University of Virginia Library

XVII
AT WAUKESHA, WISCONSIN, APRIL 3, 1903

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
ourselves 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 who 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 from America upon any friendly nation. To write
or 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 you will not misunderstand
me; I am sure that it is needless for me 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 injury on the weak. It is not at all necessary
to say disagreeable things about the strong in order to
impress them with the fact that we do not intend to submit
to injury. Keep our navy up to the highest point of
efficiency; have good ships, and enough of them; have
the officers and the enlisted men on them trained to
handle them, so that in the future the American navy
shall rise level, whenever the need comes, to the standard
it has set in the past. Keep in our hearts the rugged,
manly virtues, which have made our people formidable as
foes, and valuable as friends throughout the century and
a quarter of our national life. Do all that; and having
done it, remember that it is a sensible thing to speak
courteously of others.

I believe in the Monroe Doctrine. I shall try to see
that this nation lives up to it; and as long as I am President
it will be lived up to. But I do not intend to make
the doctrine an excuse or a justification for being unpleasant
to other powers, for speaking ill of other powers.
We want the friendship of mankind. We want to
get on well with the other nations of mankind, with the
small nations and with the big nations. We want so to
carry ourselves that if (which I think most unlikely) any
quarrel should arise, it would be evident that it was not
a quarrel of our own seeking, but one that was forced
on us. If it is forced on us, I know you too well not
to know that you will stand up to it if the need comes;
but you will stand up to it all the better if you have not
blustered or spoken ill of other nations in advance. We
want friendship; we want peace. We wish well to the
nations of mankind. We look with joy at any prosperity
of theirs, we wish them success, not failure. We rejoice
as mankind moves forward over the whole earth. Each
nation has its own difficulties. We have difficulties
enough at home. Let us improve ourselves, lifting what
needs to be lifted here, and let others do their own; let
us attend to our own, keep our own hearthstone swept
and in order. Do not shirk any duty; do not shirk any
difficulty that is forced upon us, but do not invite it by
foolish language. Do not assume a quarrelsome and unpleasant
attitude toward other people. Let the friendly
expressions of foreign powers be accepted as tokens of
their sincere good-will, and reflecting their real sentiments;
and let us avoid any language on our part which
might tend to turn their good-will into ill-will. All that
is mere common-sense; the kind of common-sense that
we apply in our own lives, man to man, neighbor to
neighbor; and remember that substantially what is true
among nations, is true on a small scale among ourselves.
The man who is a weakling, who is a coward, we all despise,

and we ought to despise him. If a man cannot do
his own work and take his own part, he does not count;
and I have no patience with those who would have the
United States unable to take its own part, to do its work
in the world. But remember that a loose tongue is just
as unfortunate an accompaniment for a nation as for an
individual. The man who talks ill of his neighbors, the
man who invites trouble for himself and them, is a nuisance.
The stronger, the more self-confident the nation is,
the more carefully it should guard its speech as well as its
action, and should make it a point, in the interest of its
own self-respect, to see that it does not say what it cannot
made good, that it avoids giving needless offence, that it
shows genuinely and sincerely its desire for friendship
with the rest of mankind, but that it keeps itself in shape
to make its weight felt should the need arise.

That is in substance my theory of what our foreign
policy should be. Let us not boast, not insult any one,
but make up our minds coolly what it is necessary to say,
say it, and then stand to it, whatever the consequences
may be.