Teddy Roosevelt and The Hammer to The Sword

Theodore Roosevelt was born OCTOBER 27, 1858.

His wife and mother died on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1884. He wrote in his diary “The light has gone out in my life.”

Depressed, he left to ranch in the Dakotas.

Returning to New York, he entered politics and rose to Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

He resigned during the Spanish-American War, organized the first Volunteer Cavalry, “the Rough Riders,” and captured Cuba’s San Juan Hill.

Elected Vice-President under William McKinley, he became America’s youngest President in 1901.

Republican Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to invite an African American, Booker T. Washington, to dine in the White House on October 16, 1901. A Southern Democrat newspapers condemned him it, as printed in The Memphis Scimitar:

“The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the President, when he invited a n- to dine with him at the White House.

It would not be worth more than a passing notice if Theodore Roosevelt had sat down to dinner in his own home with a Pullman car porter, but Roosevelt the individual and Roosevelt the President are not to be viewed in the same light.”

In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt warned:

“The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming.

The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us.”

In 1917, the New York Bible Society had Theodore Roosevelt write a message which was inscribed in a pocket New Testament & Book of Psalms given to World War I soldiers:

“The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah’s verse (Micah vi. 8):

‘What more does the Lord require of thee than to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’

DO JUSTICE; and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth.

LOVE MERCY; treat prisoners well, succor the wounded, treat every woman as if she was your sister, care for the little children, and be tender to the old and helpless.

WALK HUMBLY; You will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Saviour.

May the God of justice and mercy have you in His keeping.

-(signed) Theodore Roosevelt.”

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Theodore Roosevelt, in his book Fear God and Take Your Own Part (NY: George H. Doran Co., 1916), wrote:

“Armenians…for some centuries have sedulously avoided militarism and war…are so suffering precisely and exactly because they have been pacifists whereas their neighbors, the Turks, have not been pacifists but militarists.” (T. Roosevelt, Fear God, p. 61, 64)

“Armenians, have been subjected to wrongs far greater than any that have been committed since the close of the Napoleonic Wars…the wars of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane in Asia. Yet this government has not raised its hand to do anything to help the people who were wronged…

This course of national infamy…began when the last Administration surrendered to the peace at-any-price people, and started the negotiation of its foolish and wicked all inclusive arbitration treaties.

Individuals and nations who preach the doctrine of milk-and-water invariably have in them a softness of fiber which means that they fear to antagonize those who preach and practice the doctrine of blood-and-iron.” (T. Roosevelt, Fear God, p. 111)

“American eye-witness of the fearful atrocities, Mr. Arthur H. Gleason (New York Tribune, Nov. 25, 1915)… Serbia is at this moment passing under the harrow of torture and mortal anguish. Now, the Armenians have been butchered under circumstances of murder and torture and rape that would have appealed to an old-time Apache Indian…”

“Even to nerves dulled and jaded by the heaped-up horrors of the past year and a half, the news of the terrible fate that has befallen the Armenians must give a fresh shock of sympathy and indignation.

Let me emphatically point out that the sympathy is useless unless it is accompanied with indignation, and that the indignation is useless if it exhausts itself in words instead of taking shape in deeds…

If this people through its government had not shirked its duty…we would now be able to take effective action on behalf of Armenia.

Mass meetings on behalf of the Armenians amount to nothing whatever if they are mere methods of giving a sentimental but ineffective and safe outlet to the emotion of those engaged in them…

The principles of the peace-at-any-price men, of the professional pacifists…will be as absolutely ineffective for international righteousness…

This crowning iniquity of the wholesale slaughter of the Armenians…must be shared by the neutral powers headed by the United States for their failure to protest when this initial wrong was committed…

The devastation of Poland and Serbia has been awful beyond description and has been associated with infamies surpassing those of the dreadful religious and racial wars of the seventeenth-century Europe…

Weak and timid milk-and-water policy of the professional pacifists is just as responsible as the blood-and-iron policy of the ruthless and unscrupulous militarist for the terrible recrudescence of evil on a gigantic scale in the civilized world.

The crowning outrage has been committed by the Turks on the Armenians. They have suffered atrocities so hideous that it is difficult to name them, atrocities such as those inflicted upon conquered nations by the followers of Attila and of Genghis Khan.

It is dreadful to think that these things can be done and that this nation nevertheless remarks ‘neutral not only in deed but in thought,’ between right and the most hideous wrong, neutral between despairing and hunted people, people whose little children are murdered and their women raped, and the victorious and evil wrong-doers…

I trust that all Americans worthy of the name feel their deepest indignation and keenest sympathy aroused by the dreadful Armenian atrocities. I trust that they feel…that a peace obtained without…righting the wrongs of the Armenians would be worse than any war…

Wrongdoing will only be stopped by men who are brave as well as just, who put honor above safety, who are true to a lofty ideal of duty, who prepare in advance to make their strength effective, and who shrink from no hazard, not even the final hazard of war, if necessary in order to serve the great cause of righteousness.

When our people take this stand, we shall also be able effectively to take a stand in international matters which shall prevent such cataclysms of wrong as have been witnesses…on an even greater scale in Armenia. (T. Roosevelt, Fear God, pp. 377-383)

In his book Fear God and Take Your Part, 1916, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

If the peoples of Europe in the 7th and 8th centuries, and on up to and including the 17th century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated.”

A contemporary of Theodore Roosevelt was the English author G.K. Chesterton, who wrote of Western Christian Civilization (The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton: Volume XX, Introduction and Notes by James V. Schall, Ignatius Press):

“They seem entirely to forget that long before the Crusaders had dreamed of riding to Jerusalem, the Moslems had almost ridden into Paris.”

Theodore Roosevelt continued in Fear God and Take Your Part, 1916:

“Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared.

From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Jan Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor.”