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THE WORKS OF

Theodore Roosevelt

IN FOURTEEN VOLUMES

Illustrated



Presidential Addresses
AND State Papers



PART TWO




Jgxecutive Jgdition

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
PRESIDENT THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
WITH THE CENTURY CO., MESSRS. CHARLES
SCRIBNER'S SONS, AND G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS



THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLICATION SOCIETY

NEW YORK AND LONDON
14



/â– ^






The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that President Roosevelt

retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these

speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses

has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore,

not to be handled as copyrighted material from which

the President should receive any pecuniary return.



SOURCE TJNKNOWIW

KB 1 9 1945



^



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS



PART TWO



X^



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND
STATE PAPERS

AT DEDICATION OF NAVY MEMORIAL MONU-
MENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-CiUsens:

The ground for this monument was first turned by
President McKinley, and I am glad to have the
chance of saying a few words in dedication of the
completed monument. There is no branch of our
government in which all our people are so deeply
interested as the Navy of the United States. It is
not merely San Francisco, not merely New York, or
Boston, or Charleston, or New Orleans, not merely
the seacoast cities of the Nation ; every individual in
the Nation who is proud of America and jealous of
her good name must feel a thrill of generous emotion
at the erection of a monument to the navy, a monu-
ment to the fleet which was victorious under Admiral
Dewey on the first of May five years ago, a fleet which
then added a new page to the long honor roll of
American achievement. It is eminently fitting that
there should be here in this great city on the Pacific
Ocean a monument to commemorate the deed which
showed once for all that America had taken her po-
sition on the Pacific. I want you all to draw a prac-
tical lesson from this commemoration. We to-day
dedicate this monument because those who went be-
fore us had the wisdom to make ready for the vic-

I— Vol. XIV ^^oi)



402 Presidential Addresses

tory. If we wish our children to have the chance
of dedicating monuments of this kind in the event
of war we must see that the navy is made ready in
advance. To dedicate the monument would be an
empty and foolish thing if we accompanied it by
an abandonment of our national policy of building
up the navy. And good though it is to erect this
monument, it is better still to go on with the build-
ing up of the navy which gave the monument to
ust and which, if we ever give it a fair chance, can
be relied upon to rise level to our needs.

Remember that after the war has begun it is too
late to improvise a navy. A naval war is two-
thirds settled in advance, at least two-thirds, because
it is mainly settled by the preparation which has
gone on for years preceding its outbreak. We won
at Manila because the shipbuilders of the country,
including those here at San Francisco, under the
wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years
before been preparing the navy. In 1882 our navy
was a shame and a disgrace to the country in point
of material. The personnel contained as fine ma-
terial as there was to be found in the world but the
ships and the gims were antiquated, and it would
have been a wicked absurdity to have sent them
against the ships of any good power. Then we be-
gan to build up the navy. Every ship that fought
under Dewey had 1>een built between 1883 and 1896.
We come here as patriots remembering that our
party lines stop at the water's edge. That fleet
was successful in 1898 because under the previous
administrations of both political parties, under the
previous Congresses controlled by both political par-



And State Papers 403

ties, for the previous fifteen years there had been a
resolute effort tO' build adequate ships. The ships
that went in under Dewey had been constructed un-
der different successive Secretaries of the Navy and
had been provided for by different successive Con-
gresses of the United States. Not one of them had
been built less than two years, some of them four-
teen years. We could not have begun to fight that
battle if we had not been for so many years making
ready the navy.

The last Congress has taken greater strides than
any previous Congress in making ready the navy,
but it will be two or three years before the effects
are seen. In no branch of the government are fore-
sight and the carrying out of a steady and continu-
ous policy so necessary as in the navy; and you,
citizens of San Francisco, of California, and all our
citizens should make it a matter of prime duty to see
that there is no halt in that work, that the next Con-
gress, and the Congress after that, and the Congress
after that, go right on providing formidable war-
craft, providing officers, providing men, and pro-
viding the means of training them in peace to be
effective in war. The best ships and the best guns
do not count unless they are handled aright and
aimed aright, and the best men can not thus handle
the one nor aim the other if they do not have ample
practice. Our people must be trained in handling
our ships in squadrons on the high seas. Our peo-
ple on the ships must be trained by actual practice
to do their duty in conning tower, in the engine



404 Presidential Addresses

rooms, in the gun turrets. The shots that count in
battle are the shots that hit.

We have reason to be satisfied with the rapid in-
crease in accuracy in marksmanship of the navy in
recent years, and I congratulate Admiral Glass and
those under him and all our naval officers who are
taking their part so well in perfecting that work, and
I congratulate the enlisted men of the navy upon the
extraordinary improvement in marksmanship shown
by the gun pointers.

