Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography — Ch 02-The Vigor of Life, pt 3

While in the White House I always tried to get a couple of hours' exercise in the afternoons--sometimes tennis, more often riding, or else a rough cross-country walk, perhaps down Rock Creek, which was then as wild as a stream in the White Mountains, or on the Virginia side along the Potomac.

My companions at tennis or on these rides and walks we gradually grew to style the Tennis Cabinet; and then we extended the term to take in many of my old-time Western friends such as Ben Daniels, Seth Bullock, Luther Kelly, and others who had taken part with me in more serious outdoor adventures than walking and riding for pleasure.

Most of the men who were oftenest with me on these trips--men like Major-General Leonard Wood; or Major-General Thomas Henry Barry; or Presley Marion Rixey, Surgeon-General of the Navy; or Robert Bacon, who was afterwards Secretary of State; or James Garfield, who was Secretary of the Interior; or Gifford Pinchot, who was chief of the Forest Service--were better men physically than I was; but I could ride and walk well enough for us all thoroughly to enjoy it.

Often, especially in the winters and early springs, we would arrange for a point to point walk, not turning aside for anything--for instance, swimming Rock Creek or even the Potomac if it came in our way.

Of course under such circumstances we had to arrange that our return to Washington should be when it was dark, so that our appearance might scandalize no one.

On several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the early spring when the ice was floating thick upon it.

If we swam the Potomac, we usually took off our clothes.

I remember one such occasion when the French Ambassador, Jusserand, who was a member of the Tennis Cabinet, was along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, somebody said, "Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven't taken off your gloves," to which he promptly responded, "I think I will leave them on; we might meet ladies!"

We liked Rock Creek for these walks because we could do so much scrambling and climbing along the cliffs; there was almost as much climbing when we walked down the Potomac to Washington from the Virginia end of the Chain Bridge.

I would occasionally take some big-game friend from abroad, Selous or St. George Littledale or Captain Radclyffe or Paul Niedicke, on these walks.

Once I invited an entire class of officers who were attending lectures at the War College to come on one of these walks; I chose a route which gave us the hardest climbing along the rocks and the deepest crossings of the creek; and my army friends enjoyed it hugely--being the right sort, to a man.

On March 1, 1909, three days before leaving the Presidency, various members of the Tennis Cabinet lunched with me at the White House.

"Tennis Cabinet" was an elastic term, and of course many who ought to have been at the lunch were, for one reason or another, away from Washington; but, to make up for this, a goodly number of out-of-town honorary members, so to speak, were present--for instance, Seth Bullock;

Luther Kelly, better known as Yellowstone Kelly in the days when he was an army scout against the Sioux; and Abernathy, the wolf-hunter.

At the end of the lunch Seth Bullock suddenly reached forward, swept aside a mass of flowers which made a centerpiece on the table, and revealed a bronze cougar by Proctor, which was a parting gift to me.

The lunch party and the cougar were then photographed on the lawn.

Some of the younger officers who were my constant companions on these walks and rides pointed out to me the condition of utter physical worthlessness into which certain of the elder ones had permitted themselves to lapse, and the very bad effect this would certainly have if ever the army were called into service.

I then looked into the matter for myself, and was really shocked at what I found.

Many of the older officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they belonged to the military arm of the Government.

A cavalry colonel proved unable to keep his horse at a smart trot for even half a mile, when I visited his post; a Major-General proved afraid even to let his horse canter, when he went on a ride with us; and certain otherwise good men proved as unable to walk as if they had been sedentary brokers.

I consulted with men like Major-Generals Wood and Bell, who were themselves of fine physique, with bodies fit to meet any demand.

It was late in my administration; and we deemed it best only to make a beginning--experience teaches the most inveterate reformer how hard it is to get a totally non-military nation to accept seriously any military improvement.

Accordingly, I merely issued directions that each officer should prove his ability to walk fifty miles, or ride one hundred, in three days.

This is, of course, a test which many a healthy middle-aged woman would be able to meet.

