to attempt to placate and conciliate the South or to hold it in subjection? Do you think that Grady's reference to Dr. Talmage's speech is an instance of skillful transition and connection, or do you think that after Grady took his place at the table he originated the eloquent description of the Confederate soldier's return? Would Grady have done better not to refer to his father's record in the war? Enumerate the instances in this speech where Grady shows that there is a common sentiment in which the North and the South can unite. Grady speaks of what new democracy? In what sense does this speech mark a period in American history? THE STRENUOUS LIFE April 10, 1899 THE Civil War determined the relation of the Federal government to the states, but it took another war to settle its relation to the other nations of the world. Washington had advised against entangling alliances with foreign powers and President Monroe, in his famous message of 1823, in an attempt to promote the peace and safety of the United States and to render more remote the possibility of clashes with European nations, declared that henceforth the American continents were not to be colonized by foreign powers. In a word, the United States in the Monroe Doctrine announced that it denied to European powers any action that endangered the sovereignty of any American nation. In the course of time, however, irresponsible South American governments discovered that after failing to discharge their obligations to foreign nations they might escape punishment by hiding behind the Monroe Doctrine. Gradually, therefore, for the sake of justice, the United States found it necessary to exercise a certain degree of control over the countries it protected. Instead of assuring the United States peaceful isolation, the Monroe Doctrine seemed to promise to keep the country perpetually involved in South American affairs and to bring it from time to time into grave danger of war with Europe. The crisis came in connection with the Cuban war for independence in the last years of the century. Con ditions in Cuba had become intolerable. Business had been ruined; thousands of men, women, and children had been shot or starved; and there was no prospect that Spain could maintain her sovereignty. Warnings given by President Cleveland and President McKinley had been unheeded. On April 19, 1898, Congress finally passed a resolution declaring Cuba free. War with Spain followed soon after. The first notable battle was fought May 1, 1898, by Commodore Dewey in Manila Bay where he totally destroyed the enemy's fleet. The most important land battle was fought near Santiago, Cuba, where Colonel Roosevelt led a brilliant and successful assault on San Juan Hill. Before the peace protocol was signed on August 13, the United States had won the Philippines, Cuba, and other islands. To win the Philippines proved to be easier than to know what to do with them. Cuba, under the protection of the United States, seemed able to rule itself and was given its independence; but the Philippine islands were inhabited largely by half-civilized races utterly unfit to govern themseves. Were they to be handed back to the misrule of Spain, or to be abandoned to anarchy or the exploitation of some grasping power? Great difference of opinion existed among American statesmen and many were the plans proposed, but gradually it became clear that the time had come when the United States should cast aside that outworn view of the Monroe Doctrine, that sought for America isolation and separation from the rest of the world, and should adopt a new, expanded, and generous interpretation, that would place the country among world powers and would recognize an obligation and duty to promote liberty and democracy wherever possible throughout the globe. More than any other man, Theodore Roosevelt was influential in upholding this ideal. He maintained that it was a relic of primitive civilization for a nation to avoid physical, mental, and moral exchange with its neighbors, that only by shirking its duty could it neglect to take part in solving world problems, and only through blind stupidity could it fail to provide itself with the army and navy necessary to protect its liberty and the liberty of others. He set forth these views in many addresses. The most notable, however, was given at the Hamilton Club, in Chicago, on April 10, 1899. It is called The Strenuous Life. Its vision is so far in advance of the views of most American statesmen of his time that it seems like a prophecy of the liberal American spirit that in the world crisis of 1917 was to rise supreme over ignoble timidity and all selfish considerations. THE STRENUOUS LIFE THEODORE ROOSEVELT IN speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who pre-eminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself, and from his sons, shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes, to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share in making America. great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves and you bring up your sons to work. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor; who is prompt to help a friend; but who has the virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail; but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. As it is with the individual so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things and war and strife the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides, saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heart-break of |