signed by Theodore Roosevelt advocating the Big Stick— ‘a mighty arm of righteousness’

First edition, first printing. Signed by Theodore Roosevelt on the front free endpaper.

In this collection of essays Roosevelt urges the United States to abandon its neutral position and enter the war raging in Europe. “Explaining his title, Roosevelt said that to fear God meant to love God, respect God, and honor God. And the only way one could relate to God in this manner was to love one’s neighbor, ‘treating him justly and mercifully, and in all ways attempting to protect him from injustice and cruelty.’ For nations this sometimes meant using force—‘a mighty arm of righteousness’—to help one’s neighbor, as well as one’s self, to escape injustice and aggression. And the mighty arm, he said, should be a powerful army and navy ready at all times to spring, instantly, to the defense of humanity” (Renehan, Lion’s Pride).

The final pages of this volume print Roosevelt’s 1903 address “Bluster Without Force Worse than Abandonment,” in which he states,

“I believe in the Monroe Doctrine with all my heart and soul. I am convinced that the immense majority of our fellow countrymen so believe in it; but I would infinitely prefer to see us abandon it than to see us put it forward and bluster about it, and yet fail to build up the efficient fighting strength which in the last resort can alone make it respected by any strong foreign power whose interest it may ever happen to be to violate it. There is a homely old adage which runs: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ If the American Nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient Navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.”

$9,500