Part 1
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.
The original edition did not include a Table of Contents. For the convenience of the reader one has been created:
Presidential Addresses and State Papers 401
At Dedication of Navy Memorial Monument, San Francisco, Cal., May 14, 1903 401
At the University of California, Berkeley, Cal., May 14, 1903 404
At Banquet of the Union League Club of San Francisco, Cal., May 14, 1903 413
At Carson City, Nevada, May 19, 1903 414
From Address at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Lewis and Clark Memorial, Portland, Ore., May 21, 1903 419
Remarks in Accepting Souvenir Presented by the Workmen of the Navy Yard, Bremerton, Wash., May 23, 1903 420
To the Arctic Brotherhood, Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 421
From Address at Everett, Wash., May 23, 1903 426
From Address at Seattle, Wash., May 23, 1903 428
At Spokane, Wash., May 26, 1903 429
From Address at Columbia Gardens, Butte, Mont., May 27, 1903 432
At the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, May 29, 1903 435
At Freeport, Ill., June 3, 1903 444
At the Lincoln Monument, Springfield, Ill., June 4, 1903 446
At the Consecration of Grace Memorial Reformed Church, Washington, D. C., June 7, 1903 446
At the Saengerfest, Baltimore, Md., June 15, 1903 449
At the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., June 16, 1903 453
To the Holy Name Society at Oyster Bay, N. Y., August 16, 1903 458
On Board the _Kearsarge_, During the Review of the Fleet, August 17, 1903 463
On Board the _Olympia_ During the Review of the Fleet, August 17, 1903 465
At the State Fair, Syracuse, N. Y., September 7, 1903 466
At Richmond Hill, N. Y., September 8, 1903 481
At Antietam, Md., September 17, 1903 482
At the Unveiling of the Sherman Statue, Washington, D. C., October 15, 1903 489
At the Pan-american Missionary Service, Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, Mount St. Alban, Washington, D. C., October 25, 1903 495
At the Centennial Exercises in the N. Y. Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., Nov. 16, 1903 501
Remarks to the Delegates of the German Societies Received at the White House, Thursday, November 19, 1903 506
Correspondence, October 18, 1902 - To: Mrs. Van Vorst 508
Correspondence, November 26, 1902 - Re: Appointment of Dr. Crum 510
Correspondence, February 24, 1903 - To: Mr. Howell 514
Correspondence, July 13, 1903 - To: Secretary Cortelyou 518
Correspondence, July 14, 1903 - To: Mr. Cortelyou 520
Statement to American Federation of Labor, September 29, 1903 521
Correspondence, August 6, 1903 - To: Governor Durbin 523
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress, at the Beginning of the First Session of the Fifty-seventh Congress 529
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of the Fifty-seventh Congress 605
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the First Session of the Fifty-eighth Congress 644
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of the Fifty-eighth Congress 648
Message of the President of the United States, Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress on January 4, 1904 709
Extracts from the Messages of Theodore Roosevelt As Governor of the State of New York 758
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature, January 2, 1899 758
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature, May 22, 1899 760
Message of the Governor of New York to the Legislature, January 3, 1900 770
First Administration Index 789
[Illustration: _THE FOURTH OF MARCH, 1901_
_A photograph taken on the day when Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as Vice-President of the United States_]
Homeward Bound Edition
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
_December 3, 1901, to January 4, 1904_
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
[Illustration: (colophon)]
[INDEX FIRST ADMINISTRATION]
PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
VOLUME II
NEW YORK THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY MCMX
The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president Roosevelt retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes containing these speeches. He feels that the material contained in these addresses has been dedicated to the public, and that it is, therefore, not to be handled as copyrighted material from which Mr. Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
DECEMBER 3, 1901 TO JANUARY 4, 1904
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
AT DEDICATION OF NAVY MEMORIAL MONUMENT, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., MAY 14, 1903
_Mr. Mayor; My Fellow-Citizens_:
The ground for this monument was first turned by President McKinley, and I am glad to have the chance of saying a few words in dedication of the completed monument. There is no branch of our government in which all our people are so deeply interested as the Navy of the United States. It is not merely San Francisco, not merely New York, or Boston, or Charleston, or New Orleans, not merely the seacoast cities of the Nation; every individual in the Nation who is proud of America and jealous of her good name must feel a thrill of generous emotion at the erection of a monument to the navy, a monument to the fleet which was victorious under Admiral Dewey on the first of May five years ago, a fleet which then added a new page to the long honor roll of American achievement. It is eminently fitting that there should be here in this great city on the Pacific Ocean a monument to commemorate the deed which showed once for all that America had taken her position on the Pacific. I want you all to draw a practical lesson from this commemoration. We to-day dedicate this monument because those who went before us had the wisdom to make ready for the victory. If we wish our children to have the chance of dedicating monuments of this kind in the event of war we must see that the navy is made ready in advance. To dedicate the monument would be an empty and foolish thing if we accompanied it by an abandonment of our national policy of building up the navy. And good though it is to erect this monument, it is better still to go on with the building up of the navy which gave the monument to us, and which, if we ever give it a fair chance, can be relied upon to rise level to our needs.
