Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [230]
Roosevelt reminded his correspondents that the only influence he retained was that of his pen. And he still wanted to be fair to Wilson. “An ex-President,” he reminded Kipling, “must be exceedingly careful in a crisis like this how he hampers his successor in office who actually has to deal with the situation.” Trevelyan’s salute, however, inspired him to publish a major essay, “The World War: Its Tragedies and Its Lessons,” in The Outlook on 23 September. For the first time he gave the full range of his views on the war, writing with strong feeling but also with objectivity and erudition.
“THERE CAN BE NO HIGHER international duty,” he declared, “than to safeguard the existence and independence of industrious, orderly states, with a high personal and national standard of conduct, but without the military force of the great powers.” Examples of these were Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and Uruguay. The first had just been trampled underfoot—was still being trampled—while the United States, the world’s most righteous republic, raised no objection.
Roosevelt did not blame any of the belligerents for taking up arms, allowing that each had reasonable grievances. Austria-Hungary was right to punish Serbia for the murder of Franz Ferdinand, yet Serbia was right to oppose Austrian expansionism in the Balkans. Tsar Nicholas, as the protector of all Slavs, could not have remained passive after Hötzendorf attacked Belgrade; Kaiser Wilhelm felt a similar ethnic compulsion to defend Vienna; and Germany had been wise to strike France before that nation, unreconciled to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, struck her. The British had acted nobly in honoring their ancient pledge to uphold Belgian neutrality, and they were wise to oppose Prussian militarism. Even in the Far East, where the war had spread, Japan was justified in besieging Germany’s naval base at Kiaochow,* China, thus ending a nineteen-year provocation. The fall of that garrison looked imminent, and in Roosevelt’s opinion would greatly improve the local balance of power.
He took no side except that of Belgium. “It seems to me impossible that any man can fail to feel the deepest sympathy with a nation which is absolutely guiltless of any wrongdoing.” That was, any man whose ethics were not perverted by the amorality of war. Roosevelt noted that Britain had ignored the neutrality of Denmark when fighting France in 1807, “and with less excuse the same is true of our conduct toward Spain in Florida nearly a century ago.” The only principle that applied in major conflicts, those that wrought fundamental change, was “the supreme law of national self-preservation,” a deterministic force that had no scruples.
“But Germany’s need to struggle for her life,” he went on, “does not make it any easier for the Belgians to suffer death.” He had read German military textbooks, and the tactician in him accepted the logic of Friedrich von Bernhardi’s “necessary terror” in attack. However, as a human being, he was revolted at its injustice. King Albert’s subjects had fought with wonderful courage against a force they could not withstand. As a result, they were suffering, “somewhat as my own German ancestors suffered when Turenne ravaged the Palatinate, somewhat as my Irish ancestors suffered in the struggles that attended the conquests and reconquests of Ireland in the days of Cromwell and William.” The agony of the Belgians might not yet compare with that of the Germans themselves at French hands in 1674 and 1689. Even so, the sack of Louvain was “altogether too nearly akin to what occurred in the seventeenth century for us of the twentieth century to feel overmuch pleased at the amount of advance that has been made.”
He remarked with a touch of disdain that it was probably impossible for most Americans, “living softly and at ease,” to feel what it was like to be crushed by a conquering power. If they