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diff --git a/4252.txt b/4252.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cdfa043 --- /dev/null +++ b/4252.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4063 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Lester Pearson + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Theodore Roosevelt + + +Author: Edmund Lester Pearson + + + +Release Date: December 19, 2001 [eBook #4252] +This revision first posted March 12, 2014 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODORE ROOSEVELT*** + + +E-text prepared by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks, +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +and revised by Tom Cosmas + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 4252-h.htm or 4252-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4252/4252-h/4252-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4252/4252-h.zip) + + + + + +True Stories of Great Americans + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + + * * * * * * + + OTHER BOOKS BY MR. PEARSON + + (Published by the Macmillan Company) + The Believing Years + The Voyage of the Hoppergrass + The Secret Book + + (Published Elsewhere) + The Old Liberians Almanack + The Library and the Librarian + The Librarian at Play + + * * * * * * + + +[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. + +MR. ROOSEVELT AT SAGAMORE HILL.] + + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + +by + +EDMUND LESTER PEARSON + + + + + + + +New York +The Macmillan Company +1920 + +All rights reserved + +Copyright, 1920, by the Macmillan Company + +Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1920. + + + + +ACKNOWLEDGMENT + + +The author wishes to express his gratitude for permission to refer to +the works which have been consulted in writing this book. + +First and foremost, to Mr. William Roscoe Thayer, for "Theodore +Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography." (Houghton, Mifflin Co.) + +To Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for these writings of Theodore +Roosevelt: "African Game Trails"; "Theodore Roosevelt: An +Autobiography"; "The Rough Riders"; "Through the Brazilian Wilderness"; +"History as Literature." And for "Theodore Roosevelt and His Time" by +Joseph Bucklin Bishop, in _Scribner's Magazine_, for December, 1919. + +To Messrs. Harper and Brothers and to Mr. Hermann Hagedorn for "The +Boys' Life of Theodore Roosevelt" by Hermann Hagedorn. + +To The Century Company for these books by Theodore Roosevelt: "The +Strenuous Life"; "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail." + +To Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons for these books by Theodore Roosevelt: +"American Ideals"; "The Wilderness Hunter." + +To Mr. Charles G. Washburn for his "Theodore Roosevelt; the Logic of +His Career." (Houghton, Mifflin Co.) + +To Messrs Doubleday, Page & Co. and to Mr. Lawrence F. Abbott for +"Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt" by Lawrence F. Abbott. + + + + +CONTENTS + + I. The Boy Who Collected Animals 1 + II. In College 10 + III. In Politics 18 + IV. "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail" 28 + V. Two Defeats 37 + VI. Fighting Office-Seekers 44 + VII. Police Commissioner 50 +VIII. The Rough Rider 58 + IX. Governor of New York 70 + X. President of the United States 81 + XI. The Lion Hunter 99 + XII. Europe and America 110 +XIII. The Bull Moose 120 + XIV. The Explorer 131 + XV. The Man 137 + XVI. The Great American 149 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + +Mr. Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill _Frontispiece_ + + FACING + PAGE + +Theodore Roosevelt About 10 Years Old 33 + +Mr. Roosevelt as a Hunter 48 + +President Roosevelt Speaking in Atlanta 81 + +The Rough Rider (Cartoon) 96 + +President Roosevelt in the Saddle 113 + +President and Mrs. Roosevelt and Children 128 + +President Theodore Roosevelt 144 + + + + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE BOY WHO COLLECTED ANIMALS + + +If you had been in New York in 1917 or 1918 you might have seen, +walking quickly from a shop or a hotel to an automobile, a thick-set +but active and muscular man, wearing a soft black hat and a cape +overcoat. Probably there would have been a group of people waiting +on the sidewalk, as he came out, for this was Theodore Roosevelt, +Ex-President of the United States, and there were more Americans who +cared to know what he was doing, and to hear what he was saying, than +cared about any other living man. + +Although he was then a private citizen, holding no office, he was a +leader of his country, which was engaged in the Great War. Americans +were being called upon,--the younger men to risk their lives in battle, +and the older people to suffer and support their losses. Theodore +Roosevelt had always said that it was a good citizen's duty cheerfully +to do one or the other of these things in the hour of danger. They knew +that he had done both; and so it was to him that men turned, as to a +strong and brave man, whose words were simple and noble, and what was +more important, whose actions squared with his words. + +He had come back, not long before, from one of his hunting trips, and +it was said that fever was still troubling him. The people wish to +know if this is true, and one of the men on the sidewalk, a reporter, +probably, steps forward and asks him a question. + +He stops for a moment, and turns toward the man. Not much thought of +sickness is left in the mind of any one there! His face is clear, his +cheeks ruddy,--the face of a man who lives outdoors; and his eyes, +light-blue in color, look straight at the questioner. One of his eyes, +it had been said, was dimmed or blinded by a blow while boxing, years +before, when he was President. But no one can see anything the matter +with the eyes; they twinkle in a smile, and as his face puckers up, and +his white teeth show for an instant under his light-brown moustache, +the group of people all smile, too. + +His face is so familiar to them,--it is as if they were looking at +somebody they knew as well as their own brothers. The newspaper +cartoonists had shown it to them for years. No one else smiled like +that; no one else spoke so vigorously. + +"Never felt better in my life!" he answers, bending toward the man. + +"But thank you for asking!" and there is a pleasant and friendly +note in his voice, which perhaps surprises some of those who, though +they had heard much of his emphatic speech, knew but little of his +gentleness. He waves his hand, steps into the automobile, and is gone. + + * * * * * + +Theodore Roosevelt was born October 27, 1858, in New York City, at 28 +East Twentieth Street. The first Roosevelt of his family to come to +this country was Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt who came from Holland +to what is now New York about 1644. He was a "settler," and that, says +Theodore Roosevelt, remembering the silly claims many people like to +make about their long-dead ancestors, is a fine name for an immigrant, +who came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth +century instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. +From that time, for the next seven generations, from father to son, +every one of the family was born on Manhattan Island. As New Yorkers +say, they were "straight New York." + +Immigrant or settler, or whatever Klaes van Roosevelt may have been, +his children and grandchildren had in them more than ordinary ability. +They were not content to stand still, but made themselves useful and +prosperous, so that the name was known and honored in the city and +State even before the birth of the son who was to make it illustrious +throughout the world. + +"My father," says the President, "was the best man I ever knew.... He +never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom +I was ever really afraid." The elder Roosevelt was a merchant, a man +courageous and gentle, fond of horses and country life. He worked hard +at his business, for the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, and +for the poor and unfortunate of his own city, so hard that he wore +himself out and died at forty-six. The President's mother was Martha +Bulloch from Georgia. Two of her brothers were in the Confederate +Navy, so while the Civil War was going on, and Theodore Roosevelt was +a little boy, his family like so many other American families, had in +it those who wished well for the South, and those who hoped for the +success of the North. + +Many American Presidents have been poor when they were boys. They have +had to work hard, to make a way for themselves, and the same strength +and courage with which they did this has later helped to bring them +into the White House. It has seemed as if there were magic connected +with being born in a log-cabin, or having to work hard to get an +education, so that only the boys who did this could become famous. Of +course it is what is in the boy himself, together with the effect his +life has had on him, that counts. The boy whose family is rich, or even +well-off, has something to struggle against, too. For with these it is +easy to slip into comfortable and lazy ways, to do nothing because one +does not have to do anything. Some men never rise because their early +life was too hard; some, because it was too easy. + +Roosevelt might have had the latter fate. His father would not have +allowed idleness; he did not care about money-making, especially, but +he did believe in work, for himself and his children. When the father +died, and his son was left with enough money to have lived all his days +without doing a stroke of work, he already had too much grit to think +of such a life. And he had too much good sense to start out to become a +millionaire and to pile million upon useless million. + +He had something else to fight against: bad health. He writes: "I was +a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, and frequently had +to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe. One +of my memories is of my father walking up and down the room with me in +his arms at night, when I was a very small person, and of sitting up +in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me. I went +very little to school. I never went to the public schools, as my own +children later did."[1] For a few months he went to a private school, +his aunt taught him at home, and he had tutors there. + +[1] "Autobiography." + +When he was ten his parents took him with his brother and sisters for +a trip to Europe, where he had a bad time indeed. Like most boys, he +cared nothing for picture-galleries and the famous sights, he was +homesick and he wished to get back to what really pleased him,--that +is, collecting animals. He was already interested in that. And only +when he could go to a museum and see, as he wrote in his diary, +"birds and skeletons" or go "for a spree" with his sister and buy two +shillings worth of rock-candy, did he enjoy himself in Europe. + +His sister knew what he thought about the things one is supposed to see +in Europe, and in her diary set it down: + +"I am so glad Mama has let me stay in the butiful hotel parlor while +the poor boys have been dragged off to the orful picture galary." + +These experiences are funny enough now, but probably they were tragic +to him at the time. In a church in Venice there were at least some +moments of happiness. He writes of his sister "Conie": + +"Conie jumped over tombstones spanked me banged Ellies head &c." + +But in Paris the trip becomes too monotonous; and his diary says: + +November 26. "I stayed in the house all day, varying the day with +brushing my hair, washing my hands and thinking in fact having a verry +dull time." + +November 27. "I did the same thing as yesterday." + +They all came back to New York and again he could study and amuse +himself with natural history. This study was one of his great pleasures +throughout life and when he was a man he knew more about the animals of +America than anybody except the great scholars who devoted their lives +to this alone. + +It started with a dead seal that he happened to find laid out on a slab +in a market in Broadway. He was still a small boy, but when he heard +that the seal had been killed in the harbor, it reminded him of the +adventures he had been reading about in Mayne Reid's books. He went +back to the market, day after day, to look at the seal, to try to +measure it and to plan to own it and preserve it. He did get the skull, +and with two cousins started what they gave the grand name of the +"Roosevelt Museum of Natural History"! + +Catching and keeping specimens for this museum gave him more fun than +it gave to some of his family. His mother was not well pleased when she +found some young white mice in the ice-chest, where the founder of the +"Roosevelt Museum" was keeping them safe. She quickly threw them away, +and her son, in his indignation, said that what hurt him about it was +"the loss to Science! The loss to Science!" Once, he and his cousin had +been out in the country, collecting specimens until all their pockets +were full. Then two toads came along,--such novel and attractive toads +that room had to be made for them. Each boy put one toad under his hat, +and started down the road. But a lady, a neighbor, met them, and when +the boys took off their hats, the toads did what any sensible toads +would do, hopped down and away, and so were never added to the Museum. + +The Roosevelt family visited Europe again in 1873, and afterwards went +to Algiers and Egypt, where the air, it was hoped, would help the boy's +asthma. This was a pleasanter trip for him, and the birds which he saw +on the Nile interested him greatly. + +His studies of natural history had been carried on in the summers at +Oyster Bay on Long Island, on the Hudson and in the Adirondacks. They +soon became more than a boy's fun, and some of the observations made +when he was fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years old have found their +way into learned books. When the State of New York published, many +years afterwards, two big volumes about the birds of the state, some of +these early writings by Roosevelt were quoted as important. A friend +has given me a four-page folder printed in 1877, about the summer birds +of the Adirondacks "by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and H. D. Minot." Part +of the observations were made in 1874 when he was sixteen. Ninety-seven +different birds are listed. + +When he was fifteen and had returned a second time from Europe, he +began to study to enter Harvard. He was ahead of most boys of his age +in science, history and geography and knew something of German and +French. But he was weak in Latin, Greek and mathematics. He loved the +out-of-doors side of natural history, and hoped he might be a scientist +like Audubon. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN COLLEGE + + +Roosevelt entered the Freshman class of Harvard University in 1876. +It is worth while to remember that this man who became as much of a +Westerner as an Easterner, who was understood and trusted by the people +of the Western States, was born on the Atlantic coast and educated at a +New England college. + +The real American, if he was born in the East, does not talk with +contempt about the West; if he is a Westerner he does not pretend that +all the good in the world is on his side of the Mississippi. Nor, +wherever he came from, does he try to keep up old quarrels between +North and South. Theodore Roosevelt was an American, and admired by +Americans everywhere. Foolish folk who talk about the "effete East," +meaning that the East is worn out and corrupt, had best remember that +Abraham Lincoln did not believe that when he sent his son to the same +college which Theodore Roosevelt's father chose for him. + +At Harvard he kept up his studies and interest in natural history. +In the house where he lived he sometimes had a large, live turtle and +two or three kinds of snakes. He went in to Boston and came back with +a basket full of live lobsters, to the consternation of the other +people in the horse-car. He held a high office in the Natural History +Society, and took honors, when he graduated, in the subject. His +father had encouraged his desire to be a professor of natural history, +reminding him, however, that he must have no hopes of being a rich +man. In the end he gave up this plan, not because it did not lead to +money, for never in his life did he work to become wealthy, but because +he disliked science as it was then taught. One of the bad things the +German universities had done to the American colleges was to make them +worship fussy detail, and so science had become a matter of microscopes +and laboratories. The field-work of the naturalist was unknown or +despised. + +He took part in four or five kinds of athletics. He seems never to +have played baseball, perhaps because of poor eyesight which made him +wear glasses. But he practiced with a rifle, rowed and boxed, ran and +wrestled. In his vacations he went hunting in Maine. Boxing was one of +his favorite forms of sport,--for two reasons. He thought a boy or a +man ought to be able to defend himself and others, and he enjoyed hard +exercise. + +It is important to know what he thought and did about self-defense +and fighting. Many people dodge this, and other difficult subjects, +when they are talking to boys. It was not Roosevelt's way to hide his +thoughts in silence because of timidity, and then call his lack of +action by some such fine name as "tact" or "discretion." When there +was good reason for speaking out he always did so. Since a boy who is +forever fighting is not only a nuisance, but usually a bully, some +older folk go to the extreme and tell boys that all fighting is wrong. + +Theodore Roosevelt did not believe it. When he was about fourteen, and +riding in a stage-coach on the way to Moosehead Lake, two other boys +in the coach began tormenting him. When he tried to fight them off, he +found himself helpless. Either of them could handle him, could hit him +and prevent him from hitting back. He decided that it was a matter of +self-respect for a boy to know how to protect himself and he learned to +box. + +Speaking to boys he said later: + +"One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good boy +should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need +arises." + +And again: + +"The very fact that the boy should be manly and able to hold his own, +that he should be ashamed to submit to bullying, without instant +retaliation, should in return, make him abhor any form of bullying, +cruelty, or brutality."[2] + +[2] These two quotations from essay called "The American Boy" in "The +Strenuous Life," pp. 162, 164 + +When he was teaching a Sunday School class in Cambridge, during his +time at college, one of his pupils came in with a black eye. It turned +out that another boy had teased and pinched the first boy's sister +during church. Afterwards there had been a fight, and the one who +tormented the little girl had been beaten, but he had given the brother +a black eye. + +"You did quite right," said Roosevelt to the brother and gave him a +dollar. + +But the deacons of the church did not approve, and Roosevelt soon went +to another church. + +Meanwhile he was learning to box. In his own story of his life he makes +fun of himself as a boxer, and says that in a boxing match he once won +"a pewter mug" worth about fifty cents. He is honest enough to say that +he was proud of it at the time, "kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear +bragged about it, for a number of years, and I only wish I knew where +it was now." + +His college friends tell a different story of him. He was never one +of the best boxers, they say, and he was at a disadvantage because of +his eyesight. But he was plucky enough for two, and he fought fair. +He entered in the lightweight class in the Harvard Gymnasium, March +22, 1879. He won the first match. When time was called he dropped his +hands, and his opponent gave him a hard blow on the face. The fellows +around the ring all shouted "Foul! Foul!" and hissed. But Roosevelt +turned toward them, calling "Hush! He didn't hear!" + +In the second match he met a man named Charlie Hanks, who was a little +taller, and had a longer reach, and so for all Roosevelt's pluck and +willingness to take punishment, Hanks won the match. + +He was a member of three or four clubs,--the Institute, the Hasty +Pudding and the Porcellian. He was one of the editors of the _Harvard +Advocate_, took part in three or four college activities, and was fond +of target shooting and dancing. It is told that he never spoke in +public, until about his third year in college, that he was shy and had +great difficulty in speaking. It was by effort that he became one of +the best orators of his day. + +Roosevelt did not like the way college debates were conducted. He said +that to make one side defend or attack a certain subject, without +regard to whether they thought it right or wrong, had a bad effect. + +"What we need," he wrote, "is to turn out of colleges young men with +ardent convictions on the side of right; not young men who can make a +good argument for either right or wrong, as their interest bids them." + +He did one thing in college which is not a matter of course with +students under twenty-two years old. He began to write a history, named +"The Naval War of 1812." It was finished and published two years after +he graduated, and in it he showed that his idea of patriotism included +telling the truth. Most American boys used to be brought up on the +story of the American frigate _Constitution_ whipping all the British +ships she met, and with the notion that the War of 1812 was nothing but +a series of brilliant victories for us. + +Theodore Roosevelt thought that Americans were not so soft that they +were afraid to hear the truth, and that it was a poor sort of American +who dared not point out to his fellow-countrymen the mistakes they had +made and the disasters which followed. It did not seem patriotic to him +to dodge the fact that lack of wisdom at Washington had let our Army +run down before the war, so that our attempts to invade Canada were +failures, and that we suffered the disgrace of having Washington itself +captured and burned by the enemy. + +There was a great deal to be proud of in what our Navy did, and in the +Army's victory in the Battle of New Orleans, and these things Roosevelt +described with the pride of every good American. But he had no use for +the old-fashioned kind of history, which pretends that all the bravery +is on one side. He did his best to get at the truth, and he knew that +the English and Canadians had fought bravely and well, and so he said +just that. Where our troops or our ships failed it was not through lack +of courage, but because they were badly led, and what was worse, since +it was so unnecessary, because the Government at Washington had lost +the battle in advance by neglecting to prepare. + +Before he was twenty-four, Roosevelt was so well-informed in the +history of this period that he was later asked to write the chapter +dealing with the War of 1812 in a history of the British Navy. + +At his graduation from Harvard he stood twenty-second in a class of +one hundred and seventy. This caused him to be elected to the Phi Beta +Kappa, the society of scholars. Before he graduated he became engaged +to be married to Miss Alice Lee of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. + +He told his friend, Mr. Thayer, what he was going to do after +graduation. + +"I am going to try to help the cause of better government in New York +City," he said. And he added: + +"I don't know exactly how." