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CHAPTER TEN 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

LETTERS ON DECADENCE  WEALTH; 

BIRDS: 

HUMOR IN POLITICS: 

 CLEVELAND: 

 LIBEL SUIT: 

 THE NAVY: 

roosevelt's correspondence during the spring and summer of 1908 shows the usual wide variety of interests. Always a patient listener, his remarkable alertness of mind which enabled him to foresee clearly the end of a talker's discourse long before the talker himself had arrived at it, frequently put his patience to a severe strain. Writing to Henry Adams, on March 9, 1908, he gives a hint of his sufferings at times: "Of course I have read your grandfather's diary; but I have at once sent for another copy to reread in part about those years. There was just two years' interval, then, between his Presidency and his nominal appearance in Congress. 0 Lord! I wish I did not sympathize with him and the rest of his family about being bored! The capacity to be bored, whether treated as a sin or a misfortune, is an awful handicap."
The extraordinary range of Roosevelt's reading and knowledge is revealed in a letter which he wrote to the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balf our, at the moment when he was in the very thick of his struggle with Congress for further legislation in regard to governmental control and regulations of corporations and when his daily correspondence was crowded with protests against his course. How many other men of his time, in or out of public life, could have written such a letter as this? I append it in full.
white house,
March 5, 1908. My dear Mr. Balfour:
Through Arthur Lee I have just received the copy of "Decadence," and thank you for it. I confess I began read it with some apprehension lest it might have something to do with some phase of French literary thought. Naturally, therefore, I was glad when the first few lines showed that my fears were groundless.

It seems to me that you are eminently right in seeing that it is good to give a name to something of vital consequence, even though in a sense the name only expresses our ignorance. It is a curious thing in mankind, but undoubtedly true, that if we do not give such a name to our ignorance, most of us gradually feel that there is nothing to be ignorant about. Most emphatically there is such a thing as "decadence" of a nation, a race, a type; and it is no less true that we can not give any adequate explanation of the phenomenon. Of course there are many partial explanations, and in some cases, as with the decay of the Mongol or Turkish monarchies, the sum of these partial explanations may represent the whole. But there are other cases notably, of course, that of Rome in the ancient world, and, as I believe, that of Spain in the modern world, on a much smaller scale, where the sum of all the explanations is that they do not wholly explain. Something seems to have gone out of the people or peoples affected, and what it is no one can say. In the case of Rome, one can say that the stocks were completely changed, though I do not believe that this in the least represents even the major part of the truth. But in the case of Spain, the people remain the same. The expulsion of Moor and heretic, the loss of the anarchistic and much misused individual liberties of the provincial towns, the economic and social changes wrought by the inflow of American gold—all of them put together do not explain the military decadence of the Spaniard ; do not explain why he grew so rigid that, at first on sea and then on land, he could not adapt himself to new tactics, and above all, what subtle transformation it was that came over the fighting edge of the soldiers themselves. For nearly a century and a half following the beginning of Gonsalvo's campaigns, the Spanish infantry showed itself superior in sheer fighting ability to any other infantry of Europe. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, neither the Hollanders, fighting with despair for their own firesides, nor the Scotch and English volunteers, actuated by love of fighting and zeal for their faith, were able on anything like equal terms to hold their own against the Spanish armies, who walked at will to and fro through the Netherlands, save where strong city walls or burst dykes held them at bay. Yet the Hollander, the Englishman and the Scotchman were trained soldiers, and they were spurred by every hope and feeling which we ordinarily accept as making men formidable in fight. A century passed; and these same Spaniards had become contemptible creatures in war compared with the Dutch and Scotch, the English and French, whom they had once surpassed. Many partial explanations can be given for the change, but none that wholly or mainly explains it.

