The great adventure; present-day studies in American nationalism

Front matter

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BOOKS BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Foreword

We should accept from Germany what our allies have wrung from Austria and Turkey — unconditional surrender. This ought to be our war aim; and until this war aim is achieved the peace terms should be discussed only with our allies and not with our enemies. In broad outline, it is possible now to state what these peace terms should include: Restitution by Germany of what she has taken and atonement for the wrong she has done; her complete military withdrawal from every foot of territory outside her own Hmits; and the giving not of ''autonomy" — a slippery word used by sHppery people to mean anything or nothing — but of complete independence to the races subject to the dominion of Germany, Austria, and Turkey (which means the creation of the free commonwealths of the Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, and Armenians, and therefore the expulsion of the Turk from Europe), the absolute freeing of Russia from the German stranglehold, and aid generously furnished by us to Russia, the retention viii FOREWORD

by England and Japan of the colonies they have conquered, the restoration and indemnification of Belgium, the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, the creating of a Jugo-Slav commonwealth, the joining to Italy of Italian Austria and to Roumania of Roumanian Hungary.

When the manuscript of this volume was turned in, and even up to the time of the revision of the last galley-proofs, it seemed that, as regards the major part of what is above set forth, I was taking substantially the position to which, after much hesitation, much indecision, and much talking every which way, the administration was tending steadily to come. Apparently our government intended to fight the war through to the peace of overwhelming victory. Then, without warning, and apparently without consultation with our allies, the President entered into a correspondence or negotiation about peace terms with Germany, which looked as if we had gotten back to the bad old days when note-writing and conversation were considered by Mr. Wilson as adroit and sufficient answers to the sinking of the Lusitania and similar German crimes. It was the attitude of an untrustworthy friend and an irreso-

FOREWORD ix

lute foe, and if accepted by the nation would have caused our people to forfeit their own self-respect and the respect of all other nations. However, the outburst of protest against the President's action was such that he promptly reversed himself again, and after having invited Germany's oifFer, repudiated it with indignation. We all trust that he will persevere in this attitude; but we do not profess any certainty of conviction in the matter.

The Germans, while they are conducting their military retreat with formidable efficiency, are carrying on an adroit peace offensive, designed to save Germany from wreck and leave her an unpunished menace to the future of the world. They hope to succeed by appealing to those leaders of the Allies (especially in the United States) who are infirm of purpose and wavering of will.

What is needed at this time is not the compounding of felony by the discussion of terms with the felons, but the concentration and speedy development of our whole strength so as to overwhelm Germany in battle and to dictate to her the peace of unconditional surrender.

X FOREWORD

Moreover, our people ought emphatically to repudiate the "fourteen points'' offered by President Wilson as a satisfactory basis for peace. We ought likewise to repudiate all of his similar proposals (some of his utterances have been satisfactory, but all of these have been contradicted by his other utterances, and no one can be sure which set of utterances will receive his ultimate adherence). Some of these fourteen points are mischievous under any interpretation. Most of them are worded in language so vague and so purely rhetorical that they may be construed with equal justice as having diametrically opposite meanings. Germany and Austria have eagerly approved these fourteen points; our own pro-Germans, pacifists, socialists, anarchists, and professional internationalists also approve them; but good citizens, who are also sound American nationalists, will insist upon all of them being put into straightforward and definite language — and then will reject most of them.

Under these conditions I do not know what action our government may now be secretly planning or what course it will follow even in the immediate future. But no matter what

FOREWORD xi

this action may be, the course of conduct advocated in this volume is in my judgment the only course that can with honor and safety be followed by the American people. Our present business is to fight, and to continue fighting until Germany is brought to her knees. Our next business will be to help guarantee the peace of justice for the world at large, and to set in order the affairs of our own household.

Theodore Roosevelt.

Sagamore Hill, November 6, 19 18.

