The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14) — John Shaqi
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)Roosevelt, Theodore
General
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)
Roosevelt, Theodore
United States -- Colonial question; United States -- Politics and government
element, it is, after all, but one of the many elements that go to
make up true national greatness. No country can long endure if its
foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes
from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing
effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation
ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All
honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to
the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our
railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand;
for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our
debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in
a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their
lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they
toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon
them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier
duties—duties to the nation and duties to the race.
We can not sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely
an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens
beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations
grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into
closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle
for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without
our own borders. We must build the Isthmian Canal, and we must grasp
the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding
the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West.
So much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international
honor the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila
and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of
duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage
anarchy, we had better not have begun the task at all. It is worse than
idle to say that we have no duty to perform, and can leave to their
fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be the course
of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched
islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have to step in
and do the work, and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, unable to
carry to successful completion the labors that great and high-spirited
nations are eager to undertake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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