What is true of military prowess is even more true of national life as a whole. I do not see how any thinking man can fail to feel now and then ugly doubts as to what may befall our modern civilization—the civilization of the white races, who have spread their influence over the entire world—and the culture they have inherited or acquired in extreme western Asia and in Europe during the last three or four thousand years. There are unpleasant analogies between the twentieth century and Hellenistic antiquity in the first period of the past Alexandrian monarchies; and of course the resemblance is even closer with the orderly, peace-loving, cultivated Roman world from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius. The resemblances are in the way of analogy rather than homology, it is true, and there are deep fundamental differences. But the resemblances are there. Why the creative literary spirit should practically have vanished from Roman lands after the time of Trajan, we do not know. We can see better why the citizens lost the traits which make good individual soldiers; but we can not see why the very time of the astounding urban growth of North Africa, Gaul and Spain should have been coincident with the growth of utter inability to organize on a sufficiently large scale either in peace or war, until everything jr grew to depend upon the ability of one or two men on top. Much of the fall of the Roman Republic we can account for. For one thing, I do not think historians have ever laid sufficient emphasis on the fact that the widening of the franchise in Italy and the provinces meant so little from the governmental standpoint because citizens could only vote in one city, Rome; I should hate at this day to see the United States governed by votes cast in the city of New York, even though Texas, Oregon and Maine could in theory send their people thither to vote if they chose. But the reasons for the change in military and governmental ability under the empire between, say, the days of Hadrian and of Valens are hardly even to be guessed at.
I have always been greatly interested in what you point out as to the inability of the people of that strip of western Asia which is geographically North Africa ever to recover themselves from the downfall of the Roman Empire. It is a rather irritating delusion—the delusion that somehow or other we are all necessarily going to move forward in the long run no matter what the temporary checks may be. I have a very firm faith in this general forward movement, considering only men of our own race for the past score or two centuries, and I hope and believe that the movement will continue for an indefinite period to come; but no one can be sure; there is certainly nothing inevitable or necessary about the movement. For a thousand years, from the days of Alexander to the days of Mahomet, in spite of fluctuations, the civilization of Asia west of the Euphrates was that of Greeks and of Asiatics profoundly affected by Greek influence. Then it disappeared from the land; just as the extraordinary Roman civilization disappeared from North Africa, and left not a single vestige behind save the ruins of cities and the masonry around the springs that have dried up under the destructive impotence of the rule that succeeded it.
It is hopeful of course to think how peoples do revive now and then; peoples doubtless partly the same in blood as those that fell, and at least with the ancestral inheritance of language, of culture. You have pointed out the greatest instance of this in Italy. A totally different and much smaller example is furnished by modern Switzerland.

