Citizenship in a Republic
by Theodore Roosevelt
[23 April 1910 University of Paris / Sorbonne address]
Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man
from the New World who speaks before this august body in this
ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows
of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and
theology; through the shining dust of the great centuries he sees
crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor
of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble
students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was
well-nigh the only outlet from the dark thraldom of the Middle
Ages.
This was the most famous university of medieval Europe at a time
when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its
services to the cause of human knowledge already stretched far
back into the remote past at the time when my forefathers, three
centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, ploughmen,
woodchoppers, and fisherfolk who, in hard struggle with the iron
unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted land, were laying the
foundations of what has now become the giant republic of the
West. To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of
wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in
it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom
which once were theirs, and which still are in the hands of their
brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness
means to wrest mankind struggled in the immemorial infancy of our
race. The primeval conditions must be met by primeval qualities
which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been
painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven
upward toward civilization. In conditions so primitive there can
be but a primitive culture. At first only the rudest schools can
be established, for no others would meet the needs of the
hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrust forward the frontier in the
teeth of savage man and savage nature; and many years elapse
before any of these schools can develop into seats of higher
learning and broader culture.
The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into
vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of
log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of
trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men
who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the
heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves
vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the
way. The children of their successors an supplanters, and then
their children and children's children, change and develop with
extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and
virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all
the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant,
self-centred, far more conscious of its rights than of its
duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To the hard
materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing
than that of the older nations; although these themselves have
likewise already entered on the age of a complex and
predominantly industrial civilization.
As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many
lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind
and spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order
better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their
children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope
their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly,
sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain,
whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a
foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes
from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in
part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New
World; but it can be developed in full only by freely drawing
upon the treasure houses of the Old World upon treasures stored
in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this where
I speak to-day. It is a mistake for any nation merely to copy
another; but it is an even greater mistake, it is a proof of
weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from another,
and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national
conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for
us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old;
then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in
his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar.
To-day I shall speak to you on the subject of individual
citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my
hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are
citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic
such as each of ours - an effort to realize in its full sense
government by, of, and for the people - represents the most
gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with
greatest possibilities alike for good and for evil. The success
of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our
failure the despair, of mankind; and for your and for us the
question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme.
Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or of
a very few men, the quality of the rulers is all important. If,
under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough,
then the nation may for generations lead a brilliant career, and
add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how
low the quality of the average citizen; because the average
citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final
results of that type of national greatness.
But with you and with us the case is different. With you here,
and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure
will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the
average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary,
every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional
crises which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be
a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The steam will
not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main
source of national power and national greatness is found in the
average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do
our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept
high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of
the leaders is very much higher.
It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic,
in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the
classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided
that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain
people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you
have received special advantages; you have all had the
opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure;
most of you have had a chance for the enjoyment of life far
greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and
your kind much has been given, and from you much should be
expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is
especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated
intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position, should
especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are
especially liable; and if yielded to, their - your - chances of
useful service are at an end.
Let the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure, beware of
that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others
as the cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs,
the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face
life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a
kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine
themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves
dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man
less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or
feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that
is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble
effort which, even if it fails, comes second to achievement. A
cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize
work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an
intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's
realities - all these are marks, not, as the possessor would fain
think, of superiority, but of weakness. They mark the men unfit
to bear their part manfully in the stern strife of living, who
seek, in the affectation of contempt for the achievements of
others, to hide from others and from themselves their own
weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the
role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and
performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how
the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have
done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually
in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy
cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails
while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those
cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. Shame
on the man of cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop
into a fastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of
a workaday world. Among the free peoples who govern themselves
there is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of
cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still
less room is there for those who deride or slight what is done by
those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those
others who always profess that they would like to take action, if
only the conditions of life were not what they actually are. The
man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of
history, whether he by cynic, or fop, or voluptuary. There is
little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of the
great and generous emotion, of the high pride, the stern belief,
the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the
thunder. Well for these men if they succeed; well also, though
not so well, if they fail, given only that they have nobly
ventured, and have put forth all their heart and strength. It is
war-worn Hotspur, spent with hard fighting, he of the many errors
and the valiant end, over whose memory we love to linger, not
over the memory of the young lord who "but for the vile guns
would have been a soldier..."