Applaud the navy and what it has done. That
is first-class. But make your applause count by
seeing that the good work goes on. Besides ap-
plauding now see to it that the navy is so built up
that the men of the next generation will have some-
thing to applaud also.

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKE-
LEY, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

President Wheeler; Fellow-M embers of the Uni-
versity :

Last night, in speaking to one of my new friends
in California, he told me that he thought enough had
been said to me about the fruits and flowers; that
enough had been said to me about California being
an Eden, and that he wished I would pay some at-
tention to Adam as well. Much though I have been
interested in the wonderful physical beauty of this
wonderful State, I have been infinitely more inter-
ested in its citizenship, and perhaps most in its
citizenship in the making.



And State Papers 405

When I come to the University of California and
am greeted by its President I am greeted by an old
and valued friend, a friend whom I have not merely
known socially but upon whom, while I was Gov-
ernor of New York, I leaned often for advice and as-
sistance in the problems with which I had to deal.
When he accepted your offer I grudged him to
you. And it was not until I came here, not until I
have seen you, that I have been fully reconciled to the
loss. But now I am, for I can conceive of no hap-
pier life for any man to lead to whom life means
what it should mean, than the life of the President of
this great University,

This same friend last night suggested to me a
thought that I intend to work out in speaking to
you to-day. We were talking over the University
of California, and from that we spoke of the general
educational system of our country. Facts tend to
become commonplace, and we tend to lose sight of
their importance when once they are ingrained into
the life of the Nation. Although we talk a good
deal about what the widespread education of this
country means, I question if many of us deeply con-
sider its meaning. From the lowest grade of the
public school to the highest form of university train-
ing, education in this country is at the disposal of
every man, every woman, who chooses to work for
and obtain it. The State has done much, very much ;
witness this university. Private benefaction has
done very much; witness also this university. And
each one of us who has obtained an education



4o6 Presidential Addresses

has obtained something for which he or she has not
personally paid. No matter what the school, what
the university, every American who has a school
training, a university training, has obtained some-
thing given to him outright by the State, or given
to him by those dead or those living who were able
to make provision for that training because of the
protection of the State, because of existence within
its borders. Each one of us then who has an edu-
cation, school or college, has obtained something
from the community at large for which he or she
has not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman is
content to rest permanently under such an obliga-
tion. Where the State has bestowed education the
man who accepts it must be content to accept it
merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State
in full, in the shape of good citizenship. I do not
ask of you, men and women here to-day, good citi-
zenship as a favor to the State. I demand it of you
as a right, and hold you recreant to your duty if
you fail to give it.

Here you are in this university, in this State with
its wonderful climate, which is permitting people of
a northern stock for the first time in the history of
that northern stock to gain education in physical
surroundings somewhat akin to those which sur-
rounded the early Greeks. Here you have all those
advantages and you are not to be excused if you do
not show in tangible fashion your appreciation of
them and your power to give practical effect to
that appreciation. From all our citizens we have



And State Papers 407

a right to expect good citizenship; but most of all
from those who have received most ; most of all
from those who have had the training of body, of
mind, of soul, which comes from association in and
with a great university. From those to whom much
has been given w'e have Biblical authority to expect
and demand much in return ; and the most that can
be given to any man is education. I expect and de-
mand in the name of the Nation much more from
you who have had training of the mind than from
those of mere wealth. To the man of means much
has been given, too, and much will be expected from
him, and ought to be, but not as much as from you,
because your possession is more valuable than his.
If you envy him I think poorly of you. Envy is
merely the meanest form of admiration, and a man
who envies another admits thereby his own inferior-
ity. We have a right to expect from the college
bred man, the college bred woman, a proper sense of
proportion, a proper sense of perspective, which will
enable him or her to see things in their right rela-
tion one to another, and when thus seen while wealth
will have a proper place, a just place, as an instru-
ment for achieving happiness and power, for confer-
ring happiness and power, it will not stand as high
as much else in our national life. I ask you to take
that not as a conventional statement from the uni-
versity platform, but to test it by thinking of the
men whom you admire in our past history and see-
ing what are the qualities which have made you
admire them, what are the services thev have ren-



4o8 Presidential Addresses

dered. For as President Wheeler said to-day, it is
true now as it ever has been true that the greatest
good fortune, the greatest honor, that can befall
any man is that he shall serve, that he shall serve the
Nation, serve his people, serve mankind ; and looking
back in history the names that come up before us,
the names to which we turn, the names of the men of
our own people which stand as shining honor marks
in our annals, the names of those men typifying quali-
ties which rightly we should hold in reverence, are
the names of the statesmen, of the soldiers, of the
poets — and after them, not abreast of them, the
names of the architects of our material prosperity
also.

