It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
The fear of failure is the main thing that stops people from doing what they want. As everyone knows, it has the power to paralyze both our body and mind and it is hard to break through this feeling. Theodore Roosevelt was one of those men who had such a power and, with his speech, he tried to convince people that they also can do that because they are the best representatives of their area, typical Americans who can overcome all difficulties on their way and do that with honor. Only the constant struggle with oneself, he believes, and constant efforts can help to achieve one’s goal and this recipe of success is the best one.
A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose.
The main sense of human life, the reason why we exist on this planet is to work for the good of others, Roosevelt believes. So, it is a crime to waste your time on laziness and paralysis, because you have to work for the good of your country, and only then you will be happy and have everything you need. And he is right, only when one works hard to make others happy, it makes him happy as well. And just after man had done so much for the good of other people and his county, just then he has the right “to be freed from the necessity of work”. So, if you want to rest good, you have to work hard.
All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind.
Theodore Roosevelt pays much attention to those great men of America, who made this county better, greater and stronger. He wants the whole nation to appreciate their contribution: “our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant.” these people made America the great and strong country it is now and it would be ungrateful and unfair not to mention them. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier duties—duties to the nation and duties to the race.
While a nation's first duty is within its own borders, it is not thereby absolved from facing its duties in the world as a whole; and if it refuses to do so, it merely forfeits its right to struggle for a place among the peoples that shape the destiny of mankind.
The main characteristic of today's geopolitical realm is its tendency towards globalization. People from different countries and continents become closer to each other, countries help each other to solve conflicts and, under such conditions, people have to get used to new realities of life. Cosmopolitanism is becoming the essential part on the international arena. Roosevelt emphasizes that, undoubtedly, a nation’s first duty is it’s own country, but it is not thereby excused from doing his duty for the world. “But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world”. So, countries not just should, they have to take part in realizations of each others’ policy in order to make this world better and more peaceful.