But a large portion of the press adopted the view that it was a bit of capricious tyranny on my part; and a considerable number of elderly officers, with desk rather than field experience, intrigued with their friends in Congress to have the order annulled.

So one day I took a ride of a little over one hundred miles myself, in company with Surgeon-General Rixey and two other officers.

The Virginia roads were frozen and in ruts, and in the afternoon and evening there was a storm of snow and sleet; and when it had been thus experimentally shown, under unfavorable conditions, how easy it was to do in one day the task for which the army officers were allowed three days, all open objection ceased.

But some bureau chiefs still did as much underhanded work against the order as they dared, and it was often difficult to reach them.

In the Marine Corps Captain Leonard, who had lost an arm at Tientsin, with two of his lieutenants did the fifty miles in one day;

for they were vigorous young men, who laughed at the idea of treating a fifty-mile walk as over-fatiguing.

Well, the Navy Department officials rebuked them, and made them take the walk over again in three days, on the ground that taking it in one day did not comply with the regulations!

This seems unbelievable; but Leonard assures me it is true.

He did not inform me at the time, being afraid to "get in wrong" with his permanent superiors.

If I had known of the order, short work would have been made of the bureaucrat who issued it.

[*] [*] One of our best naval officers sent me the following letter, after the above had appeared:-- "I note in your Autobiography now being published in the Outlook that you refer to the reasons which led you to establish a physical test for the Army, and to the action you took (your 100-mile ride) to prevent the test being abolished.

Doubtless you did not know the following facts: "1. The first annual navy test of 50 miles in three days was subsequently reduced to 25 miles in two days in each quarter.

"2. This was further reduced to 10 miles each month, which is the present 'test,' and there is danger lest even this utterly insufficient test be abolished.

"I enclose a copy of a recent letter to the Surgeon General which will show our present deplorable condition and the worse condition into which we are slipping back.

"The original test of 50 miles in three days did a very great deal of good.

It decreased by thousands of dollars the money expended on street car fare, and by a much greater sum the amount expended over the bar.

It eliminated a number of the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them to learn the care of their feet and that of their men; and it improved their general health and was rapidly forming a taste for physical exercise."

The enclosed letter ran in part as follows:-- "I am returning under separate cover 'The Soldiers' Foot and the Military Shoe.'

"The book contains knowledge of a practical character that is valuable for the men who HAVE TO MARCH, WHO HAVE SUFFERED FROM FOOT TROUBLES, AND WHO MUST AVOID THEM IN ORDER TO

ATTAIN EFFICIENCY.

"The words in capitals express, according to my idea, the gist of the whole matter as regards military men.

"The army officer whose men break down on test gets a black eye.

The one whose men show efficiency in this respect gets a bouquet.

"To such men the book is invaluable.

There is no danger that they will neglect it.

They will actually learn it, for exactly the same reasons that our fellows learn the gunnery instructions--or did learn them before they were withdrawn and burned.

"B U T, I have not been able to interest a single naval officer in this fine book.

They will look at the pictures and say it is a good book, but they won't read it.

The marine officers, on the contrary, are very much interested, because they have to teach their men to care for their feet and they must know how to care for their own.

But the naval officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do not have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice marches, and they themselves do not have to do a stunt that will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency in the matter.

"For example, some time ago I was talking with some chaps about shoes--the necessity of having them long enough and wide enough, etc. , and one of them said: 'I have no use for such shoes, as I never walk except when I have to, and any old shoes do for the 10-mile-a-month stunt,' so there you are!

"When the first test was ordered, Edmonston (Washington shoe man) told me that he sold more real walking shoes to naval officers in three months than he had in the three preceding years.

I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in practice with a pair of heavy walking shoes that were too small and was laid up for three days--could not come to the office.

I know plenty of men who after the first test had to borrow shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to their normal size.

"This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts (of men who had never taken any exercise), but it was excellent as a matter of instruction and training of handling feet--and in an emergency (such as we soon may have in Mexico) sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't stand.