France has taught many lessons to other nations: surely one of
the most important is the lesson her whole history teaches, that
a high artistic and literary development is compatible with
notable leadership in arms and statecraft. The brilliant
gallantry of the French soldier has for many centuries been
proverbial; and during these same centuries at every court in
Europe the "freemasons of fashion" have treated the French tongue
as their common speech; while every artist and man of letters,
and every man of science able to appreciate that marvelous
instrument of precision, French prose, has turned toward France
for aid and inspiration. How long the leadership in arms and
letters has lasted is curiously illustrated by the fact that the
earliest masterpiece in a modern tongue is the splendid French
epic which tells of Roland's doom and the vengeance of
Charlemagne when the lords of the Frankish host were stricken at
Roncesvalles.
Let those who have, keep, let those who have not, strive to
attain, a high standard of cultivation and scholarship. Yet let
us remember that these stand second to certain other things.
There is need of a sound body, and even more need of a sound
mind. But above mind and above body stands character -- the sum
of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force
and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor. I believe in
exercise for the body, always provided that we keep in mind that
physical development is a means and not an end. I believe, of
course, in giving to all the people a good education. But the
education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be
really good. We must ever remember that no keenness and
subtleness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, in any way
make up for the lack of the great solid qualities.
Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, the power of
accepting individual responsibility and yet of acting in
conjunction with others, courage and resolution -- these are the
qualities which mark a masterful people. Without them no people
can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the
outside. I speak to a brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great
university which represents the flower of the highest
intellectual development; I pay all homage to intellect, and to
elaborate and specialized training of the intellect; and yet I
know I shall have the assent of all of you present when I add
that more important still are the commonplace, every-day
qualities and virtues.
Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power
to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy
children. The need that the average man shall work is so obvious
as hardly to warrant insistence. There are a few people in every
country so born that they can lead lives of leisure. These fill a
useful function if they make it evident that leisure does not
mean idleness; for some of the most valuable work needed by
civilization is essentially non-remunerative in its character,
and of course the people who do this work should in large part be
drawn from those to whom remuneration is an object of
indifference. But the average man must earn his own livelihood.
He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel
that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so;
that he is not an object of envy if he is idle, at whichever end
of the social scale he stands, but an object of contempt, an
object of derision.
In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a
brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able
to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises. There are
well-meaning philosophers who declaim against the unrighteousness
of war. They are right only if they lay all their emphasis upon
the unrighteousness. War is a dreadful thing, and unjust war is a
crime against humanity. But it is such a crime because it is
unjust, not because it is war. The choice must ever be in favor
of righteousness, and this whether the alternative be peace or
whether the alternative be war. The question must not be merely,
Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is the right
to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be
fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must
be, "Yes," whatever the cost. Every honorable effort should
always be made to avoid war, just as every honorable effort
should always be made by the individual in private life to keep
out of a brawl, to keep out of trouble; but no self-respecting
individual, no self-respecting nation, can or ought to submit to
wrong.
Finally, even more important than ability to work, even more
important than ability to fight at need, is it to remember that
the chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its
seed to inherit the land. It was the crown of blessings in
Biblical times; and it is the crown of blessings now. The
greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the
severest of all condemnations should be that visited upon wilful
sterility. The first essential in any civilization is that the
man and the woman shall be father and mother of healthy children,
so that the race shall increase and not decrease. If this is not
so, if through no fault of the society there is failure to
increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to
deliberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune,
it is one of those crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of
shrinking from pain and effort and risk, which in the long run
Nature punishes more heavily than any other. If we of the great
republics, if we, the free people who claim to have emancipated
ourselves from the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on our
heads the curse that comes upon the wilfully barren, then it will
be an idle waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to
boast of all that we have done. No refinement of life, no
delicacy of taste, no material progress, no sordid heaping up of
riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, can in any
way compensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues; and
of these great fundamental virtues the greatest is the race's
power to perpetuate the race.