Contents

CHAPTER TAGE

I. THE GREAT ADVENTURE i

II. THE MEN WHO PAY WITH THEIR

Chapter I The Great Adventure

ONLY those are fit to live who do not fear fo die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of Hfe. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure. Never yet was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first. Never yet was a country worth living in unless its sons and daughters were of that stern stuff which bade them die for it at need; and never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life not as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual, but as a fink in the great chain of creation and causation, so that each person is seen in his true relations as an essential part of the whole, whose Hfe must be made to serve the larger and continuing life of the whole. Therefore it is that the man who is not willing to die, and the woman who is not willing to send her man to die, in a war for a great cause, are not worthy to live. Therefore it is that the man and woman who in peace-time fear or ignore the primary and vital duties and the high happiness of family Hfe, who dare not beget and bear and rear the Hfe that is to last when they are in their graves, have broken the chain of creation, and have shown that they are unfit for companionship with the souls ready for the Great Adventure.

The wife of a fighting soldier at the front recently wrote as follows to the mother of a gallant boy, who at the front had fought in high air like an eagle, and, like an eagle, fighting had died :

I write these few lines — not of condolence for who would dare to pity you ? — but of deepest sympathy to you and yours as you stand in the shadow which is the earthly side of those clouds of glory in which your son's life has just passed. Many will envy you that when the call to sacrifice came you were not found among the paupers to whom no gift of life worth offering had been entrusted. They are the ones to be pitied, not we whose dearest are jeoparding their lives unto the death in the high places of the field. I hope my two sons will live as worthily and die as greatly as yours.

There spoke one dauntless soul to another! America is safe while her daughters are of this kind; for their lovers and their sons cannot fail, as long as beside the hearthstones stand such wives and mothers. And we have many, many such women; and their men are Hke unto them.

With all my heart I believe in the joy of living; but those who achieve it do not seek it as an end in itself, but as a seized and prized incident of hard work well done and of risk and danger never wantonly courted, but never shirked when duty commands that they be faced. And those who have earned joy, but are rewarded only with sorrow, must learn the stern comfort dear to great souls, the comfort that springs from the knowledge taught in times of iron that the law of worthy living is not fulfilled by pleasure, but by service, and by sacrifice when only thereby can service be rendered.

No nation can be great unless its sons and daughters have in them the quality to rise level to the needs of heroic days. Yet this heroic quality is but the apex of a pyramid of which the broad foundations must soHdly rest on the performance of duties so ordinary that to impatient minds they seem commonplace. No army was ever great unless its soldiers possessed the fighting edge. But the finest natural fighting edge is utterly useless unless the soldiers and the junior officers have been through months, and the officers of higher command and the general staff through years, of hard, weary, intensive training. So likewise the citizenship of any country is worthless unless in a crisis it shows the spirit of the two million Americans who in this mighty war have eagerly come forward to serve under the Banner of the Stars, afloat and ashore, and of the other millions who would now be beside them overseas if the chance had been given them; and yet such spirit will in the long run avail nothing unless in the years of peace the average man and average woman of the duty-performing type realize that the highest of all duties, the one essential duty, is the duty of perpetuating the family life, based on the mutual love and respect of the one man and the one woman, and on their purpose to rear the healthy and fine-souled children whose coming into life means that the family and, therefore, the nation shall continue in life and shall not end in a sterile death.

Woe to those who invite a sterile death; a death not for them only, but for the race; the death which is insured by a Hfe of sterile selfishness.

But honor, highest honor, to those who fearlessly face death for a good cause; no Hfe is so honorable or so fruitful as such a death. Unless men are willing to fight and die for great ideals, including love of country, ideals will vanish, and the world will become one huge sty of materialism. And unless the women of ideals bring forth the men who are ready thus to live and die, the world of the future will be filled by the spawn of the unfit. Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rests the future of the years. But the mother, and far more the father, who flinch from the vital task earn the scorn visited on the soldier who flinches in battle. And the nation should by action mark its attitude alike toward t;he fighter in war and toward the child-bearer in peace and war. The vital need of the nation is that its men and women of the future shall be the sons and daughters of the soldiers of the present. Excuse no man from going to war because he IS married; but put all unmarried men above a fixed age at the hardest and most dangerous tasks; and provide amply for the children of soldiers, so as to give their wives the assurance of material safety.

