474 COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S PARIS SPEECH. 



" The choice must ever be in favor of righteousness, and this whether 

 the peace or whether the ahernative be war. The question must not be 

 merely, Is there to be peace or war? The question must be, Is the right to 

 prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And 

 the answer from a strong and virile people niust be ' Yes,' whatever the cost. 



" Finally, even more important than ab/lity to work, even more important 

 than ability to fight at need, is it to remeniber that the chief of blessings for 

 any nation is that it shall leave its seed to inherit the land. It was the crown 

 of blessing in Biblical times; and it is the crown of blessings now. The 

 greatest of all curses is the curse of sterlity, and the severest of all condemna- 

 tions should be visited upon wilful sterility. 



" The first essential in any civilization is that the man and the woman 

 shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase 

 and not decrease. If this is not so, if through no fault of the society there 

 is failure to increase, it is a great misfortune. If the failure is due to de- 

 liberate and wilful fault, then it is not merely a misfortune, it is one of those 

 crimes of ease and self-indulgence, of shrinking from pain and effort and risk, 

 which in the long run Nature punishes more heavily than any other. 



UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION. 



"If we of the great republic, if we, -the free people who claim to have 

 emancipated ourselves from the thraldom of wrong and error, bring down on 

 our heads the curse that comes upon the wilfully barren, then it will be an idle 

 waste of breath to prattle of our achievements, to boast of all that we have 

 done. 



" No refinement of life, no delicacy of taste, no material progress, no 

 sordid heaping up of riches, no sensuous development of art and literature, 

 can in any way compensate for the loss of the great fundamental virtues; and 

 of these great fundamental virtues, the greatest is the race's power to per- 

 petuate the race. 



" Nevertheless, while laying all stress on this point, while not merely 

 acknowledging but insisting upon the fact that there must be a basis of material 

 well-being for the individual as for the nation, let us with equal emphasis 

 insist that this material well-being represents nothing but the foundation, and 

 that the foundation, though indispensable, is worthless unless upon it is raised 

 the superstructure of a higher life. ■, 



" That is why I decline to recognize the mere multi-millionaire, the man 

 of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country ; and especially as not an 

 asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that 

 makes him of real benefit, of real use — and such is often the case — why then 

 he does become an asset of worth. 



" But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere 

 fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in 

 most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligence. Their 

 places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. But we must 

 not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded. 



" It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of 

 success ; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of 

 material well-being in and for itself. 



