Part 22

I recommend more adequate provision than has been made heretofore for the work of the Department of State. Within a few years there has been a very great increase in the amount and importance of the work to be done by that Department, both in Washington and abroad. This has been caused by the great increase of our foreign trade, the increase of wealth among our people, which enables them to travel more generally than heretofore, the increase of American capital which is seeking investment in foreign countries, and the growth of our power and weight in the councils of the civilized world. There has been no corresponding increase of facilities for doing the work afforded to the Department having charge of our foreign relations.

Neither at home nor abroad is there a sufficient working force to do the business properly. In many respects the system which was adequate to the work of twenty-five, or even ten, years ago, is inadequate now, and should be changed. Our consular force should be classified, and appointments should be made to the several classes, with authority to the Executive to assign the members of each class to duty at such posts as the interests of the service require, instead of the appointments being made as at present to specified posts. There should be an adequate inspection service, so that the Department may be able to inform itself how the business of each consulate is being done, instead of depending upon casual private information or rumor. The fee system should be entirely abolished, and a due equivalent made in salary to the officers who now eke out their subsistence by means of fees. Sufficient provision should be made for a clerical force in every consulate, composed entirely of Americans, instead of the insufficient provision now made, which compels the employment of great numbers of citizens of foreign countries whose services can be obtained for less money. At a large part of our consulates the office quarters and the clerical force are inadequate to the performance of the onerous duties imposed by the recent provisions of our immigration laws as well as by our increasing trade. In many parts of the world the lack of suitable quarters for our embassies, legations, and consulates detracts from the respect in which our officers ought to be held, and seriously impairs their weight and influence.

Suitable provision should be made for the expense of keeping our diplomatic officers more fully informed of what is being done from day to day in the progress of our diplomatic affairs with other countries. The lack of such information, caused by insufficient appropriations available for cable tolls and for clerical and messenger service, frequently puts our officers at a great disadvantage and detracts from their usefulness. The salary list should be readjusted. It does not now correspond either to the importance of the service to be rendered and the degrees of ability and experience required in the different positions, or to the differences in the cost of living. In many cases the salaries are quite inadequate.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

THE WHITE HOUSE, _December 5, 1905_.

“THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT”

[Included in this volume because, although not an address or a state paper, it was written by Mr. Roosevelt while President. It was published in a recent number of “The Outlook”]

The “twilight of the poets” has been especially gray in America; for poetry is of course one of those arts in which the smallest amount of work of the very highest class is worth an infinity of good work that is not of the highest class. The touch of the purple makes a poem out of verse, and if it is not there, there is no substitute. It is hard to account for the failure to produce in America of recent years a poet who in the world of letters will rank as high as certain American sculptors and painters rank in the world of art.

But true poems do appear from time to time, by Madison Cawein, by Clinton Scollard, by Maurice Egan, and others; such are the poems in Bliss Carman’s “Ballads of Lost Haven”; and such are the poems in Edward Arlington Robinson’s “The Children of the Night.”

It is rather curious that Mr. Robinson’s volume should not have attracted more attention. There is an undoubted touch of genius in the poems collected in this volume, and a curious simplicity and good faith, all of which qualities differentiate them sharply from ordinary collections of the kind. There is in them just a little of the light that never was on land or sea, and in such light the objects described often have nebulous outlines; but it is not always necessary in order to enjoy a poem that one should be able to translate it into terms of mathematical accuracy. Indeed, those who admire the coloring of Turner, those who like to read how—and to wonder why—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, do not wish always to have the ideas presented to them with cold, hard, definite outlines; and to a man with the poetic temperament it is inevitable that life should often appear clothed with a certain sad mysticism. In the present volume I am not sure that I understand “Luke Havergal”; but I am entirely sure that I like it.

Whoever has lived in country America knows the gray, empty houses from which life has gone. It is of one of these that “The House on the Hill” was written.

“They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say.

“Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill: They are all gone away.

“Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing more to say.

“Why is it then we stray Around that sunken sill? They are all gone away,

“And our poor fancy-play For them is wasted skill: There is nothing more to say.

“There is ruin and decay In the House on the Hill: They are all gone away, There is nothing more to say.”

The next poem, “Richard Cory,” illustrates a very ancient but very profound philosophy of life with a curiously local touch which points its keen insight. Those who feel poetry in their marrow and fibre are the spiritual heirs of the ages; and so it is natural that this man from Maine, many of whose poems could have been written only by one to whom the most real of lives is the life of the American small town, should write his “Ballade of Broken Flutes”—where “A lonely surge of ancient spray told of an unforgetful sea”;—should write the poem beginning

“Since Persia fell at Marathon, The yellow years have gathered fast: Long centuries have come and gone”;

and the very original sonnet on Amaryllis, the last three lines of which are:

“But though the trumpets of the world were glad, It made me lonely and it made me sad To think that Amaryllis had grown old.”

Some of his images stay fixed in one’s mind, as in “The Pity of the Leaves,” the lines running:

“The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside Skipped with a freezing whisper.”

Sometimes he writes, as in “The Tavern,” of what most of us feel we have seen; and then again of what we have seen only with the soul’s eyes.

