Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [26]
And on his fertility too. With a directness probably not heard at the Sorbonne in a century, except in lectures on anthropology, Roosevelt declared: “The chief of blessings for any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land.” France (he did not need to name her in this connection: her falling birthrate was well-known fact) had to fight “the curse of sterility.” She must breed soldiers to protect her and assert her rights.
This touched on France’s other neurosis: fear of conquest by a Germany expansive on land and at sea. War, he granted, was “a dreadful thing.” But shrinking from it when it loomed was worse. “The question must be, ‘Is right to prevail?’ … And the answer from a strong and virile people must be, ‘Yes,’ whatever the cost.”
Roosevelt bit off every word as was his habit, with snapping teeth and wreathing lips. Spectators in the farthest recesses of the hall could feel the force of his opinions even before the interpreter translated them. Their ears, attuned to the mercurial flow of French speech, had to adjust to his raspy, jerky delivery (accompanied by smacks of right fist into left palm) and the strange falsetto he used for extra emphasis. Nothing could be less mielleux. But his foreignness excused him, and won repeated applause.
The loudest came when he attacked skeptics “of lettered leisure” who, cloistered in academe, “sneered” at anyone trying to make the real world better.
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.
IF ONLY BECAUSE ROOSEVELT clearly identified himself with the man in the arena, he had scored one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs. The Journal des Débats printed the speech as a special Sunday supplement, declaring that nobody who heard it could help being “attracted, seduced, disoriented, and conquered.” Le Temps sent copies to every schoolteacher in France. Royalist as well as republican commentators praised it as a call for centralized authority over Marxist sedition. Military patriots rejoiced in the Colonel’s moralization of war.
Only two chauvinistic journals, L’Éclair and La Patrie, sneered at him for uttering American banalities. That did not stop Librairie Hachette from issuing a luxury reprint of his address on Japanese vellum. A popular pocket-book edition sold five thousand copies in five days. Translations appeared in many European cities, while the original text became known to British and American readers simply as “The Man in the Arena.” Roosevelt was surprised at its success, admitting to Henry Cabot Lodge that the reaction of the French was “a little difficult for me to understand.”
He wanted to spend 27 April, his last day in town, sightseeing with Edith. But Jusserand informed him that the German Emperor was planning “a big review” in his honor. France would “take it amiss” if he did not recognize her, too, as a great military power. Roosevelt saw that the ambassador was upset, and agreed to watch troops stage a mimic battle at Vincennes.
Command headquarters of the French army, the castle glittered with national pride—or what was left of pride, besmirched by the conspiracism and antisemitism of l’affaire Dreyfus. For two and a quarter hours that morning, Roosevelt sat on horseback as cannons boomed and blank bullets rattled. The action was fought