The intrusion of an alien race into another civilization, its growth and supremacy and dying away, is of course curiously paralleled by what we see in the animal world, and the parallel is complete in at least one point—that is, in the fact that in such case the causes may be shrouded in absolute darkness. South America, until the middle of the Tertiary period, had a mammalian fauna almost as unique as that of Australia, composed chiefly of small marsupials, and of what we loosely call edentatas, also of small size. Then.there occurred physical union with the great arctogeal continent by the Isthmus of Panama. There followed an inrush of northern fauna and an extraordinarily powerful and abundant faunal life sprang up. The dominant forms were those of the intruders—saber-tooth tigers, bear, deer, elephants, swine, camels, tapirs, horses, all of great abundance in species, and many of the species of giant size. Under the pressure most of the old forms disappeared; but some of the so-called edentates developed into ground sloths and giant armadillos as large as elephants; and some of these forms when thus developed proved not only able to hold their own in South America, but gradually in their turn made their way north across the Isthmus and spread into North America in the teeth of the competition of the descendants of the forms that had anciently overrun South America. Thus there grew up in South America a faunal life as gigantic, as fierce, as varied, as that of Central Africa at this moment, and on the whole more like that of Central Africa than like the life of South America to-day, and infinitely more so than like the old eocene life of South America. Then there came a change, we know not why. In North America the glacial period may have had much to do with it, but surely this can not have been true of South America; yet all of these huge formidable creatures died out, alike the monsters of alien type from the North, and the monsters developed from ancient autochthonous types. A few weak representatives were left, of both types; but the old magnificent fauna completely vanished; and why we can not say, any more than we can explain why the Roman so completely failed permanently to leave North Africa to his descendants.
Of course there is a small side trouble, due to our terminology. All species of animals of course ultimately disappear, some because their kind entirely dies out, and some because the species is transformed into a wholly different species,, degenerate or not; but in our nomenclature we make no distinction between the two utterly different kinds of "disappearance." So it is, of course, with nations. I really believe that people sometimes think of "new" nations as being suddenly created out of nothing; they certainly speak as if they were not aware that the newest and the oldest nations and races must of course have identically the same length of racial pedigree. They talk, moreover, of the "destruction" of the inhabitants of Mexico, and of the "destruction" of the inhabitants of Tasmania, as if the processes were alike. In Tasmania the people were absolutely destroyed; none of their blood is left. But the bulk of the blood of Mexico, and a part of the blood of the governing classes of Mexico (including Diaz), is that of the Mexicans whom Cortez and his successors conquered. In the same way Australia and Canada and the United States are "new" commonwealths only in the sense that Syracuse and Gyrene were new compared with Athens and Corinth.
Another thing that makes one feel irritated is the way that people insist on speaking as if what has occurred during the last three or four hundred years represented part of the immutable law of nature. The military supremacy of the whites is an instance in point. From the rise of the Empire of Genghis Khan to the days of Selim, the Mongol and Turkish tribes were unquestionably the military superiors of the peoples of the Occident, and when they came into conflict it was the former who almost always appeared as invaders and usually as victors. Yet people speak of the Japanese victories over the Russians as if they had been without precedent throughout the ages.
One practical problem of statesmanship, by the way, must be to keep on good terms with these same Japanese and their kinsmen on the mainland of Asia, and yet to keep the white man in America and Australia out of home contact with them. It is equally to the interest of the British Empire and of the United States that there should be no immigration in mass from Asia to Australia or to North America. It can be prevented, and an entirely friendly feeling between Japan and the English speaking peoples preserved, if we act with sufficient courtesy and at the same time with sufficient resolution. But this is leaving speculative history for present politics. With regard,
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) theodore roosevelt.
Indifference to wealth was one of his strongest characteristics. His feeling in regard to it is defined in a letter to Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, on April 11, 1908:
"As a matter of fact, I am anxious to have it understood that it is not necessary to be a multimillionaire in order to reach the highest positions in the American diplomatic service. I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth. I very thoroughly understand the need of sufficient means to enable the man or woman to be comfortable; I also entirely understand the pleasure of having enough more than this to add certain luxuries, and above all, that greatest of all luxuries, the escape from the need of considering at every turn whether it is possible to spend a dollar or two extra; but when the last limit has been reached, then increase in wealth means but little, certainly as compared with all kinds of other things. In consequence, I am simply unable to make myself take the attitude of respect toward the very wealthy men which such an enormous multitude of people evidently really feel. I am delighted to show any courtesy to Pierpont Morgan or Andrew Carnegie or James J. Hill, but as for regarding any one of them as, for instance, I regard Professor Bury, or Peary, the Arctic explorer, or Admiral Evans, or Rhodes, the historian, or Selous, the big game hunter (to mention at random guests who have been at the White House not long ago)—why, I could not force myself to do it even if I wanted to, which I do not.
