In one of his speeches Roosevelt quotes "a homely old adage' which reads: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far. He probably would not have quoted this adage if he had known how far the "big stick" was to go in public comment on his career, but the adage is in strict consonance with his doctrine of international politics.

So far we have confined ourselves to the Roosevelt policy as applied to internal affairs. We have now to consider it in its international aspect, and first of all in regard to the preparation for national defense. The need of being strong and ready in this direction is one of his fixed contentions, one to which he has given expression on every suitable occasion. To be strong on the sea is his particular admonition-a judicious one, in view of the fact that the ocean lies between the United States and every warring nation and that our most vulnerable point lies on the waters and on our seacoast. He has never been troubled in soul about any foreign army that might by chance be landed on our soil. Its destiny would be like that of a hare exploring the inside of a lion's jaws. But on the sea and on the coast we might be hurt, and for a strong defensive and offensive fleet his voice has always been raised.

President Roosevelt's views concerning the navy have been as frequently insisted upon as those concerning conservation and the evil practices of corporations. We can give here only a summary of them. In his 1901 annual message to Congress he said:

"Our present Navy was begun in 1882. At that period our Navy consisted of a collection of antiquated wooden ships, already almost as out of place against modern war vessels as the galleys of Alcibiades and Hamilcar-certainly as the ships of Tromp and Blake. Nor at that time did we have men fit to handle a modern man-of-war. Under the wise legislation of the Congress and the successful administration of a succession of patriotic Secretaries of the Navy, belonging to both political parties, the work of upbuilding the Navy went on, and ships equal to any in the world of their kind were continually added; and what was even more important, these ships were exercised at sea singly and in squadrons until the men aboard them were able to get the best possible service out of them.

The result was seen in the short war with Spain, which was decided with such rapidity because of the infinitely greater preparedness of our Navy than of the Spanish Navy.'

It is well to state here that this exercise of the ships and men before the Spanish war was very largely the work of Roosevelt himself, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy and especially concerned in exercising the men at the guns. The story of what he did is told in Chapter VI, and does not need to be repeated here. It is also told there how he kept the coaling stations well supplied with fuel and thus enabled Dewey to deliver his telling blow at Manila. He smelt the coming war in the air and was determined that the navy should be ready when the time came.

He tells us that "It is not possible to improvise a Navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance. In the late war with Spain the ships that dealt the decisive blows at Manila and Santiago had been launched from two to fourteen years, and they were able to do as they did because the men in the conning-towers, the gun turrets, and the engine rooms, had, through long years of practice at sea, learned how to do their duty.

This advice about ships is becoming yearly more important. The ships of a decade ago have been replaced by the monster Dreadnaughts, and these are being replaced by the still larger Super-Dreadnaughts, each costing many millions of dollars and taking years to build. It is becoming necessary to have ships always on the stocks to replace those that are put by a few years' service behind the age.

Since the nations' representives at the Hague Conference would not debate the question of limitation of armaments, President Roosevelt felt it necessary to keep our navy in the front line and for a number of years asked Congress annually for four new battleshipsnever getting more than two. In his usual way he got the best he could and made the most of it. Also he demanded plenty of torpedo boats and destroyers and fortifications of the best kind to protect our great harbors on both oceans. In his view the proper duty of the navy in war is for offensive operations against hostile navies. For defense, he says, "the coast cities must depend upon their forts, mines, torpedoes, submarines, torpedo boats and destroyers."

He further remarks: "Parrying never yet won a fight. It can only be won by hard hitting, and an aggrsesive sea-going navy alone can do this hard hitting of the offensive type. But the forts and the like are necessary so that the navy may be footloose." That the United States navy is adapted to footloose operations he proved by the spectacular performance of sending a powerful fleet of battleships around the world in 1908.