« In such a matter one can only speak in general terms. At this moment there are hundreds of thousands of gallant men eating out their hearts because the privilege of facing death in battle is denied them. So there are innumerable women and men whose undeserved misfortune it is that they have no children or but one child. These soldiers denied the perilous honor they seek, these men and women heart-hungry for the children of their longing dreams, are as worthy of honor as the men who are warriors in fact, as the women whose children are of flesh and blood. If the only son who is killed at the front has no brother because his parents coldly dreaded to play their part in the Great Adventure of Life, then our sorrow is not for them, but solely for the son who himself dared the Great Adventure of Death. If, however, he is the only son because the Unseen Powers denied others to the love of his father and mother, then we mourn doubly with them because their darling went up to the sword of Azrael, because he drank the dark drink proffered by the Death Angel. In America to-day all our people are summoned to service and sacrifice. Pride is the portion only of those who know bitter sorrow or the foreboding of bitter sorrow. But all of us who give service, and stand ready for sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with the torches until we fall, content if we can then pass them to the hands of other runners. The torches whose flame is brightest are borne by the gallant men at the front, and by the gallant women whose husbands and lovers, whose sons and brothers are at the front. These men are high of soul, as they face their fate on the shell-shattered earth, or in the skies above or in the waters beneath; and no less high of soul are the women with torn hearts and shining eyes; the girls whose boy lovers have been struck down in their golden morning, and the mothers and wives to whom word has been brought that henceforth they must walk in the shadow.

These are the torch-bearers; these are they who have dared the Great Adventure.

Chapter II The Men Who Pay With Their

BODIES FOR THEIR SOULS'

DESIRE

IN a great war for the right the one great debt owed by the nation is that to the men who go to the front and pay with their bodies for the faith that is in them. At the front there are of course of necessity a few men who, from the nature of the case, are not in positions of great danger — as regards the staff and the high command, the burden of crushing responsibility borne by such men outweighs danger. But as a rule the men who do the great work for the nation are the men who, for a money payment infinitely less than what they would earn in civil life, face terrible risk and endure indescribable hardship and fatigue and misery at the front. These men include the air fighters, who run the greatest risk of all; and the fighting foot-sluggers, the infantry, — the "doughboys, — '' and the marines, lo THE GREAT ADVENTURE

and the machine-gun men, who take the terrible punishment when the tremendous thrusts are made; and the engineers and the men in the tanks and the men with the field-guns and the heavier guns, and the men who manage the gas — the work of all of whom is absolutely indispensable and who do it in hourly peril of their lives; and the doctors and stretcherbearers who suffer the same dangers as the men to whom they bring succor; and the men who bring up the munition-trains — in short, all who under fire join in the exhausting and perilous labor which brings victory. These are the real heroes. These are the men who do the one great and indispensable task which entitles them forever to be honored by all true Americans.

The rest of us behind the lines are merely supplementing their work. I have no patience with the well-meaning, silly persons who now and then announce that "saving will win the war" or that "money will win the war" or that "food will win the war." Let these good persons speak the truth and say that Liberty Bonds and Thrift Savings Stamps and the production of food and munitions and the

THE MEN WHO PAY ii

practice of economy and the work done through organizations like the Red Cross will all help to win the war and are indispensable. But the war will be won by the fighting men at the front! Every other activity in this nation is merely auxiliary to theirs.

From General Pershing down the men of our army overseas have won for themselves deathless fame and have reflected the highest honor upon this nation. I know personally of division, brigade, and regimental commanders who, in addition to high valor, have shown an efficiency which puts them on a level with the very best men of their rank in any service in the world — I do not mention their names, merely because to do so would probably do an injustice to others equally good about whom I do not know. As for the battalion and company and platoon officers and non-commissioned officers and rank and file, I do not think it is untruthful or exaggerated to say that on the whole when our troops have finished their training they stand a Httle above the average of any other army in the world to-day. The seven or eight American divisions who did the murderous fighting in July and August during Foch's great counter-ofFensive established a record such as only the few very finest troops of any other army could equal, and which could not be surpassed. Probably in our own history nothing has ever quite come up to it, save in certain actions during the Civil War. The endurance, the valor, the efficiency, the fighting edge of these men could not be surpassed. Their losses correspond to their achievements. (In the infantry regiment in which two of my sons served, the colonel, the lieutenant-colonel, the three majors, and almost all the captains and Heutenants were killed or wounded; and the loss was proportionally almost as great among the enlisted men.) In addition to these divisions there were two or three times as many other divisions, across the seas or about to cross the seas, who were composed of as fine fighting material, and who by this time are probably as efficient, but who had not at that period been sufficiently trained to do the heaviest assault work. But they have been trained now; Pershing's army began its great thrust, as a separate army, about a year and a half after we entered the war. The actual management of our oversea army work is now excellent; and the quality of our troops is really extraordinary.

