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 peace, is simply a cowardly country, bent on
making money, and afraid to fight. So when,--during Roosevelt's
administration, the biggest swaggering "gun-man" of the world, the
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, made a threat against the peace of
America, Roosevelt no more read him pretty lectures about his love
of peace, than he would have recited poetry to that other gun-man
in the hotel in Dakota years before. He simply told the Kaiser in
a few words, just what would happen if Germany didn't drop it. It
was so quietly done that nobody knew anything at all about it
until years afterward.
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