I shall close by quoting entire his poem on “The Wilderness,” which could have been written only by a man into whose heart there had entered deep the very spirit of the vast and melancholy Northern forests:

“Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes, And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water; There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we can not follow, To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.

“Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling, Calling to us to come to them, and roam no more. Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us, There’s an old song calling us to come!

“Come away! come away! for the scenes we leave behind us Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever; And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind, That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains. The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us, And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years; But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us In the strangeness of home-coming, and a faithful woman’s eyes.

“Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us— Nothing now to comfort us, but love’s road home:— Over there beyond the darkness there’s a window gleams to greet us, And a warm heart waits for us within.

“Come away! come away!—or the roving-fiend will hold us, And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring: There are no men yet can leave him when his hands are clutched upon them, There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother. So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we brag the better For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:— The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it, And the doom we can not fly from is the doom we do not see.

“Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us— Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes, And the long full wind on the lake.”

Mr. Robinson has written in this little volume not verse but poetry. Whether he has the power of sustained flight remains to be seen.

TO THE CENTRAL JUVENILE REFORMATORY COMMITTEE, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, DECEMBER 15, 1905

_Gentlemen_:

About all I can say to you is to express my very hearty sympathy with and belief in your purpose. The time of my life when I was brought into closest touch with conditions similar to those which you are trying to remedy was while I was Police Commissioner in New York City. At that time my closest friend and associate in all of my work was Mr. Jacob Riis, with whose books and writings you are all more or less familiar. I was even more impressed than I have been all along, ever since I have grown up, with the fact that if you are going to do anything permanent for the average man you have got to begin before he is a man. The older man is almost impossible to reform. Of course there are exceptional individuals, men who have been completely changed, not only after they have reached years of manhood, but after very advanced periods of life. But speaking generally, the chance of success lies in working with the boy and not with the man. That applies peculiarly to those boys who tend to drift off into courses which mean that unless they are checked they will be formidable additions to the criminal population when they grow older. It is eminently worth while to try to prevent those boys becoming criminals, to try to prevent their being menaces to and expenses and sores in society, while there is a chance of reforming them.

A year ago I was approached by the people interested in Colorado in their juvenile court, and they set an example which I wish could be followed all over the country, and particularly here in the District of Columbia. To the people of Colorado I expressed, as I express to you, my very earnest belief in their work, and told them that “of course so far as my very limited powers here go those powers will be at your disposal.”

I think people rather often completely misapprehend what are really the important questions. The question of the tariff, the currency, or even the regulation of railroad rates, are all subordinate to the great basic moral movements which mean the preservation of the individual in his or her relations to the home; because if the homes are all straight the State will take care of itself.

TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND OTHERS, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, DECEMBER 18, 1905

_Mr. Macfarland; Ladies and Gentlemen_:

It is a peculiar pleasure to greet this body here to-day. As Mr. Macfarland has well said, the public-school system of our country is the most characteristically democratic and American feature of our national life. It has been my good fortune that all of my children have received, or are receiving, a portion of their education in the public schools of this District, in this city; and I feel that the advantage to them is incalculable. I certainly do not underrate the importance of the higher education. It would be the greatest misfortune if we ever permitted such a warped and twisted view of democracy to obtain as would be implied in a denial of the advantage that comes to the whole Nation from the high education of the few who are able to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire it. But while fully admitting this, it remains true that most important of all is the education of the common school. The public schools are not merely the educational centres for the mass of our people, but they are the factories of American citizenship. Incidentally to its other work the public school does more than any other institution of any kind, sort, or description to Americanize the child of foreign-born parents who comes here when young, or is born here. Nothing else counts for as much in welding together into one compact mass of citizenship the different race stocks which here are being fused into a new nationality.

MESSAGE COMMUNICATED TO THE TWO HOUSES OF CONGRESS, JANUARY 8, 1906

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

I enclose herewith the annual report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, the annual report of the Panama Railroad Company, and the Secretary of War’s letter transmitting the same, together with certain papers.

The work on the Isthmus is being admirably done, and great progress has been made, especially during the last nine months. The plant is being made ready and the organization perfected. The first work to be done was the work of sanitation, the necessary preliminary to the work of actual construction; and this has been pushed forward with the utmost energy and means. In a short while I shall lay before you the recommendations of the Commission and of the Board of Consulting Engineers as to the proper plan to be adopted for the canal itself, together with my own recommendations thereon. All the work so far has been done, not only with the utmost expedition, but in the most careful and thorough manner; and what has been accomplished gives us good reason to believe that the canal will be dug in a shorter time than had been anticipated, and at an expenditure within the estimated amount. All our citizens have a right to congratulate themselves upon the high standard of efficiency and integrity which has been hitherto maintained by the representatives of the Government in doing this great work. If this high standard of efficiency and integrity can be maintained in the future at the same level which it has now reached, the construction of the Panama Canal will be one of the feats to which the people of this Republic will look back with the highest pride.