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN POLITICS + + +When he graduated from college Roosevelt was no longer in poor health. +His boxing and exercise in the gymnasium, and still more his outdoor +expeditions, and hunting trips in Maine, had made a well man of him. He +was yet to achieve strength and muscle, and his life in the West was to +give him the chance to do that. + +His father died while he was in college and he was left, not rich, but +so well off that he might have lived merely amusing himself. He might +have spent his days in playing polo, hunting and collecting specimens +of animals. What he did during his life, in adding to men's knowledge +of the habits of animals, would have gained him an honorable place in +the history of American science, if he had done nothing else. So with +his writing of books. He earned the respect of literary men, and left +a longer list of books to his credit than do most authors, and on a +greater variety of subjects. But he was to do other and still more +important work than either of these things. + +He believed in and quoted from one of the noblest poems ever written by +any man,--Tennyson's "Ulysses." And in this poem are lines which formed +the text for Roosevelt's life: + + How dull it is to pause, to make an end, + To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! + As tho' to breathe were life. + +This was the doctrine of "the strenuous life" which he preached,-- and +practiced. It was to perform the hard necessary work of the world, not +to sit back and criticize. It was to do disagreeable work if it had to +be done, not to pick out the soft jobs. It was to be afraid neither of +the man who fights with his fists or with a rifle, nor of the man who +fights with a sneering tongue or a sarcastic pen. + +To go into New York politics from 1880-1882 was, for a young man of +Roosevelt's place in life, just out of college, what most of his +friends and associates called "simply crazy." That young men of good +education no longer think it a crazy thing to do, but an honorable and +important one, is due to Theodore Roosevelt more than to any other one +man. + +As he sat on the window-seat of his friend's room in Holworthy Hall, +that day, and said he was going to try to help the cause of better +government in New York, Mr. Thayer looked at him and wondered if he +were "the real thing." Thirty-nine years later Mr. Thayer looked back +over the career of his college mate, and knew that he had talked that +day with one of the great men of our Republic, with one who, as another +of his college friends says, was never a "politician" in the bad sense, +but was always trying to advance the cause of better government. + +The reason why it seemed to many good people a crazy thing to go into +politics was that the work was hard and disagreeable much of the time. +Politics were in the hands of saloon-keepers, toughs, drivers of street +cars and other "low" people, as they put it. The nice folk liked to +sit at home, sigh, and say: "Politics are rotten." Then they wondered +why politics did not instantly become pure. They demanded "reform" in +politics, as Roosevelt said, as if reform were something which could +be handed round like slices of cake. Their way of getting reform, if +they tried any way at all, was to write letters to the newspapers, +complaining about the "crooked politicians," and they always chose the +newspapers which those politicians never read and cared nothing about. + +If any decent man did go into politics, hoping to do some good, these +same critics lamented loudly, and presently announced their belief that +he, too, had become crooked. If it were said that he had been seen with +a politician they disliked, or that he ate a meal in company with one, +they were sure he had gone wrong. They seemed to think that a reformer +could go among other officeholders and do great work, if he would only +begin by cutting all his associates dead, and refusing to speak to them. + +It was a fortunate day for America when Theodore Roosevelt joined the +Twenty-first District Republican Club, and later when he ran for the +New York State Assembly from the same district. He was elected in +November, 1881. This was his beginning in politics. + +In the Assembly at Albany, he presently made discoveries. He learned +something about the crooked politicians whom the stay-at-home reformers +had denounced from afar. He found that the Assembly had in it many good +men, a larger number who were neither good nor bad, but went one way +or another just as things happened to influence them at the moment. +Finally, there were some bad men indeed. He found that the bad men were +not always the poor, the uneducated, the men who had been brought up +in rough homes, lacking in refinement. On the contrary, he found some +extremely honest and useful men who had had exactly such unfavorable +beginnings. + +Also, he soon discovered that there were, in and out of politics, some +men of wealth, of education, men who boasted that they belonged to the +"best families," who were willing to be crooked, or to profit from +other men's crooked actions. He soon announced this discovery, which +naturally made such men furious with him. They pursued him with their +hatred all his life. Some people really think that great wealth makes +crime respectable, and if it is pointed out to a wealthy but dishonest +man, that he is merely a common thief, and if in addition, the fact is +proved to everybody's satisfaction, his anger is noticeable. + +Along with his serious work in the Assembly, Roosevelt found that there +was a great deal of fun in listening to the debates on the floor, or +the hearings in committees. One story, which he tells, is of two Irish +Assemblymen, both of whom wished to be leader of the minority. One, he +calls the "Colonel," the other, the "Judge." There was a question being +discussed of money for the Catholic Protectory, and somebody said that +the bill was "unconstitutional." Mr. Roosevelt writes: + + The Judge, who knew nothing--of the constitution, except that it + was continually being quoted against all of his favorite projects, + fidgetted about for some time, and at last jumped up to know if he + might ask the gentleman a question. The latter said "Yes," and the + Judge went on, "I'd like to know if the gintleman has ever personally + seen the Catholic Protectoree?" "No, I haven't," said his astonished + opponent. "Then, phwat do you mane by talking about its being + unconstitootional? It's no more unconstitootional than you are!" Then + turning to the house with slow and withering sarcasm, he added, "The + throuble wid the gintleman is that he okkipies what lawyers would + call a kind of a quasi-position upon this bill," and sat down amid + the applause of his followers. + + His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained altogether too much glory + from the encounter, and after the nonplussed countryman had taken + his seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the elated Judge, + looked at him majestically for a moment, and said, "You'll excuse + my mentioning, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down knows + more law in a wake than you do in a month; and more than that, Mike + Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin' Latin on the flure of this + House, _when you don't know the alpha and omayga of the language_!" + and back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated submission behind + him.[3] + +[3] "American Ideals," p. 93. + +Another story also relates to the "Colonel." He was presiding at a +committee meeting, in an extremely dignified and severe state of +mind. He usually came to the meetings in this mood, as a result +of having visited the bar, and taken a number of rye whiskies. The +meeting was addressed by "a great, burly man ... who bellowed as if +he had been a bull of Bashan." + + The Colonel, by this time pretty far gone, eyed him malevolently, + swaying to and fro in his chair. However, the first effect of the + fellow's oratory was soothing rather than otherwise, and produced the + unexpected result of sending the chairman fast asleep bolt upright. + But in a minute or two, as the man warmed up to his work, he gave a + peculiar resonant howl which waked the Colonel up. The latter came to + himself with a jerk, looked fixedly at the audience, caught sight of + the speaker, remembered having seen him before, forgot that he had + been asleep, and concluded that it must have been on some previous + day. Hammer, hammer, hammer, went the gavel, and-- + + "I've seen you before, sir!" + + "You have not," said the man. + + "Don't tell me I lie, sir!" responded the Colonel, with sudden + ferocity. "You've addressed this committee on a previous day!" + + "I've never--" began the man; but the Colonel broke in again: + + "Sit down, sir! The dignity of the chair must be preserved! No man + shall speak to this committee twice. The committee stands adjourned." + And with that he stalked majestically out of the room, leaving the + committee and the delegation to gaze sheepishly into each other's + faces.[4] + +[4] "American Ideals," p. 96. + +There was in the Assembly a man whom Mr. Roosevelt calls "Brogan." + + He looked like a serious elderly frog. I never heard him speak more + than once. It was before the Legislature was organized, or had + adopted any rules; and each day the only business was for the clerk + to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the following + dialogue occurred: + + Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k! + + The Clerk. The gentleman from New York. + + Brogan. I rise to a point of ordher under the rules! + + The Clerk. There are no rules. + + Brogan. Thin I object to them. + + The Clerk. There are no rules to object to. + + Brogan. Oh! (nonplussed; but immediately recovering himself.) Thin I + move that they be amended until there ar-r-re![5] + +[5] "Autobiography," p 99. + +Roosevelt was three times elected to the Assembly. He took an interest +in laws to reform the Primaries and the Civil Service, and he demanded +that a certain corrupt judge be removed. This astonished the Assembly, +for the judge had powerful and rich friends. His own party advised the +twenty-three years old Assemblyman to sit down and shut his mouth. The +judge might be corrupt, as it was charged, but it was "wiser" to keep +still about it. Roosevelt, they said, was "rash" and "hot-headed" to +make trouble. And they refused to hear him. + +But he got up next day, and the next, and the next after that, and +demanded that the dishonest judge be investigated. And on the eighth +day, his motion was carried by a vote of 104 to 6. The politicians saw +to it that the judge escaped, but it was shown that Roosevelt's charges +were true ones. And New York State found that she had an Assemblyman +with a back-bone. + +Roosevelt carried some bills for the cause of better government through +the Assembly and they were signed by a courageous and honest Governor, +named Grover Cleveland. Thomas Nast, America's great cartoonist of +those days, drew a cartoon of the two men together. Cleveland was +forty-four and Roosevelt was twenty-three. + +One of the most important events while he was in the Assembly arose +from a bill to regulate the manufacture of cigars in New York City. +He had found that cigars were often made under the most unhealthy +surroundings in the single living room of a family in a tenement. In +one house which he investigated himself, there were two families, and a +boarder, all living in one room, while one or more of the men carried +on the manufacture of cigars in the same room. Everything about the +place was filthy, and both for the health of the families and of the +possible users of the cigars, it was necessary to have this state of +affairs ended. + +He advocated a bill which passed, and was signed by Governor Cleveland, +forbidding such manufacture. So far, so good; but there were persons +who found that the law was against their interests. They succeeded +in getting the Court of Appeals to set the law aside, and in their +decision the judges said the law was an assault upon the "hallowed +associations" of the home! + +This made Roosevelt wake to the fact that courts were not always the +best judges of the living conditions of classes of people with whom +they had no contact They knew the law; they did not know life. The +decision blocked tenement house reform in New York for twenty years, +and was one more item in Roosevelt's political education. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING TRAIL" + + +At the end of Mr. Roosevelt's membership in the New York Assembly, he +began his life on a ranch in North Dakota. In this way he not only +learned much about the Western people, but came to know the ranchman's +life, and to have his first chance to shoot big game. + +He had married Miss Lee in 1880, the autumn of the year he left +college. Less than four years afterwards his wife died, following the +birth of a daughter. His mother died on the next day, and Roosevelt +under the sorrow of these two losses, left New York, and spent almost +all his time on his ranch, the Elkhorn, at Medora. + +The people in Dakota looked on this Eastern tenderfoot with a little +amusement, and, at first, probably with some contempt. He was, to their +minds, a "college dude" from the East, and moreover he wore eyeglasses. +To some of the people whom he met, this fact, he says, was enough to +cause distrust. Eyeglasses were under suspicion. + +But, with two men who had been his guides in Maine, Bill Sewall and +Wilmot Dow, he began his life as a ranchman and a cow-puncher, and went +through all the hard work and all the fun. He took long rides after +cattle, rounded them up and helped in the branding. He followed the +herd when it stampeded in a thunderstorm. He hunted all the game that +there was in the county, and also acted as Deputy Sheriff and helped +clear the place of horse-thieves and "bad men." + +In one of his adventures Roosevelt showed that he had taken to heart +the celebrated advice which, in Hamlet, Polonius gives to his son: + + Beware + Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, + Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. + + +Mulvaney, in one of Kipling's stories, proved that he knew something +about Shakespeare, for he put this advice into his own language so as +to express the meaning perfectly: + + "Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you + do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint." + +Roosevelt tried to keep out of the fight,--but this is the way it +happened. He was out after lost horses, and had to put up at a little +hotel where there were no rooms downstairs, but a bar, a dining-room +and a kitchen. It was late at night, and there was trouble on, for he +heard one or two shots in the bar as he came up. He disliked the idea +of going in, but it was cold outside and there was nowhere else to go. +Inside the bar, a cheap "bad man" was walking up and down with a cocked +revolver in each hand. He had been shooting at the clock, and making +every one unhappy and uncomfortable. + +When Roosevelt came in, he called him "Four eyes," because he wore +spectacles, and announced "Four eyes is going to set up the drinks." +Roosevelt tried to pass it off by laughing, and sat down behind the +stove to escape notice, and keep away from trouble. But the "bad man" +came and stood over him, a gun in each hand, using foul language, and +insisting that "Four eyes" should get up and treat. + +"Well," Roosevelt reluctantly remarked, "if I've got to, I've got to!" +As he said this, he rose quickly, and hit the gun-man with his right +fist on the point of the jaw, then with his left, and again with his +right. The guns went off in the air, as the "bad man" went over like +a nine-pin, striking his head on the corner of the bar as he fell. +Roosevelt was ready to drop on him if he moved, for he still clutched +the revolvers. But he was senseless. + +The other people in the bar recovered their nerve, once the man was +down. They hustled him out into the shed, and there was no more trouble +from him. + +Roosevelt hunted geese and ducks, deer, mountain sheep, elk and grizzly +bear during his stay in the West. It was still possible to find +buffalo, although most of the great herds had vanished. The prairie was +covered with relics of the dead buffalo, so that one might ride for +hundreds of miles, seeing their bones everywhere, but never getting a +glimpse of a live one. Yet he managed, after a hard hunt of several +days, to shoot a great bull buffalo. + +An encounter with a grizzly bear is much more exciting, and he was +nearly killed by one bear. In later years Roosevelt killed almost every +kind of large and dangerous game that there is on the earth,--lions, +elephants, the African buffalo, and the rhinoceros. The Indian tiger +is perhaps the only one of the large savage animals which he never +encountered. Yet after meeting all these and having some close shaves, +especially with a wounded elephant in Africa, he said that his +narrowest escape was with this grizzly bear. + +It was when he had returned to the West and was on a hunt in Idaho. He +had had trouble with his guide, who got drunk, so they parted company, +and Roosevelt was alone. Looking down into a valley, from a rocky +ridge, he saw a dark object, which he discovered was a large grizzly +bear. He fired, and the bear giving a loud grunt, as the bullet struck, +rushed forward at a gallop into a laurel thicket. Roosevelt paused at +the edge of the thicket and peered within, trying to see the bear, but +knowing too much about them to go into the brush where he was. + + When I was at the narrowest part of the thicket, he suddenly left + it, directly opposite, and then wheeled and stood broadside to me on + the hillside, a little above. He turned his head stiffly towards me; + scarlet strings of froth hung from his lips; his eyes burned like + embers in the gloom. + + I held true, aiming behind the shoulder, and my bullet shattered the + point or lower end of his heart, taking out a big nick. Instantly the + great bear turned with a harsh roar of fury and challenge, blowing + the bloody foam from his mouth, so that I saw the gleam of his white + fangs; and then he charged straight at me, crashing and bounding + through the laurel bushes, so that it was hard to aim. I waited + until he came to a fallen tree, raking him as he topped it with a + ball, which entered his chest and went through the cavity of his + body, but he neither swerved nor flinched, and at the moment I did + not know that I had struck him. He came steadily on, and in another + second was almost upon me. I fired for his forehead, but my bullet + went low, entering his open mouth, smashing his lower jaw and going + into the neck. I leaped to one side almost as I pulled the trigger; + and through the hanging smoke the first thing I saw was his paw as + he made a vicious side blow at me. The rush of his charge carried + him past. As he struck he lurched forward, leaving a pool of bright + blood where his muzzle hit the ground; but he recovered himself and + made two or three jumps onwards, while I hurriedly jammed a couple + of cartridges into the magazine, my rifle holding only four, all of + which I had fired. Then he tried to pull up, but as he did so his + muscles seemed suddenly to give way, his head drooped, and he rolled + over and over like a shot rabbit. Each of my first three bullets had + inflicted a mortal wound.[6] + +[6] "The Wilderness Hunter," pp. 305-6. + +[Illustration: Courtesy Scribner's and Sons. + +THEODORE ROOSEVELT WHEN HE WAS 10 YEARS OLD] + +There were, once, near Mr. Roosevelt's ranch, three men who had been +suspected of cattle-killing and horse-stealing. The leader was a tall +fellow named Finnegan, who had long red hair reaching to his shoulders, +and always wore a broad hat and a fringed buckskin shirt. He had been +in a number of shooting scrapes. The others were a half-breed, and a +German, who was weak and shiftless rather than actively bad. They had +a bad reputation, and were trying to get out of the country before the +Vigilance Committee got them. + +About the only way to travel--it was early in March and the rivers +were swollen--was by boat down the river. So when the cowboys on Mr. +Roosevelt's ranch found that his boat was stolen, they were sure who +had taken it. As it is every man's duty in a half-settled country to +bring law-breakers to justice, and as Roosevelt was, moreover, Deputy +Sheriff, he decided to go after the three thieves. Two of his cowboys, +Sewall and Dow from Maine, in about three days built another boat. +In this, with their rifles, food enough for two weeks, warm bedding +and thick clothes, Roosevelt, Sewall and Dow set out down the Little +Missouri River. + +There had been a blizzard, the weather was still bitterly cold, and the +river full of drifting ice. They shot prairie fowl and lived on them, +with bacon, bread and tea. It was cold work poling and paddling down +the river, with the current, but against a head wind. The ice froze on +the pole handles. At night where they camped the thermometer went down +to zero. Next day they shot two deer, for they needed meat, as they +were doing such hard work in the cold. + +On the third day they sighted smoke,--the campfire of the three +thieves. Two boats, one of them the stolen one, were tied up to the +bank. It was an exciting moment, for they expected a fight. As it +turned out, however, it was a tough job, but not a fighting one. The +German was alone in camp, and they captured him without trouble. The +other two were out hunting. When they came back an hour or two later, +they were surprised by the order to hold up their hands. The half-breed +obeyed at once, Finnigan hesitated until Roosevelt walked in close, +covering him with a rifle, and repeated the command. Then he gave up. + +But this was only the beginning of a long, hard task. It was often the +way to shoot such men at once, but Sheriff Roosevelt did not like that. +He was going to bring them back to jail. At night the thieves could not +be tied up, as they would freeze to death. So Roosevelt, Sewall and +Dow had to take turns in watching them at night. After they started +down river again, they found the river blocked by ice, and had to camp +out for eight days in freezing weather. The food all but gave out, and +at last there was nothing left but flour. Bread made out of flour and +muddy water and nothing else, is not, says Mr. Roosevelt, good eating +for a steady diet. Besides they had to be careful of meeting a band of +Sioux Indians, who were known to be in the region. + +At last they worked back to a ranch, borrowed a pony, on which +Roosevelt rode up into the mountains to a place where there was a +wagon. He hired this, with two broncos and a driver. Sewall and Dow +took the boats down the river, while Roosevelt set out on a journey +which took two days and a night, walking behind the wagon, and guarding +the three men. The driver of the wagon was a stranger. + +At night they put up at a frontier hut, and the Deputy Sheriff had to +sit up all night to be sure the three prisoners did not escape. When +he reached the little town of Dickinson, and handed the men over to +the Sheriff, he had traveled over three hundred miles. He had brought +three outlaws to justice, and done something for the cause of better +government in the country where he lived. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TWO DEFEATS + + +Although he was still under twenty-five when he left the New York +Assembly, Roosevelt was favorably known throughout the State. He +had been heard of, by those who keep up with politics, all over the +country. In 1884, the year of a Presidential election, he was one of +the four delegates-at-large from New York to the Republican convention +at Chicago. The leader for the Presidential nomination was James G. +Blaine, a brilliant man who had many warm admirers. Also, there were +many in his own party, who distrusted him, who thought that in the past +he had not been strictly honest. Good men differed on this question and +differ still. + +Roosevelt favored Senator Edmunds of Vermont, but he had agreed +beforehand, with other young Republican delegates, that they would +support for the election the man named by the convention. Since, in +later years, Roosevelt refused to abide by the decision of a party +convention, and led one of the most extraordinary "bolts" in the +history of American politics, it is important to consider for a moment +the question of political parties and the attitude a man may take +toward them. + +Because parties are responsible for a good many small, mean, and +sometimes dishonorable acts, we often hear parties and partisanship +denounced. People express the wish that there might be an end to +"party politics" and to "partisanship," and that "all good men might +get together" for the good of the whole country. This may happen when +there is Heaven on earth, but not before. Even the good and honest men +continue to differ about which is the wisest way to do things, and +so the people who think the same way about most matters get together +in a party. The suggestion, by the way, that people should give up +"partisanship" often comes from people who do not by any means intend +to give up their own partisanship,--they wish other folk to come over +to their own way of thinking. We are all apt to wish that others would +only be reasonable enough to agree with _us_. + +Nor is it at all sure that everything would be fine if there were no +parties. Countries which have tried to do without parties, have not +made a great success of it. There must be some organized group to hold +responsible if men in office do badly; some people to warn that the +things they are doing are not approved by the majority of the people. + +With parties in existence, as they have been for almost all of our +history as a nation, there are in the main, four ways in which a man +may act toward them. He may be a hidebound party man, always voting the +party ticket, and swallowing the party platforms whole. Such persons +often get into the newspapers when they are elderly, as having voted +for every candidate on this or that party ticket for fifty or sixty or +seventy years. It simply means, of course, that these men are proud of +the fact that they let other people do their thinking for them. + +Or, a man may look upon a party as the means through which he may +secure better government. He is proud of its wise and good acts, and is +willing to forgive its mistakes, because he knows that no large group +of men can be perfect. He believes in remaining loyal to his party as +long as possible, but he does not set it above his country, nor agree +to follow it when it goes absolutely wrong, or falls into the hands of +men who hold party welfare above patriotism. Roosevelt was a party man +of this kind. + +Furthermore, a man may be an Independent, one who will not join any +party for long. Many of these are highly honorable and wise citizens, +who are of great value to the country, although they can usually be +nothing but helpers in any good cause. Their position nearly always +prevents their becoming the chief actors in bringing about any good and +desirable reform. + +The fourth class in which a man may find himself in regard to parties, +is that of the so-called independent, who mistakes his own fussiness +for nobility of character. He can find fault with everybody and every +party, but he can be loyal to none. He is strong on leaving a party for +the smallest excuse; never on staying with it. It is as if a member +of a foot-ball team, half an hour before the game, should refuse to +play, because some other member of the team had once cheated in an +examination. He satisfies his own conscience, but he fails in the +loyalty he owes to the team and its friends. + +At the convention in 1884 Roosevelt took an important part for so +young a man. He made speeches and worked for Senator Edmunds, but Mr. +Blaine was nominated. This caused a split in the party, and many of +its members joined the Democrats. They were called by their opponents +"Mugwumps," and since they believed they were acting for the best, they +did not mind being called that or any other name. + +So many prominent and able Republicans joined the Mugwumps it is +sometimes forgotten that many more equally good and wise Republicans +refused to "bolt," but stayed with the party and voted for Mr. Blaine. +Either they did not at all believe the charges which had been made +against him--and it is as impossible now as it was then to prove the +charges--or else they thought that the country would be far worse off +with the Democratic party in power than with the Republicans successful. + +Mr. Roosevelt was disgusted with the result of the convention, but did +not believe that he was justified in leaving the party. He therefore +stayed in it, and supported Mr. Blaine. + +The Democrats nominated the courageous Governor of New York, Grover +Cleveland. Both before and after this, he and Mr. Roosevelt worked +together for measures of good government, and respected each other, +while belonging to different parties. The presidential election turned +out to be close, and in the end several incidents besides the split in +the Republican party worked against Blaine. He was narrowly defeated. +The change of a few hundred votes in the State of New York would have +made Blaine the President. As in later years large election frauds were +discovered to have been going on in New York, some people contend +with good show of reason, that Blaine and not Cleveland was really the +choice of the voters. + +Two years after this, in 1886, when Roosevelt was on his Dakota ranch, +the Republicans nominated him for Mayor of New York City. He was about +twenty-eight years old, and it is evident that he had made a mark in +politics. He came East, accepted the nomination, and made the campaign. + +The opponents were, first, Abram S. Hewitt, a respectable candidate +nominated by Tammany Hall in its customary fashion of offering a good +man, now and then, to pull the wool over the eyes of persons who +naturally need some excuse for voting to put New York into the hands +of the political organization whose existence has always been one of +America's greatest disgraces. + +The other candidate was Henry George, a man of high character, +nominated by the United Labor Party. Mr. Hewitt was elected, with Mr. +George second and Mr. Roosevelt third. + +About a month after the election, Mr. Roosevelt went to England, where +he married Miss Edith Kermit Carow, of New York. She had been his +friend and playmate when he was a boy, and was his sister's friend. The +groomsman was a young Englishman, Mr. Cecil Spring-Rice. Years later +the groom and his "best man" came together again in Washington, when +the American was President Roosevelt, and the Englishman was Sir Cecil +Spring-Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +FIGHTING OFFICE-SEEKERS + + +To tell the story of Roosevelt's life it is necessary to talk much +about politics, and that to some people is a dull subject. But he was +in political office over twenty years of his life, always interested +and active in politics, and the vigor which he brought to his duties +made public affairs attractive to thousands of Americans who had felt +little concern about them. + +This alone was a great service. If a man is going the wrong way in +political life, if he is trying to do unwise or evil things, he is a +danger, but a danger which may be corrected. He may be made to turn +his efforts in useful directions. But the man who takes no interest at +all in the government of his city, state or nation, who is so feeble +that he cannot even take the time to vote on election day, but goes +hunting or fishing instead,--this man is a hopeless nuisance, who does +not deserve the liberty which he enjoys, nor the protection which his +government gives him. + +Politics, when Mr. Roosevelt was active, were not dull. Few men have +ever made them so lively and interesting. Every activity in life meant +something to him, a chance for useful work or for good fun. He had +a perfectly "corking time," he said, when he was President, and the +words shocked a number of good people who had pardoned or overlooked +dirty actions by other public men, so long as these other men kept up a +certain copy-book behavior which they thought was "dignity." + +It is a question if any man ever had a better time, ever had more real +fun in his life, than did Mr. Roosevelt. In spite of the hard work he +put in, in spite of long days and weeks of drudgery he knew how to +get happiness out of every minute. He did not engage in drinking and +gambling for his amusements. He did not adopt a priggish attitude on +these matters,--he simply knew that there were other things which were +better sport. He was a religious man, a member all his life of his +father's church, but religion did not sour him, make him gloomy, or +cause him to interfere with other people about their belief or lack of +it. + +He got an immense amount of pleasure in his family life, in half a +dozen kinds of athletic sports, especially the ones which led him +outdoors, and in books. In these things he was marvelously wise or +marvelously fortunate. Some men's lives are spent indoors, in an +office or in a study among books. Their amusements are indoor games, +and they come to despise or secretly to envy, the more fortunate men +who live outdoors. + +Some of the outdoors men, on the other hand, become almost as +one-sided. Knowing nothing of the good fun that is in books they deny +themselves much pleasure, and take refuge in calling "high-brows" the +men who have simply more common sense and capacity for enjoyment than +themselves. + +Mr. Roosevelt, more than most men of his time, certainly more than any +other public man, could enjoy to the utmost the best things the world +has in it. He knew the joy of the hard and active life in the open, +and he knew the keen pleasure of books. So when he returned to America +after his marriage in 1886, he built a house on Sagamore Hill at Oyster +Bay on Long Island. Here he could ride, shoot, row, look after his +farm, and here in the next year or two he wrote two books. One was the +life of Gouverneur Morris, American minister to France in the early +years of our nation; the other a life of Senator Thomas H. Benton of +Missouri. + +But he was not long to stay out of political office. In 1888 President +Cleveland had been defeated for reelection by the Republican +candidate, Benjamin Harrison. The new President appointed Mr. +Roosevelt as one of the Civil Service Commissioners, with his office in +Washington. + +Most politicians are charged, certainly Mr. Roosevelt was sometimes +charged, with being a selfish seeker after personal advancement. +There is not much on which to base this argument in Mr. Roosevelt's +acceptance of this office. For the man who is looking out merely for +his own ambitions, for his own success in politics, is careful of the +position he takes, careful to keep out of offices where there are many +chances to make enemies. The Civil Service Commission was, of all +places at that time, the last where a selfish politician would like to +be. Nobody could do his duties there and avoid making enemies. It was +a thankless job, consisting of trying to protect the public interests +against a swarm of office-seekers and their friends in Congress. + +It is ridiculous now to remember what a fight had to be waged to set +up the merit system of the Civil Service in this country. The old +system, by which a good public servant was turned out to make room for +a hungry office-seeker of the successful political party, was firmly +established. Men and women were not appointed to office because they +knew anything about the work they were to do, but because they were +cousins of a Congressman's wife, or political heelers who had helped +to get the Congressman elected. Nobody thought of the offices as places +where, for the good of the whole country, it was necessary to have the +best men. Instead, the offices were looked on as delicious slices of +pie to be grabbed and devoured by the greediest and strongest person in +sight. + +The Civil Service Commission, when Mr. Roosevelt became a member, had +been established by Congress, but it was hated and opposed by Congress +and the Commission was still fought, secretly or openly. Congressmen +tried to ridicule it, to hamper it by denials of money, and to overrule +it in every possible way. A powerful Republican Congressman and a +powerful Democratic Senator tried to browbeat Roosevelt, and were both +caught by him in particularly mean lies. Naturally they did not enjoy +the experience. + +At the end of his term, President Harrison was defeated by Mr. +Cleveland, who came back again to the Presidency. He re-appointed Mr. +Roosevelt, who thus spent six years in the Commission. When he retired +he had made a good many enemies among the crooked politicians, and some +friends and admirers among well-informed men who watch the progress of +good government. He was still unknown to the great body of citizens +throughout the country, although he had been fighting their fight for +six years. + +[Illustration: Mr. Roosevelt as a Hunter in his Ranching Days] + +He went from Washington to accept another thankless and still more +difficult position in New York City. It was one which had been fatal to +political ambitions, and was almost certain to end the career of any +man who accepted it. This was the Presidency of the Board of Police +Commissioners. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +POLICE COMMISSIONER + + +Experienced politicians always warn young men who wish to rise in +politics, who wish to hold high office in the state or national +government, to keep out of city politics. It is a graveyard for +reputations, and it was that in 1895, when Roosevelt took charge of the +New York Police, even more than to-day. + +Between the unreasonable reformers, who expect perfection, arrived at +in their own way; the sensible folk who demand an honest government; +the lax and easy-going people who do not care how much rottenness there +is about, so that it is kept partly covered up (and this is one of the +largest classes) and the plain criminals who are out for graft and +plunder, the city office-holder is torn in a dozen ways at once. + +If he is dishonest or weak, he goes under immediately. If he is honest, +but lacking in perfect courage, he is nearly useless. And if he is both +honest and brave, but has not good brains, is not able to use his mind +quickly and well, he is either helpless, or soon placed in a position +where he seems to have been dishonorable. For, of course the first +method which a crooked man uses to destroy his honest opponent, is to +try to make him look crooked, too. Often during his life Roosevelt +insisted upon the fact that a man in public life must not only be +honest, but that he must have a back-bone and a good head into the +bargain. + +Nothing but a sense of public duty, nothing but a desire to help the +cause of better government, could have made a man take the Police +Commissionership in 1895. Mayor Strong, on a Reform ticket, had beaten +Tammany Hall. He wanted an able and energetic man and so sent for +Roosevelt. The condition of the Police Department sounds more like a +chapter from a dime novel gone mad, than from any real state of things +which could exist in a modern city. Yet it did exist. + +The police were supposed to protect the city against crime. What they +really did was to stop some of the crime--when the criminal had no +"pull"--and to protect the rest of it. The criminal handed over a +certain amount of his plunder to the police, and they let him go on +with his crime. More than that, they saw that no one bothered him. +There was a regular scale of prices for things varying all the way from +serious crime down to small offenses. It cost more to be a highway +robber, burglar, gun-man or murderer, for instance, than merely to keep +a saloon open after the legal time for closing. A man had to pay more +for running a big gambling-house, than simply for blocking the sidewalk +with rubbish and ash-cans. + +Roosevelt found that most of the policemen were honest, or wished to +be honest. But, surrounded as they were by grafters, it was almost +impossible for a man to keep straight. If he began by accepting little +bribes, he ended, as he rose in power, by taking big ones, and finally +he was in partnership with the chief rascals. The hideous system +organized by the powerful men in Tammany Hall spread outward and +downward, and at last all over the city. Roosevelt did not stop all +the crime, of course, nor leave the city spotless when he ended his +two years service. But he did make it possible for one of his chief +opponents, one of the severest of all critics, Mr. Godkin, a newspaper +editor, to write him, at the end of his term of office: + + "In New York you are doing the greatest work of which any American + to-day is capable, and exhibiting to the young men of the country the + spectacle of a very important office administered by a man of high + character in the most efficient way amid a thousand difficulties. As + a lesson in politics, I cannot think of anything more instructive."[7] + +[7] Thayer, "Theodore Roosevelt," p. 106. + +How did he do this? First, he tried to keep politics out of the +police-force,--to appoint men because they would make good officers, +not because they were Republicans or Democrats. Next, he tried to +reward and promote policemen who had proved themselves brave,--who +had saved people in burning houses or from drowning, or had arrested +violent men at great danger to themselves. This is commonly done in the +New York Police Department to-day: it was not so common before 1895. +Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners found one old policeman who had +saved twenty-five people from drowning and two or three from burning +buildings. They gave him his first promotion. He began to have the +Department pay for a policeman's uniform when it was torn in making +an arrest or otherwise ruined in the performance of duty. Before, +the policeman had had to pay for a new uniform himself. He had each +policeman trained to use a pistol, so that if he had to fire it at a +criminal, he would hit the criminal, and not somebody else. He did +his best to stop the custom of selling beer and whiskey to children. +Finally he stopped disrespect for law by having law enforced, whether +people liked it or not. + +Of course, this got him into hot water. One of our worst faults in +America lies in passing a tremendous number of laws, and then letting +them be broken. In many instances the worst troubles are with laws +about strong drink. People in the State, outside of New York City, and +some of those in the City, wished to have a law to close the saloons on +Sunday. So they passed it. But so few people in the City really wished +such a law, so many of them wished to drink on Sunday, that the saloons +stayed open, and the saloon-keepers paid bribes to the police for +"protection." The result was not temperance, but the opposite. Moreover +it led to disrespect for the law, and corruption for the police. It was +not Commissioner Roosevelt's business whether the law was a wise one or +not, but it was his business to enforce it. + +He enforced it, and had the saloons closed. As he said: "The howl +that rose was deafening. The professional politicians raved. The +yellow-press surpassed themselves in clamor and mendacity. A favorite +assertion was that I was enforcing a 'blue law,' an obsolete law that +had never before been enforced. As a matter of fact, I was enforcing +honestly a law that had hitherto been enforced dishonestly."[8] + +[8] "Autobiography," p. 210. + +In the end, those who wished to drink on Sundays found a way to do it, +and the law intended to regulate drinking habits failed, as such laws +nearly always have done. A judge decided that as drink could be served +with meals, a man need only eat one sandwich or a pretzel and he could +then drink seventeen beers, or as many as he liked. But the result of +Roosevelt's action had nearly stopped bribe-giving to the police. So +there was something gained. + +Roosevelt went about the city at night, sometimes alone, sometimes with +his friend Jacob Riis, a reporter who knew about police work and the +slum districts of the city. If he caught policemen off their beat, they +were ordered to report at his office in the morning and explain. When +his friends were dancing at fashionable balls, he was apt to be looking +after the police outside. + +From about this time, Roosevelt began to be known all over the United +States. He had been heard of ever since he was in the Assembly, but +only by those who follow politics closely. Now, New York newspapers, +with their cartoons, began to make him celebrated everywhere. The fact +that when he spoke emphatically, he showed his teeth for an instant, +was enlarged upon in pictures and in newspaper articles, and it became +connected with him henceforth. + +We demand amusing newspapers; we like the fun in every subject brought +out as no other nation does. And we get it. Our newspapers are by far +the brightest and most readable in the world. But we have to pay for +it, and we often pay by having the real truth concealed from us in a +mass of comedy. Newspapers seize upon a man or woman who has something +amusing in his life, manner, or speech, and play upon that peculiarity +until at last the true character of the person is hidden. + +This happened with Roosevelt. About the time of his Police +Commissionership, the newspaper writers and artists began to invent +a grotesque and amusing character called "Teddy," who was forever +snapping his teeth, shouting "Bully!" or rushing at everybody, +flourishing a big stick. This continued for years and was taken for +truth by a great many people. To this day, this imaginary person is +believed in by thousands. And in the meantime, the genuine man, a brave +high-minded American, loving his country ardently, and serving her +to the utmost of his great strength and ability, was engaged in his +work, known by all who had personal contact with him to be stern indeed +against evil-doers, but tender and gentle to the unfortunate, to women +and children and to animals. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE ROUGH RIDER + + +In 1897 the Republican Party came again into power; Mr. McKinley was +inaugurated as President. Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary +of the Navy, and came with his family to Washington. The Secretary of +the Navy was Mr. John D. Long. + +America was within a year of getting into war, and as usual was not +ready for it. There are men so foolish as to rejoice because we have +never been ready for the wars in which we have taken part about every +twenty or thirty years in our history. This simply means that they +rejoice at the unnecessary deaths of thousands of other Americans who +die from disease in camp, or are killed in the field through neglect +to prepare in advance. Preparation for war is not wholly the matter of +having weapons ready to fight the enemy. It also means healthy camps +for our soldiers to live in, and readiness to furnish clothing, food +and medical supplies. For lack of these, thousands of our friends and +relatives die in every war we are in. + +A rebellion had been going on in Cuba for years. The cruel government +of Spain had kept the Cubans in misery and in rebellion, and disturbed +the friendship between Spain and the United States. It was our duty to +see that Cuban expeditions did not sail from our coast to help their +friends, and in this work a great many ships of our Navy were busy all +the time. Nobody liked to have to do this for we naturally sympathized +with the Cubans, who were making such a brave fight against stupid and +tyrannical governors sent from Spain. One of the last of these was +particularly bad. He herded the Cuban people into camps where they +died of disease and starvation, and he had great numbers of them shot +without mercy. We had justly revolted against the mis-government of +King George III in 1776, but nothing that King George's governors and +generals had done to us was as bad as the things the Spaniards were +doing in Cuba, in 1896 and 1897. + +Many of the men in Washington felt that war would come sooner or later. +Roosevelt believed it and worked constantly to have the Navy ready. +He had the support of the President and of Secretary Long in nearly +everything that he proposed, and so was able to do some useful work. It +is important to understand what Roosevelt thought about war, not only +about this, but about all wars. Here it is in his own words. + + I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong + at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals, + I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be + resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid + it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity + and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation + for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless + it were the only alternative to dishonor.