2018.7.28
"I Like Big Things"
Jul 03, 2012
In July of 1886, a young Theodore Roosevelt gave his first major public speech right here in Dickinson, North Dakota. Roosevelt had been asked to give the Independence Day speech by Dr. Victor Stickney, the man who’d patched up Roosevelt’s feet following the boat thieves’ episode. Dickinson was celebrating the holiday in a big way; a witness noted that everyone was so enthusiastic about the parade that the bystanders kept joining it, leaving no one watching it!
Roosevelt was the third speaker of the celebration and with his characteristic high voice, he delivered a speech which identified him with his fellow listeners and also hinted at the big things to come for this young man from New York who called Dakota Territory home:
…Like all Americans, I like big things; big parades, big forests and mountains, big wheat fields, railroads – and herds of cattle too; big factories, steamboats and everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their property corrupted their virtue. It is more important that we should show ourselves honest, brave, truthful, and intelligent than that we should own all the railways and grain elevators in the world…I am myself at heart as much a westerner as an easterner; I am proud indeed to be considered one of yourselves, and I address you in this rather solemn strain today only because of my pride in you and because your welfare, moral as well as material, is so near my heart.
You can read the entirety of Roosevelt’s 1886 speech
here. You can also see pictures of the statue commemorating this event
here and
here, as we dedicated "Young TR Enters the Arena" during last year’s Symposium.
~ Theodore Roosevelt Center
2016
台灣史上大小事／溫紳專欄
「四健會」在農民節這天正式推廣(1952 年2月4日)
著有膾灸人口《西潮》作者蔣夢麟，他來台便獲聘為美援機構「農復會」主委，當時的「農復會」人才濟濟，例如:「四大公子」沈君山之父沈宗翰、或是政界大老蔣彥士，乃至於李登輝等，都在六零年代發跡以前是服務於該單位，而主委蔣夢麟除掌農業政策外，還兼任「石門水庫興建委員會」主委，馬英九母親秦厚修也在那時應聘轉至石門服務，使得原本就讀台北女師附小的他，轉學到桃園國小一陣子，當時之馬英九母親上司即為蔣夢麟!由於「四健會」之推廣及農復會兼「石門水庫興建委員會」主等表現傑出，使他獲選菲律賓第一屆的麥格塞塞獎得主殊榮。
胡適的留學日記中，當然提過美國總統Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)。
中文界常稱Theodore Roosevelt為老羅斯福總統，而胡適任中國駐美大使時的 F. D. R. 為小羅斯福總統。他們當然不是"父子"，這只是中文的方便稱呼法。
Theodore Roosevelt 有許多名言。
譬如說，蔣夢麟先生在1959.3.20 致劉真(【中國文哲研究通訊】第2卷第1期，1992.3。p.160)：......行遠自邇，故農復會多數計畫係從小規模實驗開始，成效既著，步驟已定，擴大推廣，自容易矣。......余最佩服老羅斯福總統的下面幾句話：
Theodore Roosevelt was irresistible in his charisma and leadership, and had a solid grounding in reality. He told his son, Kermit:
“All my life in politics I have striven to make the necessary working compromise between the ideal and the practical. If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful he is. If, on the other hand, he does not work practically, with the knowledge that he is in the world of actual men and must get results, he becomes a worthless head-in-the-air creature, a nuisance to himself and everybody else” (“Theodore Roosevelt; his life reviewed in pictures”, 1958).
Natural History Museum, London
Former US President Theodore Roosevelt died
#onthisday in 1919. 'Teddy' (centre) is seen here visiting the Museum in June 1914 with trustee Arthur Lee and Lady Lee, during a day of sightseeing in London.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open. 1916.
FOREWORD
THE man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the steaming jungles of the tropics, or on the deserts of sand or of snow. He must long greatly for the lonely winds that blow across the wilderness, and for sunrise and sunset over the rim of the empty world. His heart must thrill for the saddle and not for the hearthstone. He must be helmsman and chief, the cragsman, the rifleman, the boat steerer. He must be the wielder of axe and of paddle, the rider of fiery horses, the master of the craft that leaps through white water. His eye must be true and quick, his hand steady and strong. His heart must never fail nor his head grow bewildered, whether he face brute and human foes, or the frowning strength of hostile nature, or the awful fear that grips those who are lost in trackless lands. Wearing toil and hardship shall be his; thirst and famine he shall face, and burning fever. Death shall come to greet him with poison-fang or poison-arrow, in shape of charging beast or of scaly things that lurk in lake and river; it shall lie in wait for him among untrodden forests, in the swirl of wild waters, and in the blast of snow blizzard or thunder-shattered hurricane.
1
Not many men can with wisdom make such a life their permanent and serious occupation. Those whose tasks lie along other lines can lead it for but a few years. For them it must normally come in the hardy vigor of their youth, before the beat of the blood has grown sluggish in their veins.
2
Nevertheless, older men also can find joy in such a life, although in their case it must be led only on the outskirts of adventure, and although the part they play therein must be that of the onlooker rather than that of the doer. The feats of prowess are for others. It is for other men to face the peril of unknown lands, to master unbroken horses, and to hold their own among their fellows with bodies of supple strength. But much, very much, remains for the man who has "warmed both hands before the fire of life," and who, although he loves the great cities, loves even more the fenceless grassland, and the forest-clad hills.
3
The grandest scenery of the world is his to look at if he chooses; and he can witness the strange ways of tribes who have survived into an alien age from an immemorial past, tribes whose priests dance in honor of the serpent and worship the spirits of the wolf and the bear. Far and wide, all the continents are open to him as they never were to any of his forefathers; the Nile and the Paraguay are easy of access, and the borderland between savagery and civilization; and the veil of the past has been lifted so that he can dimly see how, in time immeasurably remote, his ancestors--no less remote--led furtive lives among uncouth and terrible beasts, whose kind has perished utterly from the face of the earth. He will take books with him as he journeys; for the keenest enjoyment of the wilderness is reserved for him who enjoys also the garnered wisdom of the present and the past. He will take pleasure in the companionship of the men of the open; in South America, the daring and reckless horsemen who guard the herds of the grazing country, and the dark-skinned paddlers who guide their clumsy dugouts down the dangerous equatorial rivers; the white and red and half-breed hunters of the Rockies, and of the Canadian woodland; and in Africa the faithful black gunbearers who have stood steadily at his elbow when the lion came on with coughing grunts, or when the huge mass of the charging elephant burst asunder the vine-tangled branches.
4
The beauty and charm of the wilderness are his for the asking, for the edges of the wilderness lie close beside the beaten roads of present travel. He can see the red splendor of desert sunsets, and the unearthly glory of the afterglow on the battlements of desolate mountains. In sapphire gulfs of ocean he can visit islets, above which the wings of myriads of sea-fowl make a kind of shifting cuneiform script in the air. He can ride along the brink of the stupendous cliff-walled canyon, where eagles soar below him, and cougars make their lairs on the ledges and harry the big-horned sheep. He can journey through the northern forests, the home of the giant moose, the forests of fragrant and murmuring life in summer, the iron-bound and melancholy forests of winter.
5
The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL,January 1, 1916
On Jan. 6, 1919, the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., at age 60.
Theodore Roosevelt 老羅斯福總統在 胡適留學日記 多次出現 是個大人物
胡適日记全集, 第 1 卷 1906-1914
Theodore Roosevelt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and ...
'Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream'
By GREGG JONES
Reviewed by CANDICE MILLARD
At the turn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt set out to transform the United States into a major world power.
