People are apt to speak as if in political life, public life, it ought to be a mere case of striving upward—striving toward a high peak.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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He must avoid both under penalty of wreckage, and it avails him nothing to have avoided one, if he founders on the other.
The absence of either makes the presence of the other worthless or worse.
There remains the great body of the people, including the entire body of those through whom the salvation of the people must ultimately be worked out.
There are, of course, men of such low moral type, or of such ingrained cynicism, that they do not believe in the possibility of making anything better, or do not care to see things better.
The Roman expanded, and he has left a memory which has profoundly influenced the history of mankind, and he has further left as the heirs of his body, and, above all, of his tongue and culture, the so-called Latin peoples of Europe and…
But the French continued to do their work; France expanded over Algiers, and the result was that piracy on the Mediterranean came to an end, and Algiers has thriven as never before in its history.
It can only come when both parties to a possible quarrel feel the same spirit.
The growth of peacefulness between nations, however, has been confined strictly to those that are civilized.
But a very marked feature in the world-history of the present century has been the growing infrequency of wars between great civilized nations.
Had the short-sighted advocates of peace for the moment had their way, and secession become an actual fact, nothing could have prevented a repetition in North America of the devastating anarchic warfare that obtained for three quarters of…
Four years of bloody struggle with an armed foe, who was helped at every turn by the self-styled advocates of peace, were needed in order to restore the Union; but the result has been that the peace of this continent has been effectually…
Yet better the excess Than the defect; better the more than less.
Cuba is, in my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be an independent State or an integral portion of the mightiest of Republics.
We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interest of its own people.
We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation.
Our army needs complete reorganization,—not merely enlarging,—and the reorganization can only come as the result of legislation.
If we are such weaklings as the proposition implies, then we are unworthy of freedom in any event.
No man of good sense and stout heart can take such a proposition seriously.
But let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance of the task.
These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national life which is really worth leading.
We can not avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines.
All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.
We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife.
If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he…
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