Our militant President had much less to say about the army. The navy stood first and foremost in his thoughts. He had no fear that the country would fail to give a good account of itself in the unlikely event of a foreign army venturing to land on our shores. Yet he thought that there was room for higher efficiency in various directions. These were his views in his 1907 annual message:

"Again and again in the past our little Regular Army has rendered service literally vital to the country, and it may at any time have to do so in the future. Its standard of efficiency and instruction is higher now than ever in the past. But it is too small. There are not enough officers; and it is impossible to secure enough enlisted men. We should maintain in peace a fairly complete skeleton of a large army. A great and long-continued war would have to be fought by volunteers. But months would pass before any large body of efficient volunteers could be put in the field, and our Regular Army should be large enough to meet any immediate need. In particular it is essential that we should possess a number of extra officers trained in peace to perform efficiently the duties urgently required upon the breaking out of war.

The Medical Corps also needed to be kept in thorough efficiency. He could not forget that in the Spanish war the chief loss to our troops was not by service in the field, but by disease in camp, and not in Cuba, but among the regiments that never left their home country. Ignorance of the art of sanitation, carelessness in camp conditions, proved worse than war or pestilence and should never be allowed to exist again.

The adoption of a new system of army control, that of placing it under a general staff of efficient commanders, and the incorporation of the State militia, the National Guard, with the Regular Army, as

part of the national forces, with the training of the militia in the most advanced methods, were final outcomes of President Roosevelt's efforts, and he left office with the army in a much higher state of efficiency than it had possessed when he entered office.

There is only one thing more we need say here. Theodore Roosevelt was not the man to send out men to fight for their country and act the stay-at-home himself. He was, as we have intimated, not built that way. Fighting was his native element. All his life he had been in a fight of some kind. In a dozen instances he had shown himself a man of fearless mould. In earlier chapters abundant evidence of this has been given. When actual war began the battlefield called him as if with trumpet-blast.

Jacob Riis, his lifelong friend, tells us: "When Dewey was in the East, it was Roosevelt's influence in the naval board that kept his fleet intact. The Olympia had been ordered home. Roosevelt secured the repeal of the order. 'Keep the Olympia,' he cabled him, and 'Keep full of coal.' The resistless energy of the man carried all before it till the day when orders were cabled under the Pacific to the man with the lion heart to go in and smash the enemy. or destroy!' We know the rest.

'Capture

"Roosevelt's work was done. "There is nothing more for me to do here,' he said, 'I've got to get into the fight myself.'

Get into it he did, and fought with a Trojan-like energy and daring that kept all eyes fixed on him and sent him home the popular hero of the war. "We know the rest" here also. His war record made him Governor. His record as Governor made him President. His record as President has lifted him to the world's admiration.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal

WA

ASHINGTON'S advice to the people of the United States to keep clear of international complications has been somewhat strictly observed in this country so far as the nations of Europe and Asia are concerned. As regards those of the Western Hemisphere, the United States, far the most powerful of them all, early assumed the position of a guardian of the others, and has continued effectively so. This step was taken in the famous Monroe Doctrine, promulgated in 1823, and since maintained as the permanent policy of this country regarding its weaker neighbors. Only once has any of the ambitious natives of Europe been bold enough to disregard it, this being done by the French emperor when he took advantage of our Civil War to invade our neighboring country of Mexico and seek to replace its republican government by an empire under a European monarch. But soon after the war ended, the ambitious Napoleon III found it convenient to withdraw his army to save it from the unpleasantness of being driven out. The United States gave its ultimatum and he meekly obeyed.

There have, however, been a number of minor difficulties, owing chiefly to the readiness of the Latin republics to run in debt to European creditors and their lack of readiness to pay their debts. Troubles of this kind have taken place within the present century, and President Roosevelt felt it necessary on more than one occasion to reiterate the Monroe Doctrine. In fact he added to it until it became in a sense a Monroe-Roosevelt Doctrine. It grew to be a part of his policy as an American President, and as such calls for our attention.

In his first message to Congress President Roosevelt made the following statement concerning this doctrine:

"The Monroe Doctrine should be the cardinal feature of the foreign policy of all the nations of the two Americas, as it is of the