters were concerned; at one time as regardsliterature, at another time as regards architecture, at another timeas regards city-building. There is nothing mysterious about Rome'sdissolution at the time of the barbarian invasions; apart from theimpoverishment and depopulation of the Empire, its fall would be quitesufficiently explained by the mere fact that the average citizen hadlost the fighting edge--an essential even under a despotism, andtherefore far more essential in free, self-governing communities, suchas those of the English-speaking peoples of to-day. The mystery israther that out of the chaos and corruption of Roman society duringthe last days of the oligarchic republic, there should have sprung anEmpire able to hold things with reasonable steadiness for three orfour centuries. But why, for instance, should the higher kinds ofliterary productiveness have ceased about the beginning of the secondcentury, whereas the following centuries witnessed a great outbreak ofenergy in the shape of city-building in the provinces, not only inWestern Europe, but in Africa? We cannot even guess why the springs ofone kind of energy dried up, while there was yet no cessation ofanother kind. 

Take another and smaller instance, that of Holland. For a periodcovering a little more than the seventeenth century, Holland, likesome of the Italian city-states at an earlier period, stood on thedangerous heights of greatness, beside nations so vastly her superiorin territory and population as to make it inevitable that sooner orlater she must fall from the glorious and perilous eminence to whichshe had been raised by her own indomitable soul. Her fall came; itcould not have been indefinitely postponed; but it came far quickerthan it needed to come, because of shortcomings on her part to whichboth Great Britain and the United States would be wise to pay heed. Her government was singularly ineffective, the decentralization beingsuch as often to permit the separatist, the particularist, spirit ofthe provinces to rob the central authority of all efficiency. This wasbad enough. But the fatal weakness was that so common in rich, peace-loving societies, where men hate to think of war as possible, and try to justify their own reluctance to face it either byhigh-sounding moral platitudes, or else by a philosophy ofshort-sighted materialism. The Dutch were very wealthy. They grew tobelieve that they could hire others to do their fighting for them onland; and on sea, where they did their own fighting, and fought verywell, they refused in time of peace to make ready fleets so efficient, as either to insure them against the peace being broken, or else togive them the victory when war came. To be opulent and unarmed is tosecure ease in the present at the almost certain cost of disaster inthe future. 

It is therefore easy to see why Holland lost when she did her positionamong the powers; but it is far more difficult to explain why at thesame time there should have come at least a partial loss of positionin the world of art and letters. Some spark of divine fire burneditself out in the national soul. As the line of great statesmen, ofgreat warriors, by land and sea, came to an end, so the line of thegreat Dutch painters ended. The loss of pre-eminence in the schoolsfollowed the loss of pre-eminence in camp and in council chamber. 

In the little republic of Holland, as in the great empire of Rome, itwas not death which came, but transformation. Both Holland and Italyteach us that races that fall may rise again. In Holland, as in theScandinavian kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, there was in a sense nodecadence at all. There was nothing analogous to what has befallen somany countries; no lowering of the general standard of well-being, nogeneral loss of vitality, no depopulation. What happened was, first aflowering time, in which the country's men of action and men ofthought gave it a commanding position among the nations of the day;then this period of command passed, and the State revolved in an eddy, aside from the sweep of the mighty current of world life; and yet thepeople themselves in their internal relations remained substantiallyunchanged, and in many fields of endeavor have now recoveredthemselves, and play again a leading part. 

In Italy, where history is recorded for a far longer time, the courseof affairs was different. When the Roman Empire that was really Romanwent down in ruin, there followed an interval of centuries when thegloom was almost unrelieved. Every form of luxury and frivolity, ofcontemptuous repugnance for serious work, of enervatingself-indulgence, every form of vice and weakness which we regard asmost ominous in the civilization of to-day, had been at workthroughout Italy for generations. The nation had lost all patriotism. It had ceased to bring forth fighters or workers, had ceased to bringforth men of mark of any kind; and the remnant of the Italian peoplecowered in helpless misery among the horse-hoofs of the barbarians, asthe wild northern bands rode in to take the land for a prey and thecities for a spoil. It was one of the great cataclysms of history; butin the end it was seen that what came had been in part change andgrowth. It was not all mere destruction. Not only did Rome leave avast heritage of language, culture, law, ideas, to all the modernworld; but the people of Italy kept the old blood as the chief strainin their veins. In a few centuries came a wonderful new birth forItaly. Then for four or five hundred years there was a growth of manylittle city-states which, in their energy both in peace and war, intheir fierce, fervent life, in the high quality of their men of artsand letters, and in their utter inability to combine so as to preserveorder among themselves or to repel outside invasion, cannot unfairlybe compared with classic Greece. Again Italy fell, and the land wasruled by Spaniard or Frenchman or Austrian; and again, in thenineteenth century, there came for the third time a wonderful newbirth. 

