Description:

T. Roosevelt Criticizes League of Nations "the recklessness...to make any kind of a promise without any thought of how it can be carried out"

A typed letter signed by Theodore Roosevelt in which he criticizes international policies in the lead-up to the First World War. 2pp, measuring 7.75" x 9.25", Oyster Bay, New York, dated June 29, 1915. Signed "Theodore Roosevelt" and addressed to Edwin A. Van Valkenburg of "The North American". Marked "Private", Roosevelt's letter offers a harsh criticism of the League for International World Peace and Woodrow Wilson's foreign policies in the First World War. With flattened mail folds and toning throughout, with darker toning at the edges. Some areas of ink bleed. Boldly signed by Roosevelt.

In part:

"By the way, there is one point about those gentlemen who support a League for International World Peace that is worth-while considering. Six months ago or more I outlined the program which they announced they had just discovered the other day. But I then very emphatically stated that it was a program for the future and that our first business was to make good the promises we had already made and to put ourselves in position to defend our own rights. These gentlemen declined to say a word in favor of our fitting ourselves to go into defensive war in our own interest; and yet they actually wish to make us at this time promise to undertake offensive war in the interests of other people! It is a striking illustration of the recklessness with which the average American is willing to make any kind of a promise without any thought of how it can be carried out. Taken concretely, they propose that we shall pledge ourselves in the future to coerce Germany if it acts say toward Switzerland or Holland or Denmark as it has acted toward Belgium. Either such a promise is an empty nullity or it means that we undertake to prepare in such event to send an army of a couple of million men to Europe. Yet these same individuals praise Wilson for shirking his duty under the moderate Hague Conventions we have already signed and for failure to prepare either to protect our own citizens when murdered on the high seas or to protect them when murdered in Mexico…"

As early as 1905, Theodore Roosevelt and Republican leaders Henry Cabot Lodge and William H. Taft began submitting proposals for a League of Nations to guarantee world peace. In September 1914, following the outbreak of WWI, Roosevelt proposed a World League for the Peace of Righteousness, believing that it would be "solemnly covenanted that if any nations refused to abide by the decisions of such a court, then others draw the sword in behalf of peace and justice." The next year (which Roosevelt refers to in this letter), he urged that nations should guarantee their entire military force, if necessary, against any nation that violated the rights of other nations. By this time, however, Woodrow Wilson was strongly hostile towards Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge and instead developed his own plans for a League of Nations, which would become a reality at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Roosevelt would go on to further criticize Wilson's plan because it would likely interfere with American domestic affairs and submit the U.S. to the whims of smaller nations who might not share the U.S.'s national interests.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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