"The very luxurious, grossly material life of the average multimillionaire whom I know does not appeal to me in the least, and nothing could hire me to lead it. It is an exceedingly nice thing to have money enough to be able to take a hunting trip in Africa after big game (if you are not able to make it pay for itself in some other way). It is an exceedingly nice thing, if you are young, to have one or two good jumping horses and to be able to occasionally hunt— although Heaven forfend that any one for whom I care should treat riding to hounds as the serious business of life! It is an exceedingly nice thing to have a good house and to be able to purchase good books and good pictures, and especially to have that house isolated from others. But I wholly fail to see where any real enjoyment comes from a dozen automobiles, a couple of hundred horses, and a good many-different houses luxuriously upholstered. From the standpoint of real pleasure I should selfishly prefer my old-time ranch on the Little Missouri to anything in Newport."
In similar vein, with special reference to the desire of Americans to be "presented at court," he wrote to White-law Reid in London, on May 25, 1908:
"I have grown to have a constantly increasing horror of the Americans who go abroad desiring to be presented at court or to meet sovereigns. In very young people it is excusable folly; in older people it is mere snobbishness. ... I can not be too sincerely grateful that when Mrs. Roosevelt and I were abroad before I was President, we refused to be presented. I have a hearty respect for the right kind of a king and for the right kind of aristocracy, and for the right kind of Englishman who wishes to be presented or have his wife or daughter presented; but it is the business of an American to be a Republican, a democrat, to behave in a simple and straight-forward manner, and, without anything cheap or blatant about it, to be just what he is, a plain citizen of the American Republic; and he is thoroughly out of place, loses his dignity in the eyes of others, and loses his own self-respect, when he tries to play a role for which he is not suited, and which personally I think is less exalted than his own natural role.
"I have been immensely amused, and not a little astonished, to find how many people, some of them pretty good people, believe that when I am through here I shall visit the courts of Europe. It would take ten strong yoke of oxen to drag me thither; and my present intention is not to go to Europe at all until the memory of my Presidency has faded, so as not to make the wretched sovereigns and statesmen feel obliged to see me or entertain me. Then, if I can go just as I went before I was President, some time I should like to take Mrs. Roosevelt to see the picture galleries, the quaint cities, the scenery; but not otherwise. When I stop being President I stop being President. I become an ordinary citizen, entirely contented to be such; and as I am not a man of large means I neither wish myself to be put into the position of the earthern pot, driven down stream with the brazen pots, nor to see my children so placed. If, for instance, I could meet the German Emperor now, when each is head of a big State and there are plenty of things on which we could naturally talk from an equal standpoint, why, I should be delighted to do so. But I haven't the slightest desire to meet him when my hand is no longer at the lever. I hope to get a holiday next spring and go for nine months or a year to Africa, to see the big game, and shoot a very moderate number of head, taking my second boy, Kermit, with me; and if the British and German officers in the territories in which I go will then show me whatever consideration they show to other fairly well-known people of good character who behave themselves—why, that is all I shall ask, and quite as much as I have any right to expect."
During his Presidency he purchased a small tract of land in western Virginia, with a small cabin-like house, to which he and Mrs. Roosevelt were accustomed to go for brief visits from time to time. He named the place '' Pine Knot,'' and on one occasion he had as guest John Burroughs, the poet and naturalist. Writing to Frank M. Chapman, of the New York Museum of Natural History, on May 10, 1908, he described what occurred during the visit:
"John Burroughs and I had a very pleasant time during our three days at Pine Knot. I was much pleased to be able to show him all the birds I had said I would, including the Bewick's wren, the blue grosbeak, the gnatcatcher, the summer redbird, etc. The one bird about which we were doubtful was the Henslow's bunting. I think he found the place almost too primitive, for a family of flying squirrels had made their abode inside the house. This tended to keep him awake at nights, whereas we have become rather attached to them. In one plowed field I found a nighthawk sitting. If I had chosen to knock it down with my hat I could have done so, but I wanted not to hurt it; and as I endeavored softly to seize it, it got away just as my fingers touched it. It did not go far, but sat lengthwise along the limb of a small tree and let me come within two feet of it before flying. When I see you again I am going to point out one or two minor matters in connection with the song of the Bewick's wren and the looks of the blue grosbeak, where we were a little puzzled by your accounts. I suppose that there is a good deal of individual variation among the birds themselves as well as among the observers.