My compatriots have discovered an America of which they had no idea. In addition to the heroism of her soldiers she has revealed aptitudes for scientific method and organization, the fruits of her education, which have awakened our admiration. Harbors, railroads, factories rise as if by magic. Every one asks how such men were trained and instructed.

Our men include Americans from every section of the country and from every walk of life. The son of the railroad president and the son of the brakeman, the college graduate and the man who left a plough-tail at the end of the furrow, or threw down his pick and shovel or his ax and saw, all stand on the same plane, and do the same work and face and meet the same dangers. The son of the wealthy man who has been reared softly, and the son of the man who has every day eaten his bread in the sweat of his brow, look death in the eyes with the same stern courage and do their hard grinding work with the same grim efficiency. In the intervals of work they are Hght-hearted and they enjoy themselves greatly, snatching the pleasures with an added zest, because peril is so very near. Protestant and CathoHc, Jew and Gentile, men of old native American stock, and men whose parents were born abroad or who themselves were born abroad — no distinction whatever can be made among them as they do their allotted tasks.

The moods in which they have accomplished these tasks vary as widely as the tasks themselves. But the work is well done, whether inspired by matter-of-fact acceptance of the fact that the United States is at war and that therefore it is up to the men of fighting age to do the fighting men's job; or by the exalted idealism of the young Galahad whose eyes are open to the shining visions shrouded from duller sight — and the young Galahads of this great war when they have found the grail have too often filled it with their own hearts' blood.

Some have been driven by a sense of duty to do the best there was in them in a task for which they have no natural desire. Others eagerly welcome the chance to sweep straight as a falcon at the quarry which may be death; and these may come back with broken wings; or they may never come back, and word may be brought to the women who weep that they must walk henceforth in the shadow. But all ahke have done their duty and more than their duty; and their souls shall stand forever in the glory of the morning; and all who dwell in this land now, or who shall dwell in it in the future, owe to them a debt that can never be cancelled.

And the first instalment of payment on this debt should be paid by the government to the wives and children and dependent mothers left by the man who goes to the front. The wife who cheers him when he goes, and the children whom he leaves behind when he goes, should be amply provided for as a matter of mere justice. I believe that the state should in some way endow motherhood anyhow; but there can be no question of our duty toward the mother of the children whose father has left her and them to go to war.

We are fighting for our dearest rights. We arc also fighting for the rights of all peoples, small or great, so long as they are well-behaved and do not wrong others, to enjoy their liberty and govern themselves in the forms they see fit to adopt. We intend to try to help others, but we know well that we cannot do so unless we are able to do justice within our own borders, and to manage well the affairs of our own household. Therefore it behooves us, even now while we are bending all our energies to winning the great war, also to look to the future, and to begin to ponder the things that we must do to bring greater happiness and well-being and a higher standard of conduct and character within our own borders when once the war is through.

Surely all of us — and especially those of us who stay at home and who are denied the opportunity to go to the front — ought to realize the need in this country of a loftier idealism than we have had in the past; and the further and even greater need that we should in actual practice live up to the ideals we profess. The things of the body have a rightful place and a great place. But the things of the soul should have an even greater place. There has been in the past in this country far too much of that gross materialism which, in the end, eats like an acid into all the finer qualities of our souls.

