Читать книгу THEODORE ROOSEVELT Boxed Set - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 20

Footnote:

1 One of our best naval officers sent me the following letter, after the above had appeared:—

I note in your Autobiography now being published in the Outlook that you refer to the reasons which led you to establish a physical test for the Army, and to the action you took (your 100-mile ride) to prevent the test being abolished. Doubtless you did not know the following facts:

1. The first annual navy test of 50 miles in three days was subsequently reduced to 25 miles in two days in each quarter.

2. This was further reduced to 10 miles each month, which is the present 'test,' and there is danger lest even this utterly insufficient test be abolished.

I enclose a copy of a recent letter to the Surgeon General which will show our present deplorable condition and the worse condition into which we are slipping back.

The original test of 50 miles in three days did a very great deal of good. It decreased by thousands of dollars the money expended on street car fare, and by a much greater sum the amount expended over the bar. It eliminated a number of the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them to learn the care of their feet and that of their men; and it improved their general health and was rapidly forming a taste for physical exercise.

The enclosed letter ran in part as follows:—

I am returning under separate cover 'The Soldiers' Foot and the Military Shoe.'

The book contains knowledge of a practical character that is valuable for the men who HAVE TO MARCH, WHO HAVE SUFFERED FROM FOOT TROUBLES, AND WHO MUST AVOID THEM IN ORDER TO ATTAIN EFFICIENCY.

The words in capitals express, according to my idea, the gist of the whole matter as regards military men.

The army officer whose men break down on test gets a black eye. The one whose men show efficiency in this respect gets a bouquet.

To such men the book is invaluable. There is no danger that they will neglect it. They will actually learn it, for exactly the same reasons that our fellows learn the gunnery instructions—or did learn them before they were withdrawn and burned.

B U T, I have not been able to interest a single naval officer in this fine book. They will look at the pictures and say it is a good book, but they won't read it. The marine officers, on the contrary, are very much interested, because they have to teach their men to care for their feet and they must know how to care for their own. But the naval officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do not have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice marches, and they themselves do not have to do a stunt that will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency in the matter.

For example, some time ago I was talking with some chaps about shoes—the necessity of having them long enough and wide enough, etc., and one of them said: 'I have no use for such shoes, as I never walk except when I have to, and any old shoes do for the 10-mile-a-month stunt,' so there you are!

When the first test was ordered, Edmonston (Washington shoe man) told me that he sold more real walking shoes to naval officers in three months than he had in the three preceding years. I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in practice with a pair of heavy walking shoes that were too small and was laid up for three days—could not come to the office. I know plenty of men who after the first test had to borrow shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to their normal size.

This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts (of men who had never taken any exercise), but it was excellent as a matter of instruction and training of handling feet—and in an emergency (such as we soon may have in Mexico) sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't stand.

However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered the same purpose, for the reason that 12.5 miles will produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore feet and lame muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice marching.

It was the necessity of doing 12.5 MORE MILES ON THE SECOND DAY WITH SORE FEET AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and take notice—made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid street cars, buy proper shoes, show some curiosity about sox and the care of the feet in general.

All this passed out with the introduction of the last test of 10 miles a month. As one fellow said: 'I can do that in sneakers'—but he couldn't if the second day involved a tramp on the sore feet.

The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice walking a bit and give some attention to proper footgear, now they don't have to, and the natural consequence is that they don't do it.

There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than is necessary to reach a street car that will carry them from their residences to their offices. Some who have motors do not do so much. They take no exercise. They take cocktails instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something should be done to remedy this state of affairs.

It would not be necessary if service opinion required officers so to order their lives that it would be common knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid the danger of being selected out.

We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process of formation. On the contrary, it is known that the 'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the Secretary to abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough not to take the advice.

I would like to see a test established that would oblige officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to walk on 'next day' feet. As for the proposed test of so many hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they take out of doors.

"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that sort of thing would be established."

