asm evoked by a great military leader. Roosevelt was a profound student of naval operations, writing his first book on the subject at twenty-four, so that his advice to study our failures was the result of scholastic inquiry as well as practical observation. There was only one way, he affirmed, in which the War of 1812 could have been avoided as is well shown in Captain Mahan's history. "If," Roosevelt wrote, "during the preceding twelve years, a navy, relatively as strong as that which the country now has, had been built up and an army provided relatively as good as that which the country now has, there never would have been the slightest necessity of fighting the war; and if the necessity had arisen, the war would under such circumstances have ended with our speedy and overwhelming triumph. But our people during those twelve years refused to make any preparations whatever regarding either the Army or the Navy. They saved a million or two of dollars by so doing; and in mere money paid a hundredfold for each million they thus saved during the three years of war which followed a war which brought untold suffering upon our people, which at one time threatened the gravest national disaster, and which, in spite of the necessity of waging it, resulted merely in what was in effect a drawn battle, while the balance of defeat and triumph was almost even." 1

2

In 1906 he asked Congress "for the building each year of at least one first-class battle-ship." But one year later he had changed his opinion and asked for four battle

1 Review of Reviews ed., 983.

'Annual Message, ibid., 984. The American Navy at that time had nine battleships and eight more in course of construction. Life of Roosevelt, Lewis, 261.

ships. The second Hague Conference, that held from June to October, 1907, meanwhile had declined to limit naval armaments; therefore "it would be most unwise for us to stop the upbuilding of our Navy. To build one battle-ship of the best and most advanced type a year would barely keep our fleet up to its present force. This is not enough. . . . The only efficient use for the Navy is for offence. The only way in which it can efficiently protect our own coast against the possible action of a foreign navy is by destroying that foreign navy.” 1

"This is a very rough-and-tumble, workaday world," Roosevelt wrote in a private letter; and we peace-lovers must admit that he comprehended Europe in 1907 better than we did. Nobody could assert that he foresaw the terrible conflict which began in 1914, but he believed in being ready for any emergency and was less trustful of our European contemporaries than were we who sat in comfortable libraries and constructed theories. Therefore the years have demonstrated that he was supremely right when he asked for four battleships, and we were wrong when we cut him down to two. "Our army and navy," he wrote, "and above all our people learned some lessons from the Spanish War and applied them to our own uses. During the following decade the improvement in our army and navy was very great; not in material but also in personnel, and, above all, in the ability to handle our forces in good-sized units. By 1908. . . the navy had become in every respect as fit a fighting instru

1 Message of 1907, Review of Reviews ed., 1573.

* Bishop, ii. 23.

• Ibid.

Act of May 13, 1908, "to cost, exclusive of armor and armament, not exceeding six million dollars each."

1

ment as any other navy in the world, fleet for fleet. Even in size there was but one nation, England, which was completely out of our class; and in view of our relations with England and all the English-speaking peoples, this was of no consequence." For the efficient use of the money which Congress gave him Roosevelt could be thoroughly trusted when he comprehended matters and it is amazing the number that he did comprehendand in his work, as we look at it now, he was above criticism when it is understood with what materials he had to work. But he always had at his back the rank and file of the Navy and Army whose attitude toward him was almost one of worship. He was now to give the greatest proof of the efficiency of the Navy in the voyage around the world.

This was so stupendous a feat that it is well that Roosevelt himself should tell the story. "In my own judgment," he wrote in his Autobiography, "the most important service that I rendered to peace was the voyage of the battle fleet round the world. I had become convinced that for many reasons it was essential that we should have it clearly understood, by our own people

1 Autobiography, 276. On March 9, 1905, he wrote to General Leonard Wood: "When I became President three years ago I made up my mind that I should try for a fleet with a minimum strength of forty armor clads; and though the difficulty of getting what I wished has increased from year to year I have now reached my mark and we have built or provided for twenty-eight battle-ships and twelve armored cruisers. This navy puts us a good second to France and about on a par with Germany; and ahead of any other power in point of material, except, of course, England.” Bishop, i. 366.

"I have had on occasions to fight bosses and rings and machines; and have to get along as best I could with bosses and rings and machines when the conditions were different." And he wrote to Sir George Trevelyan on May 13, 1905, "In practical life we have to work with the instruments at hand." Bishop, ii. 13, 150.

especially, but also by other peoples that the Pacific was as much our home waters as the Atlantic and that our fleet could and would at will pass from one to the other of the two great oceans. It seemed to me evident that such a voyage would greatly benefit the navy itself; would arouse popular interest in and enthusiasm for the navy; and would make foreign nations accept as a matter of course that our fleet should from time to time be gathered in the Pacific just as from time to time it was gathered in the Atlantic, and that its presence in one ocean was no more to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any Asiatic power than its presence in the Atlantic was to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any European power." 1 On July 4 the Secretary of the Navy in a speech at Oakland, California, said the Pacific coast would shortly receive a visit from the Navy. But a letter to Secretary Root from Oyster Bay nine days later showed a further reaching program in Roosevelt's busy brain and also the most important reason for his determination.

"I am more concerned," he wrote to Secretary Root, "over the Japanese situation than almost any other. Thank Heaven we have the Navy in good shape. It is high time however that it should go on a cruise around the world. In the first place I think it will have a pacific effect to show that it can be done; and in the next place, after talking thoroughly over the situation with the naval board I became convinced that it was absolutely necessary for us to try in time of peace to see just what we could do in the way of putting a big battle fleet in the

1 P. 592.

'Life of Roosevelt, Lewis, 266.

Pacific and not make the experiment in time of war. Aoki and Admiral Yamamoto were out here yesterday at lunch. . . . Yamamoto, an ex-Cabinet Minister and a man of importance, evidently had completely misunderstood the situation here and what the possibilities were. I had a long talk with him through an interpreter. He kept insisting that the Japanese must not be kept out save as we keep out Europeans. I kept explaining to him that what we had to do was to face facts; that if American laboring men came in and cut down the wages of Japanese laboring men, they would be shut out of Japan in one moment; and that Japanese laborers must be excluded from the United States on economic grounds. I told him emphatically that it was not possible to admit Japanese laborers into the United States. I pointed

out that under our present treaty we had explicitly reserved the right to exclude Japanese laborers. I talked freely of the intended trip of the battle-ship fleet through the Pacific, mentioning that it would return home very shortly after it had been sent out there; at least in all probability. I also was most complimentary about Japan." 1

The fleet of sixteen battleships, all of them commissioned since the Spanish-American War, sailed from Hampton Roads on December 16, 1907. Their officers and crews numbered about 12,000 men. They were reviewed before their departure by President Roosevelt, when it was generally supposed that they were going to San Francisco and possibly as far north as Seattle. But after Roosevelt had returned to the White House

1 Bishop, ii. 64.