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in modern times, there has never been an instance in which a war between two nations has lasted more than about two years. In most recent wars the operations of the first ninety days have decided the results of the conflict.” It was essential, therefore, that Congress move at once to build more ships and bigger ships, “whose business it is to fight and not to run.” Line personnel must be subjected to the highest standards of recruitment and training, while staff officers “must have as perfect weapons ready to their hands as can be found in the civilized world.” This new Navy would be more to America’s international advantage than the most brilliant corps of ambassadors. “Diplomacy,” Roosevelt insisted, “is utterly useless when there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master of the soldier.”22

Moving into his peroration, he anticipated another great war speech by forty-three years in a eulogy to “the blood and sweat and tears” which heroes must sacrifice for the cause of freedom. He begged his audience to remember that

there are higher things in this life than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like water, rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown.

ROOSEVELT’S SPEECH WAS PRINTED in full in all major newspapers and caused a nationwide sensation. From Boston to San Francisco, from Chicago to New Orleans, expansionist editors and correspondents praised it, and agreed that a new, defiantly original spirit had entered into the conduct of American affairs.23 “Well done, nobly spoken!” exclaimed the Washington Post. “Theodore Roosevelt, you have found your place at last!” The Sun called his words “manly, patriotic, intelligent, and convincing.” The Herald recommended that readers study this “lofty” speech “from its opening sentence to its close,” while the New Orleans Daily Picayune said that it “undoubtedly voices the sentiments of the great majority of thinking people.” Even such anti-expansionist journals as Harper’s Weekly found the address “very eloquent and forcible,” although the commentator, Carl Schurz, logically demolished Roosevelt’s main argument. If too much peace led to softening of the national fiber, Schurz argued, and war led to vigor and love of country, it followed that prevention of war would only be debilitating. “Ergo, the building up of a great war fleet will effect that which promotes effeminacy and languishing unpatriotism.”24

Schurz should have left his syllogism there, for it was unanswerable, but he went on to argue dreamily that the United States was so protected by foreign balances of power that no nation dare attack it. This made him sound like one of the naive doctrinaires Roosevelt had criticized in his speech, and served only to justify the Assistant Secretary’s warnings. “I suspect that Roosevelt is right,” President McKinley sighed to Lemuel Ely Quigg, “and the only difference between him and me is that mine is the greater responsibility.”25

This startling admission by a Chief Executive personally committed to a policy of non-aggression suggests that Roosevelt had more than mere headlines in mind when he spoke to the Naval War College that June afternoon.26 His words were obviously intended to create, rather than just influence, national foreign policy. In both timing and targeting, the speech was accurate as a karate chop, for Hawaii and Cuba were the issues of the hour, and the Naval War College was the nerve center of American strategic planning.27 The isolationists in the Cabinet never quite recovered from Roosevelt’s blow, and its shock effects were felt in every extremity of the Administration.

Traditionally, the Naval War College had been founded to give officers advanced instruction in science and history