ch a court the others would draw the sword on
behalf of peace and justice, and would unitedly coerce the recalcitrant
nation. This plan would not automatically bring peace, and it may be too
soon to hope for its adoption; but if some such scheme could be adopted,
in good faith and with a genuine purpose behind it to make it effective,
then we would have come nearer to the day of world peace. World peace
will not come save in some such manner as that whereby we obtain
peace within the borders of each nation; that is, by the creation
of reasonably impartial judges and by putting an efficient police
power--that is, by putting force in efficient fashion--behind the
decrees of the judges. At present each nation must in the last resort
trust to its own strength if it is to preserve all that makes life
worth having. At present this is imperative. This state of things can be
abolished only when we put force, when we put the collective armed power
of civilization, behind some body which shall with reasonable justice
and equity represent the collective determination of civilization to do
what is right."

From this beginning Roosevelt went on vigorously preaching preparedness
against war; and the Great War had been raging for a scant seven months
when he was irresistibly impelled to utter open criticism of President
Wilson. In April, 1915, in The Metropolitan Magazine, to which he had
transferred his writings, he declared that "the United States, thanks
to Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, has signally failed in its duty toward
Belgium." He maintained that the United States, under the obligations
assumed by the signature of The Hague Conventions, should have protested
to Germany against the invasion of Belgium.

For two years thereafter, while Germany slapped America first on one
cheek and then on the other, and treacherously stabbed her with slinking
spies and dishonored diplomats, Roosevelt preached, with growing
indignation and vehemence, the cause of preparedness and national honor.
He found it impossible to support the President further. In February,
1916, he wrote:

"Eighteen months have gone by since the Great War broke out. It needed
no prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of forecasting the
future, to see that, when such mighty forces were unloosed, and when it
had been shown that all treaties and other methods hitherto relied upon
for national protection and for mitigating the horror and circumscribing
the area of