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Theodore Roosevelt

And his time

Shown in his own letters,.

By
Joseph Bucklin Bishop
Volume one.

Copyright, 1919, 1920," by
Charles Scribner’s  sons
Published September 1920
The Scribner press,.

To
His fellow-countrymen,.

INTRODUCTION
five years or more before his death Theodore Roosevelt said he wished me to write the history of the period, which covered his public career. His reason was that I had been in his close confidence during the greater part of that period and knew the inside of every movement nearly as well as he knew it himself. We talked often on the subject and in the early spring of 1918 the project took definite form. He turned over to me for exclusive use all his personal and official correspondence together with other material relating to his public career from the time he was elected to the New York Legislature in November, 1881, till his life ended.
I began work at once, and at the time of his death I had completed the first draft of the story of his public life down to the year 1905, and had received his approval of it. At different stages of the work I went over with him what I had written and had the inestimable advantage of his suggestions, obtaining from him incidents and anecdotes which added immeasurably to the interest and historical value of the narrative, making it virtually his own. Between us we evolved a general plan for the history, which was to let the story of his career be told, as far as possible, in his own letters, utterances and acts.
This was an arduous but not a difficult task to perform. It was arduous because the material was virtually inexhaustible, but it was not difficult because of the quality of Roosevelt's letters. One of his private secretaries has estimated that during his public career he wrote 150,000 letters. Copies of these have been preserved. With them

are the original letters of the many correspondents that he had in all parts of the world—authors, poets, historians, artists, explorers, naturalists, statesmen, prime ministers, kings, emperors. He not only touched life at all points, but on its intellectual side touched the highest points in every land. Not only is the correspondence limitless in its range, but from beginning to end it is Roosevelt himself and hence unlike the correspondence of any other person. Emerson, in his observations upon great men, says that "He is great who never reminds us of others." No man ever met this test more fully than Theodore Roosevelt. Nature has made many millions of men but she has made only one Theodore Roosevelt. From the beginning to the end of his life he was himself and was unlike any one else. It was this clearly defined personality, at once unique and commanding, which concentrated upon him the attention of the world and made his name familiar in all civilized lands. Fame of this phenomenal sort is given only to a dominating personality. Its bestowal is to be explained only by an examination of the man as revealed in his words and acts. Roosevelt's letters not merely reflect his personality, they reveal it with all the fulness of a frank and truthful man talking to tried and trusted friends. His letters are not merely like his talk, they are his talk—frank and free, with rays of irrepressible and always joyous humor playing about it, and with deft and sure thrusts at the foibles, vanities, perversities, and weaknesses of mankind. Few men have had a keener insight into human motives or could detect more quickly the real nature of them. When he sat down to write or to dictate a letter to a congenial friend, he did not compose, he talked. Whatever was uppermost in his mind at the time came out without restraint or reservation. As he wrote most freely in moments of greatest stress, at the height of crises created by himself in his struggle for the triumph of causes dear to his heart, his letters give us a veritable "inside history" of his time. They push aside the screen that hides the

wires which control great events and we see them operating before our eyes. We see, in very truth, history in the making, shown and explained to us by the man who himself is making it.
We get also a complete self-revelation of the man, of the motives, desires, and principles which guided his life. It is this quality of self-revelation, more than any other perhaps, which makes his letters so admirable a vehicle for telling the story of his career. Many writers have sought to depict the man Roosevelt, and many others will repeat the effort, but none has, and none can, depict him as he really was with that vivid clearness in which he stands self-revealed in his letters. All sides of this many-sided man are disclosed there—the intellectual, which covered all fields of human knowledge, ancient and modern; the political, which shows him to have been a sagacious statesman of the first rank rather than a politician, for as a politician he repeatedly broke the fundamental rules of the game; the executive and administrator first of a great State and then of a great nation, whose motto was action, action and still more action, and who accomplished great and supposedly impossible tasks by the driving force of his character; the diplomatist and peacemaker, a role which he played with greater success than any other man of his time; and finally, the inspiring and uplifting leader of his countrymen, the intense, vigilant, militant, uncompromising patriot, eager to serve the nation in peace or in war, who throughout his life was first and always an American.
It is the purpose of the present study of the man and his time to let his words and acts tell the story of his career and also of the epoch which it constitutes in American history, an epoch in which he was the leading and molding figure. As the narrative concerns itself chiefly with his public career, it passes briefly over his ancestry, childhood and youth, a full account of which he has given in his 'Autobiography,' and begins in detail with his entry into political life.