From time to time various publications have been made, and from time to time in the future various similar publications doubtless will be made, purporting to give an account of jobbery, or immorality, or inefficiency, or misery, as obtaining on the Isthmus. I have carefully examined into each of these accusations which seemed worthy of attention. In every instance the accusations have proved to be without foundation in any shape or form. They spring from several sources. Sometimes they take the shape of statements by irresponsible investigators of a sensational habit of mind, incapable of observing or repeating with accuracy what they see, and desirous of obtaining notoriety by widespread slander. More often they originate with, or are given currency by, individuals with a personal grievance. The sensation-mongers, both those who stay at home and those who visit the Isthmus, may ground their accusations on false statements by some engineer, who, having applied for service on the Commission and been refused such service, now endeavors to discredit his successful competitors; or by some lessee or owner of real estate who has sought action or inaction by the Commission to increase the value of his lots, and is bitter because the Commission can not be used for such purposes; or on the tales of disappointed bidders for contracts; or of office-holders who have proved incompetent, or who have been suspected of corruption and dismissed, or who have been overcome by panic and have fled from the Isthmus. Every specific charge relating to jobbery, to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come, has been immediately investigated, and in no single instance have the statements of these sensation-mongers and the interested complainants behind them proved true. The only discredit inhering in these false accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who, to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the completion of the great work in which both the honor and the interest of America are so deeply involved. It matters not whether those guilty of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and folly or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or political grudge.

Any attempt to cut down the salaries of the officials of the Isthmian Commission, or of their subordinates who are doing important work, would be ruinous from the standpoint of accomplishing the work effectively. To quote the words of one of the best observers on the Isthmus: “Demoralization of the service is certain if the reward for successful endeavor is a reduction of pay.” We are undertaking in Panama a gigantic task—the largest piece of engineering ever done. The employment of the men engaged thereon is only temporary, and yet it will require the highest order of ability if it is to be done economically, honestly, and efficiently. To attempt to secure men to do this work on insufficient salaries would amount to putting a premium upon inefficiency and corruption. Men fit for the work will not undertake it unless they are well paid. In the end the men who do undertake it will be left to seek other employment with as their chief reward the reputations they achieve. Their work is infinitely more difficult than any private work, both because of the peculiar conditions of the tropical land in which it is laid, and because it is impossible to free them from the peculiar limitations inseparably connected with Government employment; while it is unfortunately true that men engaged on public work, no matter how devoted and disinterested their services, must expect to be made the objects of misrepresentation and attack. At best, therefore, the positions are not attractive in proportion to their importance; and among the men fit to do the task, only those with a genuine sense of public spirit and eager to do the great work for the work’s sake, can be obtained; and such men can not be kept if they are to be treated with niggardliness and parsimony, in addition to the certainty that false accusations will continually be brought against them.

I repeat that the work on the Isthmus has been done and is being done admirably. The organization is good. The mistakes are extraordinarily few, and these few have been of practically no consequence. The zeal, intelligence, and efficient public service of the Isthmian Commission and its subordinates have been noteworthy. I court the fullest, most exhaustive, and most searching investigation of any act of theirs, and if any one of them is ever shown to have done wrong his punishment shall be exemplary. But I ask that they be decently paid, and that their hands be upheld as long as they act decently. On any other conditions we shall not be able to get men of the right type to do the work; and this means that on any other conditions we shall ensure, if not failure, at least delay, scandal, and inefficiency in the task of digging the giant canal.

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, JANUARY 10, 1906

_Gentlemen_:

I want to say just a word of greeting to you and to ask your influence on behalf of the medical corps, not only of the Army, but of the Navy. There is not a more exacting profession; there is not a profession which makes greater demands upon those following it, and which more entitles them to the gratitude of mankind, than is the profession which is yours. The Army surgeon has to combine the work of your profession with the work of the military man of the line. In saying that, I want to call your attention to two specific things; one thing that is now being done by men of your profession and one need of men of your profession.

First, the thing that is being done: All the United States is the debtor to the medical men who have accomplished such remarkable work on the Isthmus of Panama. You hear very loose talk about making the dirt fly in Panama. Before making the dirt fly it was necessary to get the microbes under; it was necessary to grapple with the mosquitoes; necessary to eradicate disease. That has been done to perfection. We have had the foundation laid for that wonderful piece of constructive engineering work, to dig the giant canal. Too much praise can not be given to those who have done this work in Panama. So much for tribute to your compeers. Now as to the need of your compeers. You recollect the complaint made about hygienic conditions during the war with Spain. Complaint was made that the troops were not properly treated, etc. The blame rested, not on any one man then in office, but upon our people as a whole who had declined, through their representatives, to make provision long in advance for meeting such a need. If we had a war break out to-morrow and had to raise any large army, there would be an immediate breakdown in the medical department simply because at present our medical corps is numerically only fit to take care of about forty per cent of the Regular Army as it is now. The medical corps is not numerically fit to grapple with a campaign in which our whole Army as it is, the little Army as it is, should be employed. And of course if we had to mobilize an army of volunteers we would under present conditions have to count upon widespread disaster through the shortcomings in the medical and sanitary and hygienic arrangements rendered inevitable by our present lack of preparation.