[9] + +[9] "Autobiography," p. 226. + +You will be able to see from what he did while he was President, when +he was in a position where he could have plunged the country into war +half a dozen times, whether these words were true, or whether he was +really the fire-eater which some of his enemies insisted he was. + +He secured from Congress nearly a million dollars, to permit the +Navy to engage in target-practice. To those who were alarmed at such +"waste," he remarked that gun-powder was meant to be burned, and that +sailors must learn to shoot, since in battle, the shots that hit +are the only ones that count. There is nothing wonderful about such +remarks. In looking back at them there seems to be nothing wonderful +about many things that he said and did. They are merely examples of +plain, common-sense, and it appears ridiculous that anybody should +have had to make such remarks, or to fight hard to get such clearly +necessary things done. Yet he did have to fight for them. It had to be +driven into the heads of some of the men in Congress that it is not the +proper use of gun-powder to keep it stored up, until war is declared, +then bring it out, partly spoiled, and give it to soldiers and sailors, +who for lack of practice, do not know how to shoot straight. + +Roosevelt also was able to help in having appointed to command the +Asiatic squadron, a naval officer named Commodore George Dewey. + +On February 15, 1898, while affairs were at their worst between America +and Spain, our battleship _Maine_ was blown up in Havana Harbor. She +had gone there on a friendly visit, but now was destroyed and sent to +the bottom. Over two hundred and fifty of our men were killed. Almost +every one knew that war was now certain. For weeks the country debated +as to the cause of the explosion which sank the _Maine_, and the matter +was investigated by naval officers assisted by divers. They found that +the explosion had come from the outside. Somebody had set off a mine +or torpedo beneath the ship. Nobody in America disputed this, except +a few of the peace-at-any-price folk, who preferred to think that the +carelessness of our own sailors had been the cause. These gentlemen +always think the best of the people of other nations, which is a fine +thing; but they are always ready to believe the worst of their own +countrymen, which is, on the whole, rather a nasty trait. + +Roosevelt worked at top-speed in the Navy Department, and began to +lay plans for going to the war himself. He believed that it was right +and necessary to fight Spain, and end the horrible suffering in Cuba. +And he believed that it was the duty first and foremost of men like +himself, who advised war, to take part in it. He was nearly forty +years old, and had a family. Many other men in his place would have +discovered that their services were most important in Washington. They +would have stayed in their offices, and let other men (whom they called +"jingoes") do the fighting for them. It was never Roosevelt's custom to +act that way. + +Later in February, while Mr. Long was away, and Roosevelt was +Acting-Secretary of the Navy, he sent this cable message to Commodore +Dewey: + + Washington, February 25, '98. + +_Dewey, Hong Kong_ + +Order the squadron, except the _Monocacy_, to Hong Kong. Keep full of +coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to +see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and +then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep _Olympia_ until +further orders. + + Roosevelt. + +War against Spain was declared in April,--the month in our history +which has also seen the beginning of our Revolution, our Civil War, and +our entrance into the Great War against Germany. Congress arranged for +three regiments of volunteer cavalry to be raised among the men in the +Rockies and on the Great Plains who knew how to ride and shoot. Here +Roosevelt saw his chance. He knew these men and longed to go to war in +their company. + +The Secretary of War offered to make him Colonel of one of these +regiments. It is worth while to notice what his reply was. He knew how +to manage a horse and a rifle, he had lived in the open and could take +care of himself in the field. He had had three years in the National +Guard in New York, rising to the rank of Captain. Many men in the Civil +War without one half of his experience and knowledge, gayly accepted +Brigadier-Generalships. Also, in the Spanish War, another public man, +Mr. William J. Bryan, allowed himself to be made a Colonel, and took +full command of a regiment, without one day's military experience. Yet +Roosevelt declined the offer of a Colonel's commission and asked to be +made Lieutenant-Colonel, with Leonard Wood, of the regular Army as his +Colonel. + +When you hear or read that Roosevelt was a conceited man, always +pushing himself forward, it may be well to ask if that is the way a +conceited man would have acted. + +Colonel Wood was an army surgeon, who had been a fighting officer in +the campaign against the Apaches. He had been awarded the Medal of +Honor, the highest decoration an American soldier can win for personal +bravery. + +The new regiment, the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, was +promptly called, by some newspaper or by the public, the "Rough +Riders," and by that name it is always known. Most of the men in it +came from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, but +it had members from nearly every State. Many Eastern college men were +in it, including some famous foot-ball players, polo-players, tennis +champions and oarsmen. The regiment trained at San Antonio, and landed +in Cuba for the attack on Santiago on June 22. The troopers had to +leave their horses behind, so they were to fight on foot after all. +Roosevelt's Rough Riders, somebody said, had become Wood's Weary +Walkers. The walking was not pleasant to some of the cowboys, who never +used to walk a step when there was a horse to ride. + +Within a day or two they were in a fight at Las Guasimas. It was a +confusing business, advancing through the jungle and fired at by an +enemy they could not see. The Rough Riders lost eight men killed and +thirty-four wounded. The Spaniards were using smokeless powder, then +rather a new thing in war. Two of our regiments at Santiago were still +using black powder rifles, and the artillery used black powder, which +by its smoke showed the enemy just where they were. Our artillery +was always silenced or driven off, because this country had been so +neglectful of its Army and its men as to let poor, old backward Spain +get better guns, and more modern ammunition than ours. That never +should happen with a rich, progressive country like ours. + +A few days later came the fight at San Juan. Colonel Wood had been +put in command of the brigade, so Roosevelt led the regiment of Rough +Riders. It was a fearfully hot day; many men dropped from exhaustion. +The regular regiments of cavalry, together with the Rough Riders, all +fighting on foot, moved forward against the low hills on which were +the Spaniards in block-houses or trenches. For some while they were +kept waiting in reserve, taking what shelter they could from the Mauser +bullets, which came whirring through the tall jungle grass. This is +the most trying part of a fight. It is all right when at last you can +charge your enemy and come to close quarters with him, but to lie on +the ground under fire, unable to see anybody to fire upon, is the worst +strain upon the soldiers' nerves. As one after another is shot, the +officers begin to watch the men closely to see how they are standing +it. Roosevelt received a trifling wound from a shrapnel bullet at the +beginning of the fight. Later his orderly had a sun-stroke, and when he +called another orderly to take a message, this second man was killed as +he stood near, pitching forward dead at Roosevelt's feet. + +Finally came the order to charge. Roosevelt was the only mounted man +in the regiment. He had intended to go into the fight on foot, as he +had at Las Guasimas, but found that the heat was so bad that he could +not run up and down the line and superintend things unless he was on +horseback. When he was mounted he could see his own men better, and +they could see him. So could the enemy see him better, and he had one +or two narrow escapes because of being so conspicuous. + +He started in the rear of the regiment, which is where the Colonel +should be, according to the books, but soon rode through the lines and +led the charge up "Kettle Hill,"--so-called by the Rough Riders because +there were some sugar kettles on top of it. His horse was scraped by +a couple of bullets, as he went up, and one of the bullets nicked +his elbow. Members of the other cavalry regiments were mingled with +the Rough Riders in the charge,--their officers had been waiting for +orders, and were glad to join in the advance. The Spaniards were driven +out and the Rough Riders planted their flags on the hill. + +But there were other hills and other trenches full of Spaniards beyond, +and again the Rough Riders, mixed with men of other regiments, went +forward. In cleaning out the trenches Roosevelt and his orderly were +suddenly fired on at less than ten yards by two Spaniards. Roosevelt +killed one of them with his revolver. The Rough Riders had had +eighty-eight killed and wounded out of less than five hundred men who +were in the fight. + +The American forces were now within sight of Santiago, but they had to +dig in and hold the ground they had taken. There was a short period in +the trenches, which seemed tedious to the riders from the plains, but +was nothing to what men, years later, had to endure in the Great War +against Germany. At last Santiago surrendered, on July 17. + +The war ended within about a month. Commodore Dewey had beaten the +Spanish Fleet at Manila and Admiral Sampson and his fleet had destroyed +the Spanish cruisers which were forced out of Santiago Harbor on July +3rd, as a result of the Army getting within striking distance of the +city. One other thing of importance was done by Roosevelt before the +regiment was brought home to Montauk Point and mustered out. After the +surrender of Santiago it was supposed that the war was going on and +that there would be a campaign in the winter against Havana. But the +American Army was full of yellow fever. Half the Rough Riders were +sick at one time, and the condition of other regiments was as bad. +The higher officers knew that unless the troops were taken to some +healthier climate to recover, there would be nothing left of them. Over +four thousand men were sick, and not ten per cent, of the Army was +fit for active work. But the War Department would not listen to the +suggestion that the army be sent for a while to a cooler climate. + +What none of the regular Army officers could afford to do, Roosevelt +did. He wrote a letter to General Shafter, the commander of the +expedition, explaining the state of things, and setting out how +important it was, if any of the army was to be kept alive, that they +should be sent away from Cuba, until the sickly season was over. +General Shafter really wished such a letter to be written, and he +allowed the Associated Press reporter to have it as soon as it was +handed to him. + +Then, all the Generals joined with Roosevelt in a "Round Robin" to +General Shafter, saying the same things. The Government at Washington +began to take notice, and in a short time ordered the army home. + +Roosevelt had taken a leading part in an act which caused him to be +severely blamed by many, to be denounced by all who worship military +etiquette, and charged with "insubordination" by men who would rather +make a mess of things and do it according to the rules of the book, +than succeed in something useful and do it by common-sense rules made +up at the time. He had shocked the folks who like red tape, and he had +helped save the lives of perhaps four thousand men. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK + + +When the Rough Riders were disbanded at Montauk Point in September +1898, Theodore Roosevelt was the most popular man in America. This is +the judgment of his best historian, Mr. Thayer, and it is undoubtedly +correct. The war had made known to the country a number of professional +soldiers or sailors--especially Admiral Dewey and Admiral Sampson, +whose conduct had been splendid. It had also created some popular +"heroes," whose fame was brief. But Colonel Roosevelt was first and +foremost a _citizen_, his career as a soldier was for a few months only. +Behind that was a solid foundation of service in civil office. Ahead of +it were still finer achievements, also in civil life. He felt the pride +which all men feel--despite much pretense and humbug--to have had the +chance to lead men in battle for a just cause, to have put his life in +danger when his country needed such offer of sacrifice. + +But the Santiago campaign, the charge up San Juan hill, did not "make" +Roosevelt. It was a dramatic episode in his history; it attracted +attention to him. Such are the peculiar conditions of politics, it +proved a short cut to the White House. He said, frankly, that he would +never have been President if the Rough Riders had not gone to Cuba. +In this he underestimated himself, as he often did. He had too much +ability in politics, too much courage in fighting for the cause of +better government, at a time when courage was badly needed, to have +failed to rise to the highest office. Back in the days when he was +Civil Service Commissioner two visitors in the White House, saw him, +also a visitor, looking about the rooms. + +"There is a young man," said one of them, who knew him, "who is going +to move into this house himself, before long." + +After Cuba, the next step was the Governorship of New York State. +Before he was out of uniform, the politicians began talking about him +for the place. The Republican party in New York was in a bad way. They +had quarreled among themselves; the Democrats had just beaten them in +an election. They knew they must have a strong candidate for Governor, +or the Democrats, (that is, Tammany Hall) would get control at Albany. + +This was the great day of the political Bosses. Perhaps at no time +since have they been quite as powerful as they were then. A man named +Croker was the Boss of the Democratic Party; a man named Platt, the +Boss of the Republicans. Men called the Boss of their own party the +"Leader," but they referred to the "Leader" of the other party as +the Boss, without wasting any politeness. Most men do not pay much +attention to politics; a Boss is a man who pays too much attention to +them. He exists because the average citizen thinks he has done his +whole duty if he votes on election day. A Boss works at his business, +which is politics, night and day, all the year round. He might be very +useful if he could be kept honest. He manages to get a great deal of +power, in ways that are shady, if not actually criminal. Then, if he +is one kind of a Boss, greedy for money, he sells this power to the +highest bidder. Men are nominated for office, because the Boss has +picked them out, as a poultryman might select a fat goose. Usually he +selects a man who will obey orders. But another kind of Boss does not +especially care for money. He likes the power which his position gives +him, he likes to be able to move men about as if they were toy-soldiers. + +Such apparently was Senator Platt, the Republican Boss of New York. +People had so neglected their duty of managing their own affairs in +politics, that he had seized the reins, and could say who should be +nominated. In the same way Croker was the ruler of the Democratic party +in New York, and could say who should be nominated in his party. + +Now, in such a situation, what was an honest man to do? The best men in +the Republican party believed that Roosevelt was the only one who could +be elected, that the people believed so firmly in his honor and courage +that they would vote for him. Senator Platt did not want him, did not +like him, but he came to see that they could win with him, and with no +one else. So Roosevelt was nominated, and elected, by a narrow lead of +18,000 votes. So far, the people could rule with Roosevelt as their +servant. But the Governor can do little alone; he must have the support +of the Legislature and the other State officers. The Boss hoped to rule +through them, to say who should be appointed to office, to decide which +bill should pass and which be defeated. + +There were people who would have had Governor Roosevelt declare war on +Platt; refuse to have anything to do with him; refuse even to speak to +him. In that way he could have done nothing for the good of the State; +he could have spent his term in fighting Platt, made a great show of +independence and reform, but, in point of fact, advanced the cause +of good government not an inch. All of his proposals would have been +blocked by Platt's men in the Legislature. + +Instead, he acted in accord with the facts as they were; not as if they +were the way he would have liked them to be. If Platt could not rule he +could ruin. So the Governor treated him politely, and only disagreed +with him when the Boss proposed something actually bad. For instance, +there was a most important officer, the Superintendent of Public Works, +to be appointed. Senator Platt informed Governor Roosevelt that a +certain man had been chosen; he showed him the telegram with the man's +acceptance. Roosevelt said, quietly, something like this: + +"I think not, Senator. The Governor appoints that officer, and I am the +Governor." + +Platt was very angry; Roosevelt refused to get angry, but stuck to his +decision, and made his own choice. Things like this happened again and +again, during the two years while Roosevelt was Governor of New York. + +Every honorable man in American politics has to fight against this evil +of the Boss. Officeholders, Presidents and Governors, come and go, but +the Bosses hold their power for a long time. So long as they exist it +is not wise for us to talk too much about Kings and their tyranny. For +a Boss is very like a King. Platt and Croker thought that the people +were not fit to rule; theirs was much the same idea that King George +the Third and the German Kaiser had. The best and wisest men have had +to admit the strength of the Boss and try to deal with him as well as +they could; Abraham Lincoln even had to appoint one to his Cabinet. The +Boss creeps into power while the people are asleep. + +Roosevelt pointed out that it is not hard for a man to be good if he +lives entirely by himself. Nor is it difficult for him to get things +done, if he is careless about right and wrong. The hard thing, yet the +one which must be demanded of the public man, is to get useful things +done, and to keep straight all the while. When Roosevelt was elected +Governor, John Hay, the Secretary of State, wrote to him: + +"You have already shown that a man may be absolutely honest and yet +practical; a reformer by instinct and a wise politician; brave, +bold and uncompromising, and yet not a wild ass of the desert. The +exhibition made by the professional independents in voting against you +for no reason on earth except that somebody else was voting for you, is +a lesson that is worth its cost."[10] + +[10] "Autobiography," p. 296. + +The year 1900 was the year of a Presidential election. Mr. McKinley +was to run again on the Republican ticket, and later it appeared that +Mr. Bryan would oppose him again, as he had in 1896. The Republican +Vice-President, Mr. Hobart, had died in office, so the Republicans had +to find someone to go on the ticket with President McKinley. Roosevelt +was mentioned for the office, and Platt warmly agreed, hoping to get +him out of New York politics. Roosevelt, at first, refused to consider +an office which has more dignity than usefulness about it. Another +utterance of Secretary of State John Hay is interesting. He wrote to a +friend: + + "Teddy has been here: have you heard of it? It was more fun than a + goat. He came down with a somber resolution thrown on his strenuous + brow to let McKinley and Hanna know once for all that he would not + be Vice-President, and found to his stupefaction that nobody in + Washington, except Platt, had ever dreamed of such a thing."[11] + +[11] Thayer, p. 148. + +Mr. Hay was one of the wisest of our statesmen; one of the most +polished and agreeable men in public life. Yet this letter shows how +the older men often mistook Roosevelt. For, in less than a year after +Mr. Hay had gently poked fun at "Teddy" for thinking that he might be +made Vice-President, and said that there was not the slightest danger +of such a thing happening, Roosevelt had been elected to that office. +His enjoyment of his work, his bubbling merriment, his lack of the +old-fashioned, pompous manners which used to be supposed proper for +a statesman, made many older men inclined to treat him with a sort +of fatherly amusement. They looked at his acts as an older man might +look at the pranks of a boy. And then, suddenly, they found themselves +serving under this "youngster," in the Government! It was a surprise +from which they never recovered. + +I have said that the reporters, the makers of funny pictures in the +newspapers, and others, exaggerated Roosevelt's traits, and created a +false idea about him. This is true. But it is also true that there was +a great deal of real and honest fun poked at him throughout his life, +and that it added to the public enjoyment of his career. The writers +of comic rhymes, the cartoonists, and the writers of political satire +had a chance which no other President has ever given them. Many of our +Presidents--wise and good men--and many Senators, Governors, Cabinet +officers and others, have gone about as if they were all ready to pose +for their statues. Roosevelt never did this. He bore himself in public +with dignity, and respect for the high offices to which the people +elected him. But he did not suggest the old style of portrait, in which +a statesman is standing stiffly, hand in the breast of his coat, a +distant view of the Capitol in the background. He had too keen a sense +of fun for anything of the sort. + +Nobody laughed at the jokes about him more heartily than he did +himself. When "Mr. Dooley" described his adventures as a Rough Rider, +and spoke of him as "Alone in Cubia," as if he thought he had won the +war all by himself, he wrote to the author: + + "Three cheers Mr. Dooley! Do come on and let me see you soon. I am by + no means so much alone as in Cubia. ..." + + "Let me repeat that Dooley, especially when he writes about Teddy + Rosenfelt has no more interested and amused reader than said + Rosenfelt himself."[12] + +[12] Scribner's Magazine, December, 1919, p. 658. + + * * * * * + +Mr. McKinley was reelected President of the United States and Mr. +Roosevelt was elected Vice-President in November 1900. Roosevelt had +taken part in the campaign before election, and of this Mr. Thayer +writes: + + He spoke in the East and in the West, and for the first time the + people of many of the States heard him speak and saw his actual + presence. His attitude as a speaker, his gestures, the way in which + his pent up thoughts seemed almost to strangle him before he could + utter them, his smile showing the white rows of teeth, his fist + clenched as if to strike an invisible adversary, the sudden dropping + of his voice, and leveling of his forefinger as he became almost + conversational in tone, and seemed to address special individuals + in the crowd before him, the strokes of sarcasm, stern and cutting, + and the swift flashes of humor which set the great multitude in + a roar, became in that summer and autumn familiar to millions of + his countrymen; and the cartoonists made his features and gestures + familiar to many other millions.