While in a few instances, in order to maintain the continuity of the narrative, the present record overlaps the 'Autobiography,' it really supplements and completes it, and the two works together constitute authentically the Life and Letters of Theodore Roosevelt as designed by himself.
J. B. B.
September, 1920.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIME,.
CHAPTER ONE,. 
ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH,.
Theodore Roosevelt, the second of that name, was born in New York City on October 27, 1858. His ancestors on the paternal side were of Holland stock, and on the maternal side were Scotch, Irish, Huguenot and English descent. The first Roosevelt to come to America was Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt, who reached New Amsterdam about 1644, and from that time for seven generations, from father to son, every one of his descendants was born in New York City. They were mainly merchants who held prominent positions in the affairs of the city and in its commercial and social life, before, during and after the Revolutionary War.
The ancestors of the grandmother of the second Theodore came to Pennsylvania with William Penn, those of his mother came to Georgia from Scotland, her grandfather being the first Revolutionary President of Georgia. Some of the Roosevelt ancestors on both sides served respectably, but without distinction, in the army during the Revolution, and others rendered similar service in the Continental Congress and in local legislatures. Those in the South were for the most part planters. Two brothers of Roosevelt's mother served in the Confederate navy during the Civil War, one as admiral, who was the builder of the famous Confederate war sloop Alabama, and the other as midshipman on the same vessel.
These facts about Roosevelt's ancestry are taken from his 'Autobiography' (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920) which 
contains much interesting information about his forbears, with affectionate tributes to those immediately preceding him, and charming reminiscences of his childhood. His letters supply some additional material which is well worth quoting. He invariably discouraged efforts to make him appear as an "infant prodigy" who had given early signs of future greatness. During his first term as President, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, then editor of the Century magazine, expressed a desire to publish a sketch of his childhood days with photographs of him at various stages of growth. In avowing his objection to the project, Roosevelt wrote to Mr. Gilder, on August 20, 1903:
"For reasons which I am wholly unable to explain even to myself I somehow rather shrink from having a sketch of my younger days prepared. Perhaps my reason for caring little for the sketch of my younger days is that as far as I can remember they were absolutely commonplace. I was a rather sickly, rather timid little boy, very fond of desultory reading and of natural history, and not excelling in any form of sport. Owing to my asthma I was not able to go to school, and I was nervous and self-conscious, so that as far as I can remember my belief is that I was rather below than above my average playmate in point of leadership; though as I had an imaginative temperament this sometimes made up for my other short-comings. Altogether, while, thanks to my father and mother, I had a very happy childhood I am inclined to look back at it with some wonder that I should have come out of it as well as I have! It was not until after I was sixteen that I began to show any prowess, or even ordinary capacity; up to that time, except making collections of natural history, reading a good deal in certain narrowly limited fields and indulging in the usual scribbling of the small boy who does not excel in sport, I cannot remember that I did anything that even lifted me up to the average."
His love for his father, whom he spoke of always as the best man he had ever known, amounted to adoration. Writing to Edward S. Martin, on November 26, 1900, he said: "I was fortunate enough in having a father whom I have always been able to regard as an ideal man. It sounds a little like cant to say what I am going to say, but he really did combine the strength and courage and will and energy of the strongest man with the tenderness, cleanness and purity of a woman. I was a sickly and timid boy. He not only took great and untiring care of me—some of my earliest remembrances are of nights when he would walk up and down with me for an hour at a time in his arms when I was a wretched mite suffering acutely with asthma— but he also most wisely refused to coddle me, and made me feel that I must force myself to hold my own with other boys and prepare to do the rough work of the world. I cannot say that he ever put it into words, but he certainly gave me the feeling that I was always to be both decent and manly, and that if I were manly nobody would laugh at my being decent. In all my childhood he never laid hand on me but once, but I always knew perfectly well that in case it became necessary he would not have the slightest hesitancy in doing so again, and alike from my love and respect, and in a certain sense, my fear of him, I would have hated and dreaded beyond measure to have him know that I had been guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying, or of uncleanness or of cowardice. Gradually I grew to have the feeling on my own account, and not merely on his.
