Theodore Roosevelt - Fear God and Take Your Own Part

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-3646-6

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of
Julia Ward Howe

Because In The Vital Matters Fundamentally Affecting The Life Of The Republic, She Was As Good A Citizen Of The Republic As Washington And Lincoln Themselves. She Was In The Highest Sense A Good Wife And A Good Mother; And Therefore She Fulfilled The Primary Law Of Our Being. She Brought Up With Devoted Care And Wisdom Her Sons And Her Daughters. At The Same Time She Fulfilled Her Full Duty To The Commonwealth From The Public Standpoint. She Preached Righteousness And She Practiced Righteousness. She Sought The Peace That Comes As The Handmaiden Of Well Doing. She Preached That Stern And Lofty Courage Of Soul Which Shrinks Neither From War Nor From Any Other Form Of Suffering And Hardship And Danger If It Is Only Thereby That Justice Can Be Served. She Embodied That Trait More Essential Than Any Other In The Make-up Of The Men And Women Of This Republic The Valor Of Righteousness.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC

JULIA WARD HOWE

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows o f steel:

As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet,

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

T HIS book is based primarily upon, and mainly consists of, matter contained in articles I have written in the Metropolitan Magazine during the past fourteen months. It also contains or is based upon an article contributed to the Wheeler Syndicate, a paper submitted to the American Sociological Congress, and one or two speeches and public statements. In addition there is much new matter, including most of the first chapter. In part the old matter has been rearranged. For the most part, I have left it unchanged. In the few instances where what I spoke was in the nature of prophecy as to what might or would happen during the last year, the prophecy has been fulfilled, and I have changed the tense but not the purport of the statements. I have preferred to run the risk of occasional repetition rather than to attempt rewriting certain of the chapters, because whatever of value these chapters have had lay in the fact that in them I was applying eternal principles of right to concrete cases which were of vital importance at the moment, instead of merely treating these eternal principles as having their place forever in the realm of abstract thought and never to be reduced to action. I was speaking to and for the living present about the immediate needs of the present.

The principles set forth in this book are simply the principles of true Americanism within and without our own borders, the principles which, according to my abilities, I have preached and, according to my abilities, I have practised for the thirty-five years since, as a very young man, I first began to take an active interest in American history and in American political life.

T HEODORE R OOSEVELT .

Sagamore Hill, February 3, 1916.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

FEAR GOD AND TAKE YOUR OWN PART

R EADERS of Borrow will recognize in the heading of this chapter, which I have also chosen for the title of the book, a phrase used by the heroine of Lavengro.

Fear God; and take your own part! Fear God, in the true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor God; and all of this can only be done by loving our neighbor, treating him justly and mercifully, and in all ways, endeavoring to protect him from injustice and cruelty; thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will permit, the great and immutable law of righteousness.

We fear God when we do justice to and demand justice for the men within our own borders. We are false to the teachings of righteousness if we do not do such justice and demand such justice. We must do it to the weak, and we must do it to the strong. We do not fear God if we show mean envy and hatred of those who are better off than we are; and still less do we fear God if we show a base arrogance towards and selfish lack of consideration for those who are less well off. We must apply the same standard of conduct alike to man and to woman, to rich man and to poor man, to employer and employee. We must organize our social and industrial life so as to secure a reasonable equality of opportunity for all men to show the stuff that is in them, and a reasonable division among those engaged in industrial work of the reward for that industrial work, a division which shall take into account all the qualities that contribute to the necessary success. We must demand honesty, justice, mercy, truthfulness, in our dealings with one another within our own borders. Outside of our own borders we must treat other nations as we would wish to be treated in return, judging each in any given crisis as we ourselves ought to be judged that is, by our conduct in that crisis. If they do ill, we show that we fear God when we sternly bear testimony against them and oppose them in any way and to what ever extent the needs require. If they do well, we must not wrong them ourselves. Finally, if we are really devoted to a lofty ideal we must in so far as our strength permits aid them if they are wronged by others. When we sit idly by while Belgium is being overwhelmed, and rolling up our eyes prattle with unctuous self-righteousness about the duty of neutrality, we show that we do not really fear God; on the contrary, we show an odious fear of the devil, and a mean readiness to serve him.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary that we should be able and ready to take our own part. The man who cannot take his own part is a nuisance in the community, a source of weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an added burden to the men who wish to do what is right. If he cannot take his own part, then somebody else has to take it for him; and this means that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency place an added burden on some other man and make that other mans strength by just so much of less avail to the community as a whole. No man can take the part of any one else unless he is able to take his own part. This is just as true of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take its own part is at times almost as fertile a source of mischief in the world at large as is a nation which does wrong to others, for its very existence puts a premium on such wrongdoing. Therefore, a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and interest against outside aggression; and this necessarily means that in a free democracy every man fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can do his full duty to the nation in war no less than in peace.