[13] + +[13] Thayer, p. 51. + +In the following March he was sworn in as Vice-President. His duties +as presiding officer of the Senate were not severe, and he went on a +cougar hunt in Colorado in the winter before inauguration to enable him +to bear the physical inactivity of his new work. + +When he came back to Washington again, to hold the second highest place +in the national government, it troubled him to think that he had never +finished the study of law, begun in New York many years before. He +asked his friend, Justice White of the Supreme Court, if it would be +wrong for him to take a legal course in a Washington law school. The +Justice told him that it would hardly be proper for the Vice-President +to do that, but offered to tutor him in law. They agreed to study +together the following winter. + +But Roosevelt's term as Vice-President was coming to an end. He only +occupied the office for six months. He was soon to succeed to the +highest office of all. + +[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. + +PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT SPEAKING IN ATLANTA] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES + + +In the first week of September 1901, President McKinley was killed +by an anarchist in Buffalo. The young man who shot him was rather +weak-minded, and had been led to believe, by the speeches and writings +of others, craftier and wickeder than himself, that he could help the +poor and unfortunate by murdering the President. This he treacherously +did while shaking hands with him. + +One of the leaders of the poisonous brood who had made this young +man believe such villainous nonsense was a foreign woman named Emma +Goldman, who for twenty or thirty years went up and down the land, +trying to overthrow the law and government, yet always calling for the +protection of both when she was in danger. The American Government +tolerated this mischief-maker until 1919, when it properly sent her, +and others of her stripe, back to their own country. + +President McKinley, who was the gentlest and kindest of men, did not +die immediately from the bullet wound, but lingered for about a week. +Vice-President Roosevelt joined him in Buffalo, and came to believe, +from the reports of the doctors, that the President would get well. +So he returned to his family who were in the Adirondacks. A few days +later, while Mr. Roosevelt was mountain-climbing, a message came that +the President was worse and that the Vice-President must come at once +to Buffalo. He drove fifty miles by night, in a buckboard down the +mountain roads, took a special train, and arrived in Buffalo the next +afternoon. + +Mr. McKinley was dead, and Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office +as President. He was under forty-three years of age, the youngest man +who had ever become President. + +It is important to note his first act. It was to insist that all of Mr. +McKinley's Cabinet remain in office. Thus he secured for the continued +service of the Nation, some of its ablest men: Mr. Hay, one of the +most accomplished Secretaries of State we have ever had, and Mr. Root, +Secretary of War, and afterwards Secretary of State, whose highly +trained legal mind placed him at the head of his profession. + +A test of a great man, as well as a test of a modest man, in the true +sense, is whether he is willing to have other able and eminent men +around him as his assistants and fellow-workers. The most remarkable +instances of this among our Presidents were Washington and Lincoln. +The latter appointed men not because they admired him, or were +personally agreeable to him; indeed some of his strongest and bitterest +antagonists were put in his Cabinet, because he knew that they could +well serve the country. + +Mr. McKinley had chosen excellent Cabinet officers, and these Mr. +Roosevelt kept in office, promoting them and appointing other men of +high ability to other offices as the need arose. He did not care to +shine as a great man among a group of second-rate persons; he preferred +to be chief among his peers, the leader of the strongest and most +sagacious of his time. + +In saying this, I do not mean to compare Roosevelt with Washington or +Lincoln or any of the noble figures of the past. Such comparisons are +made too often; every President for fifty years has been acclaimed +by his admirers as "the greatest since Lincoln," or "as great as +Lincoln." This is both foolish and useless. There has been no character +in our land like Lincoln; he stands alone. What we can say of Mr. +Roosevelt, now, is that he was admired and beloved by millions of his +fellow-countrymen while he lived; that his was an extraordinary and +entirely different character from that of any of our Presidents; and +that upon his death thousands who had opposed him and bitterly hated +him but a few years before, were altering their opinion and speaking +of him in admiration--with more than the mere respect which custom +pays to the dead. This has gone on, and other unusual signs have been +given of the world's esteem for him. So much we can say; and leave the +determination of his place in our history for a later time than ours. + +One thing which many people feared when Roosevelt became President was +that he would get the country into a war. They thought he liked war for +its own sake. Men said: "Oh! this Roosevelt is such a rash, impulsive +fellow! He will have us in a war in a few months!" The exact opposite +was the truth. He kept our country and our flag respected throughout +the world; he avoided two possible wars; he helped end a foreign war; +we lived at peace. Of him it can truly be said: he kept us out of war, +and he kept us in the paths of honor. + +He preached the doctrine of the square deal. + +"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country, is good +enough to be given a square deal afterward. More than that no man is +entitled to, and less than that no man shall have."[14] + +[14] Springfield, Ill., July 4, 1503. Thayer, p. 212. + +He did not seek help and rewards from the rich by enabling them to prey +upon the poor; neither did he seek the votes and applause of the poor +by cheap and unjust attacks upon the rich. To the people who expect +a public man to lean unfairly to one side or the other; who cannot +understand any different way of acting, he was a constant puzzle. + +"Oh! we have got him sized up!" they would say, "he is for the labor +unions against the capitalist!" and in a few months they would be +puzzled again: "No; he is for Wall Street and he is down on the poor +laboring man." + +For a long time they could not get it into their heads that he was for +the honest man, whether laboring man or capitalist, and against the +dishonest man, whether laboring man or capitalist. + +"While I am President the doors of the White House will open as easily +for the labor leader as for the capitalist,--_and no easier_."[15] + +[15] Hagedorn, p. 242. + +Many Presidents might have said the first part of that sentence. Few of +them would have added the last three words. + +He annoyed many people in the South by inviting a very able and eminent +Negro, Booker T. Washington, to eat luncheon with him. According to the +curious way of thinking on this subject, Mr. Washington who had been +good enough to eat dinner at the table of the Queen of England, was not +good enough to eat at the White House. Shortly after being violently +denounced for being too polite to a Negro, he was still more violently +denounced for being too harsh to Negroes. He discharged from the Army +some riotous and disorderly Negro soldiers. Persons with small natures +had attacked him for showing courtesy to a distinguished man; other +persons with equally small natures now attacked him for acting justly +towards mutinous soldiers. + +What did he do while he was President? What laws were passed by +Congress, which he advocated or urged, and which he approved by his +signature? Here are some of them as they are given by Mr. Washburn,[16] +a Congressman of that time: + +[16] Washburn, "Theodore Roosevelt," p. 128. + +The Elkins Anti-Rebate Law, to end unjust business dealings of the +railroads. + +The creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor. + +The law for building the Panama Canal. + +The laws to prevent impure and poisonous food being sold under false +labels; and the law to establish the proper inspection of meat. + +The creation of the Bureau of Immigration. + +The law limiting the working hours of employees and protecting them in +case of injury in their occupations. + +The law against child-labor in the District of Columbia. + +The reformation of the Consular Service. + +The law to stop corporations from giving great sums of money for +political purposes at election time. + +You will notice that these were not laws to enable a few rich men to +get richer still at the expense of the many; neither were they designed +to help dishonest labor leaders to plunder the employers. They were +aimed to bring about justice between man and man, to protect the weak. + +There was, when Mr. Roosevelt became President, a long standing +dispute between this country and England and Canada about the boundary +of Alaska. This was quickly settled by arbitration; our rights were +secured; and all possible causes of war were removed. + +The South American country, Colombia, made an attempt to block the +building of the Panama Canal. This canal had been planned to run +through the State of Panama, which was part of the Republic of +Colombia. It was a part of that country, however, separated by fifteen +days' journey from the capital city, Bogota, and so separated in +friendship from the rest of the country that it had made over fifty +attempts in fifty years to revolt and gain independence. Our State +Department, through Mr. Hay, had come to an understanding with the +Minister from Colombia as to the canal, and the amount we were to pay +Colombia for the privilege of building this important waterway, for the +benefit of the whole world. + +But the Colombian Government at that time were a slippery lot,-- +dealing with them, said President Roosevelt, "was like trying to +nail currant jelly to a wall." It struck them that they would do +well to squeeze more money yet out of Uncle Sam, and that they might +by twisting and turning, get forty million dollars as easily as ten +millions. So they delayed and quibbled. + +In the meantime, the people of Panama, not wishing to lose the +advantage of the canal, and desiring greatly to take any opportunity to +free themselves from the Colombians who had plundered them for years, +declared a revolution, which took place without bloodshed. Colombian +troops, coming to try to reconquer Panama, were forbidden to land by +our ships, acting under President Roosevelt's orders. We were under +treaty agreement to preserve order on the Isthmus. Our Government +recognized the new Republic of Panama, an act which was promptly +followed by all the nations of the earth. We then opened negotiations +with Panama, paid the money to her, and built the Canal. + +Of course the politicians in Colombia howled with rage. A tricky +horse-dealer, who has a horse which he has abused for years, but +desires to sell to a customer for four times its value, would be +angry if the horse ran away, and he lost not only the animal, but +also his chances of swindling the customer. So with the Colombians. +Some people in this country took up their cry, and professed to feel +great sorrow for Colombia. It was noticed, however, that this sorrow +seemed to afflict most pitifully the people who were strongest in their +opposition to Mr. Roosevelt, and this caused a suspicion that their +pretended horror at the act of our Government was not so much based +upon any knowledge of the facts, as upon a readiness to think evil +of the President. Others who joined in an expression of grief at the +time, and later attempted to bolster up Colombia's claims for damages, +belonged to that class referred to in connection with the sinking of +the _Maine_, who always think the best of any foreign country and +suspect the worst of their own. + +The fact that other countries instantly recognized Panama, and that +President Roosevelt's action was completely and emphatically endorsed +by Secretary Hay, proved that the Panama incident was an example of +the promptness, wisdom and courage in the conduct of foreign relations +which leads alike to justice and the satisfactory settlement of +difficult problems. For not the bitterest opponent of Mr. Roosevelt's +administration ever dared to cast a shadow of doubt upon the honesty +of Secretary Hay. The canal is now built, thanks in large part to +President Roosevelt, and we have had a chance to see that wise +decisions may often be reached swiftly; whereas dawdling, hesitation +and timidity, which are sometimes mistaken for statesmanship, are +more than apt to end, not only in general injustice, but in practical +failure. + +The war between Russia and Japan took place during President +Roosevelt's term of office. After it had been going on over a year, +and Japan had won victories by land and sea, the President asked +both countries to open negotiations for peace. He continued to exert +strong influence in every quarter to help bring the two enemies to an +agreement. Only since his death has it become generally known how hard +he worked to this end. A peace conference was held at Kittery Navy Yard +in Maine, and a treaty was signed which ended the war. + +For his action in this, President Roosevelt was the first American +to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This was a sad reverse to the +predictions of those who had been so sure that he was longing to start +wars, instead of end them. Indeed, men who prophesied evil about Mr. +Roosevelt, as well as those who tried to catch him in traps, had a +most disappointing experience. The Nobel Prize consisted of a diploma, +and an award in money of $40,000. This he tried to devote to helping +the cause of peace between capital and labor in America. When Congress +failed to take the needed action to apply his money for this purpose, +it was returned to him. During the Great War he gave all of it to +different relief organizations, like the Red Cross, and other societies +for helping the sufferers. + +The President assembled the most powerful fleet we had ever had +together, sixteen battleships, with destroyers, and sent them on a +cruise around the world. This was bitterly opposed at the time. Public +men and newspapers predicted that the fleet could never make the +voyage, or that even if it could, its effect would be to cause war +with some other nation. The most emphatic predictions were made by a +famous newspaper that the entrance of the fleet into the Pacific Ocean +would be the signal for a declaration of war upon us by a foreign +power. Nothing of the sort happened. The cruise attracted to the +American navy the admiration of the world; it immensely increased the +usefulness of the Navy itself by the experience it gave the officers +and men; and it served warning upon anybody who needed it (and some +folk did need it) that America was not a country of dollar-chasing +Yankees, rich and helpless, but that it had the ability to defend +itself. + +This was an illustration of Roosevelt's use of the old saying: "Speak +softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." When he first repeated +this, it was seized upon by the newspapers for its amusing quality, and +he was henceforth pictured as carrying a tremendous bludgeon, of the +sort which giants usually bore in the tale of "Jack the Giant Killer." +Timid folk thought that it proved their worst fears about his fondness +for a fight. They failed to notice the "Speak softly" part of the +saying. It was only a vivid way of advising his countrymen to be quiet +and polite in their dealings with other nations, but not to let America +become defenseless. What hasty and shallow critics denounced as the +threat of a bully, proved in practice to be the sagacious advice of a +statesman, whose promise when he took office, to preserve the peace and +honor of his beloved country, was kept faithfully and precisely. + +And he was able to keep the peace, to fill the office of President for +seven years without having a shot fired by our forces, because he +made it clear that this country would not submit to wrong, would not +argue or bicker with foreign trespassers, kidnappers, highwaymen or +murderers, but would promptly fight them. He did not fill the air with +beautiful words about his love of peace; but we had peace. For as he +knew perfectly well, there were countries, like Canada, with which we +could live at peace for a hundred years and more, without needing forts +or guns between them and us, because we think alike on most subjects, +and respect each other's honor. + +And there were other countries, Germany in particular, against whom +all her neighbors have to live armed to the teeth, and in deadly fear, +because the Germans respect nothing on earth except force. To argue +or plead with the Germans, as he well knew, was not only a waste of +time, it was worse: it was a direct invitation to war. Because since +1870 the Germans think that any country which professes to love peace, +any country whose statesmen utter noble thoughts about peace, is +simply a cowardly country, bent on making money, and afraid to fight. +So when,--during Roosevelt's administration, the biggest swaggering +"gun-man" of the world, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, made a threat +against the peace of America, Roosevelt no more read him pretty +lectures about his love of peace, than he would have recited poetry to +that other gun-man in the hotel in Dakota years before. He simply told +the Kaiser in a few words, just what would happen if Germany didn't +drop it. It was so quietly done that nobody knew anything at all about +it until years afterward. There was no delay; there was no endless +note-writing; there was no blustering; the Kaiser climbed down; _and +there was no war_. + +This, I am inclined to think, was one of the most important events of +Roosevelt's seven years in the White House. If we wish America to live +henceforth in peace and in honor, there is no incident of the past +thirty years which should be studied by every American with more care. +Germany began her attack on the world long before 1914. She bullied +here, and she schemed and plotted there, but she was at work for years. +In 1898 she tried to range the countries of Europe against us, as we +went to war with Spain. England stood our friend and kept her off. +Germany sent a fleet meddling into Manila Harbor to annoy and threaten +Admiral Dewey. He refused to be frightened by them however and as an +English squadron which was also there played the part of a good friend, +the German admiral had his trip for nothing. + +Later, about a year after Mr. Roosevelt became President, the German +Kaiser discovered a way, as he thought, to grab some territory in +South America. Our Monroe Doctrine, which insures peace in the Western +Hemisphere, by forbidding European nations to seize land here, was +an obstacle to the Kaiser. He disliked it. But taking as pretext the +fact that some people in Venezuela owed money to various Europeans, +including Germans, he induced England and Italy to join in sending a +fleet for a blockade of the Venezuelan coast. The English and Italians +agreed, before long, to arbitrate their difficulty with Venezuela, +and moreover they had no intention of seizing land. The German plan +was quite different. They threatened to bombard Venezuelan towns, +and we know enough now of their methods to say that they were hoping +for something which might serve as an excuse for landing troops and +taking possession of towns and territory. This was in defiance of our +Monroe Doctrine; it aimed at setting up an Emperor's colonies in South +America, and putting the peace of both South and North America into +danger. Mr. Roosevelt did not mean to allow it. + +But consider the situation. Germany was the foremost military power of +the world. Her army was almost the greatest; probably the best trained +and equipped. Ours was one of the smallest. Germany was not engaged in +difficulties elsewhere. She faced us across no barriers but the sea. +No great French and British armies held the lines against her, as they +did in later years when once more she threatened America. No mighty +British fleet held the seas and kept the German Navy cooped up where it +could do no harm,--except to such merchant ships, passenger steamers +and hospital boats as it could strike from under the water. We faced +Germany alone. But we had two means of defense. One of them was Admiral +Dewey and his ships. The first of them, however, and the only one +needed, was the cool-headed and brave-hearted man in the White House. + +He told the German Ambassador, quietly and without bluster, that unless +the Kaiser agreed to arbitrate his quarrel with Venezuela, and unless +he agreed within a short time, ten days or less, Admiral Dewey would be +ordered to Venezuela to protect it against a German attack. The German +ambassador said that, of course, as the All Highest Kaiser had refused +once before to arbitrate, there could be nothing done about it. All +Highests do not arbitrate. People simply have to step aside. + +President Roosevelt informed the German Ambassador that this meant war. +A few days later when the German Ambassador was again at the White +House, the President asked if the Kaiser had changed his mind. The +Ambassador seemed to think that it was a joke. The Kaiser change his +mind at the bidding of a Yankee President! It was almost funny! + +[Illustration: THE ROUGH RIDER + +_With Mr. Punch's best wishes to Colonel Roosevelt, President of the +United States._ + +(A Cartoon in _Punch_ when Colonel Roosevelt became President.)] + +"All right," said President Roosevelt, "I can change my mind. Admiral +Dewey will not even wait until Tuesday to start for Venezuela. He will +go on Monday. If you are cabling to Berlin, please tell them that." + +The pompous Ambassador was much flustered. He hurried away, but +returned in about a day and a half, still out of breath. + +"Mr. President," he said, "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor has agreed +to arbitrate with Venezuela." + +So there was no delay, no long and distressing argument; and there was +no war. The President could do this because he knew his countrymen; +he knew that they were not cowards. He knew they never had failed to +back up their leader in the White House. He knew that no President +need worry about loyalty when he tells America that a foreign enemy +is making threats. He had seen his courageous predecessor, Grover +Cleveland, rouse America, as one man, over another Venezuelan incident, +a dozen or more years before. And he knew that the only occasion +when America had ever seemed about to fall into doubt and hesitation +in time of danger, was when that doubt and hesitation began in the +White House,--in the administration of Buchanan, before the Civil War. +America will always support her President, if war threatens,--but +America expects him to show leadership. Timidity in the leader will +make timidity in the nation. + +So the Kaiser changed his mind and gave in,--why? Because he knew +that there was a President in the White House whose words were easy +to understand; they did not have to be interpreted nor explained. And +moreover, when these words were uttered, the President would make them +good, every one. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE LION HUNTER + + +Other important events of President Roosevelt's administration will +best be described farther on. For their importance increased after he +was out of office, and they had a great influence upon a later campaign. + +Here, it should be said that in 1904, as the term for which he was +acting as Mr. McKinley's successor, drew toward an end, he was +nominated by the Republican Party to succeed himself. There was some +talk of opposition within his party, especially from the friends of +"big business" who thought that he was not sufficiently reverent and +submissive to the moneyed interests. This opposition took the form of a +move to nominate Senator Hanna. But the Senator died, and the talk of +opposition which was mostly moonshine, faded away. + +When the campaign came in the autumn of 1904, his opponent was the +Democratic nominee, Judge Parker, also from New York. Mr. Roosevelt was +elected by a majority of more than two million and a half votes,--the +largest majority ever given to a President in our history, either +before or since that time. + +On the night of election day he issued a statement in which he said: +"Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another +nomination." Of this he writes: + + The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was twofold. + In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I + had served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in + from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had + really had only one elective term, so that the third term custom + did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I + believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom or tradition + to be wholesome, and therefore, I was determined to regard its + substance, refusing to quibble over the words usually employed to + express it. On the other hand I did not wish simply and specifically + to say that I would not be a candidate for the nomination in 1908, + because if I had specified the year when I would not be a candidate, + it would have been widely accepted as meaning that I intended to be + a candidate some other year; and I had no such intention, and had + no idea that I would ever be a candidate again. Certain newspaper + men did ask me if I intended to apply my prohibition to 1912, and I + answered that I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920, nor of 1940, + and that I must decline to say anything whatever except what appeared + in my statement.[17] + +[17] "Autobiography," pp. 422-3. + +From March 4, 1905, until March 4, 1909, he was an elected President, +not a President who had succeeded to the office through the death of +another. When the end of his term approached he threw his influence in +favor of the nomination of Mr. William H. Taft, Secretary of War in his +Cabinet. He could have had the nomination himself if he had wished it; +indeed he had to take precautions against being nominated. But Mr. Taft +was nominated, and in November, 1908, was elected over Mr. Bryan, who +was then running for the Presidency for the third time. + +President Roosevelt and President-elect Taft drove up Pennsylvania +Avenue to the Capitol together, March 4, 1909, in a cold gale of wind, +which had followed a sudden blizzard. The weather was an omen of the +stormy change which was coming over the friendship of these two men. +An hour or two later it was President Taft who drove back to the White +House, while Mr. Roosevelt, once more a private citizen, was hurrying +to his home in Oyster Bay, to get ready for his hunting trip to Africa. + + * * * * * + +This was the vacation to which he had been looking forward for years. +He had long been a friend of a number of famous hunters, and had +corresponded with and received visits from some of them. Chief among +these was Mr. Frederick Selous, one of the greatest of African hunters. +Those who have read any of Rider Haggard's fine stories of adventure +(especially "King Solomon's Mines" and "Allan Quartermain") will be +interested to know that Mr. Selous was the original of Quartermain. +Adventures like these of Selous, the opportunity to see the marvelous +African country, and the chance to shoot the dangerous big game, made +Roosevelt long to visit Africa. + +So he headed a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian +Institution to collect specimens for the National Museum at Washington. +With him went his son Kermit, a student at Harvard; and three American +naturalists. They left America only two or three weeks after his term +as President had ended, and they came out of the African wilderness +at Khartoum about a year later. With friends whom they met in Africa, +English and American hunters, and a long train of native bearers and +scouts, they visited the parts of Africa richest in game, and killed +lions, leopards, hyenas, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, zebra, +giraffe, buffalo, and dozens of other kinds of animals. Mr. Roosevelt +and Kermit shot about a dozen trophies for themselves; otherwise +nothing was killed which was not intended as a museum specimen or +for meat. No useless butchery of animals was allowed; often at great +inconvenience and even danger, animals were avoided or driven off +rather than let them be killed needlessly. Some of the finest groups of +mounted animals in the country are now standing in the National Museum, +as a result of this trip. + +They saw many wonderful sights. They saw a band of Nandi warriors, +fierce savages, naked, and armed only with shields and long spears, +attack and kill a big lion. Kermit Roosevelt took photographs of most +of the large game, coming up to close quarters in order to get his +pictures. He took two or three photographs of a herd of wild elephants +in the forest, going at great risk within twenty-five yards of the herd +to be sure to get a good view. + +One day's hunting, which Mr. Roosevelt describes, shows what the +country was like, how full it was of all kinds of animals. Leaving +camp at seven in the morning they were out altogether over fifteen +hours. They were after a lion, so did not look for other game. They +soon passed some zebra, and antelope, but left them alone. The country +was a dry, brown grassland, with few trees, and in some places seems +to have looked like our Western prairie. At noon they sighted three +rhinoceros, which they tried to avoid, as they did not wish to shoot +them. Of course, in such circumstances it is necessary to do nothing +to disturb the temper of the animals--stupid, short-sighted beasts--or +else in their anger or alarm, they will blindly charge the hunter, who +then is forced to shoot to save himself from being tossed and gored +on that great horn. There was a hyena disturbing the other game, and +as these are savage nuisances, Mr. Roosevelt shot this one at three +hundred and fifty paces. While the porters were taking the skin, he +could not help laughing, he says, at finding their party in the center +of a great plain, stared at from all sides by enough wild animals to +stock a circus. Vultures were flying overhead. The three rhinoceros +were gazing at them, about half a mile away. Wildebeest (sometimes +called gnu) which look something like the American buffalo or bison, +and hartebeest, stood around in a ring, looking on. Four or five +antelope came in closer to see what was happening, and a zebra trotted +by, neighing and startling the rhinoceros. + +After a rest for luncheon, they went on, looking for lions. Two +wart-hogs jumped up, and Mr. Roosevelt shot the biggest of them. By +this time it was getting late in the afternoon; time for lions to be +about. At last they saw one; a big lioness. She ran along the bed of +a stream, crouching so as not to be seen in the failing light. The +two hunters rode past and would have missed her if one of the native +followers had not sighted her a second time. Then Roosevelt and the +other hunter left their horses, and came in close on foot. This is +perhaps as dangerous as any hunting in Africa. A man must be cool and a +good shot to go after lions; sooner or later almost every lion hunter +either gets badly hurt or gets killed. + +This time all went well; Roosevelt hit her with his first shot; ran +in close and finished her. She weighed over three hundred pounds. +The porters--much excited, as they always are at the death of a +lion--wished to carry the whole body without skinning it, back to +camp. While they were lashing it to a pole another lion began to growl +hungrily. The night was dark, without a moon, and the work of getting +back was hard for the porters, as well as rather terrifying to them. +Lions were grunting all about; twice one of them kept alongside the men +as they walked,--much to their discomfort. Then a rhinoceros, nearby, +let off a series of snorts, like a locomotive. This did not cheer up +the porters to any great degree. Roosevelt and the other white hunter +had trouble to keep them together and to keep on the watch, with their +rifles ready to drive off any animals which might attack. + +At last they came to the camp of a tribe of savages called Masai. As +they were still four miles from their own camp and as the porters were +about exhausted from carrying the lion, they decided to go in there, +skin the lion and rest for a while. There was some trouble about this, +as the Masai feared that the scent of the dead lion would scare their +cattle. They agreed at last, however, admitted the white men and the +porters, and stood about, in the fire-light, leaning on their spears, +and laughing, while the lion was being skinned. They gave Roosevelt +milk to drink and seemed pleased to have a call from "Bwana Makuba," +the Great Chief, as the porters called him. + +So here was an Ex-President of the United States, not many months from +his work as Chief Magistrate in the Capitol of a civilized nation, +talking to a group of savages, who in their dwellings, weapons, +clothing and customs had hardly changed in three thousand years; the +twentieth century A.D. meeting the tenth century B.C. + +At ten o'clock they got back to their own camp, and after a hot bath, +sat down to a supper of eland venison and broiled spur fowl,--"and +surely no supper ever tasted more delicious." + +Another day, when hunting with the same companion he had the experience +of being charged by a wounded lion. It was a big, male lion, with +a black and yellow mane. They chased him on horseback for about two +miles. Then he stopped and hid behind a bush. A shot wounded him +slightly and, Mr. Tarlton, Roosevelt's companion, an experienced +lion-hunter, told him that the lion was sure to charge. + + Again I knelt and fired; but the mass of hair on the lion made me + think he was nearer than he was, and I undershot, inflicting a flesh + wound that was neither crippling nor fatal. He was already grunting + savagely and tossing his tail erect, with his head held low; and at + the shot the great sinewy beast came toward us with the speed of a + greyhound. Tarlton then very properly fired, for lion hunting is + no child's play, and it is not good to run risks. Ordinarily it is + a very mean thing to experience joy at a friend's miss, but this + was not an ordinary case, and I felt keen delight when the bullet + from the badly sighted rifle missed, striking the ground many yards + short. I was sighting carefully from my knee, and I knew I had the + lion all right; for though he galloped at a great pace he came on + steadily--ears laid back, and uttering terrific coughing grunts--and + there was now no question of making allowance for distance, nor, as + he was out in the open, for the fact that he had not before been + distinctly visible. The bead of my foresight was exactly on the + center of his chest as I pressed the trigger, and the bullet went as + true as if the place had been plotted with dividers. The blow brought + him up all standing, and he fell forward on his head. + + The soft-nosed Winchester bullet had gone straight through the chest + cavity, smashing the lungs and the big blood-vessels of the heart. + Painfully he recovered his feet, and tried to come on, his ferocious + courage holding out to the last; but he staggered and turned from + side to side, unable to stand firmly, still less to advance at a + faster pace than a walk. He had not ten seconds to live; but it is a + sound principle to take no chances with lions. Tarlton hit him with + his second bullet probably in the shoulder; and with my next shot I + broke his neck. I had stopped him when he was still a hundred yards + away, and certainly no finer sight could be imagined than that of + this great maned lion as he charged.[18] + +[18] "African Game Trails," pp. 192-3. + +To the man who can shoot straight, and shoot just as straight at a +savage animal as at a target, African game-hunting is for part of the +time not very dangerous. Nine or ten lions or elephants or rhinoceros +may be killed, without seeming risk. The tenth time something +unexpected happens, and death comes very near to the hunter. + +In shooting an elephant in the forest one day, Roosevelt had what was +perhaps his closest call since the bear nearly killed him, years before +in Idaho. He had just shot an elephant, when there came a surprise: + + But at that very instant, before there was a moment's time in which + to reload, the thick bushes parted immediately on my left front, and + through them surged the vast bulk of a charging bull elephant, the + matted mass of tough creepers snapping like packthread before his + rush. He was so close that he could have touched me with his trunk. + I leaped to one side and dodged behind a tree trunk, opening the + rifle, throwing out the empty shells, and slipping in two cartridges. + Meantime Cunninghame fired right and left, at the same time throwing + himself into the bushes on the other side. Both his bullets went + home, and the bull stopped short in his charge, wheeled, and + immediately disappeared in the thick cover. We ran forward, but the + forest had closed over his wake. We heard him trumpet shrilly, and + then all sounds ceased.[19] + +[19] "African Game Trails," p. 251. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +EUROPE AND AMERICA + + +At Khartoum Mr. Roosevelt and his son were joined by other members of +his family. They all crossed to Europe, for he had been invited by the +rulers and learned bodies of a number of countries to pay them a visit. +He went to Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, +Denmark, Belgium and England, receiving the highest compliments from +their rulers, honorary degrees from the universities, and a welcome +from the people everywhere which had been given with such heartiness to +no other American since General Grant traveled round the world after +the Civil War. + +In Norway he spoke to the Nobel Committee in thanks for the Peace Prize +which they had awarded him after the Russo-Japanese War. In Germany, +the Kaiser ordered a review of troops for him; and he was received by +the University of Berlin. In Paris, he addressed the famous institution +of learning, the Sorbonne. The English universities received him, +and gave him their honorary degrees. London made him a "freeman." +His speeches before the learned men of Europe might not have been +extraordinary for a university teacher, but when we think that his +life had alternated between the hustle of politics, the career of a +ranchman, of a soldier, and of a hunter of big game, it is evident that +we shall have to search long and far among our public men before we can +find any to match him in the variety of his interests and achievements. + +In England, King Edward VII had just died, and Mr. Roosevelt was +appointed by President Taft as the American representative at the +funeral. There was a gathering in London of thirteen reigning monarchs, +and many curious stories are told about the occasion. Of course the +Kaiser was there, strutting about and trying to patronize everybody. +Mr. Roosevelt had been politely received by the Kaiser and believed, +as did every one, that beneath his arrogant manners, there was a great +deal of ability. But he did not allow himself to be treated by the "All +Highest" with magnificent condescension. + +A story is repeated, of which one version is that the Kaiser suddenly +called out, at some reception: + +"Oh, Colonel Roosevelt, I wish to see you before I leave London, and +can give you just thirty minutes, to-morrow afternoon at two." + +"That's very good of Your Majesty," replied Mr. Roosevelt, "and I'll +be there. But unfortunately I have an engagement, so that I'll only be +able to give you twenty minutes." + +Another story concerns a little boy,--the Crown Prince of one of the +countries where royal folk have simpler and better manners than in +Germany. He and his parents and other persons of royal rank were at the +palace where Mr. Roosevelt was staying. As any man would know, boys are +interested in much the same things whether they are princes or not, +and this one was greatly taken by Mr. Roosevelt's stories of hunting, +and by being taught some of the games which the American father and +his boys had played in the White House, not many years before. So +it happened that as a group of the visitors, including two or three +kings and queens, stepped out of one of the rooms of the palace into +a corridor one evening, they were astonished to see a gentleman down +on his hands and knees on a rug, playing "bear" with a little boy. The +gentleman was the Ex-President of the United States, and the boy was +the future King of one of the countries of Europe. + +[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by Clinedinet, Washington, D.C. + +President Roosevelt in the Saddle] + +Roosevelt's return to New York was the signal for a tremendous +reception. New York outdid itself in salutes, parades, and wildly +cheering crowds. Nothing like it had been seen before. Even after the +excitement of the first day of his return, he could not go out without +being surrounded by cheering crowds. He knew that it could not last, +and said to his sister: "Soon they will be throwing rotten apples at +me." + +He was right. A period was about to begin when he was to be defeated +in every campaign in which he engaged. All the enemies he had made in +his long fight for better government--and they were many and bitter +enemies--were to join hands with all the people who opposed him just +because they disliked him. He was to part company from some of his +nearest friends, and persistently to be reviled, misunderstood and +attacked. Yet he was to rally around him a body of devoted friends, and +make these the greatest years of his life. + +It is partly comic and partly sad, to look back and consider the things +for which Roosevelt had fought in his public life, and to recall that +a fight had to be made for things like these; that the man advocating +them had to stand unlimited abuse. He had been abused for trying +to stop the sale of liquor to children, and opposed in his efforts +to prevent the making of cigars in filthy bed-rooms. He had been +violently attacked for enforcing the liquor laws of New York. Lawyers +and public men had grown red with anger as they denounced him as a +tyrant, and an enemy to the Constitution, because he wished to stop +a dishonest system of rebates by the railroads. A man looks back and +wonders if he were living among sane people, or in a mad-house, when +he recalls that Roosevelt was viciously attacked because he proposed +that the meat-packers of this country should not be allowed to sell to +their countrymen rotten and diseased products which foreign countries +refused even to admit. Sneers greeted his attempts to prevent poisons +being sold as medicine, and laudanum being peddled to little children +as soothing-syrup. His fight to prevent greedy folk from destroying +the forests, wasting the minerals, and spoiling the water supplies of +America had to be made in the face of every sort of legal trickery and +the meanest of personal abuse. + +The Republican Party had been founded during one of the greatest +efforts for human freedom ever made in our history. In its long years +in power, and in the amazing increase in prosperity and wealth in +America, if had become the defender of wealth. Many of its highest and +most powerful men could see no farther than the cash drawer. Human +rights and wrongs, human suffering, or any attempt to prevent such +sufferings, simply did not interest them. They were not cruel men +personally, but they had heard repeated for so many years that this or +the other thing could not be done "because it would hurt business," +that they had come to worship "business" as a savage bows his head +before an idol. Many of them could give money for an orphan asylum or +a children's hospital, and yet on the same day, vote to kill a bill +aimed to prevent child-labor. To pass such a bill as that would "hurt +business." + +The Democratic Party was no better. It was simply weaker, and usually +less intelligent. Wherever it was powerful, it, too, was apt to be the +servant of corruption. The politicians of both parties loved to keep up +a continual fight about the tariff, to distract public attention from +other important subjects. + +There had been disagreements in the Republican Party for a number +of years. These had gone on during the Roosevelt administration. In +the main, these struggles can be described by saying that President +Roosevelt and those who agreed with him were looking out for the +advantage of the many, and for the welfare and health of great masses +of the people. His opponents were more interested to see that +nothing checked the activities of great corporations, railroads, and +manufacturing interests. They sincerely believed that this was the +first concern of all true patriots. Roosevelt wished every man to have +a square deal, an equal chance, so far as possible, to earn as good a +living as he could. His opponents thought that if the great business +interests could only go on, as they liked, without being annoyed by the +government, they would be able to give employment to almost everybody, +and to all the unfortunates, who were crushed in the struggle, they +would give charity. + +Between these two groups there was a ceaseless fight all the years +Roosevelt was in the White House. He had been strongly approved at +the polls; many of the measures he advocated had been made laws by +Congress. So he thought, and the larger part of the Republican Party +thought, when Mr. Taft became President, that the measures which they +had approved were going to be advanced still further. + +It soon appeared that they were in for a disappointment. Mr. Taft +proved friendly to the older politicians; the younger and progressive +men were not in favor. He made his associates, and chose as his +advisers, the men who called Mr. Roosevelt "rash," "a socialist," +"an anarchist." Many of the men who surrounded President Taft were +honest and patriotic. But there were also a number of stick-in-the-mud +statesmen,--old gentlemen who had been saying the same thing, thinking +the same things, doing the same things, for forty years. To change, +to be up with the times, to progress, to alter methods to meet new +conditions, struck them as simply indecent. Their idea of a happy +national life was great "prosperity" for a fortunate few, a lesser +degree of success for some others who could cling to the chariot wheels +of the rich, and,--charity for the rest. That was always their answer +to the old, hard problem of wealth and poverty. Like quack doctors they +would try to cure the symptoms, rather than like wise physicians seek +to find the causes. They were like the Tories in our Revolution who +were for King George against George Washington, because King George +was the legal King of the American colonies, or like the Northern +pro-slavery men, who defended slavery because it was permitted by the +Constitution and the slaves were legal "property." The Constitution +was, for them, an instrument to be used to block all change, whether +good or bad. + +Other men, near to President Taft, were neither patriotic nor innocent. +They were shrewd, powerful Bosses,--men of the type of Platt. Only, Mr. +Taft did not stand on the alert with them, as Roosevelt had done as +Governor, working with them when he could, and fighting them when they +went wrong. He allowed them to influence his administration, and, at +last, accepted a nomination engineered by them for their own selfish +purposes. + +The Republicans who followed President Taft, the "stand-patters," +believed in property rights first, and human rights second. If any +of them did not actually believe this, they joined people who did +thoroughly believe it, and so their action counted toward putting that +belief into practice. The others, the "Insurgents" or Progressive +Republicans, (later called the Bull Moose) believed in human rights +first. That is as near as the thing can be stated, remembering that it +was a disputed point, with good men on both sides. The stand-patters +said the Progressives were cranks,--visionary and impractical; the +Progressives replied that it was better to be both of these things than +to be quite so near to the earth and selfish as Mr. Taft's followers or +managers. The events of later years have not borne out the contention +that Roosevelt was "rash" and "dangerous"; while the charge that Mr. +Taft made a President more pleasing to the Bosses than to the people +was amply proved, in the campaign of 1912. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE BULL MOOSE + + +It was not personal ambition which made Roosevelt become the leader +of the revolt in the Republican Party, and later head a new party. +The revolt had been growing while he was in Africa, and he was long +besought to become its leader. At first, Senator La Follette seemed a +possible leader, but he broke down in a nervous attack, and the belief +that he was not the man for the place has been justified by later +events. + +As President Taft's administration drew to an end, in 1911 and 1912, +it was clear that he was steadily losing the public confidence. State +elections, and other straws, showed how the wind was blowing. The +Progressive Republicans pointed out to their fellow-members of the +party that only where a Progressive ran for office in a state election +did the party win. Otherwise the Democrats were victorious. The lesson +was plain; but the stand-patters did not care to see it. By the +beginning of 1912 it was freely predicted in print that the Democrats +would nominate Governor Wilson of New Jersey, their strongest +candidate, and that they would win if the Republicans insisted on +naming Mr. Taft. But the old-line Republicans were above taking advice. +The Democrats were naturally gleeful about the situation; they kept +their faces straight and solemnly warned the Republicans, in the +name of the safety of the country, not to listen to the "wild man," +Roosevelt, but to be sure to nominate Mr. Taft. And the Republicans +listened to the advice of their opponents. "Whom the Gods would destroy +they first make mad." + +Roosevelt had been telling his friends that he would not run again; +that he did not wish to oppose Mr. Taft, who had been his close friend +and associate. But neither he, nor the Republicans who thought as +he did, liked to see their party drift back and back to become the +organization for plunder which the Bosses would have made it long +before, if they had always had a "good-natured" man in the White House. +When the governors of seven States--Michigan, West Virginia, Wyoming, +Nebraska, New Hampshire, Missouri and Kansas--united in an appeal to +Roosevelt for leadership, he began to change his mind. + +He said in private, that he knew it would be hard, if not impossible, +for him to get the nomination; President Taft had all the machinery on +his side. He knew that it meant parting with many of his best friends; +the older politicians would mainly oppose him; he would have to go +directly to the people for his support, and rely upon the younger +leaders as his lieutenants. + +In going straight to the people he was following one of the principles +of the Insurgent or Progressive Republicans. In order to fight the +Bosses, and overcome the crooked and secret influence of "big business" +in politics, the Progressives were proposing various methods by which +it was hoped the people might rule more directly, and prevent a few +men from overcoming the wishes of the many. One of these methods was +the direct primary, so that the voters might choose their candidates +themselves, instead of leaving it to the absurd conventions, where +large crowds of men are hired to fill the galleries, yell for one +candidate, and try to out-yell the opposing crowd. + +In February, 1912, Roosevelt announced that he was a candidate for the +Republican nomination. + +"My hat is in the ring," he said. + +The storm of abuse which raged around him now was terrific. All the +friends of fattened monopoly--and this included many of the most +powerful newspapers--screamed aloud in their fright. Mostly they +assailed him on three counts: that he was "disloyal" to his friend, +Mr. Taft, that he had promised never to run for President again; and +that it meant the overthrow of the Republic and the setting up of a +monarchy if any man ever disregarded Washington's example and was +President for three terms. + +The charge of disloyalty to Mr. Taft does not deserve discussion. +Those who made it never stopped to think that they were saying that +a man should set his personal friendships higher than his regard for +the nation; that he must support his friend, even if he believed that +to do so would work harm to the whole country. Moreover, if there +had been any disloyalty, it had not been on Mr. Roosevelt's side! He +had remained true to his principles. As for the promise never to run +again, we have already seen what he said about that. The notion that +Washington laid down some law against reelecting a President for more +than two terms is an example of how a complete error may pass into +popular belief and become a superstition. Washington said and believed +the very opposite. He did not wish a third term himself, because he +was old and weary, but in regard to third terms he seems to have been +even more liberal than Roosevelt, who disapproved of three terms _in +succession_. But Washington distinctly said that he saw no reason why +a President should not be reelected as often as the people needed his +services. He said nothing about four, eight, or twelve years, but in +discussing this very question in a letter to Lafayette, wrote: + + "I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the services + of any man, who on some emergency shall be deemed most capable of + serving the public."[20] + +[20] Sparks, "Writings of George Washington," ix. 358. + +In the primary campaign, in the spring of 1912, the Progressive +Republicans and Mr. Roosevelt proved their case up to the hilt. In +every instance but one, where it was possible to get a direct vote of +the people, Roosevelt beat President Taft, and overwhelmingly. Thus, in +California he beat him nearly two to one; in Illinois, more than two +to one, in Nebraska more than three to one, in North Dakota more than +twenty to one, in South Dakota more than three to one. In New Jersey, +Maryland, Oregon and Ohio, Roosevelt won decisively; in Pennsylvania by +a tremendous majority. Massachusetts, the only remaining State which +held a direct primary, where both men were in the field, split nearly +even, giving Mr. Taft a small lead. + +In the face of this clear indication of what the voters wished, for the +Republican leaders to go ahead and nominate Mr. Taft was sheer suicide +from a political point of view. It was also something much worse: the +few denying the will of the many. This, of course, is tyranny,--what +our ancestors revolted against when they founded the nation. But go +ahead they did. It is probable that even as early as this they had +no idea of winning the election; they merely intended to keep the +party machinery in their own hands. Gravely talking about law and the +Constitution they proceeded to defy the first principles of popular +government. + +By use of the Southern delegates, from States where the Republican +Party exists mostly in theory, by contesting almost every delegation, +and always ruling against Roosevelt, by every manipulation which the +"Old Guard" of the party could employ, Mr. Taft was nominated. In at +least one important and crucial case, delegates were seized for Mr. +Taft by shameless theft. The phrase is that used by Mr. Thayer,--a +historian, accustomed to weigh his words, and a non-partisan in this +contest, since he favored neither Mr. Taft nor Roosevelt. + +In August the Progressive Party was founded at a convention held in +Chicago. Roosevelt and Johnson were the nominees for President and +Vice-President. The men gathered at this convention were out of the +Republican Party; they had not left it, but the party had left them. +Not willingly did they take this action; men whose grandfathers voted +for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860, and again for Lincoln in +1864, when the fate of the Republic really depended on the success of +the Republican Party. The sons of men who had fought for the Union +did not lightly attack even the name of the old party. But there was +nothing left but its name; its worst elements led it; many of the +better men who stayed in it kept silent. Probably even they realized +the nauseous hypocrisy of the situation when Mr. William Barnes of New +York came forward and implored that the country be saved, that our +liberty be saved, that the Constitution be saved! + +For the destroyer, from whom the country was to be saved, was one of +the greatest and most honorable men of his time,--while it was later +established in court that it was no libel to say that Mr. Barnes was a +Boss and had used crooked methods. + +The Progressives, soon called the Bull Moose Party, attracted the +usual group of reformers, and some cranks. Each new party does this. +Roosevelt had, many years before, spoken of the "lunatic fringe" which +clings to the skirts of every sincere reform. + +"But the whole body," writes Mr. Thayer, "judged without +prejudice, probably contained the largest number of disinterested, +public-spirited, and devoted persons, who had ever met for a national +and political object since the group which formed the Republican Party +in 1854." + +All the new measures which they proposed, although denounced by the +two old parties, were in use in other democratic countries; many of +them have since been adopted here. Roosevelt foresaw the radical wave +which was later to sweep over the country and was trying to make our +government more liberal, so as to meet the new spirit of things. The +more radical of Socialists always hated him as their worst enemy, for +they knew that his reasonable reforms would make it impossible for them +to succeed in their extreme proposals. + +The jokes made about the new party were often most amusing and added a +great deal of interest to an exciting campaign. The Bull Moosers were +very much in earnest, and had a camp-meeting fervor, which laid them +open to a good deal of ridicule. But they could stand it, for they knew +that as between themselves and the Republicans, the last laugh would be +theirs. The Republicans had nominated Mr. Taft by means of delegates +from rock-ribbed Democratic States like Alabama, Florida and Georgia, +let them now see if they could elect him by such means! + +One phase of the campaign was a shame and a disgrace. The Republican +newspapers joined in the use of abusive terms against Roosevelt, to +a degree which has never been paralleled, before nor since. They +described him as a monster, a foul traitor, another Benedict Arnold, +and for weeks used language about him for which the writers would be +overcome with shame if it were brought home to them now. This had its +natural result. Just as the speeches of Emma Goldman and others stirred +up the murderer of President McKinley to his act, so this reiteration +of abuse, this harping on the assertion that Roosevelt was the enemy +of the country, the destroyer of law and liberty, induced another +weak-minded creature to attempt murder. + +A man named Schrank who said that he had been led on by what he read +in the papers, waited for Roosevelt outside a hotel in Milwaukee. This +was during the campaign and Roosevelt was leaving the hotel to make +a speech in a public hall. As he stood up in his automobile, Schrank +shot him in the chest. The bullet was partially checked by a thick +roll of paper--the notes for his speech--and by an eyeglasses case. +Nevertheless, with the bullet in him, only stopping to change his +blood-soaked shirt, he refused to quit. He went and made his speech, +standing on the platform and speaking for over an hour. + +[Illustration: Copyright by Underwood and Underwood. + +PRESIDENT AND MRS. ROOSEVELT WITH FIVE OF THEIR CHILDREN] + +He thought of himself as a soldier fighting for a cause, and he would +no more leave because of a wound than he would have deserted his +fellow-hunter in Africa, when that charging lion came down on them. + +For two weeks he had to keep out of the campaign, recovering from his +wound, first in a hospital and then at home. Governor Wilson, the +Democratic nominee, soon to be the President-Elect, generously offered +to cease his campaign speeches, but this offer was declined by Mr. +Roosevelt. + +In the election, Mr. Wilson was the winner, with Mr. Roosevelt second. +The Progressive candidate beat the Republican, as it had been predicted +he would. Mr. Roosevelt received over half a million more votes than +Mr. Taft, and had eighty-eight electoral votes to eight for Mr. Taft. +The Bosses were punished for defying the will of the voters and a +useful lesson in politics was administered. + +The testimony of Mr. Thayer is especially valuable, since he was a +supporter of Mr. Wilson in this election. He writes that since the +election showed that Roosevelt had been all the time the real choice of +the Republican Party "it was the Taft faction and not Roosevelt which +split the Republican Party in 1912." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE EXPLORER + + + I cannot rest from travel; I will drink + Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd + Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those + That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when + Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades + Vext the dim sea. I am become a name; + For always roaming with a hungry heart + Much have I seen and known,--cities of men + And manners, climates, councils, governments, + Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,-- + And drunk delight of battle with my peers, + Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. ... + How dull it is to pause, to make an end, + To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! + As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life + Were all too little, and of one to me + Little remains; but every hour is saved + From that eternal silence, something more, + A bringer of new things; and vile it were + For some three suns to store and hoard myself, + And this grey spirit yearning in desire + To follow knowledge like a sinking star, + Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. + + Tennyson's _Ulysses_. + +Mr. Roosevelt took his defeat without whimpering. When he was in a +fight he gave blows and expected to receive them. His enemies often hit +foul blows, and this his friends resented, especially when the attacks +actually provoked an attempt at murder. When his private character was +assailed he defended himself, promptly and successfully. But neither +he nor any of his friends asked that he should be sacred from all +criticism; nor feebly protested that he was above ordinary mortals, and +only to be mentioned with a sort of trembling reverence. He was too +much of a man to be kept wrapped in wool. + +In 1913 he traveled through South American countries to speak before +learned bodies which had invited him to come before them. Afterwards, +with his son Kermit, some American naturalists, and Colonel Rondon, a +brave and distinguished Brazilian officer, he made a long trip through +the wilderness of Brazil, to hunt and explore. Some of the country +through which they traveled was little known to white men; some of it +absolutely unknown. They hunted and killed specimens of the jaguar, +tapir, peccary, and nearly all of the other strange South American +animals. + +In February 1914, they set out upon an unknown stream called the River +of Doubt. They did not know whether the exploration of this river would +take them weeks or months; whether they might have to face starvation, +or savage tribes, or worse than either, disease. They surveyed the +river as they went, so as to be able to map its course, and add to +geographical knowledge. Strange birds haunted the river, and vicious +stinging insects annoyed the travelers. They constantly had to carry +the canoes around rapids or waterfalls, so that progress was slow. Some +of the canoes were damaged and others had to be built. Large birds, +like the curassow, and also monkeys, were shot for food. The pest +of stinging insects grew constantly worse,--bees, mosquitoes, large +blood-sucking flies and enormous ants tormented them. The flies were +called piums and borashudas. Some of them bit like scorpions. + +Kermit Roosevelt's canoe was caught in the rapids, smashed and sunk, +and one of the men drowned. Once they saw signs of some unknown tribe +of Indians, when, one of the dogs belonging to the party was killed in +the forest, almost within sight of Colonel Rondon, and found with two +arrows in his body. The river was dangerous for bathing, because of a +peculiar fish--the piranha--a savage little beast which attacks men +and animals with its razor-like teeth, inflicts fearful wounds and may +even kill any unfortunate creature which is caught by a school in deep +water. Some members of the party were badly bitten by the piranhas. + +As their long and difficult course down the river continued, and as +their hardships increased, one of the native helpers murdered another +native--a sergeant--and fled. Roosevelt, while in the water helping to +right an upset canoe, bruised his leg against a boulder. Inflammation +set in, as it usually does with wounds in the tropics. For forty-eight +days they saw no human being outside their own party. They were all +weak with fever and troubled with wounds received in the river. Colonel +Roosevelt (who was nearly fifty-six years old) wrote of his own +condition: + + The after effects of the fever still hung on; and the leg which had + been hurt while working in the rapids with the sunken canoe had taken + a turn for the bad and developed an abscess. The good doctor, to + whose unwearied care and kindness I owe much, had cut it open and + inserted a drainage tube; an added charm being given the operation, + and the subsequent dressings, by the enthusiasm with which the piums + and boroshudas took part therein. I could hardly hobble, and was + pretty well laid up. "But there aren't no 'stop conductor,' while a + battery's changing ground." No man has any business to go on such + a trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of + his associates by any delay caused by a weakness or ailment of his. + It is his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he + drops. Fortunately, I was put to no such test. I remained in good + shape until we had passed the last of the rapids of the chasms. When + my serious trouble came we had only canoe-riding ahead of us. It + is not ideal for a sick man to spend the hottest hours of the day + stretched on the boxes in the bottom of a small open dugout, under + the well-nigh intolerable heat of the torrid sun of the mid-tropics, + varied by blinding, drenching downpours of rain, but I could not be + sufficiently grateful for the chance. Kermit and Cherrie took care of + me as if they had been trained nurses; and Colonel Rondon and Lyra + were no less thoughtful.[21] + +[21] "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," p. 319. + +It is known that his illness was more serious, and his conduct much +more unselfish than he told in his book. When he could not be moved, he +asked the others to go forward for their own safety and leave him. They +refused, naturally, and he secretly resolved to shoot himself if his +condition did not soon improve, rather than be a drag on the party. In +his report to the Brazilian Government, which had made the expedition +possible by its aid, Mr. Roosevelt was able to say: + +"We have put on the map a river about 1500 kilometers in length running +from just south of the 13th degree to north of the 5th degree and the +biggest affluent of the Madeira. Until now its upper course has been +utterly unknown to every one, and its lower course, although known for +years to the rubber men, utterly unknown to cartographers." + +The Brazilian Government renamed the river in his honor, first the Rio +Roosevelt, later the Rio Teodoro. Branches of it were named in honor of +other members of the party, the Rio Kermit and the Rio Cherrie,--the +latter for the American naturalist, Mr. George K. Cherrie. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE MAN + + +What did Theodore Roosevelt do during his life that raised him above +other men? What were his achievements? Why are memorials and monuments +raised in his honor, books written about him? Why do people visit his +grave, and care to preserve the house where he was born? + +First, because he helped the cause of better government all his life, +as, while in college, he said that he was going to do. + +Second, because he had a good influence on politics, upon business, and +upon American life generally. Dishonest and shady dealings which were +common when he left college, became very much less common as a result +of his work. No other American did as much as he for this improvement. + +Third, because he practiced the "square deal." It did not matter to +him if the evil-doer was rich or poor,--Roosevelt was his enemy. The +criminal who had many friends in Wall Street was a criminal still +in his eyes; and the rascal who had friends in labor unions was +nevertheless a rascal to him. He would not denounce one and go easy +with the other. Poisoning people with bad meat was no less a crime to +him because it was said to be done in the interests of "business"; +blowing up people with bombs was not to be considered any less than +murder because some one said it was done to help "labor." + +Next, he practiced what he preached. When the great time came, he was +ready "to pay with his body for his soul's desire." + +While President, he proved by his conduct of our relations with foreign +countries, that it is possible both to keep peace and to keep our self +respect, and that this can be done only by firmness and courage. + +He maintained our national defenses at the highest possible level, +scorning to risk his fellow-countrymen's lives and fortunes through +neglect of the Army and Navy. + +By his wisdom, promptness and moral courage in an emergency he made the +Panama Canal possible. + +He led in a great fight for liberal politics, trying to put the ruling +power of the nation once more in the hands of its citizens, and showing +by his action that his country was dearer to him than any political +party. + +Finally, in the very last years of his life, and in a time of dreadful +national trial, his great voice became the true voice of America to +lead his countrymen out of a quagmire of doubt and disloyalty. + +You may have heard it said that he was conceited, arrogant, +head-strong. What did the men nearest him think? John Hay, the polished +diplomat, who had been private secretary to Abraham Lincoln, wrote +about Roosevelt in his diary. November 28, 1904: + + I read the President's message in the afternoon.... Made several + suggestions as to changes and omissions. The President came in just + as I had finished and we went over the matter together. He accepted + my ideas with that singular amiability and open-mindedness which + form so striking a contrast with the general idea of his brusque and + arbitrary character. + +You may have heard it said that he acted hastily, went ahead on +snap-judgments. On this subject, Mr. Hay wrote: + + Roosevelt is prompt and energetic, but he takes infinite pains to + get at the facts before he acts. In all the crises in which he has + been accused of undue haste, his action has been the result of long + meditation and well-reasoned conviction. If he thinks rapidly, that + is no fault; he thinks thoroughly, and that is the essential. + +He was never a humbug. He did not deny that he enjoyed being President. +He never let his friends point to him, while he was in the White House, +as a martyr. He had a good time wherever he was. As he wrote: + + I remember once sitting at a table with six or eight other public + officials, and each was explaining how he regarded being in public + life--how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from + resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a thankless + constituency was telling upon him--and that nothing but the fact that + he felt that he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare of his + country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship. It went round + the table until it came to my turn. This was during my first term of + office as President of the United States. I said: "Now, gentlemen, I + do not wish there to be any misunderstanding. I like my job, and I + want to keep it for four years more."