"There were many things I tried to do because he did them, which I found afterwards were not in my line. For instance, I taught Sunday school all through college, but afterwards gave it up, just as on experiment I could not do the charitable work which he had done. In doing my Sunday school work I was very much struck by the fact that the other men who did it only possessed one side of his character. My ordinary companions in college would, I think, have had a tendency to look down upon me for doing Sunday school work if I had not also been a corking boxer, a good runner, and a genial member of the Porcelain Club. I went in for boxing and wrestling a good deal, and I really think that while this was partly because I liked them as sports, it was even more because I intended to be a middling decent fellow, and I did not intend that any one should laugh at me with impunity because I was decent. It is exactly the same thing with history. In most countries the Bourgeoisie—the moral, respectable, commercial, middle class—are looked upon with a certain contempt which is justified by their timidity /and, unwarlikeness. But the minute a middle class produces men like Hawkins and Frobisher on the seas, or men such as the average Union soldier in the Civil War, it acquires the hearty respect of others which it merits."
It is easy to trace in this tribute of supreme filial devotion the influences which molded the son's character and laid firm and sure the strong foundations upon which he built his subsequent career, winning world-wide fame and honor and the enduring faith and affection of his countrymen.
He was, as he said in his letter, a sickly and timid boy. Cordially supported and encouraged by his father, he began quite early to improve his physical condition through regular gymnastic exercises, including boxing lessons. When he was ten years old he was taken on a trip to Europe which he "thoroughly hated" and from which he gained nothing, and a second one four years later which he "enjoyed thoroughly" and profited by. On his return from this second trip he began serious study under a private tutor (Arthur Cutler, later founder of the Cutler School in New York) in preparation for college, and in the fall of 1876, having by his systematic exercise brought himself into excellent physical condition, he entered Harvard University.
"I thoroughly enjoyed Harvard," he says in his 'Autobiography,' "and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after life." Before he left Harvard in 1880 he had begun the writing of his "History of the Naval War of 1812," which he completed in the following year and published in 1882. Although he said later of the opening chapters that they "were so dry that they would have made a dictionary seem light reading by comparison," the book had such genuine historical merit that it has remained till this day as the standard work on the subject.
On October 27, 1880, he married Alice Hathaway Lee, daughter of George Cabot Lee. She died on February 14, 1884, leaving one child, Alice, who became the wife of Nicholas Longworth on February 17, 1906. On December 2, 1886, he married in London Edith Kermit Carow, daughter of Charles Carow of New York. By this marriage there were five children, Theodore, Kermit, Archibald, Quentin and Ethel. 

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CHAPTER TWO,. 
LEGISLATURE—FIRST TERM,.
Theodore Roosevelt’s public career began in January, 1882, when at the age of 23 he entered the New York Legislature as a member of its lower house. He had been graduated from Harvard in 1880 and had spent the following year in the study of law. His inclination toward the legal profession was not strengthened by his studies for it seemed to him that some of the teachings of the law books and of the class-room were against rather than in favor of the attainment of justice. Then, too, the standards set by many successful lawyers who were in the service of great corporations, were incompatible with the idealism which he, in common with other high-minded men, entertained. It was a period, not yet closed, in which many of the ablest and most eminent members of the bar devoted their talents, not so much to the strict observance of the law, as to finding ways by which their clients could violate the spirit if not the letter of the law and escape its penalties. The effect of studies under these conditions made an impression upon young Roosevelt’s mind which was never wholly effaced, but which deepened and strengthened as time went on and found expression later in his action as President in the direction of regulating and controlling the conduct of great corporations.
While studying law he began to take an active interest in politics and his comfortable financial condition enabled him to give time and attention to political matters which he would otherwise have been obliged to concentrate upon earning a livelihood. He had been left by his father sufficient means to permit him to make the earning of additional money a secondary matter. He said in after life that it was the possession of this inheritance which enabled him to accept offices at a salary inadequate for the support of himself and his family and through which he secured advancement in public life. Instead of making his inheritance the excuse for an idle and purposeless life, as many another man in like situation has done, he used it as an aid to a life of action and public usefulness.
In 1880, the machinery of party organization in New York City was entirely in the hands of men who made politics a profession by means of which they earned a livelihood. As the Republican party was in a hopeless minority in the city, the men in control of its organization used it mainly as a basis for combinations or "deals" with Tammany Hall, receiving in return minor offices from the Tammany authorities and various other favors. The Republican district organizations formed social and political clubs and these selected all the candidates for office, who were usually men who could be depended upon to "obey orders," that is, to act as the party bosses commanded. It was somewhat difficult for a man of young Roosevelt's type to become a member of a district club, as candidates had to be regularly proposed and elected, as in any other club.
