America and the World War. Theodore Roosevelt

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      There are certain respects in which I think the United States can fairly claim to stand ahead of most nations in its regard for international morality. For example, last spring when we took Vera Cruz, there were individuals within the city who fired at our troops in exactly the same fashion as that which is alleged to have taken place in Louvain. But it never for one moment entered the heads of our people to destroy Vera Cruz. In the same way, when we promised freedom to Cuba, we kept our promise, and after establishing an orderly government in Cuba withdrew our army and left her as an independent power; performing an act which, as far as I know, is entirely without parallel in the dealings of stronger with weaker nations.

      In the same way our action in San Domingo, when we took and administered her customs houses, represented a substantial and efficient achievement in the cause of international peace which stands high in the very honorable but scanty list of such actions by great nations in dealing with their less fortunate sisters. In the same way our handling of the Panama situation, both in the acquisition of the canal, in its construction, and in the attitude we have taken toward the dwellers on the Isthmus and all the nations of mankind, has been such as to reflect signal honor on our people. In the same way we returned the Chinese indemnity, because we deemed it excessive, just as previously we had returned a money indemnity to Japan. Similarly the disinterestedness with which we have administered the Philippines for the good of the Philippine people is something upon which we have a right to pride ourselves and shows the harm that would have been done had we not taken possession of the Philippines.

      But, unfortunately, in dealing with schemes of universal peace and arbitration, we have often shown an unwillingness to fulfil proper promises which we had already made by treaty, coupled with a reckless willingness to make new treaties with all kinds of promises which were either improper and ought not to be kept or which, even if proper, could not and would not be kept. It has again and again proved exceedingly difficult to get Congress to appropriate money to pay some obligation which under treaty or arbitration or the like has been declared to be owing by us to the citizens of some foreign nation. Often we have announced our intention to make sweeping arbitration treaties or agreements at the very time when by our conduct we were showing that in actual fact we had not the slightest intention of applying them with the sweeping universality we promised. In these cases we were usually, although not always, right in our refusal to apply the treaties, or rather the principles set forth in the treaties, to the concrete case at issue; but we were utterly wrong, we were, even although perhaps unintentionally, both insincere and hypocritical, when at the same time we made believe we intended that these principles would be universally applied. This was particularly true in connection with the universal arbitration treaties which our government unsuccessfully endeavored to negotiate some three years ago. Our government announced at that time that we intended to enter into universal arbitration treaties under which we would arbitrate everything, even including questions of honor and of vital national interest. At the very time that this announcement was made and the negotiation of the treaties begun, the government in case after case where specific performance of its pledges was demanded responded with a flat refusal to do the very thing it had announced its intention of doing.

      Recently, there have been negotiated in Washington thirty or forty little all-inclusive arbitration or so-called “peace” treaties, which represent as high a degree of fatuity as is often achieved in these matters. There is no likelihood that they will do us any great material harm because it is absolutely certain that we would not pay the smallest attention to them in the event of their being invoked in any matter where our interests were seriously involved; but it would do us moral harm to break them, even although this were the least evil of two evil alternatives. It is a discreditable thing that at this very moment, with before our eyes such proof of the worthlessness of the neutrality treaties affecting Belgium and Luxembourg, our nation should be negotiating treaties which convince every sensible and well-informed observer abroad that we are either utterly heedless in making promises which cannot be kept or else willing to make promises which we have no intention of keeping. What has just happened shows that such treaties are worthless except to the degree that force can and will be used in backing them.

      There are some well-meaning people, misled by mere words, who doubtless think that treaties of this kind do accomplish something. These good and well-meaning people may feel that I am not zealous in the cause of peace. This is the direct reverse of the truth. I abhor war. In common with all other thinking men I am inexpressibly saddened by the dreadful contest now waging in Europe. I put peace very high as an agent for bringing about righteousness. But if I must choose between righteousness and peace I choose righteousness. Therefore, I hold myself in honor bound to do anything in my power to advance the cause of the peace of righteousness throughout the world. I believe we can make substantial advances by international agreement in the line of achieving this purpose and in this book I state in outline just what I think can be done toward this end. But I hold that we will do nothing and less than nothing unless, pending the accomplishment of this purpose, we keep our own beloved country in such shape that war shall not strike her down; and, furthermore, unless we also seriously consider what the defects have been in the existing peace, neutrality, and arbitration treaties and in the attitude hitherto assumed by the professional pacificists, which have rendered these treaties such feeble aids to peace and the ultrapacificist attitude a positive obstacle to peace.

      The truth is that the advocates of world-wide peace, like all reformers, should bear in mind Josh Billings’s astute remark that “it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent.” The worthy pacificists have completely forgotten that the Biblical injunction is two-sided and that we are bidden not only to be harmless as doves but also to be wise as serpents. The ultrapacificists have undoubtedly been an exceedingly harmless body so far as obtaining peace is concerned. They have exerted practically no influence in restraining wrong, although they have sometimes had a real and lamentable influence in crippling the forces of right and preventing them from dealing with wrong. An appreciable amount of good work has been done for peace by genuine lovers of peace, but it has not been done by the feeble folk of the peace movement, loquacious but impotent, who are usually unfortunately prominent in the movement and who excite the utter derision of the great powers of evil.

      Sincere lovers of peace who are wise have been obliged to face the fact that it is often a very complicated thing to secure peace without the sacrifice of righteousness. Furthermore, they have been obliged to face the fact that generally the only way to accomplish anything was by not trying to accomplish too much.

      The complicated nature of the problem is shown by the fact that whereas the real friends of righteousness believe that our duty to peace ought to be fulfilled by protesting against—and doubtless if necessary doing more than merely protest against—the violation of the rights secured to Belgium by treaty, the professional pacificists nervously point out that such a course would expose us to accusations of abandoning our “neutrality.” In theory these pacificists admit it to be our duty to uphold the Hague treaties of which we were among the signatory powers; but they are against effective action to uphold them, for they are pathetic believers in the all-sufficiency of signatures, placed on bits of paper. They have pinned their faith to the foolish belief that everything put in these treaties was forthwith guaranteed to all mankind. In dealing with the rights of neutrals Article 10 of Chapter 1 explicitly states that if the territory of a neutral nation is invaded the repelling of such invasion by force shall not be esteemed a “hostile” act on the part of the neutral nation. Unquestionably under this clause Belgium has committed no hostile act. Yet, this sound declaration of morality, in a treaty that the leading world-powers have signed, amounts to precisely and exactly nothing so far as the rights of poor Belgium are concerned, because there is no way provided of enforcing the treaty and because the American government has decided that it can keep at peace and remain neutral only by declining to do what, according to the intention of the Hague treaty, it would be expected to do in securing peace for Belgium. In practice the Hague treaties have proved and will always prove useless while there is no sanction of force behind them. For the United States to proffer “good offices” to the various powers entering such a great conflict СКАЧАТЬ