"
Colonel Roosevelt said that for America to take this step would not mean
war, as the firm assertion of our rights could not be so construed, but
he added that we would do well to remember that there were things worse
than war.
The Colonel has been reading President Wilson's speech carefully, and
what seemed to impress him more than anything else was this passage from
it:
"There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such
a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince
others by force that it is right."
Asked if he cared to make any comment upon the speech of the President,
Mr. Roosevelt said:
"I think that China is entitled to draw all the comfort she can from
this statement and it would be well for the United States to ponder
seriously what the effect upon China has been of managing her foreign
affairs during the last fifteen years on the theory thus enunciated.
"If the United States is satisfied with occupying some time in the
future the precise international position that China now occupies, then
the United States can afford to act on this theory. But it cannot act on
this theory if it desires to retain or regain the position won for it by
the men who fought under Washington and by the men who, in the days of
Abraham Lincoln, wore the blue under Grant and the gray under Lee.
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