edge. When
men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always
danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of
fiber."

He used the same phrase many times. Here is another instance:

"Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make
ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it!
And woe, thrice over, to the nation in which the average man loses the
fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need
should arise!"

That was it--THE FIGHTING EDGE. Roosevelt had it, if ever man had. The
conviction of the need for that combination of physical and spiritual
qualities that this represented, if a man is to take his place and keep
it in the world, became an inseparable part of his consciousness early
in life. It grew in strength and depth with every year that he lived.
He learned the need of preparedness on that day in Maine when he found
himself helpless before the tormenting of his young fellow travelers. In
the gymnasium on Twentieth Street, within the boxing ring at Harvard,
in the New York Assembly, in the conflicts with the spoilsmen in
Washington, on the frontier in cowboy land, in Mulberry Street and on
Capitol Hill, and in the jungle before Santiago, the lesson was hammered
into him by the stern reality of events. The strokes fell on malleable
metal.

In the spring of 1897, Roosevelt had been appointed Assistant Secretary
of the Navy, largely through the efforts of his friend, Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. The appointment was excellent from every
point of view. Though Roosevelt had received no training for the post
so far as technical education was concerned, he brought to his duties a
profound belief in the navy and a keen interest in its development. His
first published book had been "The Naval War of 1812"; and the lessons
of that war had not been lost upon him. It was indeed a fortuitous
circumstance that placed him in this branch of the national service
just as relations between Spain and the United States were reaching the
breaking point. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor,
his reaction to that startling event was instantaneous. He was convinced
that the sinking of the Maine made war inevitable, but he had long been
certain that war ought to come. He believed that the United States had
a moral duty toward the Cuban people, oppressed, abused, starved, and
murdered at the hands o