Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 10.djvu/291

 ROOSEVELT

��less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace; but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right, and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts rightly and justly should ever have cause to fear, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.

Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power, as a na- tion has seen during a century and a quarter of its national life, is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever be- fore every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee.

Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraor- dinary industrial development of the half cen- tury are felt in every fiber of our social and po- litical being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of ad- ministering the affairs of a continent under th' forms of a democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material wel:- being, which have developed to a very high degree our energ>% self-reliance, and individual 251

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