Afoot in England | Page 7

The Nobel
Prize speech and this address taken together form a pretty complete
exposition of what may perhaps be called, for want of a better term, Mr.
Roosevelt's "peace with action" doctrine.
"The World Movement," the address at the University of Berlin, was
the first of two distinctively academic, or scholastic utterances, the
other, of course, being the Romanes lecture. The Sorbonne speech was
almost purely sociological and ethical. There are, to be sure, social and
moral applications made of the theories laid down at Berlin and at
Oxford; but these two university addresses are distinctly for a
university audience. My own judgment is that the Sorbonne and
Guildhall addresses were more effective in their human interest and
their immediate political influence. But at both Berlin and Oxford, Mr.
Roosevelt showed that he could deal with scholarly subjects in a
scholarly fashion. It may be that he desired on these two occasions to
give some indication that, although universally regarded as a man of

action, he is entitled also to be considered as a man of thought. The
lecture at the University of Berlin was a brilliant and picturesque
academic celebration in which doctors' gowns, military uniforms, and
the somewhat bizarre dress of the representatives of the undergraduate
student corps, mingled in kaleidoscopic effect. One interesting feature
of the ceremony was the singing by a finely trained student chorus
without instrumental accompaniment, of Hail Columbia and _The
Star-Spangled Banner_, harmonized as only the Germans can
harmonize choral music. The Emperor and the Empress, with several
members of the Imperial family, attended the lecture. Those who sat
near the Emperor could see that he followed the address with genuine
interest, nodding his head, or smiling now and then with approval at
some incisively expressed idea, or some phrase of interjected humor, or
a characteristic gesture on the part of the speaker. In one respect the
lecture was a tour de force. On account of a sharp attack of bronchitis,
from which he was then recovering, it was not decided by the
physicians in charge until the morning of the lecture that Mr. Roosevelt
could use his voice for one hour in safety. Arrangements had been
made to have some one else read the lecture if at the last moment it
should be necessary; and the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was able to do it
himself effectively under these circumstances indicates that he has
some of the physical as well as the intellectual attributes of the
practised orator.
Mr. Roosevelt's first public speech in England was made at the
University of Cambridge on May 26th when he received the honorary
degree of LL.D. His address on this occasion was not, like the
Romanes lecture at Oxford, a part of the academic ceremony connected
with the conferring of the honorary degree. It was spoken to an
audience of undergraduates when, after the academic exercises in the
Senate House, he was elected to honorary membership in the Union
Society, the well-known Cambridge debating club which has trained
some of the best public speakers of England. At Oxford the doctors and
dignitaries cracked the jokes--in Latin--while the undergraduates were
highly decorous. At Cambridge, on the other hand, the students
indulged in the traditional pranks which often lend a color of gaiety to
University ceremonies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Roosevelt
entered heartily into the spirit of the undergraduates, and it was evident

that they, quite as heartily, liked his understanding of the fact that the
best university and college life consists in a judicious mixture of the
grave and the gay. The honor which these undergraduates paid to their
guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned, and its
genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note of
pleasantry. Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to university
students and what he said, although brief, extemporaneous, and even
unpremeditated, deserves to be included with his more important
addresses, because it affords an excellent example of his characteristic
habit of making an occasion of social gaiety also an occasion of
expressing his belief in the fundamental moral principles of social and
political life. The speech was frequently interrupted by the laughter and
applause of the audience, and the theory which Mr. Roosevelt
propounded, that any man in any walk of life may achieve genuine
success simply by developing ordinary qualities to a more than
ordinary degree, was widely quoted and discussed by the press of Great
Britain.
Next in chronological order comes the Guildhall speech. In the
picturesqueness of its setting, in the occasion which gave rise to it, in
the extraordinary effect it had upon public opinion in Great Britain, the
continent of Europe, and America, and in the courage which it evinced
on the part of the speaker, it is in my judgment