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
seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gunnery,
and the power of acting together, which their successors utilized so
gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember the
converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those
who built up the navy, and, for the sake of the future of the country,
keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the “Congressional
Record.” Find out the Senators and Congressmen who opposed the grants
for building the new ships; who opposed the purchase of armor, without
which the ships were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance
for the Navy Department, and strove to cut down the number of men
necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one
and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share
in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause
to feel proud of the valor of our sea-captains, of the renown of our
flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were
heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor, and we
won in spite of their sinister opposition.
Now, apply all this to our public men of to-day. Our army has never
been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an
audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy
millions of freemen is in danger of losing its liberties from the
existence of an army of one hundred thousand men, three-fourths of
whom will be employed in certain foreign islands, in certain coast
fortresses, and on Indian reservations. No man of good sense and stout
heart can take such a proposition seriously. If we are such weaklings
as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any
event. To no body of men in the United States is the country so much
indebted as to the splendid officers and enlisted men of the regular
army and navy. There is no body from which the country has less to
fear, and none of which it should be prouder, none which it should be
more anxious to upbuild.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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