[22] + +[22] Abbott, p. 100. + +As for the question whether he acted from personal ambition, or from +devotion to the cause he represented, the following incident is as +strong a piece of evidence as we have about any of our public men. It +is related by Mr. Travers Carman, of the _Outlook_, who accompanied +Colonel Roosevelt to the Republican convention in 1912. + +Roosevelt, on the evening of this conference in the Congress Hotel, +lacked only twenty-eight votes to secure the nomination for President. +Mr. Carman was in the room, when a delegate entered, in suppressed +excitement, announcing that he represented thirty-two Southern +delegates who would pledge themselves to vote for the Colonel, if +they could be permitted to vote with the "regular" Republicans on all +matters of party organization, upon the platform, and so on. Here +were thirty-two votes,--four more than were needed to give him the +nomination. + + Without a moment's hesitation and in the death-like silence of that + room the Colonel's answer rang out, clearly and distinctly: "Thank + the delegates you represent, but tell them that I cannot permit + them to vote for me unless they vote for all progressive principles + for which I have fought, for which the Progressive element in the + Republican party stands, and by which I stand or fall." Strong men + broke down under the stress of that night. Life-long friends of Mr. + Roosevelt endeavored to persuade him to reconsider his decision. + After listening patiently he turned to two who had been urging him + to accept the offer of the Southern delegates, placed a hand on + the shoulder of each, and said: "I have grown to regard you both + as brothers; let no act or word of yours make that relationship + impossible."[23] + +[23] Abbott, p. 85. + +Two important law-suits occupied some of Roosevelt's time after the +Progressive campaign. One of the favorite slanders about Roosevelt, +repeated mostly by word of mouth, was that he drank to excess or was an +habitual drunkard. At last it began to be repeated in print; a Michigan +newspaper printed it, coupled with other falsehoods concerning his use +of profane language. Few public men would have cared to bring suit, +because the plaintiff must stand a cross-examination. But Roosevelt was +careful of his good name; he did not intend that persons should be able +to repeat slander about him, except in deliberate bad faith. + +He and his lawyers went to the trial, bringing with them dozens of +witnesses, life-long friends, hunting companions, reporters who had +accompanied him on political campaigns, fellow-soldiers, Cabinet +officers, physicians, officers of the Army and Navy. These witnesses +testified for a week to his temperate habits, agreeing absolutely in +their testimony. The doctors pointed out that only a temperate man +could have recovered so quickly from his wound. It was established that +he never drank anything stronger than wine, except as a medicine; that +he drank very little wine, and never got drunk. + +At the end, the newspaper editor withdrew his statement, apologized, +was found guilty and fined only nominal charges. Mr. Roosevelt was not +after this small creature's money, but was only bent on clearing his +reputation. So it was at his request that the fine was fixed at six +cents. + +Mr. William Barnes, the Albany politician, sued Mr. Roosevelt for +libel, because Roosevelt had called him a Boss, and said that he used +crooked methods. This had been said in a political campaign. The +Republicans were looking for some chance to destroy Roosevelt, and Mr. +Barnes, aided by an able Republican lawyer, thought that they would be +doing a great service if they could besmirch Mr. Roosevelt in some way. + +So they worked their hardest and best, cross-examined him for days and +searched every incident of his political life. At the end they joined +that large band of disappointed men who tried to destroy Roosevelt +or catch him in something disreputable. For the jury decided in Mr. +Roosevelt's favor, indicating that he had uttered no untruth when he +made his remarks about Mr. Barnes. + +As a writer, Mr. Roosevelt would have made a name for himself, if he +had done nothing else. The success of his books is not due to the high +offices which he held, for his best writings had nothing to do with +politics. As a writer on politics he was forceful and clear. There was +no doubt as to the meaning of his state papers; they never had to be +explained nor "interpreted." They were not designed to mean any one of +two or three things, according to later circumstances. Strength and +directness were the characteristics. When writing about the by-ways +of politics his enjoyment of the ridiculous made his work especially +readable. When he felt deeply about any great issue, as in his last +years, about the Great War, and our part in it, his indignation found +its way into his pages, which became touched with the fire of genuine +eloquence. + +He wrote about books and animals, and about outdoor life, as no +President has ever done. His remarks upon literature are those of a +great book-lover, sensible, well-informed and free from pose. + +Every one should read his "Autobiography," his "Hero Tales from +American History" which he wrote in company with Senator Lodge, and +his "Letters to His Children." His early accounts of hunting in the +West make good reading, but in his book about his African hunt, and in +the one on the South American trip, he probably reached his highest +level as a writer. If any American has written better books of travel +than these, more continuously interesting, fuller of pleasing detail +about the little incidents, the birds and tiny animals which he +encountered, and at the same time with a stricter regard for accuracy +of observation, I do not know where they are to be found. + +[Illustration: Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons and Lord Lee of +Fareham. + +From a painting by P. Lazzlo. + +PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT] + +This man of politics had a true poetic feeling for the countries he +visited; time and again he moves his readers in describing the wonders +of the great waste places, the melancholy deserts and wildernesses, the +deadly fascination of the jungle, and the awful glory of the tropic +dawns and sunsets. When something awakened his imagination he could +write passages full of the magic of poetry. Witness this, it is not +a description of scenery, but a vision of the true historian of the +future: + + The true historian will bring the past before our eyes as if it were + the present. He will make us see as living men the hard-faced archers + of Agincourt, and the war-worn spear-men who followed Alexander down + beyond the rim of the known world. We shall hear grate on the coast + of Britain the keels of the Low-Dutch sea-thieves whose children's + children were to inherit unknown continents.... Beyond the dim + centuries we shall see the banners float above armed hosts.... Dead + poets shall sing to us of the deeds of men of might and the love + and beauty of women. We shall see the dancing girls of Memphis. The + scent of the flowers in the hanging gardens of Babylon will be heavy + to our senses. We shall sit at feast with the kings of Nineveh when + they drink from ivory and gold.... For us the war-horns of King Olaf + shall wail across the flood, and the harps sound high at festivals + in forgotten halls. The frowning strongholds of the barons of old + shall rise before us, and the white palace-castles from whose windows + Syrian princes once looked across the blue Aegean.... We shall see + the terrible horsemen of Timur the Lame ride over the roof of the + world; we shall hear the drums beat as the armies of Gustavus and + Frederick and Napoleon drive forward to victory.[24] + +[24] "History as Literature," p. 32, et seq. + +Here is one of Mr. Roosevelt's anecdotes of an incident in the White +House. It shows why the people were interested in that house while he +lived in it: + + "No guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these + old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps--the men with + whom I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of + a chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washington during my + Presidency. I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one + day just before lunch, a huge powerful man, who, when I knew him, + had been distinctly a fighting character. It happened that on that + day another old friend, the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was + among those coming to lunch. Just before we went in I turned to my + cow-puncher friend and said to him with great solemnity, 'Remember, + Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the British Ambassador to make + him dance, it would be likely to cause international complications'; + to which Jim responded with unaffected horror, 'Why, Colonel, I + shouldn't think of it! I shouldn't think of it!'"[25] + +[25] "Autobiography," p. 132. + +And here is one about his children: + + "The small boy was convalescing, and was engaged in playing on the + floor with some tin ships, together with two or three pasteboard + monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He was giving a vivid + rendering of Farragut at Mobile Bay, from memories of how I had told + the story. My pasteboard rams were fascinating--if a naval architect + may be allowed to praise his own work--and as property they were + equally divided between the little girl and the small boy. The little + girl looked on with alert suspicion from the bed, for she was not yet + convalescent enough to be allowed down on the floor. The small boy + was busily reciting the phases of the fight, which now approached its + climax, and the little girl evidently suspected that her monitor was + destined to play the part of victim. + + "Little boy. 'And then they steamed bang into the monitor.' + + "Little girl. 'Brother, don't you sink my monitor!' + + "Little boy (without heeding and hurrying toward the climax). 'And + the torpedo went at the monitor!' + + "Little girl. 'My monitor is not to sink!' + + "Little boy, dramatically; 'And bang the monitor sank!' + + "Little girl. 'It didn't do any such thing. My monitor always goes to + bed at seven, and it's now quarter past. My monitor was in bed and + couldn't sink!'"[26] + +[26] "Autobiography," p. 367. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE GREAT AMERICAN + + + Death closes all; but something ere the end, + Some work of noble note, may yet be done.... + Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' + We are not now that strength which in old days + Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- + One equal temper of heroic hearts, + Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will + To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. + + Tennyson's _Ulysses_. + + +Not many months after Roosevelt came back from South America, the Great +War in Europe broke out. It is but dreaming now to surmise what might +have been done in those fearful days of July 1914, when the German +hordes were gathering for their attack upon the world. Once before, +and singlehanded, this country had made the German Kaiser halt. Had +there been resolution in the White House in 1914, could all the neutral +nations have been rallied at our side, and could we have spoken in +tones so decisive to the Hun that he would have drawn back even then, +have left Belgium unravaged, and spared the world the misery of the +next four years? It may be so; Germany did not expect to have to take +on England as an enemy. If she had been told, _so that there was no +mistaking our meaning_, that she would have us against her as well, +then it might have been her part to hesitate, and finally put back her +sword. + +Roosevelt supported the President at first, in his policy of +neutrality, supposing him to have some special information. He +supported him with hesitation, and with qualifications however, +pointing out that neutrality is no proud position, and has many +disadvantages. Perhaps he had some inklings of the danger to the +country when our foreign affairs are managed by pacifists. Certainly +America had noticed the grim fact that a Government which forever +talked about peace had in actual practice, shed more blood in a few +hours at Vera Cruz than had been spilled in all the seven years while +Roosevelt was President. Moreover, this blood was shed uselessly; no +object whatever having been gained by it. + +It is impossible to understand Roosevelt; it is impossible to get any +idea of what he did during his term of office; it is impossible to +learn anything from his career, unless we contrast him and his beliefs +and actions with the conduct of our Government during the Great War. +An object lesson of the most illuminating sort is afforded by this +contrast, and we may make up our minds about the wisest paths to be +followed in the future if we notice what Roosevelt said and did at this +time, how far and how wisely his counsel was accepted or rejected. + +He disapproved, for instance, President Wilson's speech, made a day or +two after the sinking of the _Lusitania_ in which the President spoke +of a nation being "too proud to fight." Roosevelt said that a nation +which announced itself as too proud to fight was usually about proud +enough to be kicked; and it must be admitted that the Germans took +that view of it, and for a year and more continued to kick. He did not +deem it wise, when President Wilson informed the Germans, ten days +later, that we remembered the "humane attitude" of their Government +"in matters of international right," for he happened to recall that +Belgium was at that moment red with the blood of its citizens, slain +by the Germans in a sort of warfare that combined highway robbery with +revolting murder. Neither did it seem useful to him to speak about +German influence as always "upon the side of justice and humanity." + +Mr. Roosevelt had always been strong for having the nation ready +for war if war should come. Mr. Wilson first said that persons who +believed this were nervous and excited. Next he joined these persons +himself, so far as words went, and finally he let the matter drop until +we were at war. Mr. Roosevelt believed that when you once were at war +it was a crime to "hit softly." Mr. Wilson waited until we had been +at war a year and over, and then announced in a speech that he was +determined to use force! + +Mr. Roosevelt wrote regularly for _The Outlook_, later for the +_Metropolitan Magazine_ and the _Kansas City Star_. Thousands of his +countrymen read his articles, and found in them the only expression of +the American spirit which was being uttered. Americans were puzzled, +troubled and finally humiliated by the letters and speeches which +came from Washington. To be told that in this struggle between the +blood-guilty Hun, and the civilized nations of the earth, that we must +keep even our minds impartial seemed an impossible command. School-boys +throughout the country must have wondered why President Wilson, with +every means for getting information, should have to confess that he did +not know what the war was about! And when Mr. Wilson declared in favor +of a peace without victory, his friends and admirers were kept busy +explaining, some of them, that he meant without victory for the Allies, +and others that he meant without victory for Germany, and still others +that he meant without victory for anybody in particular. + +It was not strange that Americans began to wonder what country they +were living in, and whether they had been mistaken in thinking that +America had a heroic history, in which its citizens took pride. +No wonder they turned their eyes to Europe, where scores of young +Americans, sickening at the state of things at home, had eagerly +volunteered to fight with France or England against the Hun. One of +these, named Alan Seeger, who wrote the fine poem "I have a Rendezvous +with Death," died in battle on our Independence Day. He also wrote a +poem called "A Message to America."[27] In it he said that America had +once a leader: + +[27] Seeger. Poems, pp. 164, 165. + + ... the man + Most fit to be called American. + +In it he spoke further of the same leader + + I have been too long from my country's shores + To reckon what state of mind is yours, + But as for myself I know right well + I would go through fire and shot and shell + And face new perils and make my bed + In new privations, if _Roosevelt_ led. + +One did not have to be long with the men who volunteered at the +beginning of the war to know that Roosevelt's spirit led these men, +and that they looked to him and trusted him as the great American. The +country's honor was safe in his hands, and no mawkish nor cowardly +words ever came from his lips. + +He pointed out the folly of the pacifist type of public men, like Mr. +Bryan and Mr. Ford. The latter, helpless as a butterfly in those iron +years, led his quarreling group of pilgrims to Europe, on his "Peace +Ship," and then left them to their incessant fights with each other. +The American public was quick to see the contrast, when war came, +and Roosevelt's four sons and son-in-law all volunteered, while Mr. +Ford's son took advantage of some law and avoided military duty, in +order to add more millions to his already enormous heap. The lesson +of Roosevelt's teaching and example was not lost, and the people +recognized that the country would endure while it had men like the +Roosevelts, but that it would go down in infamy if the other sort +became numerous. + +In the election of 1916 Mr. Roosevelt, after refusing the Progressive +nomination, supported Mr. Hughes, the Republican, against President +Wilson. He tried hard to get Mr. Hughes to come out with some utterance +which would put him plainly on record against the Germans and +Pro-Germans who were filling America with their poisonous schemes. For +we continued to entertain German diplomats and agents (paymasters, as +they were, of murderers and plotters of arson) and to run on Germany's +errands in various countries. The cry "He kept us out of war" was +effectively used to reelect Mr. Wilson, although members of the +Government must have been thoroughly well aware that war was coming and +coming soon. + +It had long been Mr. Roosevelt's hope that if war came he might be +allowed to raise a division, as he had once helped to raise a regiment, +and take them, after suitable training, to the front. He knew where he +could put his hands on the men, regular army officers, ex-volunteers +and Rough Riders of the Spanish War, and other men of experience, who +in turn could find other men, who could be made into soldiers, for they +knew the important parts of a soldier's work, and could be trained +quickly. + +But the War Department and the President would have none of Mr. +Roosevelt's services. The President replied that the high officers of +the Army advised him against it, which was undoubtedly true. It is +also extremely likely that the high officers of the Democratic Party +would advise against letting Mr. Roosevelt serve his country, as they +still feared him, and still vainly hoped that they could lessen his +influence with the American people. Unlike President Lincoln, who would +gladly accept the services of any man who could serve the country, +Mr. Wilson could work only with men who were personally pleasing, +who thought as he did on all subjects. The officer of the Army best +known to European soldiers, and the one who trained one of the best +divisions, was Roosevelt's old commander, General Leonard Wood. But +he, like a statesman, had been advising preparedness for years, and he +was therefore displeasing to the politicians who only began to prepare +after war was declared. America and the Allies did not have the benefit +of this distinguished officer's services in France. + +Against the slothfulness of the Government in these years, Roosevelt +voiced the true opinion of America. He did not merely criticize, for +he offered his own services, and when he disapproved of what was being +done, he pointed out what might be done by way of improvement. In spite +of much condemnation of his course, his suggestions were nearly all +adopted--six months or a year later. His offer to raise a division +showed how many men were eager to fight, and spurred the Government +into action. + +The Germans and their friends in this country, the peace-at-any-price +folk who defended or apologized for the worst crimes of the Germans, +and all the band of disloyal persons who think that patriotism is +something to be sneered at,--all these hated Roosevelt with a deadly +hatred. It was not a proud distinction to be numbered with these, and +all who joined with them have made haste to forget the fact. + +In his own family, his eldest son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., became +first a Major and later a Lieutenant-Colonel of Infantry; Kermit and +Archibald were both Captains; and Quentin was a Lieutenant in the +Aviation force. His son-in-law, Dr. Richard Derby, was a Major in the +Medical Corps. All of them sought active service, made every effort to +get to the front, and succeeded. Two of them were wounded, and Quentin +was killed in a battle in the air. + +The death of his youngest son was a terrible blow to him, but he would +not wince. His son had been true to his teaching; he had dared the high +fortune of battle. + +"You cannot bring up boys to be eagles," said he, "and expect them to +act like sparrows!" + +Some distinguished Japanese visitors calling on Mr. Roosevelt at this +time came away deeply affected. To them he recalled the Samurai, with +their noble traditions of utter self-sacrifice. + +Throughout his life, but now as never before, he told his +countrymen, there was no place in America for a divided loyalty. No +German-Americans, nor Irish-Americans, nor Scotch-Americans. He would +have no man try to split even, and be a "50-50 American." + +Shortly after war had ended, he sent this message to a patriotic +meeting: + + There must be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism merely + because the war is over. Any man who says he is an American, but + something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but + one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which + symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much + as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. + We have room for but one language here, and that is the English + language, for we intended to see that the crucible turns our people + out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a + polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, + and that is loyalty to the American people.[28] + +[28] Hagedorn, p. 384. + +It was practically his last word to the country he had loved and served +so well. That was on January 5, 1919. + +Years before, when he and his children had played together, he had told +them a story about lions. Some of the boys had been called the lion +cubs, and henceforth their father was to them "The Old Lion." + +On the sixth of January, one of his sons, who was at home recovering +from his wounds, sent a message to his brothers in France: + + The Old Lion is dead. + +He was buried in a small cemetery near his Long Island home. A +plain grave-stone marks the place. To his grave have come a King +and a Prince and other men of great name from Europe, to lay +wreaths there, as they put them on the tombs of Washington and +Lincoln. But what would have pleased him even more is that every +Sunday and holiday thousands of men, women and children who knew +him, thousands who loved him, although they never saw him, men who +fought at his side, and men who fought against him, go out to +stand for a moment at his grave, because they know him now as a +wise, brave, and patriotic American. + + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + + * * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Any image which split a paragraph was moved. + +Two quoted sections were reformatted as block quotes. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODORE ROOSEVELT*** + + +******* This file should be named 4252.txt or 4252.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/2/5/4252 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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