When Roosevelt declared his intention of becoming a member of the club in his district, which was known as the "silk-stocking" district of the city because of the wealth and social eminence of a large proportion of its voting population, his friends ridiculed him, saying that the men in control of city politics were not gentlemen, but saloonkeepers, street-car conductors and the like, and that he would not only be unable to exert any influence but would be subjected to unpleasantness and even brutality. His reply was characteristic of the man. '' I answered,'' he says in his 'Autobiography,' "that if this were so it merely meant that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that the other people did—and that I intended to be one of the governing class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have to quit, but I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough and tumble."
He was admitted to membership and after a year's association had so held his own as to become on good terms with enough of his fellow members to win their nomination for member of the Assembly, or lower branch of the Legislature, in spite of the fact that he had been an open opponent of their machine methods and had fought a losing fight with them on more than one occasion. There was no doubt in their minds about his anti-machine sentiments or about his inflexible determination to uphold them at any and all times. In fact, they obtained fresh light on the subject as soon as he was nominated. The Assembly district included sections of Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and the party leaders thought at first they would take him on a personal canvass through the liquor saloons along Sixth Avenue. The canvass ended with the first saloon. The candidate was introduced with proper solemnity to the proprietor, who was an important political personage, and who began to catechize him as a suppliant for favor. When he said that he expected Roosevelt as member to treat the liquor interests fairly, he got a rather sharp reply that all interests would be treated fairly, and when he added that he regarded existing licenses as too high he got in response an assurance that the candidate did not consider them high enough and would endeavor to have them made higher. The interview at this point assumed so stormy an aspect that the candidate was withdrawn by his backers on a plea of pressing engagements elsewhere, and no other saloons were visited, it being explained to him that he would better confine his energies to his friends in Fifth Avenue and leave to others the burdens of the canvass in Sixth Avenue.
These details of the first steps of Roosevelt in political life are given as throwing important light upon his subsequent career, for they disclose the same characteristics that he displayed in all its later stages.
He was successful in the election, and in January, 1882, took his seat in the Legislature a new man in politics, totally unknown outside the limits of the district that he represented. He had at the time no intention or expectation of abandoning the profession of law for a political career. He wrote immediately after his election, to a classmate, Charles G. Washburn of Worcester, Mass., that finding it would not interfere with his law studies he had accepted the nomination, "but don't," he added, "think I am going to go into politics after this year, for I am not."
Almost from the moment of his entrance he took a commanding position among his associates. The Assembly was nearly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, the latter having a bare majority of one vote. The Democrats themselves were divided between Tammany and anti-Tammany members. The half dozen Tammany members sought to dictate the nomination for Speaker by putting up a candidate of their own, thus depriving the regularly nominated Democratic candidate of a majority. There was thus provided an ideal situation for a "deal" between the machine Republican members and the handful of Tammany members in favor of the nomination of a Speaker who would divide the patronage of the Assembly between his supporters. "Deals" of this character had been a well-established custom for many years, whenever the opportunity arose, and one was confidently anticipated at this time. In fact, the first steps of it had been taken, when the new and unknown member from New York arose to explain his vote while the deadlock was in progress. He said that the Democrats were in the majority and should be permitted to organize the Assembly. No harm was being done by the delay, and he was convinced after talking with gentlemen among his constituents who had large commercial interests that they would be relieved rather than annoyed by the absence of legislation. The Democrats were responsible for the delay and they would receive whatever blame the people might administer for it. As for the Republicans, they were opposed to any combination with the Democrats.
The effect of this unexpected speech was instantaneous and, so far as the proposed "deal" was concerned, deadly. As it was the first utterance of Roosevelt as a holder of public office it is interesting to record the comments that were made on it by the newspapers at the time. One said: "Assemblyman Roosevelt made a very favorable impression by his first speech." Another: "His sensible and well-delivered remarks brought him many hearty congratulations from the older members." An Albany correspondent of another: "The next orator was Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of the twenty-first, a Republican. This young gentleman has been dubbed 'Oscar Wilde' by his admiring colleagues, who were much amused by his elastic movements, voluminous laughter and wealth of mouth. But his speech to-day was well-considered and put." Another correspondent, like the one just quoted, writing for a Democratic journal, felt moved to ridicule while bestowing praise: "Young Mr. Roosevelt of New York, a blond young man with eyeglasses, English side whiskers, and Dundreary drawl in his speech, made his maiden effort as an orator. He objected to talk of Republican aid to the Democrats. . . . The older Republican members who have been trying to make party capital by representing the State as going to ruin because the Democrats did not organize the Legislature, wriggled uneasily in their seats when young Mr. Roosevelt pictured the complacency of the people over the deadlock. There was no way to stop him, however, and he got through without interruption. An effort to undo what he said to-day will probably be made to-morrow."