"I now feel as though I wonder how I ever got on without your 'Birds of the Eastern United States' and your book on warblers."
The subjoined letter to Senator Lodge, August 18, 1908, gives us a glimpse of Roosevelt's keen sense of humor: "To my immense delight, which I know you will share, the New York 'Herald, last Sunday contained the following item:

'Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday.—Word reached here today from Brownfield, in Terry County, Western Texas, that residents there on Thursday erected a life-size statue of President Roosevelt after a street fight in which fifty shots were fired. One person was killed and nine others were wounded. The statue represents Mr. Roosevelt in hunting costume and stands in the town square.

'Brownfield is one hundred miles from the nearest railroad, the Texas Pacific. Its population is 1,500, composed largely of cattlemen, cowboys and planters. The erection of the statue was vigorously opposed by democrats and some Republicans, but it had already been ordered from Denver by a citizens committee, which refused to turn from its plans. The unveiling was opposed because it was pointed out that Roosevelt was still President and because the democrats wanted a Bryan statue on the opposite side of the square and the town could not afford both statues.
'Efforts were made to steal the statue and it was buried for a week. When the ceremonies took place on Thursday a band of cowboys made a rush and met a determined crowd. Revolvers, clubs and fists were freely used, but the statue was not disturbed.
'After the riot a mass meeting was held, at which a compromise was effected whereby it was agreed that should Bryan be elected, his statue should be placed near that of Roosevelt.'
"I never heard of the statue and indeed I never heard of Brownfield before and I think there is something delightful beyond words in the idea of this sudden erection of a statue of me in hunting costume at the cost of a riot in which one man was killed and nine wounded; and the final compromise by which it was agreed to put up another statue of Bryan in case he was elected. I wonder what that statue looks like. Who with a sense of humor and a real zest for life would not be glad to be prominent in American politics at the outset of the 20th century?"
His deep and constant veneration for Lincoln, expressed in many letters, is seen in this letter to Dr. Duncan C. Milner, Chicago, on November 20, 1908:
"Great-Heart is my favorite character in allegory (which is, of course, a branch of fiction, as you say), just as Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' is to my mind one of the greatest books that was ever written; and I think that Abraham Lincoln is the ideal Great-Heart of public life."
When I was discussing with Roosevelt the writing of the present volumes, he said on one occasion when I spoke of Grover Cleveland: "I wish you would put in all letters of mine referring to him, for I respected the old fellow highly and greatly liked him." In accordance with this request I append two letters which the President wrote in the closing year of his administration:
To mRs. gRoveR cleveland,
Princeton, N. J.
oyster baY, July 13, 1908. My Dear Mrs. Cleveland:
It has recently been my privilege to sign a proclamation changing the name of the San Jacinto National Forest to the Cleveland National Forest. May I express to you the very great pleasure it gave me to take that action—a pleasure mingled with a keen sense of the loss to our country and to our citizens in the death of President Cleveland? On February 22, 1897, President Cleveland signed the proclamation creating the San Jacinto Forest reserve in Southern California. The date, February 22, was no mere accident since the signature of the proclamation was timed to coincide with the birthday of our first President.
President Cleveland was one of the first to recognize the need of forest preservation, and the creation of the San Jacinto and other Forest Reserves with a total area of 25,686,320 acres was one of the results of his foresight in this direction. Throughout his life he took great interest in conserving the natural resources of the Nation; and I particularly regretted his inability to attend the meeting of the Governors in May, because that meeting was in part the fruit of seed he had sown years before. (The meeting was called at the White House by President Roosevelt.)
The name of Grover Cleveland will always be prominently identified with the movement to protect the forests of the United States, and it seemed to me eminently fitting that one of the forests which he created should bear his name throughout all time.
 
To Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson.
white house, November 9, 1908. My dear Mr. Stetson:

I regret that it is not possible for me to be present in person at the meeting held under the auspices of the Cleveland Memorial Committee. I wish you all success in your efforts. I was a member of the Legislature when Mr. Cleveland became Governor of the State of New York at the beginning of the year 1883, and for the next twenty-five years on several different occasions I was brought into close contact with him. For two years during his second administration I served under him as Civil Service Commissioner. Like all others who were thrown closely with him I was much impressed by his high standard of official conduct and his rugged strength of character. Not only did I become intimately acquainted with the manner in which he upheld and enforced the civil service law, but I also saw at close quarters his successful fight against free silver, and the courage with which he, aided by men like the late Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, supported the judiciary at the time of the Chicago riot; and, finally, I happened to be in a position in which I knew intimately how he acted and the reasons why he acted in the Venezuelan matter. This knowledge gained at first hand enables me to bear testimony, which I am more than glad to bear, to the late President's earnest purpose to serve the whole country, and the high courage with which he encountered every species of opposition and attack. Owing to a peculiar combination of circumstances he went out of office assailed even more bitterly by his own party than by the opposing party, and shortsighted people thought that the great mass of American citizens had repudiated him and disbelieved in him. Six years later it happened that I was at St. Louis as President when Mr. Cleveland, then a plain private citizen, arose to make an address in the great hall of the Exposition; and no one there will ever forget the extraordinary reception given by scores of thousands present to the man who, six years before, had left the White House with seemingly hardly a handful of friends and supporters. It was an extraordinary testimony to the esteem and regard in which he was held, an extraordinary testimony to the fact that the American people had not forgotten him, and, looking back, had recognized in him a man who with straightforward directness had sought to do all in his power to serve their interests.
Moreover, all Americans should pay honor to the memory of Mr. Cleveland because of the simplicity and dignity with which as ex-President he led his life in the beautiful college town wherein he elected to live. He had been true to the honorable tradition which has kept our Presidents from making money while in office. His life was therefore of necessity very simple; but it was the kind of life which it is a good thing to see led by any man who has held a position such as he held.
Roosevelt had a warm regard for Baron Speck von Stern-burg, who for several years was the German Ambassador at Washington. The news of his death in September 1908 was, as his correspondence shows, the cause of genuine grief to him:
To hon. henRy white,
The American Ambassador,
Paris, France.	oyster bay,
September 10, 1908.
I sincerely mourn Speck's loss, though I can not be sorry for the gallant little fellow himself, for life was one long torture for him.   I have never met a man for whom I had a higher respect or regard.   It is very hard on the Baroness.
To ambassador david J. hill, Berlin, Germany.
oyster bat, September 10, 1908.
It was kind of you to write me in full of the funeral of my dear friend Sternburg. He was just that to me—a dear friend—and I mourn his loss. A more upright, fearless, and disinterested public servant, a more faithful and loyal friend, I have never seen.
One of the last letters Roosevelt wrote from the White House was in relation to the baseless rumors that had been circulating freely for a year or more about his drinking habits. To a gentleman in New York who was disturbed by them, he wrote on February 25, 1909:
"It happens that in the matter of drinking I am an extremely abstemious man; I suppose that no man not a total abstainer could well drink less than I do; and whiskey and brandy I practically never touch. The accusation that I ever have been addicted in the slightest degree to drinking to excess, or to drinking even wine—and liquor, as I say, I practically never touch—in any but the most moderate way, is not only the blackest falsehood but an utterly ridiculous falsehood; it does not represent any distortion or exaggeration; it has no slightest base in fact; it is simply malignant invention—just as sheer an invention as if they had said that at the age of five I had poisoned my grandmother or had been mixed up in the assassination of Lincoln by Wilkes Booth. One accusation would be exactly as infamous and exactly as ludicrous as the other.''
Several years later, in October 1912, when the editor of a Western newspaper published an article making definite charges that Roosevelt was an intemperate man, he, thinking the time had arrived to put a stop to such slanders once and for all, brought suit against the editor for libel. The suit was tried in May 1913, when Roosevelt attended with a large number of witnesses and so completely refuted the charges that at the conclusion of the testimony the editor withdrew them, stating that he had been unable to find any witnesses to give evidence in support of them, and admitting that in making the charges he had been mistaken. When the editor had concluded his retraction Colonel Roosevelt asked the court for permission to make a statement, and when it had been granted he said:
"Your Honor, in view of the statement of the defendant, I ask the Court to instruct the jury that I desire only nominal damages.
"I did not go into this suit for money. I did not go into it for any vindictive purpose. I went into it, and, as the Court has said, I made my reputation an issue, because I wished, once for all during my lifetime, thoroughly and comprehensively to deal with these slanders, so that never again will it be possible for any man, in good faith, to repeat them. I have achieved my purpose, and I am content."
Roosevelt's final and, so far as his correspondence shows, only appeal that he made to his successor before leaving office was in the following letter to Mr. Taft on March 3, 1909, in behalf of his beloved navy:
'' One closing legacy. Under no circumstances divide the battleship fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans prior to the finishing of the Panama Canal. Malevolent enemies of the navy will try to lead public opinion in a matter like this without regard to the dreadful harm they may do the country; and good, entirely ignorant, men may be thus misled. I should obey no direction of Congress and pay heed to no popular sentiment, no matter how strong, if it went wrong in such a vital matter as this. When I sent the fleet around the world there was a wild clamor that some of it should be sent to the Pacific, and equally wild clamor that some of it should be left in the Atlantic. 
I disregarded both. At first it seemed as if popular feeling was nearly a unit against me. It is now nearly a unit in favor of what I did.
"It is now nearly four years since the close of the Russian-Japanese war. There were various factors that brought about Russia's defeat; but most important by all odds was her having divided her fleet between the Baltic and the Pacific, and, furthermore, splitting up her Pacific fleet into three utterly unequal divisions. The entire Japanese force was always used to smash some fraction of the Russian force. The knaves and fools who advise the separation of our fleet nowadays and the honest, misguided creatures who think so little that they are misled by such advice, ought to take into account this striking lesson furnished by actual experience in a great war but four years ago. Keep the battle fleet either in one ocean or the other and have the armed cruisers always in trim, as they are now, so that they can be at once sent to join the battle fleet if the need should arise."