2 This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just been victorious in the Congressional elections.

3 In a letter written me just before I became Assistant Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; his letter running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three o'clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign functions—for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . . The aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it, for to do so does me good." After quoting one of Poe's stories the letter continues: "The world will come out all right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks out from its rank and file and demands action or expression, and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman were about to disturb the game, and protests until American patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to do—why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment together on the things we don't like, and together indulge in hopes that I believe are prophetic."

4 To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality. The New York Evening Post, on June 18, gave expression to the following gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers. In addition to all this, like the regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range rifles. There have been few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals." A week or so after this not wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty was consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan fighting.

5 General Wood writes me: The representative of the Associated Press was very anxious to get a copy of this despatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible for him to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and stated the case to him, handing him the despatch, saying, 'The matter is now in your hands.' He, General Shafter, then said, 'I don't care whether this gentleman has it or not,' and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had given the Press representative a copy of the despatch, and that he had gone to the office with it.

6 I quote this sentence from memory; it is substantially correct.

7 In a letter to me Mr. Quigg states, what I had forgotten, that I told him to tell the Senator that I would talk freely with him, and had no intention of becoming a factional leader with a personal organization, yet that I must have direct personal relations with everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so desired, because I could not have one man speaking for all.

8 Each nation has its own pet sins to which it is merciful and also sins which it treats as most abhorrent. In America we are peculiarly sensitive about big money contributions for which the donors expect any reward. In England, where in some ways the standard is higher than here, such contributions are accepted as a matter of course, nay, as one of the methods by which wealthy men obtain peerages. It would be well-nigh an impossibility for a man to secure a seat in the United States Senate by mere campaign contributions, in the way that seats in the British House of Lords have often been secured without any scandal being caused thereby.

9 To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899. He had been trying to get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another Judge Y. I wrote: There is a strong feeling among the judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at 8:30.

10 Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees, and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.

