“The Strenuous Life” by Theodore Roosevelt (1900)
From The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (New York: Century, 1900), pp. 115–121.
Theodore Roosevelt is one of the great larger-than-life characters of U.S. history, and his legacy
is that of a man who embodied a certain type of rugged U.S. individualism. The essay excerpted
below was first delivered as a speech in 1899, after Roosevelt had returned from the SpanishAmerican War and been elected governor of New York. The following year he was elected vice
president on the Republican ticket with William McKinley. The speech addresses Roosevelt’s
opinions on U.S. expansionism and the need for “strenuous endeavor” as a new century was
dawning.
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…The army and the navy are the sword and the shield which this nation must carry if she is to
do her duty among the nations of the earth—if she is not to stand merely as the China of the
western hemisphere. Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from
Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course, we are bound to
handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic
cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation. We must
strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual;
for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of
individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own
household in order, we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the
world. A man’s first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty
to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a free man.
In the same way, while a nation’s first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved
from facing its duties in the world as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its
right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind.
In the West Indies and the Philippines alike, we are confronted by most difficult problems. It is
cowardly to shrink from solving them in the proper way; for solved they must be, if not by us,
then by some stronger and more manful race. If we are too weak, too selfish, or too foolish to
solve them, some bolder and abler people must undertake the solution. Personally, I am far too
firm a believer in the greatness of my country and the power of my countrymen to admit for
one moment that we shall ever be driven to the ignoble alternative.
The problems are different for the different islands. Porto Rico is not large enough to stand
alone. We must govern it wisely and well, primarily in the interest of its own people. Cuba is, in
my judgment, entitled ultimately to settle for itself whether it shall be an independent state or
an integral portion of the mightiest of republics. But until order and stable liberty are secured,
we must remain in the island to insure them, and infinite tact, judgment, moderation, and
courage must be shown by our military and civil representatives in keeping the island pacified,
in relentlessly stamping out brigandage, in protecting all alike, and yet in showing proper
recognition to the men who have fought for Cuban liberty. The Philippines offers a yet graver
problem. Their population includes half-caste and native Christians, warlike Moslems, and wild
pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for self- government and show no signs of
becoming fit. Others may in time become fit but at present can only take part in selfgovernment under a wise supervision, at once firm and beneficent. We have driven Spanish
tyranny from the islands. If we now let it be replaced by savage anarchy, our work has been for
harm and not for good. I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake the task of
governing the Philippines, and who openly avow that they do fear to undertake it, or that they
shrink from it because of the expense and trouble; but I have even scanter patience with those
who make a pretense of humanitarianism to hide and cover their timidity, and who cant about
“liberty” and the “consent of the governed,” in order to excuse themselves for their
unwillingness to play the part of men. Their doctrines, if carried out, would make it incumbent
upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out their own salvation, and to decline to
interfere in a single Indian reservation. Their doctrines condemn your forefathers and mine for
ever having settled in these United States.
England’s rule in India and Egypt has been of great benefit to England, for it has trained up
generations of men accustomed to look at the larger and loftier side of public life. It has been of
even greater benefit to India and Egypt. And finally, and most of all, it has advanced the cause
of civilization. So, if we do our duty aright in the Philippines, we will add to that national
renown which is the highest and finest part of national life, will greatly benefit the people of
the Philippine Islands, and, above all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting
mankind. But to do this work, keep ever in mind that we must show in a very high degree the
qualities of courage, of honesty, and of good judgment. Resistance must be stamped out. The
first and all-important work to be done is to establish the supremacy of our flag. We must put
down armed resistance before we can accomplish anything else, and there should be no
parleying, no faltering, in dealing with our foe. As for those in our own country who encourage
the foe, we can afford contemptuously to disregard them; but it must be remembered that
their utterances are not saved from being treasonable merely by the fact that they are
despicable.
When once we have put down armed resistance, when once our rule is acknowledged, then an
even more difficult task will begin, for then we must see to it that the islands are administered
with absolute honesty and with good judgment. If we let the public service of the islands be
turned into the prey of the spoiled politician, we shall have begun to tread the path which Spain
trod to her own destruction. We must send out there only good and able men, chosen for their
fitness, and not because of their partisan service, and these men must not only administer
impartial justice to the natives and serve their own government with honesty and fidelity, but
must show the utmost tact and firmness, remembering that, with such people as those with
whom we are to deal, weakness is the greatest of crimes, and that next to weakness comes lack
of consideration for their principles and prejudices.
I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the
life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many
nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, 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, resolute to do our
duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be
both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us
shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain
that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor,
that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

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