Of recent years I have been thrown in contact
with a number of college graduates doing good
service to the country, and as I wish to make it per-
fectly evident what I mean by the kind of service
which I should hope to have from you and which it
seems to me worth while to render, I want to say
just a word about two college graduates who have
during the last five years rendered and are now ren-
dering such services: Governor Taft in the Phil-
ippines, and Brigadier-General Leonard Wood, late-
ly Governor of Cuba. When we acquired the Phil-
ippines and took possession for the time being of
Cuba to train its people in citizenship, we assumed
hea\7 responsibilities ; so heavy that some very ex-
cellent persons thought we ought to shirk them. I
hold that a great and masterful people forfeits its
title to greatness if it shirks any work because that



And State Papers 409

work is difficult and responsible. The difficulty and
responsibility impose upon us the high duty of doing
the work well, but they in no way excuse us for re-
fusing to do it. We had to do the work and
the question came of the choice of instruments in
doing it. The most important and most difficult
task after the establishment of order by the army
in the Philippines was the establishment of civil
government therein ; and second only in impor-
tance to that came the administration of Cuba,
during the three years and over that elapsed be-
fore we were able to turn its government over to
its own people and start it as a free Republic. When
tasks are all-important the most important factor
in doing them right is the choice of the agents ; and
among the many debts of gratitude which this Na-
tion owes to President McKinley, no debt is greater
than the debt we owe him for the choice of his in-
strimients, such a choice as that of Taft, such a
choice as that of Wood. We sent Taft to the Phil-
ippines; we sent Wood to Cuba; both of them as
tested by the standard of our commercial life, poor
men ; each man with little more than his salary to
keep himself and his family ; each man to handle
millions upon millions of dollars, to have the power
by mere coimiving at what was improper to acquire
untold wealth — and sent them knowing that we did
not ever have to consider whether such opportuni-
ties would be temptations toward them ; sent them
knowing that they had the ideals of the true Ameri-
can and that, therefore, we did not have to con-



4IO Presidential Addresses

sider the chance of such a temptation appeahng
to them.

Taft went to the PhiHppines to stay there; not
only forfeiting thereby the certainty of brilhant rise
in his profession on the bench or at the bar here
if he had stayed, but at imminent risk to his own
health ; because he felt that his duty as an American
made him go; that, as President McKInley told me
of him, he had been drafted into the service of the
country and he could not honorably refuse. We
have seen in consequence the Philippine Islands ad-
ministered by the American official who is at the
head of the government and by his colleagues in the
interest primarily of their people, and seeking to
obtain for the United States, for the dominant race,
that spent its blood and its treasure in making firm
and stable the government of those islands, the re-
ward that comes from the consciousness of duty well
done. Under Taft, by and through his efforts, not
only have peace and material well-being come to
those islands to a degree never before known in their
recorded history, and to a degree infinitely greater
than had ever been dreamed possible by those who
knew them best, but more than that^ a greater meas-
ure of self-government has been given to them than
is now given to any other Asiatic people under alien
rule, than to any other Asiatic people under their
own rulers, save Japan alone. That is an achieve-
ment of the past five years which I hold to be abso-
lutely unparalleled in history ; and when the debit and
credit side of our national life is finally made up a



And State Papers 411

long stroke shall be put to the credit side for what
has been done in the Philippines under Taft and his
associates.

In the same way Leonard Wood worked in Cuba.
Put down there to do an absolutely new task, to
take a people of a different race, a different speech,
a different creed, a people just emerging from the
hideous welter of a war, cruel and sanguinary be-
yond what we in this fortunate country can readily
conceive, to take a people down in the depths of
poverty and misery, just recovering from suffer-
ing which makes one shudder to think of, a peo-
ple untrained utterly and absolutely in self-gov-
ernment, and fit them for it; and he did it. For
three years he worked. He established a school
system as good as the best that we have in any of
our States. He cleaned cities which had never been
cleaned in their existence before. He secured ab-
solute safety for life and property. He did the kind
of governmental work which should be the undy-
ing honor of our people forever. And he came
home to what ? He came home to be thanked by a
few, to be attacked by others — not to their credit —
and to have as his real reward the sense that thouo-h
his work had been done at pecuniary sacrifice to
him, that though the demands upon him had been
such as to eat into his private means, yet he had
worthily and w^ell done his duty as an American citi-
zen and reflected fresh honor upon the uniform of
the United States Army.

