The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

170
THE PRESIDENT STARTS ON HIS TRIP
train which left for Milwaukee at eleven o'clock, arriving at
Waukesha at 12:30 p. m., where several thousand people gave
him greeting. President Roosevelt spoke as follows:
THE PRESIDENT'S WAUKESHA SPEECH
Gentlemen and Ladies, my Fellow-citizens of Wisconsin: You are men and
women of Wisconsin, but you are men and women of America first. I am glad of
having the chance of saying a few words to you to-day. I believe with all my heart
in this nation playing its part manfully and well. I believe that we are now, at the
outset of the twentieth century, face to face with great world problems ; that we
cannot help playing the part of a great world power; that all we can decide is
whether we will play it well or ill. I do not want to see us shrink from any least bit
of duty. We have not only taken during the past five years a position of even
greater importance in this Western Hemisphere than ever before, but we have taken
a position of great importance even in the furthest Orient, in that furthest West
which is the immemorial East. We must hold our own. If we show our.selves
weaklings we will earn the contempt of mankind, and—what is of far more
consequence—our own contempt ; but
I would like to impress upon every public
man, upon every writer in the press, the fact that strength should go hand in
hand with courtesy, with scrupulous regard in word and deed, not only for the rights,
but for the feelings of other nations. I want to see a man able to hold his own. I
have no respect for the man that will put up with injustice. If a man will not take
his part, the part is not worth taking. That is true. On the other hand I have a
hearty contempt for the man who is always walking about waiting to pick a
quarrel, and above all, wanting to say something unpleasant about some one else.
He is not an agreeable character anywhere ; and the fact that he talks loud does
not necessarily mean that he fights hard either. Sometimes you will see a man
who will talk loud and fight hard; but he does not fight hard because he talks loud,
but in spite of it. I want the same thing to be true of us as a nation. I am always
sorry whenever I see any reflection that seems to come upon any friendly nation.
To write or to say anything unkind, unjust, or inconsiderate about any foreign
nation does not do us any good, and does not help us toward holding our own if
ever the need should arise to hold our own. I am sure that you will not mis-
understand me; I am sure that it is needless forme to say that I do not believe
the United States should ever suffer a wrong. I should be the first to ask that we
resent a wrong from the strong, just as I should be the first to insist that we do not
wrong the weak. As a nation, if we are to be true to our past, we must steadfastly
keep these two positions— to submit to no injury by the strong and to inflict no