It was impossible to undo it for the simple reason that daylight had been let into the scheme by "Young Mr. Roosevelt"—he was to be accused of the "atrocious crime of being a young man" for many years afterwards—and the "deal" was abandoned, for political trickery of that sort must be carried on in secret or it cannot succeed. The anti-Tammany candidate for Speaker was elected by aid of the Tammany votes and Roosevelt had scored his first victory over the united powers of evil in politics.
  The second victory followed quickly on the steps of the first. An effort was made to regain what had been lost in the Speakership contest by a scheme to deprive the Speaker of the power to appoint subordinate officers in the Assembly, lodging it in the hands of the clerk, who was a Republican. The defeated Tammany members had united with the Republican "dealers" in this project. A Republican caucus was held and a resolution was introduced by an expert Republican ''dealer" to approve the plan. Mr. Roosevelt, who had been joined by a half-dozen other young members who shared his independent views, denounced the plan so vigorously that it was defeated by a nearly unanimous vote. The press of the State had been fully aroused by the action which Roosevelt had taken in the Speakership contest and its hearty approval of his course had made Republican members very timid about opposing him.
He had been made a member of the Committee on Cities, and as soon as the Speakership controversy was settled he turned his attention to needed legislation for the city of New York, bringing in a bill which provided for the election of Aldermen by Assembly Districts and the election of the President of the Board by the city at large. This abolished the existing method which included a system of minority representation that had worked chiefly in the interest of '' deals'' and the consequent success of the most undesirable candidates, and assured the choice of a President of the Board who, because of the method of his election, would be a less objectionable person than was possible under the old system. The measure was fought viciously by the politicians of both parties but was supported warmly by the reputable press of the city and was enacted. It was the first step toward an improvement in the quality of the membership of the Board of Aldermen, and was the basis of further steps in the same direction in subsequent years.
The action of his first legislative session, which attracted most widespread attention and subjected Roosevelt to abuse and ridicule was his effort to secure the impeachment of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State. The Justice had been charged in the press with allowing himself to be used as an instrument in their business by men connected with railway interests in New York City. Roosevelt introduced a resolution calling for an investigation by the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly. In support of it he made a carefully prepared speech, setting forth in detail the charges in the case. Strong opposition was at once made to the resolution, led by one of the oldest Republican leaders in the Assembly and warmly espoused by the leader or boss of Tammany Hall. It was the old combination that Roosevelt had fought and overcome in the Speaker-ship contest.
The press of the city and State was divided on the question, the more reputable portion favoring investigation and the Tammany Democratic portion bitterly opposing it and assailing Roosevelt personally. As, on the occasion of his first speech in the Assembly, these press comments are of illuminating value, especially in view of other comments, which were made at various stages of his career.
In reference to his speech in presenting the resolution the New York Times said it was "A very concise and vigorous presentation of the essential facts in the case," and added:
"Mr. Roosevelt has a most refreshing habit of calling men and things by their right names, and in these days of judicial, ecclesiastical, and journalistic subservience to the robber-barons of the Street, it needs some little courage in any public man to characterize them and their acts in fitting terms. There is a splendid career open for a young man of position, character, and independence like Mr. Roosevelt who can denounce the legalized robbery of Gould and his allies without descending to the turgid abuse of the demagogue, and without being restrained by the cowardly caution of the politician."
The New York World represented the opposite view and taking the side of Tammany and its Republican allies, said on various occasions:
"The son of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt ought to have learned, even at this, early period of his life, the difference between a call for a legislative committee of inquiry and a stump speech.
"Why not allow Mr. Roosevelt to impeach the Judge at once, try him and convict him? Why irritate an estimable youth into making a spectacle of himself to no purpose?"