I have chosen Taft and Wood simply as instances



412 Presidential Addresses

of what other men by the hundred have done, Amer-
icans who have graduated from no college, Ameri-
cans who have graduated from our different colleges,
and especially by practically all those Americans who
have graduated from the two great typical Ameri-
can institutions of learning — West Point and Annap-
olis. Taft and Wood and their fellows are spend-
ing or have spent the best years of their prime in do-
ing a work which means to them pecuniary loss, at
the best a bare livelihood while they are doing it,
and are doing it gladly because they realize the truth
that the highest privilege that can be given to any
American is the privilege of serving his country, his
fellow-Americans. As I am speaking to an audience
with proper ideals, when I say that Taft and Wood
have done all this service to their pecuniary loss
I am holding them up not for pity but for ad-
miration. Every man, every woman here should
feel it incumbent upon him or her to welcome
with joy the chance to render service to the coun-
try, service to our people at large, and to accept the
rendering of the service as in itself ample repay-
ment therefor. Do not misunderstand me. The
average man, the average woman must earn his or
her living in one way or another, and I most em-
phatically do not advise any one to decline to do the
humdrum, every-day duties because there may come
a chance for the display of heroism. I ask of you
the straightforward, earnest, performance of duty
in all the little things that come up day by day
in business, in domestic life, in every way, and then



And State Papers 413

when the opportunity comes, if you have thus done
your duty in the lesser things, I know you will rise
level to the heroic needs.



AT BANQUET OF THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB
OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903

Mr. Toastmaster, and you, my Fellow-Members of
the Union League Club:

No one can too strongly insist upon the elemen-
tary fact that you can not build the superstruc-
ture of public virtue save on private virtue. The
sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to
make that whole, the State, the representative and
exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made
through the decency, public and private, of the aver-
age citizen.

It is absolutely essential if we are to have the
proper standard of public life that promise shall be
square with performance. A lie is no more to be
excused in politics than out of politics. A promise
is as binding on the stump as off the stump; and
there are two facets to that crystal. In the first
place, the man who makes a promise which he does
not intend to keep and does not try to keep should
rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree
what should be every man's most precious posses-
sion — his honor. On the other hand, the public
that exacts a promise which ought not to be kept,
or which can not be kept, is by just so much for-
feiting its right to self-government. There is no



414 Presidential Addresses

surer way of destroying the capacity for self-gov-
ernment in a people than to accustom that people
to demanding the impossible or the improper from
its pubhc men. No man fit to be a public man will
promise either the impossible or the improper ; and
if the demand is made that he shall do so it means
putting a premium upon the unfit in public life.
There is the same sound reason for distrusting the
man who promises too much in public that there is
for distrusting the man who promises too much in
private business.

The one indispensable thing for us to keep is a
high standard of character for the average American
citizen.

AT CARSON CITY, NEVADA, MAY 19, 1903
Mr. Governor, Mr Mayor, and you, my Fellow-
Citizens:

It has been a great pleasure to be introduced in
the more than kind words the Governor has used,
because the Governor has been a genuine pioneer.
Here in this great Western country, the country
which is what it is purely because the pioneers who
came here had iron in their veins, because they were
able to conquer plain and mountain, and to make the
wilderness blossom, we are not to be excused if we
do not see to it that the generation that comes after
us is trained to have the sum of the fundamental
qualities which enabled their fathers to succeed.

I want to say one special word to-day here in Car-
son City on a subject in which all of our people



And State Papers 415

from the Atlantic to the Pacific take an interest, but
which affects in especial the people of the States of
the great plains and mountains and affects no State
more than it does Nevada — the question of irriga-
tion. Now, as I say, I do not regard that as in
any way merely a question of the Rocky Moun-
tain States, of the great plains States, because
anything which tends for the well-being of any
portion of the Union is therefore for the well-
being of all of it, and it was for that reason
that I felt warranted in appealing to the people
of the seaboard States on the Atlantic, to the peo-
ple of the States of the Great Lakes and the Mis-
sissippi Valley, to say that it was their duty to help
in bringing about a scheme of national irrigation,
because the interest of any part of this country is
the interest of all of it; and no man is a really
good American who fails to grasp that fact.

The National Government is still, as you all well
know, but as many Easterners do not know, the great-
est land owner in the Western States, and among all
those States Nevada holds the great proportion of
vacant public land, and the need of Nevada for Fed-
eral assistance was one of the strongest arguments
used in the discussion which preceded the reclama-
tion act of June, 1902, the irrigation act of a year
ago. The great extent of the vacant public lands
in the State, the fact that its water supply came
chiefly from streams rising in the adjoining State of
California, and the overwhelming difficulties which
for these and other reasons prevented the people of



41 6 Presidential Addresses

Nevada from efficiently acting in their own inter-
est, made, in my judgment, and, as it proved, in the
judgment of the Congress, Federal interference ab-