Topic 30 
LOYALTY

THE longer I live the more I am inclined to think of clan loyalty.  I am afraid of those superior persons who are so good they can long stand by nobody, not even themselves."

Colonel Roosevelt had in mind some members of the old Progressive party who did not fully approve of his war attitude.  These were the more respectable of what he had been known to call the "lunatic fringe."

"The spirit of the clan," he went on, "is what we as Americans lack.  We need one big American clan, with its members always for the clan.  I must confess that I have never been able to get the viewpoint of those very excellent persons who object to the old navy toast: 'My country right, my country wrong; but right or wrong, my country.' There are other versions, and I may not have it exact, but that is the thought.

" I suppose it is another manifestation of my general bloodthirsty, swashbuckling frame of mind, my fondness for the big stick and violence of all kinds.  I know it is most reprehensible for me to talk to a youth of your tender years — you are n't much over forty, are you? — and I should know better, but I don't.  I cannot bring myself to that point where I can disagree with that sentiment.

"I want my country to be right; I hope she always will be right; but right or wrong, whatever she gets into I am going to be with her until she gets out.  Then if there is any correcting to do, I'll try and do my share.  And I am not prepared to concede the possibility of error in  that doctrine by agreeing to debate it with anybody.

" It is said to be bad ethics, just as it is said to be bad ethics to teach a boy to defend himself, or his baby brother or his sister or his mother.  Some good people hold that a boy who gets into a fight, whether he be right or wrong, should be punished.  I do not.  If one of my boys was a bully, I’d try to thrash it out of him.  If he would not defend himself against a bully, I’d thrash him until I had some degree of manhood in him.  He'd require but one thrashing.

"The clan, of course, is one of the oldest forms of organization — it is a crude manifestation of the organizing spirit.  At bottom there is no real difference between the spirit that makes possible great corporations and that responsible for our New York gangs.  It is the clan spirit — the organizing spirit.  The difference is that in one instance the organizing spirit is developed along good lines, is used in a proper direction, and in the other it is not.  Organization per se is bad only when it is used for bad ends.

"The New York street gang is but a form of clan.  The gang leader comes to the top because of the same general qualities that makes another, born into happier surroundings, a society leader.  Both have to fight their way up through.  I do not like gangs, and I do not admire gang leaders, but this much is to be said for them — they do stand for something and you know where they stand.  They have in them the essence of loyalty."