Character must show itself in the man's performance both of the
duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state. The man's
foremost duty is owed to himself and his family; and he can do
this duty only by earning money, by providing what is essential
to material well-being; it is only after this has been done that
he can hope to build a higher superstructure on the solid
material foundation; it is only after this has been done that he
can help in movements for the general well-being. He must pull
his own weight first, and only after this can his surplus
strength be of use to the general public. It is not good to
excite that bitter laughter which expresses contempt; and
contempt is what we feel for the being whose enthusiasm to
benefit mankind is such that he is a burden to those nearest him;
who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but
who can not keep his wife in comfort or educate his children.
Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not
merely acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must
be a basis of material well-being for the individual as for the
nation, let us with equal emphasis insist that this material
well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and that the
foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is
raised the superstructure of a higher life. That is why I decline
to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth,
as an asset of value to any country; and especially as not an
asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a
way that makes him of real benefit, of real use -- and such is
often the case -- why, then he does become an asset of worth. But
it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the
mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is
need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of
the great guiding intelligences. Their places can not be supplied
by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that
they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not
transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed
rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the
service having been rendered, then admiration will come only from
those who are mean of soul. The truth is that, after a certain
measure of tangible material success or reward has been achieved,
the question of increasing it becomes of constantly less
importance compared to other things that can be done in life. It
is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false
standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than
that set by the deification of material well-being in and for
itself. The man who, for any cause for which he is himself
accountable, has failed to support himself and those for whom he
is responsible, ought to feel that he has fallen lamentably short
in his prime duty. But the man who, having far surpassed the
limit of providing for the wants, both of body and mind, of
himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great
fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no
corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be
made to feel that, so far from being a desirable, he is an
unworthy, citizen of the community; that he is to be neither
admired nor envied; that his right-thinking fellow countrymen put
him low in the scale of citizenship, and leave him to be consoled
by the admiration of those whose level of purpose is even lower
than his own.
My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few
words. In every civilized society property rights must be
carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of
cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in
the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is
a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper
hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property.
In fact, it is essential to good citizenship clearly to
understand that there are certain qualities which we in a
democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought
by rights to be judged admirable or the reverse solely from the
standpoint of the use made of them. Foremost among these I should
include two very distinct gifts -- the gift of money-making and
the gift of oratory. Money-making, the money touch, I have spoken
of above. It is a quality which in a moderate degree is
essential. It may be useful when developed to a very great
degree, but only if accompanied and controlled by other
qualities; and without such control the possessor tends to
develop into one of the least attractive types produced by a
modern industrial democracy. So it is with the orator. It is
highly desirable that a leader of opinion in a democracy should
be able to state his views clearly and convincingly. But all that
the oratory can do of value to the community is to enable the man
thus to explain himself; if it enables the orator to persuade his
hearers to put false values on things, it merely makes him a
power for mischief. Some excellent public servants have not the
gift at all, and must rely upon their deeds to speak for them;
and unless the oratory does represent genuine conviction based on
good common sense and able to be translated into efficient
performance, then the better the oratory the greater the damage
to the public it deceives. Indeed, it is a sign of marked
political weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to be
carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and
for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are
supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready
talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for
courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious
element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if
he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without
regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the
republic.
Of course all that I say of the orator applies with even greater
force to the orator's latter-day and more influential brother,
the journalist. The power of the journalist is great, but he is
entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power
unless it is used aright. He can do, and he often does, great
good. He can do, and he often does, infinite mischief. All
journalists, all writers, for the very reason that they
appreciate the vast possibilities of their profession, should
bear testimony against those who deeply discredit it. Offences
against taste and morals, which are bad enough in a private
citizen, are infinitely worse if made into instruments for
debauching the community through a newspaper. Mendacity, slander,
sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors
for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience. The excuse
advanced for vicious writing, that the public demands it and that
the demand must be supplied, can no more be admitted than if it
were advanced by the purveyors of food who sell poisonous
adulterations.