Contrast this persistence of the old type in its old home, and incertain lands which it had conquered, with its utter disappearance incertain other lands where it was intrusive, but where it at one timeseemed as firmly established as in Italy--certainly as in Spain orGaul. No more curious example of the growth and disappearance of anational type can be found than in the case of the Græco-Romandominion in Western Asia and North Africa. All told it extended overnearly a thousand years, from the days of Alexander till after thetime of Heraclius. Throughout these lands there yet remain the ruinsof innumerable cities which tell how firmly rooted that dominion mustonce have been. The over-shadowing and far-reaching importance of whatoccurred is sufficiently shown by the familiar fact that the NewTestament was written in Greek; while to the early Christians, NorthAfrica seemed as much a Latin land as Sicily or the Valley of the Po. The intrusive peoples and their culture flourished in the lands for aperiod twice as long as that which has elapsed since, with the voyageof Columbus, modern history may fairly be said to have begun; and thenthey withered like dry grass before the flame of the Arab invasion, and their place knew them no more. They overshadowed the ground; theyvanished; and the old types reappeared in their old homes, with besidethem a new type, the Arab. 

Now, as to all these changes we can at least be sure of the mainfacts. We know that the Hollander remains in Holland, though thegreatness of Holland has passed; we know that the Latin blood remainsin Italy, whether to a greater or less extent; and that the Latinculture has died out in the African realm it once won, while it haslasted in Spain and France, and thence has extended itself tocontinents beyond the ocean. We may not know the causes of the facts, save partially; but the facts themselves we do know. But there areother cases in which we are at present ignorant even of the facts; wedo not know what the changes really were, still less the hiddencauses and meaning of these changes. Much remains to be found outbefore we can speak with any certainty as to whether some changes meanthe actual dying out or the mere transformation of types. It is, forinstance, astonishing how little permanent change in the physicalmake-up of the people seems to have been worked in Europe by themigrations of the races in historic times. A tall, fair-haired, long-skulled race penetrates to some southern country and establishesa commonwealth. The generations pass. There is no violent revolution, no break in continuity of history, nothing in the written records toindicate an epoch-making change at any given moment; and yet after atime we find that the old type has reappeared and that the people ofthe locality do not substantially differ in physical form from thepeople of other localities that did not suffer such an invasion. Doesthis mean that gradually the children of the invaders have dwindledand died out; or, as the blood is mixed with the ancient blood, hasthere been a change, part reversion and part assimilation, to theancient type in its old surroundings? Do tint of skin, eyes and hair, shape of skull, and stature, change in the new environment, so as tobe like those of the older people who dwelt in this environment? Dothe intrusive races, without change of blood, tend under the pressureof their new surroundings to change in type so as to resemble theancient peoples of the land? Or, as the strains mingled, has the newstrain dwindled and vanished, from causes as yet obscure? Has theblood of the Lombard practically disappeared from Italy, and of theVisigoth from Spain, or does it still flow in large populations wherethe old physical type has once more become dominant? Here in England, the long-skulled men of the long barrows, the short-skulled men of theround barrows, have they blended, or has one or the other typeactually died out; or are they merged in some older race which theyseemingly supplanted, or have they adopted the tongue and civilizationof some later race which seemingly destroyed them? We cannot say. Wedo not know which of the widely different stocks now speaking Aryantongues represents in physical characteristics the ancient Aryan type, nor where the type originated, nor how or why it imposed its languageon other types, nor how much or how little mixture of bloodaccompanied the change of tongue. 

The phenomena of national growth and decay, both of those which canand those which cannot be explained, have been peculiarly in evidenceduring the four centuries that have gone by since the discovery ofAmerica and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These have been thefour centuries of by far the most intense and constantly acceleratingrapidity of movement and development that the world has yet seen. Themovement has covered all the fields of human activity. It haswitnessed an altogether unexampled spread of civilized mankind overthe world, as well as an altogether unexampled advance in man'sdominion over nature; and this together with a literary and artisticactivity to be matched in but one previous epoch. This period ofextension and development has been that of one race, the so-calledwhite race, or, to speak more accurately, the group of peoples livingin Europe, who undoubtedly have a certain kinship of blood, whoprofess the Christian religion, and trace back their culture to Greeceand Rome. 

