It is a source of pride and gratification to record the fact that Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, the great former President of the United States, whose sudden and untimely death occurred on January 6, 1919, made his last public appearance and address at a meeting held in Carnegie, Hall, New York, on November 2nd, 1918, under the auspices of the Circle for Negro War Relief. It was on this occasion that Colonel Roosevelt paid the following high tribute to the Negro Race in War:

"The Negro has a right to sit at the council board where questions vitally affecting him are considered, and at the same time, as a matter of expediency, it is well to have white men at the board too. And I say that, though I know that there are many men---Dr. Scott is one---whom I would be delighted to have sit at the council board where only the. affairs of white men are concerned. As things are now, the wisest course to follow is that followed in the organization of this circle.

"Such an organization as this, though started and maintained with a friendly co-operation from white friends, is intended to prove to the world that the colored people themselves can manage war relief in an efficient, honest and dignified way and so bring honor to their race. Every organization like this Circle for Negro War Relief is doing its part in bringing about the right solution for the great problem which the Chairman has spoken of this evening.

"I do not for one moment want to be understood as excusing the white man from his full responsibility for anything that he has done to keep the black man down; but I do wish to say, with all the emphasis and all the earnestness at my command, that the greatest work the colored man can do to help his race upward is by, in his own person and through co-operation with his fellows, showing the dignity of service by the colored man and colored woman f or all our people.

"Let me illustrate just what I mean when I say the advisability of white co-operation and the occasional advisability of doing without white co-operation. Had I been permitted to raise troops to go on the other side, I should have asked permission to raise two colored regiments. It is perfectly possible, of course, that there is more than one colored man in the country fit for the extraordinarily difficult task of commanding one such colored regiment, which would contain nothing but colored officers. But it happens that I only knew of one and that was Colonel Charles Young. I had intended to offer him the colonelship of one regiment, telling him I expected him to choose only colored officers, and that while I was sure he would understand the extreme difficulty and extreme responsibility of his task, I intended to try to impress it upon him still more; to tell him that under those conditions I put a heavier responsibility upon him than upon any other colored man in the country, and that he was to be given an absolutely free hand in choosing his officers, and that on the other hand he would have to treat them absolutely mercilessly, if they didn't come right up to the highest level.

"On the other hand, with the other colored regiment, I should have had a colonel and a Lieutenant-colonel and three majors who would have been white men. One of them, Hamilton Fish, is over there now. One went over and was offered permission to form another regiment. He said no, he would stay with his sunburned Yankees. He stayed accordingly.

"Mr. Cobb has spoken to you as an eyewitness of what has been done by the colored troops across the seas. I am well prepared to believe it. In the very small war in which I served, which was a kind of a pink tea affair, I had a division, small dismounted cavalry division, ---where in addition to my own regiment we had three white regular regiments and two colored regiments; and when we had gotten through the campaign my own men, who were probably two-thirds Southerners and Southwesterners, used to say, 'The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry are good enough to drink out of our canteens.'

"And terrible though this war has been, I think it has been also fraught with the greatest good for our national soul. We went to war, as Mr. Cobb has said, to maintain our own national self-respect. And, friends, it would have been something awful if we hadn't gone in. Materially, because the fight was so even that I don't think it is boasting, I think it is a plain statement of fact, Mr. Cobb, that our going in turned the scale. Isn't that so? I think the Germans and their vassal allies would have been victorious if we hadn't gone in.

And if they had been victorious and we had stayed out, soft, flabby, wealthy, they would have eaten us without saying grace.

"Well, thank Heaven! we went in, and our men on the other side, our sons and brothers on the other side, white men and black, white soldiers and colored soldiers, have been so active that every American now can walk with his head up and look the citizen of any other country in the world straight in the eyes, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that we have played the decisive part. I am not saying this in any spirit of self-flattery. If any of you have heard me speak during the preceding four years you know that I have not addressed the American people in a vein of undiluted eulogy. But without self-flattery we can say that it was our going in that turned the scale for freedom and against the most dangerous tyranny that the world has ever seen. We acted as genuine friends of liberty in so doing.

"Now after the war, friends, I think all of us in this country, white and black alike, have also got to set all example to the rest of the world in steering a straight course equally distant from Kaiserism and Bolshevism.

"And now, friends, I want as an American to thank you, and as your fellow American to congratulate you, upon the honor won and the service rendered by the colored troops on the other side; by the men such as the soldier Needham Roberts we have with us tonight who won the Cross of War, the greatest War Cross for gallantry in action; for the many others like him who acted with equal gallantry and who for one reason or another never attracted the attention of their superiors and, well though they did, did not receive the outward and visible token to prove what they had done. I want to congratulate you on what all those men have done. I want to congratulate you on what the colored nurses at home have done and have been ready to do, and to express my very sincere regret that some way was not found to put them on the other side at the front. I congratulate you upon it in the name of our country and above all in the name of the colored people of our country. For in the end services of this kind have a cumulative effect in winning the confidence of your fellows of another color.

"And I hope---and I wish to use a stronger expression than 'hope'; I expect---and I am going to do whatever small amount I can do, to bring about the realization of the expectation, I expect, that as a result of this great war, intended to secure a greater justice internationally among the people of mankind, we shall apply at home the lessons that we have been learning and helping teach abroad; that we shall work sanely, not foolishly, but resolutely, toward securing a juster and fairer treatment in this country of colored people, basing that treatment upon the only safe rule to be followed in American life, of treating each individual accordingly as his conduct or her conduct requires you to treat them.

"I don't ask for any man that he shall because of his race be given any privilege. All I ask is that in his ordinary civil rights, in his right to work, to enjoy life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that as regards those rights he be given the same treatment that we would give him if he was of another color.

Now, friends, both the white man and the, black man in moments of exultation are apt to think that the millennium is pretty near; that the sweet chariot has swung so low that everybody can get upon it. I don't think that my colored fellow-citizens are a bit worse than my white fellow-citizens as regards that particular aspiration. And I am sure you do not envy me the ungrateful task of warning both that they must not expect too much. They must have their eyes on the stars but their feet on the ground. I have to warn my white fellow-citizens about that when they say: 'Well, now, at the end of this war, we are going to have universal peace. Everybody loves everybody else.' I want you to remember that the strongest exponents of international love in public life today are Lenine and Trotsky.

"I will do everything I can to aid, to help to bring about, to bring nearer the day when justice and what in a humble way may be called the square deal will be given. And yet I want to warn you that that is only going to come gradually; that there will be very much injustice, injustice that must not over-much disappoint you and it must not cow you and above all it must not make you feel sullen and hopeless.

"And one thing I want to say, not to you here but to the colored men who live where the bulk of the colored men do, in the South, and that is always to remember the lesson which I learned from Booker Washington: that in the long run, in the long run, the white man who can give most help to the colored man is the white man who lives next to him. And in consequence I always felt it my official duty to work so that I could command the assistance and respect of the bulk of the white men who are decent and square, in what I tried to do for the colored man who is decent and square.

"To each side I preach the doctrine of thinking more of his duties than of his rights. I don't mean that you shan't think of your rights. I want you to do it. But it is awfully easy, if you begin to dwell all the time on your rights, to find that you suffer from an ingrowing sense of your own perfections and wrongs and that you forget what you owe to anyone else.

"I congratulate all colored men and women and all their white fellow-Americans upon the gallantry and efficiency with which the colored men have behaved at the front, and the efficiency and wish to render service which have been shown by both the colored men and the colored women behind them in this country."

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

This article was obtained from:
http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/comment/Scott/Spreface.htm#D