The President assembled the most powerful fleet we had ever had together, sixteen battleships, with destroyers, and sent them on a cruise around the world.  This was bitterly opposed at the time.  Public men and newspapers predicted that the fleet could never make the voyage, or that even if it could, its effect would be to cause war with some other nation.  The most emphatic predictions were made by a famous newspaper that the entrance of the fleet into the Pacific Ocean would be the signal for a declaration of war upon us by a foreign power.  Nothing of the sort happened.  The cruise attracted to the American navy the admiration of the world; it immensely increased the usefulness of the Navy itself by the experience it gave the officers and men; and it served warning upon anybody who needed it (and some folk did need it) that America was not a country of dollar-chasing Yankees, rich and helpless, but that it had the ability to defend itself.

This was an illustration of Roosevelt’s use of the old saying:  “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”  When he first repeated this, it was seized upon by the newspapers for its amusing quality, and he was henceforth pictured as carrying a tremendous bludgeon, of the sort which giants usually bore in the tale of “Jack the Giant Killer.”  Timid folk thought that it proved their worst fears about his fondness for a fight.  They failed to notice the “Speak softly” part of the saying.  It was only a vivid way of advising his countrymen to be quiet and polite in their dealings with other nations, but not to let America become defenseless.  What hasty and shallow critics denounced as the threat of a bully, proved in practice to be the sagacious advice of a statesman, whose promise when he took office, to preserve the peace and honor of his beloved country, was kept faithfully and precisely.

And he was able to keep the peace, to fill the office of President for seven years without having a shot fired by our forces, because he made it clear that this country would not submit to wrong, would not argue or bicker with foreign trespassers, kidnappers, highwaymen or murderers, but would promptly fight them.  He did not fill the air with beautiful words about his love of peace; but we had peace.  For as he knew perfectly well, there were countries, like Canada, with which we could live at peace for a hundred years and more, without needing forts or guns between them and us, because we think alike on most subjects, and respect each other’s honor.

And there were other countries, Germany in particular, against whom all her neighbors have to live armed to the teeth, and in deadly fear, because the Germans respect nothing on earth except force.  To argue or plead with the Germans, as he well knew, was not only a waste of time, it was worse:  it was a direct invitation to war.  Because since 1870 the Germans think that any country which professes to love peace, any country whose statesmen utter noble thoughts about