Study & Research America 1900-1909: World Events

The New Century.

On 10 April 1899, on the eve of a new century and enthused by his personal triumph with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, a young Theodore Roosevelt called on his fellow Americans to meet the challenges of the dawning age. "The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations," he said. "If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world." While many of Roosevelt's contemporaries worried less about the struggle for world power than about the struggle for daily survival, they would embrace the bold dynamism he brought to the office of the...
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