The memories of men are short, and it is easy to forget how brief isthis period of unquestioned supremacy of the so-called white race. Itis but a thing of yesterday. During the thousand years which wentbefore the opening of this era of European supremacy, the attitude ofAsia and Africa, of Hun and Mongol, Turk and Tartar, Arab and Moor, had on the whole been that of successful aggression against Europe. More than a century went by after the voyages of Columbus before themastery in war began to pass from the Asiatic to the European. Duringthat time Europe produced no generals or conquerors able to standcomparison with Selim and Solyman, Baber and Akbar. Then the Europeanadvance gathered momentum; until at the present time peoples ofEuropean blood hold dominion over all America and Australia and theislands of the sea, over most of Africa, and the major half of Asia. Much of this world conquest is merely political, and such a conquestis always likely in the long run to vanish. But very much of itrepresents not a merely political, but an ethnic conquest; theintrusive people having either exterminated or driven out theconquered peoples, or else having imposed upon them its tongue, law, culture, and religion, together with a strain of its blood. Duringthis period substantially all of the world achievements worthremembering are to be credited to the people of European descent. Thefirst exception of any consequence is the wonderful rise of Japanwithin the last generation--a phenomenon unexampled in history; forboth in blood and in culture the Japanese line of ancestral descent isas remote as possible from ours, and yet Japan, while hitherto keepingmost of what was strongest in her ancient character and traditions, has assimilated with curious completeness most of the characteristicsthat have given power and leadership to the West. 

During this period of intense and feverish activity among the peoplesof European stock, first one and then another has taken the lead. Themovement began with Spain and Portugal. Their flowering time was asbrief as it was wonderful. The gorgeous pages of their annals areillumined by the figures of warriors, explorers, statesmen, poets, andpainters. Then their days of greatness ceased. Many partialexplanations can be given, but something remains behind, some hiddenforce for evil, some hidden source of weakness upon which we cannotlay our hands. Yet there are many signs that in the New World, aftercenturies of arrested growth, the peoples of Spanish and Portuguesestock are entering upon another era of development, and there areother signs that this is true also in the Iberian peninsula itself. 

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

Comparison is often made between the Empire of Britain and the Empireof Rome. When judged relatively to the effect on all moderncivilization, the Empire of Rome is of course the more important, simply because all the nations of Europe and their offshoots in othercontinents trace back their culture either to the earlier Rome by theTiber, or the later Rome by the Bosphorus. The Empire of Rome is themost stupendous fact in lay history; no empire later in time can becompared with it. But this is merely another way of saying that thenearer the source the more important becomes any deflection of thestream's current. Absolutely, comparing the two empires one with theother in point of actual achievement, and disregarding the immenselyincreased effect on other civilizations which inhered in the olderempire because it antedated the younger by a couple of thousand years, there is little to choose between them as regards the wide andabounding interest and importance of their careers. 

In the world of antiquity each great empire rose when its predecessorhad already crumbled. By the time that Rome loomed large over thehorizon of history, there were left for her to contend with onlydecaying civilizations and raw barbarism. When she conquered Pyrrhus, she strove against the strength of but one of the many fragments intowhich Alexander's kingdom had fallen. When she conquered Carthage, sheoverthrew a foe against whom for two centuries the single Greek cityof Syracuse had contended on equal terms; it was not the Sepoy armiesof the Carthaginian plutocracy, but the towering genius of the Houseof Barca, which rendered the struggle for ever memorable. It was thedistance and the desert, rather than the Parthian horse-bowmen, thatset bounds to Rome in the east; and on the north her advance wascurbed by the vast reaches of marshy woodland, rather than by the tallbarbarians who dwelt therein. During the long generations of hergreatness, and until the sword dropped from her withered hand, theParthian was never a menace of aggression, and the German threatenedher but to die. 

On the contrary, the great expansion of England has occurred, thegreat Empire of Britain has been achieved, during the centuries thathave also seen mighty military nations rise and flourish on thecontinent of Europe. It is as if Rome, while creating and keeping theempire she won between the days of Scipio and the days of Trajan, hadat the same time held her own with the Nineveh of Sargon and Tiglath, the Egypt of Thothmes and Rameses, and the kingdoms of Persia andMacedon in the red flush of their warrior-dawn. The Empire of Britainis vaster in space, in population, in wealth, in wide variety ofpossession, in a history of multiplied and manifold achievement ofevery kind, than even the glorious Empire of Rome. Yet, unlike Rome, Britain has won dominion in every clime, has carried her flag byconquest and settlement to the uttermost ends of the earth, at thevery time that haughty and powerful rivals, in their abounding youthor strong maturity, were eager to set bounds to her greatness, and totear from her what she had won afar. England has peopled continentswith her children, has swayed the destinies of teeming myriads ofalien race, has ruled ancient monarchies, and wrested from all comersthe right to the world's waste spaces, while at home she has held herown before nations, each of military power comparable to Rome's at herzenith. 

