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"FITTER TO DO THE ROUGH WORK OF THE
WORLD" - ROOSEVELT 1903
Strength and Decency
It follows the full text transcript of
Theodore Roosevelt's Strength and Decency speech, delivered at
the Society of the Holy Name of Brooklyn and Long Island
at Oyster Bay, NY - August 16, 1903.
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I am particularly
glad to see |
such a society as
this flourishing as your society has flourished,
because the future welfare of our nation depends
upon the way in which we can combine in our men,
in our young men, decency and strength.
Just this morning
when attending service on the great battleship
Kearsarge, I listened to a sermon addressed to
the officers and enlisted men of the navy, in
which the central thought was that each American
must be a good man or he could not be a good
citizen. And one of the things dwelt upon in
that sermon was the fact that a man must be
clean of mouth as well as clean of life - must
show by his words as well as by his actions his
fealty to the Almighty if he was to be what we
have a right to expect from men wearing the
national uniform.
We have good
Scriptural authority for the statement that it
is not what comes into a man's mouth but what
goes out of it that counts. I am not addressing
weaklings, or I should not take the trouble to
come here. I am addressing strong, vigorous men,
who are engaged in the active hard work of life;
and life to be worth living must be a life of
activity and hard work. I am speaking to men
engaged in the hard, active work of life, and
therefore to men who will count for good or for
evil.
It is peculiarly
incumbent upon you who have strength to set a
right example to others. I ask you to remember
that you cannot retain your self-respect if you
are loose and foul of tongue, that a man who is
to lead a clean and honorable life must
inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not
clean and honorable. Every man here knows the
temptations that beset all of us in this world.
At times any man will slip. I do not expect
perfection, but I do expect genuine and sincere
effort toward being decent and cleanly in
thought, in word, and in deed.
As I said at the
outset, I hail the work of this society as
typifying one of those forces which tend to the
betterment and uplifting of our social system.
Our whole effort should be toward securing a
combination of the strong qualities with those
qualities which we term virtues. I expect you to
be strong. I would not respect you if you were
not. I do not want to see Christianity professed
only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving
spirit among men of strength.
I do not expect
you to lose one particle of your strength or
courage by being decent. On the contrary, I
should hope to see each man who is a member of
this society, from his membership in it become
all the fitter to do the rough work of the
world; all the fitter to work in time of peace;
and if, which may Heaven forfend, war should
come, all the fitter to fight in time of war. I
desire to see in this country the decent men
strong and the strong men decent, and until we
get that combination in pretty good shape we are
not going to be by any means as successful as we
should be.
There is always a
tendency among very young men and among boys who
are not quite young men as yet to think that to
be wicked is rather smart; to think it shows
that they are men. Oh, how often you see some
young fellow who boasts that he is going to "see
life," meaning by that that he is going to see
that part of life which it is a thousand fold
better should remain unseen!
I ask that every
man here constitute himself his brother's keeper
by setting an example to that younger brother
which will prevent him from getting such a false
estimate of life. Example is the most potent of
all things. If any one of you in the presence of
younger boys, and especially the younger people
of our own family, misbehave yourself, if you
use coarse and blasphemous language before them,
you can be sure that these younger people will
follow your example and not your precept. It is
no use to preach to them if you do not act
decently yourself. You must feel that the most
effective way in which you can preach is by your
practice.
As I was driving
up here a friend who was with us said that in
his experience the boy who went out into life
with a foul tongue was apt so to go because his
kinsfolk, at least his intimate associates,
themselves had foul tongues. The father, the
elder brothers, the friends, can do much toward
seeing that the boys as they become men become
clean and honorable men.
I have told you
that I wanted you not only to be decent, but to
be strong.
These boys will
not admire virtue of a merely anemic type. They
believe in courage, in manliness. They admire
those who have the quality of being brave, the
quality of facing life as life should be faced,
the quality that must stand at the root of good
citizenship in peace or in war. If you are to be
effective as good Christians you must possess
strength and courage, or your example will count
for little with the young, who admire strength
and courage.
I want to see you,
the men of the Holy Name Society, you who embody
the qualities which the younger people admire,
by your example give those young people the
tendency, the trend, in the right direction; and
remember that this example counts in many other
ways besides cleanliness of speech.
I want to see
every man able to hold his own with the strong,
and also ashamed to oppress the weak.
I want to see each
young fellow able to do a man's work in the
world, and of a type which will not permit
imposition to be practiced upon him.
I want to see him
too strong of spirit to submit to wrong, and, on
the other hand, ashamed to do wrong to others.
I want to see each
man able to hold his own in the rough work of
actual life outside, and also, when he is at
home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with
wife, or mother, or children.
Remember that the
preaching does not count if it is not backed up
by practice. There is no good in your preaching
to your boys to be brave if you run away. There
is no good in your preaching to them to tell the
truth if you do not. There is no good in your
preaching to them to be unselfish if they see
you selfish with your wife, disregardful of
others.
We have a right to
expect that you will come together in meetings
like this; that you will march in processions;
that you will join in building up such a great
and useful association as this; and, even more,
we have a right to expect that in your own homes
and among your own associates you will prove by
your deeds that yours is not a lip-loyalty
merely; that you show in actual practice the
faith that is in you.
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