"However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered the same purpose, for the reason that 12. 5 miles will produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore feet and lame muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice marching.

"It was the necessity of doing 12. 5 MORE MILES ON THE SECOND

DAY WITH SORE FEET AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and take notice--made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid street cars, buy proper shoes, show some curiosity about sox and the care of the feet in general.

"All this passed out with the introduction of the last test of 10 miles a month.

As one fellow said: 'I can do that in sneakers'--but he couldn't if the second day involved a tramp on the sore feet.

"The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice walking a bit and give some attention to proper footgear, now they don't have to, and the natural consequence is that they don't do it.

"There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than is necessary to reach a street car that will carry them from their residences to their offices.

Some who have motors do not do so much.

They take no exercise.

They take cocktails instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something should be done to remedy this state of affairs.

"It would not be necessary if service opinion required officers so to order their lives that it would be common knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid the danger of being selected out.

"We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process of formation.

On the contrary, it is known that the 'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the Secretary to abandon all physical tests.

He, a civilian, was wise enough not to take the advice.

"I would like to see a test established that would oblige officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without inconvenience.

For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to walk on 'next day' feet.

As for the proposed test of so many hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous belly muscles are delighted.

They are looking into the question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they take out of doors.

"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that sort of thing would be established."

These tests were kept during my administration.

They were afterwards abandoned; not through perversity or viciousness; but through weakness, and inability to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the emergencies of war are to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive.

In no country with an army worth calling such is there a chance for a man physically unfit to stay in the service.

Our countrymen should understand that every army officer--and every marine officer--ought to be summarily removed from the service unless he is able to undergo far severer tests than those which, as a beginning, I imposed.

To follow any other course is to put a premium on slothful incapacity, and to do the gravest wrong to the Nation.

I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could mention scores of others, because out of them grew my philosophy--perhaps they were in part caused by my philosophy--of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.

The dweller in cities has less chance than the dweller in the country to keep his body sound and vigorous.

But he can do so, if only he will take the trouble.

Any young lawyer, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant can keep himself in good condition if he tries.

Some of the best men who have ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regiment were former clerks or floor-walkers.

Why, Johnny Hayes, the Marathon victor, and at one time world champion, one of my valued friends and supporters, was a floor-walker in Bloomingdale's big department store.

Surely with Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a city can hope to make his body all that a vigorous man's body should be.

I once made a speech to which I gave the title "The Strenuous Life."

Afterwards I published a volume of essays with this for a title.

There were two translations of it which always especially pleased me.

One was by a Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had carried the essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and later translated it for the benefit of his countrymen.

The other was by an Italian lady, whose brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round with him.

In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as _Vigor di Vita_.

I thought this translation a great improvement on the original, and have always wished that I had myself used "The Vigor of Life" as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of the heading I actually did use.

There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed in the achievement of success.

There is, first, the success either in big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to do.

This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be on a very big scale or on a small scale.

The quality which the man possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or Nelson at Trafalgar.

No amount of training of body or mind would enable any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats.

Of course the proper performance of each implies much previous study or training, but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the ordinary man does not have.

This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no less than in degree from his fellows.

But much the commoner type of success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has given that quality.

This kind of success is open to a large number of persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it.

It is the kind of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind, who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does possess.

It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us.

Yet some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first class.

To the average man it is probably more useful to study this second type of success than to study the first.

From the study of the first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm.

From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win a similar success himself.

I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won have been of the second type.

I never won anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in advance.

Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young man at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess.

I had to train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit.

When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books which always impressed me.

In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness.

He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened.

After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it.

(I am using my own language, not Marryat's. ) This was the theory upon which I went.

There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.

Most men can have the same experience if they choose.

They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance to meet.

After a while the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares.

It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy and respect the men who are naturally fearless.

But it is a good thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, if he chooses to.

Of course he must not let his desire take the form merely of a day-dream.

Let him dream about being a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice.

He can do his part honorably and well provided only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it, not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.

CHAPTER III