Rome fell by attack from without only because the ills within her ownborders had grown incurable. What is true of your country, my hearers, is true of my own; while we should be vigilant against foes fromwithout, yet we need never really fear them so long as we safeguardourselves against the enemies within our own households; and theseenemies are our own passions and follies. Free peoples can escapebeing mastered by others only by being able to master themselves. WeAmericans and you people of the British Isles alike need ever to keepin mind that, among the many qualities indispensable to the success ofa great democracy, and second only to a high and stern sense of duty, of moral obligation, are self-knowledge and self-mastery. You, myhosts, and I may not agree in all our views; some of you would thinkme a very radical democrat--as, for the matter of that, I am--and mytheory of imperialism would probably suit the anti-imperialists aslittle as it would suit a certain type of forcible-feeble imperialist. But there are some points on which we must all agree if we thinksoundly. The precise form of government, democratic or otherwise, isthe instrument, the tool, with which we work. It is important to havea good tool. But, even if it is the best possible, it is only a tool. No implement can ever take the place of the guiding intelligence thatwields it. A very bad tool will ruin the work of the best craftsman;but a good tool in bad hands is no better. In the last analysis theall-important factor in national greatness is national character. 

There are questions which we of the great civilized nations are evertempted to ask of the future. Is our time of growth drawing to an end?Are we as nations soon to come under the rule of that great law ofdeath which is itself but part of the great law of life? None cantell. Forces that we can see, and other forces that are hidden or thatcan but dimly be apprehended, are at work all around us, both forgood and for evil. The growth in luxury, in love of ease, in taste forvapid and frivolous excitement, is both evident and unhealthy. Themost ominous sign is the diminution in the birth-rate, in the rate ofnatural increase, now to a larger or lesser degree shared by most ofthe civilized nations of Central and Western Europe, of America andAustralia; a diminution so great that if it continues for the nextcentury at the rate which has obtained for the last twenty-five years, all the more highly civilized peoples will be stationary or else havebegun to go backward in population, while many of them will havealready gone very far backward. 

There is much that should give us concern for the future. But there ismuch also which should give us hope. No man is more apt to be mistakenthan the prophet of evil. After the French Revolution in 1830 Niebuhrhazarded the guess that all civilization was about to go down with acrash, that we were all about to share the fall of third-andfourth-century Rome--a respectable, but painfully overworked, comparison. The fears once expressed by the followers of Malthus as tothe future of the world have proved groundless as regards thecivilized portion of the world; it is strange indeed to look back atCarlyle's prophecies of some seventy years ago, and then think of theteeming life of achievement, the life of conquest of every kind, andof noble effort crowned by success, which has been ours for the twogenerations since he complained to High Heaven that all the tales hadbeen told and all the songs sung, and that all the deeds really worthdoing had been done. I believe with all my heart that a great futureremains for us; but whether it does or does not, our duty is notaltered. However the battle may go, the soldier worthy of the namewill with utmost vigor do his allotted task, and bear himself asvaliantly in defeat as in victory. Come what will, we belong topeoples who have not yielded to the craven fear of being great. In theages that have gone by, the great nations, the nations that haveexpanded and that have played a mighty part in the world, have in theend grown old and weakened and vanished; but so have the nations whoseonly thought was to avoid all danger, all effort, who would risknothing, and who therefore gained nothing. In the end, the same fatemay overwhelm all alike; but the memory of the one type perishes withit, while the other leaves its mark deep on the history of all thefuture of mankind. 

A nation that seemingly dies may be born again; and even though in thephysical sense it die utterly, it may yet hand down a history ofheroic achievement, and for all time to come may profoundly influencethe nations that arise in its place by the impress of what it hasdone. Best of all is it to do our part well, and at the same time tosee our blood live young and vital in men and women fit to take up thetask as we lay it down; for so shall our seed inherit the earth. Butif this, which is best, is denied us, then at least it is ours toremember that if we choose we can be torch-bearers, as our fatherswere before us. The torch has been handed on from nation to nation, from civilization to civilization, throughout all recorded time, fromthe dim years before history dawned down to the blazing splendor ofthis teeming century of ours. It dropped from the hands of the cowardand the sluggard, of the man wrapped in luxury or love of ease, theman whose soul was eaten away by self-indulgence; it has been keptalight only by those who were mighty of heart and cunning of hand. What they worked at, provided it was worth doing at all, was of lessmatter than how they worked, whether in the realm of the mind or therealm of the body. If their work was good, if what they achieved wasof substance, then high success was really theirs. 