The war came — our gross ideals were shattered and the scales fell from our eyes, and we saw things as they really were. Suddenly in the awful presence of death we grew to understand the true values of Hfe. We realized that only those men were fit to live who were not afraid to die; that although death was a terrible thing, yet that there were other things that were more terrible, other things that made life not worth living. All the finest of our young men, all those high of soul, responded eagerly to the call to arms ; the son of the rich man and the son of the poor man, side by side, neither claiming any favor except the chance to win honor and perform duty in the face of deadly peril. These men who have been going, and are going abroad by the million, are sacrificing everything for the sake of a great ideal. They have shown their willingness to sacrifice money and ease and pleasure, and life itself when duty calls, and the nation bids them go. Let us who are left behind in our turn strive to make our lives a little nearer the right ideal.

Let us introduce into the work of peace some* thing of the spirit that they have introduced into the work of war. When these men come home, or at least when those of them who escape death come home, I beheve that they will demand, and I know that they ought to demand, a juster type of life, socially and industrially, in this country. I believe, and I hope, that they will demand a loftier idealism in both our public and private affairs, and better and more common-sense methods of reducing our ideals to practice and making them realizable. I believe that they will themselves show both idealism and also that common sense the lack of which insures disaster in peace as in war. I think they will insist upon a livelier sense of brotherhood and yet will no less insist upon the duty of recognizing leadership. Our aim must be to raise the level of the table-land of general opportunity and welfare without lowering the peaks of high achievement. Let the difference of reward be as great as that between our generals and admirals, such as Pershing and Sims, and the warrant officers or senior non-commissioned officers under them. But let there be a better proportion than is now the case in industrial life, between the service rendered and the reward given. Gradually I hope to see the wage-worker become in a real sense a partner in the enterprise in which he works; and to achieve this end he must develop the power of self-control, the power of recognizing the rights of others no less than insisting upon his own; he must develop common sense; and that strength of character which cannot be conferred from without, and the lack of which renders everything else of no avail. Above all, I wish to see the farmers develop their strength by co-operation and in other ways, so that the elemental work of the soil will resume its ancient importance among us.

At this moment we can only lay the foundation in outline; but there are certain things that we should do at once in connection with the war. One of them is to stop all profiteering by capitalists; and another is to stop all slacking and loafing, whether by undividual workmen or as a result of union action. Of these two perhaps the profiteer is worse; but the slacker is almost as bad. As for the profiteer, any man who makes a fortune out of this war ought to be held up to derision and scorn. No man should come out of this war materially ahead of what he was when we went into it. There must be the reward for capital necessary in order to make it profitable to do the necessary work, and to cover the necessary risks; this is indispensable, and the government should see that neither demagogy nor ignorance interferes with this necessary reward. But we heartily approve, as a war measure, of heavy progressive taxation of all profits, beyond the reasonable profits necessary for the continuance of industry, and our governmental authorities would do well to see whether it is not possible tc put a tax on unused land. Most of our captains of finance are doing with all their energy necessary governmental work without any financial reward for themselves. I honor these men, I honor their sons who have gone to the war. But I have scant patience with the other men who treat the war merely as a chance for profit; and I have least patience with the rich men who keep their sons at home. I will not excuse the poor man from going to war; but I would mal^e it obligatory on the man who has much. As for the profiteer, if I could get at him I would like to put him to digging the front trenches. And I would put beside him his brother in wrong-doing, the slacker or loafer, the man who Hmits the output, when it is necessary at this time that we should have the greatest possible production; and I would do this whether he was acting as an individual, or as an official or member of a labor union. Pershing's men are not limiting their output, and shame and disgrace should be the portion of any man who Hmits his output here at home.

I believe that when this war is over we should prepare for our self-defense against other nations, and I believe that we should prepare for our own inner development. And in order to meet both needs, I believe in the principle of universal service. Of this military service is but a part. It is a vital part, and under no circumstances can we neglect it. But it is only a part. Universal suffrage can be justified only by universal service, service in peace and service in war. The man who will not render this service has no right to the vote. If he won't fight for the country in war and do his duty by the country in peace, we ought not to permit him to vote in the country. The conscientious objector who won't serve as a soldier or won*t pay his taxes has no place in a repubHc Hke ours, and should be expelled from it, for no man who won't pull his weight in the boat has a right in the boat. The Society of Friends have come forward in this war just as gallantly as they came forward in the Civil War, and all true believers in peace will do well to follow their example.