if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us, therefore, boldly face the life of strife. . . . Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation—for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavors, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
That the sentiments and principles here expressed sound very familiar to us today is not, I fancy, because most of us have been reading Roosevelt's addresses of the Spanish War period, but because we have been reading the utterances of the PanGermans whom Roosevelt himself in 1910 was adjuring not to lose the fighting edge and whom he was congratulating on the size of European military establishments as a sign of health and virility. Retrospectively considered, his solicitude for the fighting edge of the Germans reminds one of the matador in Blasco Ibáñez's Blood and Sand, who, it will be remembered, prays for a "good bull." With the essentials in the religion of the militarists of Germany, Roosevelt was utterly in sympathy. He believed that if you kept your fighting edge keen enough no one would seriously question your righteousness. The only significant difference in objects was that while they invoked the blessing of Jehovah upon Pan-Germany he invoked it upon Pan-