In the first part of this lecture I drew certain analogies betweenwhat has occurred to forms of animal life through the procession ofthe ages on this planet, and what has occurred and is occurring to thegreat artificial civilizations which have gradually spread over theworld's surface, during the thousands of years that have elapsed sincecities of temples and palaces first rose beside the Nile and theEuphrates, and the harbors of Minoan Crete bristled with the masts ofthe Ægean craft. But of course the parallel is true only in theroughest and most general way. Moreover, even between thecivilizations of to-day and the civilizations of ancient times, thereare differences so profound that we must be cautious in drawing anyconclusions for the present based on what has happened in the past. While freely admitting all of our follies and weaknesses of to-day, itis yet mere perversity to refuse to realize the incredible advancethat has been made in ethical standards. I do not believe that thereis the slightest necessary connection between any weakening of virileforce and this advance in the moral standard, this growth of the senseof obligation to one's neighbor and of reluctance to do that neighborwrong. We need have scant patience with that silly cynicism whichinsists that kindliness of character only accompanies weakness ofcharacter. On the contrary, just as in private life many of the men ofstrongest character are the very men of loftiest and most exaltedmorality, so I believe that in national life, as the ages go by, weshall find that the permanent national types will more and more tendto become those in which, though intellect stands high, characterstands higher; in which rugged strength and courage, rugged capacityto resist wrongful aggression by others, will go hand in hand with alofty scorn of doing wrong to others. This is the type of Timoleon, ofHampden, of Washington, and Lincoln. These were as good men, asdisinterested and unselfish men, as ever served a State; and they werealso as strong men as ever founded or saved a State. Surely suchexamples prove that there is nothing Utopian in our effort to combinejustice and strength in the same nation. The really high civilizationsmust themselves supply the antidote to the self-indulgence and loveof ease which they tend to produce. 

Every modern civilized nation has many and terrible problems to solvewithin its own borders, problems that arise not merely fromjuxtaposition of poverty and riches, but especially from theself-consciousness of both poverty and riches. Each nation must dealwith these matters in its own fashion, and yet the spirit in which theproblem is approached must ever be fundamentally the same. It must bea spirit of broad humanity; of brotherly kindness; of acceptance ofresponsibility, one for each and each for all; and at the same time aspirit as remote as the poles from every form of weakness andsentimentality. As in war to pardon the coward is to do cruel wrong tothe brave man whose life his cowardice jeopardizes, so in civilaffairs it is revolting to every principle of justice to give to thelazy, the vicious, or even the feeble or dull-witted, a reward whichis 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;and the worst lesson to teach him is that he can be permanently helpedat the expense of some one else. True liberty shows itself to bestadvantage in protecting the rights of others, and especially ofminorities. Privilege should not be tolerated because it is to theadvantage of a minority; nor yet because it is to the advantage of amajority. No doctrinaire theories of vested rights or freedom ofcontract can stand in the way of our cutting out abuses from the bodypolitic. Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of animpossible--and incidentally of a highly undesirable--socialrevolution, which in destroying individual rights--including propertyrights--and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in theadvance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advanceor the preservation of mankind is worth while. It is an evil and adreadful thing to be callous to sorrow and suffering and blind to ourduty to do all things possible for the betterment of socialconditions. But it is an unspeakably foolish thing to strive for thisbetterment by means so destructive that they would leave no socialconditions to better. In dealing with all these social problems, withthe intimate relations of the family, with wealth in private use andbusiness use, with labor, with poverty, the one prime necessity is toremember that though hardness of heart is a great evil it is nogreater an evil than softness of head. 

But in addition to these problems, the most intimate and important ofall, and which to a larger or less degree affect all the modernnations somewhat alike, we of the great nations that have expanded, that are now in complicated relations with one another and with alienraces, have special problems and special duties of our own. You belongto a nation which possesses the greatest empire upon which the sun hasever shone. I belong to a nation which is trying on a scale hithertounexampled to work out the problems of government for, of, and by thepeople, while at the same time doing the international duty of a greatPower. But there are certain problems which both of us have to solve, and as to which our standards should be the same. The Englishman, theman of the British Isles, in his various homes across the seas, andthe American, both at home and abroad, are brought into contact withutterly alien peoples, some with a civilization more ancient than ourown, others still in, or having but recently arisen from, thebarbarism which our people left behind ages ago. The problems thatarise are of well-nigh inconceivable difficulty. They cannot be solvedby the foolish sentimentality of stay-at-home people, with littlepatent recipes, and those cut-and-dried theories of the politicalnursery which have such limited applicability amid the crash ofelemental forces. Neither can they be solved by the raw brutality ofthe men who, whether at home or on the rough frontier of civilization, adopt might as the only standard of right in dealing with other men, and treat alien races only as subjects for exploitation. 