In short, the good citizen in a republic must realize that he
ought to possess two sets of qualities, and that neither avails
without the other. He must have those qualities which make for
efficiency; and he must also have those qualities which direct
the efficiency into channels for the public good. He is useless
if he is inefficient. There is nothing to be done with that type
of citizen of whom all that can be said is that he is harmless.
Virtue which is dependent upon a sluggish circulation is not
impressive. There is little place in active life for the timid
good man. The man who is saved by weakness from robust wickedness
is likewise rendered immune from the robuster virtues. The good
citizen in a republic must first of all be able to hold his own.
He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make
him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard. The
good citizen is not a good citizen unless he is an efficient
citizen.
But if a man's efficiency is not guided and regulated by a moral
sense, then the more efficient he is the worse he is, the more
dangerous to the body politic. Courage, intellect, all the
masterful qualities, serve but to make a man more evil if they
are used merely for that man's own advancement, with brutal
indifference to the rights of others. It speaks ill for the
community if the community worships these qualities and treats
their possessors as heroes regardless of whether the qualities
are used rightly or wrongly. It makes no difference as to the
precise way in which this sinister efficiency is shown. It makes
no difference whether such a man's force and ability betray
themselves in the career of money-maker or politician, soldier or
orator, journalist or popular leader. If the man works for evil,
then the more successful he is the more he should be despised and
condemned by all upright and far-seeing men. To judge a man
merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at
large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness
because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to
understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon
the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil
they prove themselves unfit for liberty.
The homely virtues of the household, the ordinary workaday
virtues which make the woman a good housewife and housemother,
which make the man a hard worker, a good husband and father, a
good soldier at need, stand at the bottom of character. But of
course many others must be added thereto if a state is to be not
only free but great. Good citizenship is not good citizenship if
exhibited only in the home. There remain the duties of the
individual in relation to the state, and these duties are none
too easy under the conditions which exist where the effort is
made to carry on free government in a complex, industrial
civilization. Perhaps the most important thing the ordinary
citizen, and, above all, the leader of ordinary citizens, has to
remember in political life is that he must not be a sheer
doctrinaire. The closet philosopher, the refined and cultured
individual who from his library tells how men ought to be
governed under ideal conditions, is of no use in actual
governmental work; and the one-sided fanatic, and still more the
mob-leader, and the insincere man who to achieve power promises
what by no possibility can be performed, are not merely useless
but noxious.
The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to
achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from
aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have
become impossible and indeed undesirable to realize. The
impracticable visionary is far less often the guide and precursor
than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer, of the man
who, with stumblings and shortcomings, yet does in some shape, in
practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those
who strive for better things. Woe to the empty phrase-maker, to
the empty idealist, who, instead of making ready the ground for
the man of action, turns against him when he appears and hampers
him as he does the work! Moreover, the preacher of ideals must
remember how sorry and contemptible is the figure which he will
cut, how great the damage that he will do, if he does not
himself, in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals
that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth
of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which
it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called
"practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that
peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in
morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living
and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body
politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal
opponent and real ally, the man of fantastic vision who makes the
impossible better forever the enemy of the possible good.
We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an
extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme
socialism. Individual initiative, so far from being discouraged,
should be stimulated; and yet we should remember that, as society
develops and grows more complex, we continually find that things
which once it was desirable to leave to individual initiative
can, under the changed conditions, be performed with better
results by common effort. It is quite impossible, and equally
undesirable, to draw in theory a hard-and-fast line which shall
always divide the two sets of cases. This every one who is not
cursed with the pride of the closet philosopher will see, if he
will only take the trouble to think about some of our commonest
phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in
little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own
drainage and water supply; but the mere multiplication of
families in a given area produces new problems which, because
they differ in size, are found to differ not only in degree but
in kind from the old; and the questions of drainage and water
supply have to be considered from the common standpoint. It is
not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to decide when this point
is reached; it is a matter to be tested by practical experiment.
Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is
entirely pointless, because of failure to agree on terminology.
It is not good to be the slave of names. I am a strong
individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but
it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the state,
the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of
things better than if they were left to individual action. The
individualism which finds its expression in the abuse of physical
force is checked very early in the growth of civilization, and we
of to-day should in our turn strive to shackle or destroy that
individualism which triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits
the weak by craft instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought
to go with any man in the effort to bring about justice and the
equality of opportunity, to turn the tool-user more and more into
the tool-owner, to shift burdens so that they can be more
equitably borne. The deadening effect on any race of the adoption
of a logical and extreme socialistic system could not be
overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce
grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality, than any existing
system. But this does not mean that we may not with great
advantage adopt certain of the principles professed by some given
set of men who happen to call themselves Socialists; to be afraid
to do so would be to make a mark of weakness on our part.
But we should not take part in acting a lie any more than in
telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they
are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an
equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring
about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing
the inequality which is due to force or fraud. Abraham Lincoln, a
man of the plain people, blood of their blood and bone of their
bone, who all his life toiled and wrought and suffered for them,
and at the end died for them, who always strove to represent
them, who would never tell an untruth to or for them, spoke of
the doctrine of equality with his usual mixture of idealism and
sound common sense. He said (I omit what was of merely local
significance):
"I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended
to include all men, but that they did not mean to declare all men
equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were
equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social
capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they
did consider all men created equal -- equal in certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They
did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then
actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to
confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard
maxim for free society which should be familiar to all --
constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though
never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby
constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting
the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere."
We are bound in honor to refuse to listen to those men who would
make us desist from the effort to do away with the inequality
which means injustice; the inequality of right, of opportunity,
of privilege. We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever
nearer the day when, as far as is humanly possible, we shall be
able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal
opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which
he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equality
of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is
inequality of service there should and must be inequality of
reward. We may be sorry for the general, the painter, the artist,
the worker in any profession or of any kind, whose misfortune
rather than whose fault it is that he does his work ill. But the
reward must go to the man who does his work well; for any other
course is to create a new kind of privilege, the privilege of
folly and weakness; and special privilege is injustice, whatever
form it takes.
To say that the thriftless, the lazy, the vicious, the incapable,
ought to have the reward given to those who are far-sighted,
capable, and upright, is to say what is not true and can not be
true. Let us try to level up, but let us beware of the evil of
levelling down. If a man stumbles, it is a good thing to help him
to his feet. Every one of us needs a helping hand now and then.
But if a man lies down, it is a waste of time to try to carry
him; and it is a very bad thing for every one if we make men feel
that the same reward will come to those who shirk their work and
to those who do it.
Let us, then, take into account the actual facts of life, and not
be misled into following any proposal for achieving the
millennium, for re-creating the golden age, until we have
subjected it to hardheaded examination. On the other hand, it is
foolish to reject a proposal merely because it is advanced by
visionaries. If a given scheme is proposed, look at it on its
merits, and, in considering it, disregard formulas. It does not
matter in the least who proposes it, or why. If it seems good,
try it. If it proves good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There
are plenty of men calling themselves Socialists with whom, up to
a certain point, it is quite possible to work. If the next step
is one which both we and they wish to take, why of course take
it, without any regard to the fact that our views as to the tenth
step may differ. But, on the other hand, keep clearly in mind
that, though it has been worth while to take one step, this does
not in the least mean that it may not be highly disadvantageous
to take the next. It is just as foolish to refuse all progress
because people demanding it desire at some points to go to absurd
extremes, as it would be to go to these absurd extremes simply
because some of the measures advocated by the extremists were
wise.