Concerning the quality of Mr. Roosevelt's speech, the Albany correspondent of the New York Sun said: "It was delivered with deliberation and measured emphasis, and his charges were made with a boldness that was almost scathing." Another correspondent wrote: "The bold language used by Mr. Roosevelt to-day has been the principal topic of conversation among the members to-night."
Every parliamentary trick and device was used to defeat the resolution. An ex-Governor of the State, who was the oldest Republican member and an expert "dealer" of many years' practice, talked against time when the resolution was introduced and prevented a vote being reached. He alluded to Roosevelt repeatedly as the "young man from New York," and in this and subsequent sessions led the opposition on the floor, upheld invariably by the Republican Speaker in the chair, who represented the district in which the accused Judge lived. Among other efforts to secure defeat it was asserted on the floor that a member of the Roosevelt family had been "squeezed" in some operation by the elevated railway authorities and he was trying to "get even" with them by assailing the Judge. This was promptly refuted. Roosevelt, undaunted and undismayed, overcame all obstacles, steadily pressing for a vote, and when the time for it arrived the resolution was adopted by a vote of 104 in favor to only 6 against. So strong was popular sentiment throughout the State in favor of Roosevelt's course that few of the members who had been opposing it in private ventured to do so openly when they were forced to go on the record.
Commenting on this result, Harper's Weekly, then edited by George William Curtis, said:
"It is with the greatest satisfaction that those who are interested in good government see a young man in the Legislature who, like Mr. Roosevelt, does not know the meaning of fear, and to whom the bluster and bravado of party and political bullies are as absolutely indifferent as the blowing of the wind."
The investigation resulted in two reports from the Judiciary Committee, one by the majority against impeachment of the Judge and one by a minority in favor of impeachment. The "Black Horse Cavalry," as the forces of evil in politics were called, had triumphed. The Committee members whom they controlled had voted, without the slightest regard to the evidence, against impeachment. Their action was fore-ordained from the beginning. Roosevelt made an earnest effort to have the Assembly adopt the minority report, but without success, for the same forces were in control there. The majority report was adopted by a vote of 77 to 35. This action was denounced by the reputable press of the city and State as a disgrace to the Assembly and a shameless act of "whitewashing." Unbiased public opinion throughout the State was virtually unanimous in the belief that the evidence presented had established beyond question the guilt of the Judge. The Assembly won a temporary triumph, but a great moral victory was accredited to Roosevelt, who stood higher than ever in public estimation.
Roosevelt further incurred the bitter enmity of the Elevated Railway Company by opposing and securing the failure of a measure designed to relieve it of the burden of about one-half of its just taxes. A bill which had passed the Assembly relating to the taxation of corporations was surreptitiously amended in the Senate and passed by that body in such form as to fix the rate of taxation to be levied upon the elevated railway corporation at 4 per cent of gross receipts, instead of 8 per cent as levied by the city authorities on that and other corporations. An effort was made by the "Black Horse Cavalry," assisted by one of their number in the chair, to force the bill through the Assembly under "gag law." Roosevelt objected, insisted upon reading official protests from the New York city authorities, showing that the bill would deprive the city of at least a quarter of a million dollars, and in explaining his vote declared: "It is a steal pure and simple, the most monstrous that has been perpetrated here this year. The way it is being pushed through under the gag law shows the motives of those who are thus acting." He was unable to defeat the bill in the Assembly, but his denunciation led to full publicity in the press regarding its nature and the method of its passage, raising a storm of protest throughout the State, and leading to a veto by the Governor. Roosevelt's opposition was justified three years later when, after much litigation, the courts decreed that the Elevated companies owed taxes in excess of $1,500,000, as levied by the city authorities.
Roosevelt's experience made upon him what was shown in later years to be a lasting impression. "Various men," he says in his 'Autobiography,' "whom I had known socially and had been taught to look up to, prominent business men and lawyers, acted in a way which not only astounded me, but which I was quite unable to reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their high standing." He relates a conversation with a member of a prominent law firm, an old family friend, which should be reproduced here, not only because of its bearing upon Roosevelt's subsequent career, but for another reason which will be mentioned presently. He records that this family friend took him to lunch one day with this outcome:
"He explained that I had done well in the Legislature, that it was a good thing to have made the 'reform play,' that I had shown that I possessed ability such as would make me useful in the right kind of law office or business concern; but that I must not overplay my hand; that I had gone far enough, and that now was the time to leave politics and identify myself with the right kind of people, the people who would always in the long run control others and obtain the real rewards which were worth having. I asked him if that meant that I was to yield to the ring in politics. He answered somewhat impatiently that I was entirely mistaken (as in fact I was) about there being merely a political ring, of the kind of which the papers were fond of talking; that the 'ring,' if it could be called such—that is, the inner circle—included certain big business men, and the politicians, lawyers and judges who were in alliance with and to a certain extent dependent upon them, and that the successful man had to win his success by the backing of the same forces, whether in law, business, or politics.