No hard-and-fast rule can be drawn as applying to all alien races, because they differ from one another far more widely than some of themdiffer from us. But there are one or two rules which must not beforgotten. In the long run there can be no justification for one racemanaging or controlling another unless the management and control areexercised in the interest and for the benefit of that other race. Thisis what our peoples have in the main done, and must continue in thefuture in even greater degree to do, in India, Egypt, and thePhilippines alike. In the next place, as regards every race, everywhere, at home or abroad, we cannot afford to deviate from thegreat rule of righteousness which bids us treat each man on his worthas a man. He must not be sentimentally favored because he belongs to agiven race; he must not be given immunity in wrong-doing or permittedto cumber the ground, or given other privileges which would be deniedto the vicious and unfit among ourselves. On the other hand, where heacts in a way which would entitle him to respect and reward if he wasone of our own stock, he is just as entitled to that respect andreward if he comes of another stock, even though that other stockproduces a much smaller proportion of men of his type than does ourown. This has nothing to do with social intermingling, with what iscalled social equality. It has to do merely with the question of doingto each man and each woman that elementary justice which will permithim or her to gain from life the reward which should always accompanythrift, sobriety, self-control, respect for the rights of others, andhard and intelligent work to a given end. To more than such justtreatment no man is entitled, and less than such just treatment no manshould receive. 

The other type of duty is the international duty, the duty owed by onenation to another. I hold that the laws of morality which shouldgovern individuals in their dealings one with the other, are just asbinding concerning nations in their dealings one with the other. Theapplication 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 sanctionof a civil law with force behind it. The individual can depend for hisrights upon the courts, which themselves derive their force from thepolice power of the State. The nation can depend upon nothing of thekind; and therefore, as things are now, it is the highest duty of themost advanced and freest peoples to keep themselves in such a state ofreadiness as to forbid to any barbarism or despotism the hope ofarresting the progress of the world by striking down the nations thatlead in that progress. It would be foolish indeed to pay heed to theunwise persons who desire disarmament to be begun by the very peopleswho, of all others, should not be left helpless before any possiblefoe. But we must reprobate quite as strongly both the leaders and thepeoples who practise, or encourage, or condone, aggression andiniquity by the strong at the expense of the weak. We should toleratelawlessness and wickedness neither by the weak nor by the strong; andboth weak and strong we should in return treat with scrupulousfairness. The foreign policy of a great and self-respecting countryshould be conducted on exactly the same plane of honor, for insistenceupon one's own rights and of respect for the rights of others, thatmarks the conduct of a brave and honorable man when dealing with hisfellows. Permit me to support this statement out of my own experience. For nearly eight years I was the head of a great nation, and chargedespecially with the conduct of its foreign policy; and during thoseyears I took no action with reference to any other people on the faceof the earth that I would not have felt justified in taking as anindividual in dealing with other individuals. 

I believe that we of the great civilized nations of to-day have aright to feel that long careers of achievement lie before our severalcountries. To each of us is vouchsafed the honorable privilege ofdoing his part, however small, in that work. Let us strive hardily forsuccess even if by so doing we risk failure, spurning the poorer soulsof small endeavor who know neither failure nor success. Let us hopethat our own blood shall continue in the land, that our children andchildren's children to endless generations shall arise to take ourplaces and play a mighty and dominant part in the world. But whetherthis be denied or granted by the years we shall not see, let at leastthe satisfaction be ours that we have carried onward the lighted torchin our own day and generation. If we do this, then, as our eyes close, and we go out into the darkness, and others' hands grasp the torch, atleast we can say that our part has been borne well and valiantly. 

 * * * * *

APPENDIX

 CONVOCATION

 JUNE 7, 1910

 FOLLOWED BY THE DELIVERY OF

 THE ROMANES LECTURE

 BY

 THE HON'BLE THEODORE ROOSEVELT

 HON. D. C. L. 

 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

 LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON

 CHANCELLOR

 PRESIDING

 * * * * *

Convocation and the Romanes Lecture, June 7, 1910[16]

 [16] An artistically printed pamphlet, containing, with text in Latin and in English, the programme and ritual here given, was placed by the University authorities in the hands of each member of the audience. --L. F. A. 

THE CHANCELLOR. 

Causa huius Convocationis est, Academici, ut, si vobis placuerit, invirum Honorabilem Theodorum Roosevelt, Civitatum Foederatarum AmericaeBorealis olim Praesidentem, Gradus Doctoris in Iure Civili conferaturhonoris causa; ut Praelectio exspectatissima ab eodem, Doctore inUniversitate facto novissimo, coram vobis pronuncietur; necnon ut aliaperagantur, quae ad Venerabilem hanc Domum spectant. 