The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter
of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which
he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of
liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated
in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in
matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each
man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so
doing he does not wrong his neighbor. Persecution is bad because
it is persecution, and without reference to which side happens at
the moment to be the persecutor and which the persecuted. Class
hatred is bad in just the same way, and without any regard to the
individual who, at a given time, substitutes loyalty to a class
for loyalty to the nation, or substitutes hatred of men because
they happen to come in a certain social category, for judgment
awarded them according to their conduct. Remember always that the
same measure of condemnation should be extended to the arrogance
which would look down upon or crush any man because he is poor
and to the envy and hatred which would destroy a man because he
is wealthy. The overbearing brutality of the man of wealth or
power, and the envious and hateful malice directed against wealth
or power, are really at root merely different manifestations of
the same quality, merely the two sides of the same shield. The
man who, if born to wealth and power, exploits and ruins his less
fortunate brethren is at heart the same as the greedy and violent
demagogue who excites those who have not property to plunder
those who have. The gravest wrong upon his country is inflicted
by that man, whatever his station, who seeks to make his
countrymen divide primarily on the line that separates class from
class, occupation from occupation, men of more wealth from men of
less wealth, instead of remembering that the only safe standard
is that which judges each man on his worth as a man, whether he
be rich or poor, without regard to his profession or to his
station in life. Such is the only true democratic test, the only
test that can with propriety be applied in a republic. There have
been many republics in the past, both in what we call antiquity
and in what we call the Middle Ages. They fell, and the prime
factor in their fall was the fact that the parties tended to
divide along the line that separates wealth from poverty. It made
no difference which side was successful; it made no difference
whether the republic fell under the rule of an oligarchy or the
rule of a mob. In either case, when once loyalty to a class had
been substituted for loyalty to the republic, the end of the
republic was at hand. There is no greater need to-day than the
need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between
right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship,
runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of
cleavage between class and class, between occupation and
occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his
position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.
In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine
intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of
conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious,
political, and social belief must exist if conscience and
intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for
healthy growth. Bitter internecine hatreds, based on such
differences, are signs, not of earnestness of belief, but of that
fanaticism which, whether religious or anti-religious, democratic
or anti-democratic, is itself but a manifestation of the gloomy
bigotry which has been the chief factor in the downfall of so
many, many nations.
Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens of a
republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to
them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other
citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect
him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other
citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he
appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or
anti-religious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should
always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own
interest. The very last thing that an intelligent and
self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to
reward any public man because that public man says he will get
the private citizen something to which this private citizen is
not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which
this private citizen ought not to possess. Let me illustrate this
by one anecdote from my own experience. A number of years ago I
was engaged in cattle-ranching on the great plains of the western
United States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered free,
the ownership of each being determined by the brand; the calves
were branded with the brand of the cows they followed. If on the
round-up an animal was passed by, the following year it would
appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick.
By the custom of the country these mavericks were branded with
the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I
was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon
a maverick. We roped and threw it; then we built a little fire,
took out a cinch-ring, heated it at the fire; and the cowboy
started to put on the brand. I said to him, "It is So-and-so's
brand," naming the man on whose range we happened to be. He
answered: "That's all right, boss; I know my business." In
another moment I said to him: "Hold on, you are putting on my
brand!" To which he answered: "That's all right; I always put on
the boss's brand." I answered: "Oh, very well. Now you go
straight back to the ranch and get what is owing to you; I don't
need you any longer." He jumped up and said: "Why, what's the
matter? I was putting on your brand." And I answered: "Yes, my
friend, and if you will steal for me you will steal from me."
Now, the same principle which applies in private life applies
also in public life. If a public man tries to get your vote by
saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can
be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he
will do something wrong against your interest.
So much for the citizenship of the individual in his relations to
his family, to his neighbor, to the state. There remain duties of
citizenship which the state, the aggregation of all the
individuals, owes in connection with other states, with other
nations. Let me say at once that I am no advocate of a foolish
cosmopolitanism. I believe that a man must be a good patriot
before he can be, and as the only possible way of being, a good
citizen of the world. Experience teaches us that the average man
who protests that his international feeling swamps his national
feeling, that he does not care for his country because he cares
so much for mankind, in actual practice proves himself the foe of
mankind; that the man who says that he does not care to be a
citizen of any one country, because he is a citizen of the world,
is in very fact usually an exceedingly undesirable citizen of
whatever corner of the world he happens at the moment to be in.
