Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| ill-disciplined soldiers. But they hated to pay their bills; they would never make provision for any sustained effort, nor carry through any farreaching policy; they were impatient of restraint; and they wrangled perpetually among themselves. As a result, their parsimony, greed, and selfishness, and their jealousy of one another, caused them at times—in spite of some heroic actions—to cut but sorry figures in the struggles with France. They swindled and overcharged the very troops sent out to protect them; and their legislatures could with difficulty be persuaded to vote sufficient money to prosecute the wars with proper vigor. New York was vitally interested in seeing Canada cowed and the French intrigues among the Indians definitely stopped; yet the New York Assembly insisted that the whole expense of the conquest of Canada ought to come on the mother country. New England looked on unmoved when the French merely raided on New York; and New York sold arms to the savages who attacked New England. All the provinces were dependent on the British fleets for the defense of their open seaboard and widely scattered trade; but doubtless feeling that both trade and seaboard were menaced by foes that were primarily foes to Britain, not to America, they evinced no inclination to do their share in paying for the navy to which they trusted. On the other hand, it must be said that |