Placetne igitur Venerabili huic Convocationi ut in virum HonorabilemTheodorum Roosevelt Gradus Doctoris in Iure Civili conferatur honoriscausa?

Placetne vobis, Domini Doctores? Placetne vobis, Magistri?

 * * * * *

To the Bedels. 

Ite, Bedelli! Petite Virum Honorabilem!

 * * * * *

The Chancellor to the Vice-Chancellor, as Mr. Roosevelt takes hisplace for presentation. 

 Hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis, Cuius in adventum pavidi cessere cometae Et septemgemini turbant trepida ostia Nili!

 * * * * *

PRESENTATION SPEECH by DR. HENRY GOUDY, Regius Professor of Civil Law, Fellow of All Souls College. 

Insignissime Cancellarie!

Vosque Egregii Procuratores!

Saepenumero mihi et antea contigit plurimos e Republica illa illustrioriundos, affines nostros, vobis praesentare gradum honorariumDoctoris in Iure Civili accepturos, inter quos vel nominapraestantissimorum hominum citare in promptu esset. Neque tamenquemquam vel suis ipsius meritis vel fama digniorem, qui hoc titulodonaretur, salutavi quam hunc virum quem ad vos duco. 

Batavorum antiqua stirpe ortus, sicut et nomen ipsius inclitumindicat, Americanae patriae germanum civem sese praestitit; in quanemo sane laudem maiorem Reipublicae suae suorum iudicio contulissecreditur. 

Tardius quidem ad Britannos fama nominis inclaruit, imprimis tum quumcertamine inter Hispanos atque suos orto alae Equitum praefectus reimilitaris sese peritissimum ostentabat. Huic autem, omnia scireardenti, nulla pars humanitatis supervacua aut negligenda videbatur. Manifesto quippe declaravit, ut cum poeta loquar:

 "Non sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo, "

atque exinde annales non tantum patriae suae sed totius terrarum orbisexemplo virtutis implere. 

Quippe bis Hercule! in locum amplissimum Praesulis Reipublicae suaeelectus egregio illo in statu ita se gerebat ut laudes et nomen magniillius antecessoris, Abraham Lincoln, vel aequipararet--quorum alterservitudinem, alter corruptionem vicit. Unde et spem licet concipereut viro bis summum civitatis honorem adepto accedat et denuo idem illehonor terna vice, numero auspicatissimo, numerandus. 

Fortem hospitis nostri animum et tenacem propositi novimus; felicitatiet otio non modo suorum sed etiam gentium exterarum consuluit:bellator ipse atque idem pacis omnibus terrae gentibus firmandaeauctor indefessus, sicut et exemplum illustre praebuit nuper foedereicto post bellum inter Iapones et Scytharum populos gestuni. Nequeidem pacem veram esse iudicavit, nisi quae iustitiae et ipsainniteretur; quippe civitates laude dignas negavit quibus nee in seipsis constaret fides et animi magnitudo. 

Venatoriam artem exercuit, historiae naturalis amator; post dimissumopus civicum requiem in Africae solitudinibus nuper quaesivit ubi inferas terrae non minore animo, successu haud minore, ferrum exacuitquam in malos saeculi mores saevire solitus est. 

Iam tandem, laboribus functus, patriam suam repetiturus nobiscumpaulum temporis commoratur Ulysses ille alter, viarum pariter expertuset consiliorum largitor. 

Neque praetermittendum est hospitem nostrum, dum varias artes colit, Musarum opus non neglexisse, stilo non minus quam lingua facundus;quem nos, Academici, magnis de rebus loquentem hodie audituri sumus. 

Hunc igitur praesento

Theodorum Roosevelt, ut admittatur ad gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili honoris causa. 

 * * * * *

The Chancellor to Mr. Roosevelt in admitting him to the Degree. 

Strenuissime, insignissime, civium toto orbe terrae hodie agentium, summum ingentis rei publicae magistratum bis incorrupte gestum, terforsitan gesture, augustissimis regibus par, hominum domitor, beluarumubique vastator, homo omnium humanissime, nihil a te alienum, nenigerrimum quidem, putans, ego auctoritate Mea et totius Universitatisadmitto te ad Gradum Doctoris in Iure Civili _honoris causa_. 

The Chancellor to the Bedels. 

Ite, Bedelli! Ducite Doctorem Honorabilem ad Pulpitum!

 * * * * *

The Chancellor will then, in English, welcome Mr. Roosevelt toOxford, and invite him to deliver his Lecture. 