In the dim future all moral needs and moral standards may change;
but at present, if a man can view his own country and all other
countries from the same level with tepid indifference, it is wise
to distrust him, just as it is wise to distrust the man who can
take the same dispassionate view of his wife and his mother.
However broad and deep a man's sympathies, however intense his
activities, he need have no fear that they will be cramped by
love of his native land.
Now, this does not mean in the least that a man should not wish
to do good outside of his native land. On the contrary, just as I
think that the man who loves his family is more apt to be a good
neighbor than the man who does not, so I think that the most
useful member of the family of nations is normally a strongly
patriotic nation. So far from patriotism being inconsistent with
a proper regard for the rights of other nations, I hold that the
true patriot, who is as jealous of the national honor as a
gentleman is of his own honor, will be careful to see that the
nation neither inflicts nor suffers wrong, just as a gentleman
scorns equally to wrong others or to suffer others to wrong him.
I do not for one moment admit that political morality is
different from private morality, that a promise made on the stump
differs from a promise made in private life. I do not for one
moment admit that a man should act deceitfully as a public
servant in his dealings with other nations, any more than that he
should act deceitfully in his dealings as a private citizen with
other private citizens. I do not for one moment admit that a
nation should treat other nations in a different spirit from that
in which an honorable man would treat other men.
In practically applying this principle to the two sets of cases
there is, of course, a great practical difference to be taken
into account. We speak of international law; but international
law is something wholly different from private or municipal law,
and the capital difference is that there is a sanction for the
one and no sanction for the other; that there is an outside force
which compels individuals to obey the one, while there is no such
outside force to compel obedience as regards the other.
International law will, I believe, as the generations pass, grow
stronger and stronger until in some way or other there develops
the power to make it respected. But as yet it is only in the
first formative period. As yet, as a rule, each nation is of
necessity obliged to judge for itself in matters of vital
importance between it and its neighbors, and actions must of
necessity, where this is the case, be different from what they
are where, as among private citizens, there is an outside force
whose action is all-powerful and must be invoked in any crisis of
importance. It is the duty of wise statesmen, gifted with the
power of looking ahead, to try to encourage and build up every
movement which will substitute or tend to substitute some other
agency for force in the settlement of international disputes. It
is the duty of every honest statesman to try to guide the nation
so that it shall not wrong any other nation. But as yet the great
civilized peoples, if they are to be true to themselves and to
the cause of humanity and civilization, must keep ever in mind
that in the last resort they must possess both the will and the
power to resent wrong-doing from others. The men who sanely
believe in a lofty morality preach righteousness; but they do not
preach weakness, whether among private citizens or among nations.
We believe that our ideals should be high, but not so high as to
make it impossible measurably to realize them. We sincerely and
earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, we
scorn the man who would not stand for justice though the whole
world came in arms against him.
And now, my hosts, a word in parting. You and I belong to the
only two republics among the great powers of the world. The
ancient friendship between France and the United States has been,
on the whole, a sincere and disinterested friendship. A calamity
to you would be a sorrow to us. But it would be more than that.
In the seething turmoil of the history of humanity certain
nations stand out as possessing a peculiar power or charm, some
special gift of beauty or wisdom or strength, which puts them
among the immortals, which makes them rank forever with the
leaders of mankind. France is one of these nations. For her to
sink would be a loss to all the world. There are certain lessons
of brilliance and of generous gallantry that she can teach better
than any of her sister nations. When the French peasantry sang of
Malbrook, it was to tell how the soul of this warrior-foe took
flight upward through the laurels he had won. Nearly seven
centuries ago, Froissart, writing of a time of dire disaster,
said that the realm of France was never so stricken that there
were not left men who would valiantly fight for it. You have had
a great past. I believe that you will have a great future. Long
may you carry yourselves proudly as citizens of a nation which
bears a leading part in the teaching and uplifting of mankind.
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