Remember that after the war has begun it is too late to improvise a navy. A naval war is two-thirds settled in advance, at least two-thirds, because it is mainly settled by the preparation which has gone on for years preceding its outbreak. We won at Manila because the shipbuilders of the country, including those here at San Francisco, under the wise provisions of Congress, had for fifteen years before been preparing the navy. In 1882 our navy was a shame and a disgrace to the country in point of material. The personnel contained as fine material as there was to be found in the world but the ships and the guns were antiquated, and it would have been a wicked absurdity to have sent them against the ships of any good power. Then we began to build up the navy. Every ship that fought under Dewey had been built between 1883 and 1896.
We come here as patriots remembering that our party lines stop at the water’s edge. That fleet was successful in 1898 because under the previous administrations of both political parties, under the previous Congresses controlled by both political parties, for the previous fifteen years there had been a resolute effort to build adequate ships. The ships that went in under Dewey had been constructed under different successive Secretaries of the Navy and had been provided for by different successive Congresses of the United States. Not one of them had been built less than two years, some of them fourteen years. We could not have begun to fight that battle if we had not been for so many years making ready the navy.
The last Congress has taken greater strides than any previous Congress in making ready the navy, but it will be two or three years before the effects are seen. In no branch of the government are foresight and the carrying out of a steady and continuous policy so necessary as in the navy; and you, citizens of San Francisco, of California, and all our citizens should make it a matter of prime duty to see that there is no halt in that work, that the next Congress, and the Congress after that, and the Congress after that, go right on providing formidable warcraft, providing officers, providing men, and providing the means of training them in peace to be effective in war. The best ships and the best guns do not count unless they are handled aright and aimed aright, and the best men can not thus handle the one nor aim the other if they do not have ample practice. Our people must be trained in handling our ships in squadrons on the high seas. Our people on the ships must be trained by actual practice to do their duty in conning tower, in the engine-rooms, in the gun-turrets. The shots that count in battle are the shots that hit.
We have reason to be satisfied with the rapid increase in accuracy in marksmanship of the navy in recent years, and I congratulate Admiral Glass and those under him and all our naval officers who are taking their part so well in perfecting that work, and I congratulate the enlisted men of the navy upon the extraordinary improvement in marksmanship shown by the gun pointers.
Applaud the navy and what it has done. That is first-class. But make your applause count by seeing that the good work goes on. Besides applauding now see to it that the navy is so built up that the men of the next generation will have something to applaud also.
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, CAL., MAY 14, 1903
_President Wheeler; Fellow-Members of the University_:
Last night, in speaking to one of my new friends in California, he told me that he thought enough had been said to me about the fruits and flowers; that enough had been said to me about California being an Eden, and that he wished I would pay some attention to Adam as well. Much though I have been interested in the wonderful physical beauty of this wonderful State, I have been infinitely more interested in its citizenship, and perhaps most in its citizenship in the making.
When I come to the University of California and am greeted by its President I am greeted by an old and valued friend, a friend whom I have not merely known socially but upon whom, while I was Governor of New York, I leaned often for advice and assistance in the problems with which I had to deal. When he accepted your offer I grudged him to you. And it was not until I came here, not until I have seen you, that I have been fully reconciled to the loss. But now I am, for I can conceive of no happier life for any man to lead to whom life means what it should mean, than the life of the President of this great University.
This same friend last night suggested to me a thought that I intend to work out in speaking to you to-day. We were talking over the University of California, and from that we spoke of the general educational system of our country. Facts tend to become commonplace, and we tend to lose sight of their importance when once they are ingrained into the life of the Nation. Although we talk a good deal about what the widespread education of this country means, I question if many of us deeply consider its meaning. From the lowest grade of the public school to the highest form of university training, education in this country is at the disposal of every man, every woman, who chooses to work for and obtain it. The State has done much, very much; witness this university. Private benefaction has done very much; witness also this university. And each one of us who has obtained an education has obtained something for which he or she has not personally paid. No matter what the school, what the university, every American who has a school training, a university training, has obtained something given to him outright by the State, or given to him by those dead or those living who were able to make provision for that training because of the protection of the State, because of existence within its borders. Each one of us then who has an education, school or college, has obtained something from the community at large for which he or she has not paid, and no self-respecting man or woman is content to rest permanently under such an obligation. Where the State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as a charity unless he returns it to the State in full, in the shape of good citizenship. I do not ask of you, men and women here to-day, good citizenship as a favor to the State. I demand it of you as a right, and hold you recreant to your duty if you fail to give it.