 * * * * *

THE ROMANES LECTURE

 * * * * *

At the close of the Lecture the Chancellor will direct theVice-Chancellor to dissolve the Convocation as follows:

Iamque tempus enim est, Insignissime mi Vice-Cancellarie, dissolve, quaeso, Convocationem. 

 * * * * *

The Vice-Chancellor will dissolve the Convocation as follows:

Celsissime Domine Cancellarie, iussu tuo dissolvimus hancConvocationem. 

FINIS

 * * * * *

Convocation and the Romanes Lecture

TRANSLATION OF THE LATIN

THE CHANCELLOR. 

The object of this Convocation is, that, if it be your pleasure, Gentlemen of the University, the Honorary Degree of Doctor of CivilLaw may be conferred on the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, ex-Presidentof the United States of North America, that the long-expected RomanesLecture may be delivered by him, when he has been made the youngestDoctor in the University, and that any other business should betransacted which may belong to this Venerable House. 

Is it the pleasure then of this Venerable House that the HonoraryDegree of Doctor of Civil Law should be conferred upon the HonorableTheodore Roosevelt? Is it your pleasure, Reverend Doctors? Is it yourpleasure, Masters of the University?

 * * * * *

Go, Bedels, and bring in the Honorable gentleman!

 * * * * *

The Chancellor to the Vice-Chancellor. 

 Behold, Vice-Chancellor, the promised wight, Before whose coming comets turned to flight, And all the startled mouths of sevenfold Nile took fright!

 * * * * *

PRESENTATION SPEECH by DR. HENRY GOUDY. 

It has been my privilege to present in former years many distinguishedcitizens of the great American Republic for our honorary degree ofDoctor of Laws, but none of them have surpassed in merit or obtainedsuch world-wide celebrity as he whom I now present to you. Of ancientDutch lineage, as his name indicates, but still a genuine American, he has long been an outstanding figure among his fellow citizens. Hefirst became known to us in England during the Spanish-American War, when he commanded a regiment of cavalry and proved himself a mostcapable military leader. Omnivorous in his quest of knowledge, nothingin human affairs seemed to him superfluous or negligible. In thelanguage of the poet, one might say of him--"Non sibi sed toti genitumse credere mundo. " Twice has he been elevated to the position ofPresident of the Republic, and in performing the duties of that highoffice has acquired a title to be ranked with his great predecessorAbraham Lincoln--"Quorum alter servitudinem, alter corruptionemvicit. " May we not presage that still a third time--most auspicious ofnumbers--he may be called upon to take the reins of government?

With unrivalled energy and tenacity of purpose he has combined loftyideals with a sincere devotion to the practical needs not only of hisfellow countrymen, but of humanity at large. A sincere friend of peaceamong nations--who does not know of his successful efforts toterminate the devastating war between Russia and Japan?--he has alsofirmly held that Peace is only a good thing when combined with justiceand right. He has ever asserted that a nation can only hope to surviveif it be self-respecting and makes itself respected by others. 

A noted sportsman and lover of Natural History, he has recently, afterhis arduous labors as Head of the State, been seeking relaxation indistant Africa, where his onslaughts on the wild beasts of the deserthave been not less fierce nor less successful than over themany-headed hydra of corruption in his own land. 

Now, like another Ulysses, on his homeward way he has come to us for abrief interval, after visiting many cities and discoursing on manythemes. 

Nor must I omit to remind you that our guest, amid his engrossingduties of State, has not neglected the Muses. Not less facile with thepen than the tongue, he has written on many topics, and this afternoonit will be our privilege to listen to him discoursing on a loftytheme. 

 * * * * *

By the Chancellor. 

Most strenuous of men, most distinguished of citizens to-day playing apart on the stage of the world, you who have twice administered withpurity the first Magistracy of the Great Republic (and may perhapsadminister it a third time), peer of the most august Kings, queller ofmen, destroyer of monsters wherever found, yet the most human ofmankind, deeming nothing indifferent to you, not even the blackest ofthe black; I, by my authority and that of the whole University, admityou to the Degree of Doctor of Civil Law, _honoris causa_. 

 * * * * *

Go, Bedels, conduct the Honorable Doctor to the Lectern!

 * * * * *

Here follows the Chancellor's welcome, and the Romanes Lecture. 

 * * * * *

After the Lecture, the Chancellor to the Vice-Chancellor. 

And now, my dear Vice-Chancellor--for it is time--be good enough todissolve the Convocation!

 * * * * *

The Vice-Chancellor. 

Exalted Lord Chancellor, at your bidding we dissolve the Convocation. 

FINIS