11 I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to my enemies to attest the truth of this statement. The New York Sun, shortly before the National Convention of 1904, spoke of me as follows: President Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the National Republican Convention of 1904 is an assured thing. He makes no concealment of his conviction, and it is unreservedly shared by his friends. We think President Roosevelt is right. There are strong and convincing reasons why the President should feel that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that he found or created, and he has used them with consummate skill and undeniable success. The President has disarmed all his enemies. Every weapon they had, new or old, has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable Roosevelt arsenal. Why should people wonder that Mr. Bryan clings to silver? Has not Mr. Roosevelt absorbed and sequestered every vestige of the Kansas City platform that had a shred of practical value? Suppose that Mr. Bryan had been elected President. What could he have accomplished compared with what Mr. Roosevelt has accomplished? Will his most passionate followers pretend for one moment that Mr. Bryan could have conceived, much less enforced, any such pursuit of the trusts as that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue? Will Mr. Bryan himself intimate that the Federal courts would have turned to his projects the friendly countenance which they have lent to those of Mr. Roosevelt? Where is 'government by injunction' gone to? The very emptiness of that once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest dreams of Bryan's campaign orators. He has outdone them all. "And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and of the whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor! How empty were all their professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the face of the simple and unpretentious achievements of the President! In his own straightforward fashion he inflicted upon capital in one short hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Bryan could have visited upon it in a century. He is the leader of the labor unions of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above the Constitution, because for him they are the American people. [This last, I need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation.] Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following my leaving the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows: Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a large extent against its will. He has played a large part in the world's work, for the past seven years. The activities of his remarkably forceful personality have been so manifold that it will be long before his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race. He is said to think that the three great things done by him are the undertaking of the construction of the Panama Canal and its rapid and successful carrying forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending around the world of the fleet. These are important things, but many will be slow to think them his greatest services. The Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in operation; and the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine. But no one can say whether this project will be a gigantic success or a gigantic failure; and the task is one which must, in the nature of things, have been undertaken and carried through some time soon, as historic periods go, anyhow. The Peace of Portsmouth was a great thing to be responsible for, and Roosevelt's good offices undoubtedly saved a great and bloody battle in Manchuria. But the war was fought out, and the parties ready to quit, and there is reason to think that it was only when this situation was arrived at that the good offices of the President of the United States were, more or less indirectly, invited. The fleet's cruise was a strong piece of diplomacy, by which we informed Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we please. It worked out well. But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with some of Roosevelt's other achievements. Perhaps he is loath to take credit as a reformer, for he is prone to spell the word with question marks, and to speak disparagingly of 'reform.' But for all that, this contemner of 'reformers' made reform respectable in the United States, and this rebuker of 'muck-rakers' has been the chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States a National one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the Nation a slogan in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is likely to think. And, then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the conservation of our National resources, into which Roosevelt so energetically threw himself at a time when the Nation as a whole knew not that we are ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as we can. This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did, undoubtedly. This globe is the capital stock of the race. It is just so much coal and oil and gas. This may be economized or wasted. The same thing is true of phosphates and other mineral resources. Our water resources are immense, and we are only just beginning to use them. Our forests have been destroyed; they must be restored. Our soils are being depleted; they must be built up and conserved. These questions are not of this day only or of this generation. They belong all to the future. Their consideration requires that high moral tone which regards the earth as the home of a posterity to whom we owe a sacred duty. This immense idea Roosevelt, with high statesmanship, dinned into the ears of the Nation until the Nation heeded. He held it so high that it attracted the attention of the neighboring nations of the continent, and will so spread and intensify that we will soon see the world's conferences devoted to it. Nothing can be greater or finer than this. It is so great and so fine that when the historian of the future shall speak of Theodore Roosevelt he is likely to say that he did many notable things, among them that of inaugurating the movement which finally resulted in the square deal, but that his greatest work was inspiring and actually beginning a world movement for staying terrestrial waste and saving for the human race the things upon which, and upon which alone, a great and peaceful and progressive and happy race life can be founded. "What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a view and for a purpose more lofty?

12 The case is known in the law books as U. S, vs, E, C. Knight, 156 U. S. Sept., p. 1.

13 Northern Securities Company et al. vs. U. S., 156 U. S., Sept., pp. 391-2.

14 One of my appointees on the Anthracite Strike Commission was Judge George Gray, of Delaware, a Democrat whose standing in the country was second only to that of Grover Cleveland. A year later he commented on my action as follows: "I have no hesitation in saying that the President of the United States was confronted in October, 1902, by the existence of a crisis more grave and threatening than any that had occurred since the Civil War. I mean that the cessation of mining in the anthracite country, brought about by the dispute between the miners and those who controlled the greatest natural monopoly in this country and perhaps in the world, had brought upon more than one-half of the American people a condition of deprivation of one of the necessaries of life, and the probable continuance of the dispute threatened not only the comfort and health, but the safety and good order, of the nation. He was without legal or constitutional power to interfere, but his position as President of the United States gave him an influence, a leadership, as first citizen of the republic, that enabled him to appeal to the patriotism and good sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country. He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers to which I have alluded. "So far from interfering or infringing upon property rights, the Presidents' action tended to conserve them. The peculiar situation, as regards the anthracite coal interest, was that they controlled a natural monopoly of a product necessary to the comfort and to the very life of a large portion of the people. A prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of this necessary of life would have tended to precipitate an attack upon these property rights of which you speak; for, after all, it is vain to deny that this property, so peculiar in its conditions, and which is properly spoken of as a natural monopoly, is affected with a public interest. I do not think that any President ever acted more wisely, courageously or promptly in a national crisis. Mr. Roosevelt deserves unstinted praise for what he did.

15 My own belief is that our Nation should long ago have adopted the policy of merely leasing for a term of years mineral-bearing land; but it is the fault of us ourselves, of the people, not of the Steel Corporation, that this policy has not been adopted.