The late President Roosevelt has expressed his views on our wars, and he may certainly be taken as fairly representative of a large portion of the American people. He was a devout Christian, but singularly free from hypocrisy. He was given to "speakin' out in meetin'," on occasions with a frankness that was embarrassing to his followers, and even later to himself.[57] In his life of Thomas H. Benton, American Statesmen Series, page 261, he says, in treating of this boundary dispute with Canada: "The matter was sure to be decided in favor of the strongest; and, say what we will about the justice and right of the various claims, _the honest truth_ is, that the comparative _might_ of the different nations, and not the comparative _righteousness_ of their several causes, was the determining factor in the settlement. Mexico lost her northern provinces by no law of right, but simply by the law of the longest sword--the same law that gave India to England."[58] On page 262 he says: "It would be untrue to say that Nations have not at times proved themselves capable of acting with great disinterestedness and generosity towards other peoples; but such conduct is not very common at the best, and although it often may be desirable, _it certainly is not always so_. If the matter in dispute is of _great importance_, and if there is a _doubt_ as to which side is right, then the strongest party to the controversy is pretty sure to give itself the benefit of that doubt; and international morality will have to take tremendous strides in advance before this ceases to be the case."[59] On page 268 he says: "No foot of soil to which we had any title[60] in the Northwest should have been given up; we were the people who could use it best, and _we ought to have taken it all_. The prize was well worth winning, and would warrant a good deal of risk being run." On page 289, in speaking of the final compromise and settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute, he says: "Yet as there was no particular reason why we should show any generosity in our diplomatic dealings with England, it may well be questioned whether it would not have been better to have left things as they were until we could have taken all. Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided, but they are far better than certain kinds of peace. Every war in which we have been engaged, except the one with Mexico, has been justifiable in its origin, and each one, without any exception whatever, has left us better off, taking both moral[61] and material considerations into account, than we should have been if we had not waged it." These citations, reflecting, as they undoubtedly do, prevalent American sentiment in the past and present, establish the utter hypocrisy of any claim that the Sermon on the Mount has had any practical, effective power in determining the actions of our nation concerning wars, whether justifiable or not. (b) SUNDAY AND THE SABBATH