Here you are in this university, in this State with its wonderful climate, which is permitting people of a northern stock for the first time in the history of that northern stock to gain education in physical surroundings somewhat akin to those which surrounded the early Greeks. Here you have all those advantages and you are not to be excused if you do not show in tangible fashion your appreciation of them and your power to give practical effect to that appreciation. From all our citizens we have a right to expect good citizenship; but most of all from those who have received most; most of all from those who have had the training of body, of mind, of soul, which comes from association in and with a great university. From those to whom much has been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in return; and the most that can be given to any man is education. I expect and demand in the name of the Nation much more from you who have had training of the mind than from those of mere wealth. To the man of means much has been given, too, and much will be expected from him, and ought to be, but not as much as from you, because your possession is more valuable than his. If you envy him I think poorly of you. Envy is merely the meanest form of admiration, and a man who envies another admits thereby his own inferiority. We have a right to expect from the college bred man, the college bred woman, a proper sense of proportion, a proper sense of perspective, which will enable him or her to see things in their right relation one to another, and when thus seen while wealth will have a proper place, a just place, as an instrument for achieving happiness and power, for conferring happiness and power, it will not stand as high as much else in our national life. I ask you to take that not as a conventional statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the qualities which have made you admire them, what are the services they have rendered. For as President Wheeler said to-day, it is true now as it ever has been true that the greatest good fortune, the greatest honor, that can befall any man is that he shall serve, that he shall serve the Nation, serve his people, serve mankind; and looking back in history the names that come up before us, the names to which we turn, the names of the men of our own people which stand as shining honor marks in our annals, the names of those men typifying qualities which rightly we should hold in reverence, are the names of the statesmen, of the soldiers, of the poets—and after them, not abreast of them, the names of the architects of our material prosperity also.
Of recent years I have been thrown in contact with a number of college graduates doing good service to the country, and as I wish to make it perfectly evident what I mean by the kind of service which I should hope to have from you and which it seems to me worth while to render, I want to say just a word about two college graduates who have during the last five years rendered and are now rendering such services: Governor Taft in the Philippines, and Brigadier-General Leonard Wood, lately Governor of Cuba. When we acquired the Philippines and took possession for the time being of Cuba to train its people in citizenship, we assumed heavy responsibilities; so heavy that some very excellent persons thought we ought to shirk them. I hold that a great and masterful people forfeits its title to greatness if it shirks any work because that work is difficult and responsible. The difficulty and responsibility impose upon us the high duty of doing the work well, but they in no way excuse us for refusing to do it. We had to do the work and the question came of the choice of instruments in doing it. The most important and most difficult task after the establishment of order by the army in the Philippines was the establishment of civil government therein; and second only in importance to that came the administration of Cuba, during the three years and over that elapsed before we were able to turn its government over to its own people and start it as a free Republic. When tasks are all-important the most important factor in doing them right is the choice of the agents; and among the many debts of gratitude which this Nation owes to President McKinley, no debt is greater than the debt we owe him for the choice of his instruments, such a choice as that of Taft, such a choice as that of Wood. We sent Taft to the Philippines; we sent Wood to Cuba; both of them as tested by the standard of our commercial life, poor men; each man with little more than his salary to keep himself and his family; each man to handle millions upon millions of dollars, to have the power by mere conniving at what was improper to acquire untold wealth—and sent them knowing that we did not ever have to consider whether such opportunities would be temptations toward them; sent them knowing that they had the ideals of the true American and that, therefore, we did not have to consider the chance of such a temptation appealing to them.
Taft went to the Philippines to stay there; not only forfeiting thereby the certainty of brilliant rise in his profession on the bench or at the bar here if he had stayed, but at imminent risk to his own health; because he felt that his duty as an American made him go; that, as President McKinley told me of him, he had been drafted into the service of the country and he could not honorably refuse. We have seen in consequence the Philippine Islands administered by the American official who is at the head of the government and by his colleagues in the interest primarily of their people, and seeking to obtain for the United States, for the dominant race, that spent its blood and its treasure in making firm and stable the government of those islands, the reward that comes from the consciousness of duty well done. Under Taft, by and through his efforts, not only have peace and material well-being come to those islands to a degree never before known in their recorded history, and to a degree infinitely greater than had ever been dreamed possible by those who knew them best, but more than that, a greater measure of self-government has been given to them than is now given to any other Asiatic people under alien rule, than to any other Asiatic people under their own rulers, save Japan alone. That is an achievement of the past five years which I hold to be absolutely unparalleled in history; and when the debit and credit side of our national life is finally made up a long stroke shall be put to the credit side for what has been done in the Philippines under Taft and his associates.
In the same way Leonard Wood worked in Cuba. Put down there to do an absolutely new task, to take a people of a different race, a different speech, a different creed, a people just emerging from the hideous welter of a war, cruel and sanguinary beyond what we in this fortunate country can readily conceive, to take a people down in the depths of poverty and misery, just recovering from suffering which makes one shudder to think of, a people untrained utterly and absolutely in self-government, and fit them for it; and he did it. For three years he worked. He established a school system as good as the best that we have in any of our States. He cleaned cities which had never been cleaned in their existence before. He secured absolute safety for life and property. He did the kind of governmental work which should be the undying honor of our people forever. And he came home to what? He came home to be thanked by a few, to be attacked by others—not to their credit—and to have as his real reward the sense that though his work had been done at pecuniary sacrifice to him, that though the demands upon him had been such as to eat into his private means, yet he had worthily and well done his duty as an American citizen and reflected fresh honor upon the uniform of the United States Army.