'' This conversation not only interested me, but made such an impression that I always remembered it, for it was the first glimpse I had of that combination between business and politics which I was in after years so often to oppose."
The gist of this friend's advice was that Theodore Roosevelt should cease to be himself, change the personality to which his first success as a public man was due, and become somebody else. Time was to show that this disinterested friend was the forerunner of a vast host of the same type. Throughout his career, at every stage of its progress, politicians, statesmen, editors, clergymen, educators and others bestowed upon him like advice, begged him to go their way instead of his own, cease to be himself, and become the sort of man they thought he should be. Abundant evidence on this point will be forthcoming as this narrative proceeds.  

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CHAPTER THREE,.
LEGISLATURE—SECOND TERM
the prestige that he had won during his first term in the Legislature secured Roosevelt a re-nomination without opposition by the Republican organization of his district, and with the warm support of the press he was reelected by an increased majority. His conduct during this session showed the same characteristics that had marked the preceding one. In spite of the advice of well-meaning friends, he persisted in being himself. He received his party's nomination for Speaker, which was merely honorary, as the Democrats had a majority in the body. At the preceding session a bill had been introduced reducing the fare on the elevated railways in New York City from 10 cents to 5. It was introduced as a "strike" upon the railway company, that is, with the intention of making the company use money to secure its defeat. When they were convinced that money was being so used, Roosevelt and his reform associates supported it, and were confirmed in their conviction when on final passage the very members who had introduced it voted against it. It was reintroduced at the succeeding session, when the company decided not to use money for its defeat but to fight it on its merits. The entire "Black Horse Cavalry," including its original supporters, voted against it, but the honest members, including Roosevelt and his associates, voted for it, though doubtful about its principle, being influenced largely in their action by the character of the opposition. It was passed, and when it reached the Governor, Grover Cleveland, he vetoed it on the ground of unconstitutionality. When an attempt was made to pass it over the veto, Roosevelt supported the veto in a speech, which will always stand among the most thoroughly characteristic utterances of his career. Never was he more entirely himself than he was in this confession of error in judgment and act. In the course of it he said:
"I have to say with shame that when I voted for this bill I did not act as I think I ought to have acted and as I generally have acted on the floor of this House. I have to confess that I weakly yielded, partly in a vindictive spirit, toward the infernal thieves and conscienceless swindlers who have had the elevated railroad in charge, and partly to the popular voice of New York.
"I realize that they (managers of the railway) have done the most incalculable wrong to this community with their hired newspapers, with their corruption of the judiciary, with their corruption of past legislatures. It is not a question of doing right to them. They are merely common thieves. It is not a question of doing justice to them. It is a question of doing justice to ourselves. It is a question of standing by what we honestly believe to be right, even if in so doing we antagonize the feelings of our constituents.
"We have heard a great deal about the people demanding the passage of this bill. Now, anything that the people demand that is right, it is most clearly and most emphatically the duty of this Legislature to do; but we should never yield to what they demand if it is wrong.
"I would rather go out of politics feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men knowing in my heart that I had acted as I ought not to."
This remarkable declaration, the like of which was rarely ever heard in a legislative body, was received with jeers and veritable howls of delight by the newspapers that had abused Roosevelt in the impeachment controversy and in his other assault upon the elevated railway tax relief bill. They were quite sure that he had wrecked his political career and that little more would be heard of him. One of them spoke of him as a young man of whom it could be truly said: 
"His strong point is his bank account, His weak point is his head."
Another one said: "The popular voice of New York will probably leave this weakling at home hereafter." Another spoke of the deliverance as the "last dying speech and confession" and declared that to say it showed "characteristic manliness," as a contemporary had done, was, "if not trampling on a grave, certainly amounts to dancing on the side of it." Still another regretted that "a son of Theodore Roosevelt should have brought this discredit upon a name made honorable by the private virtues and public services of his father."
These prophets undoubtedly had faith in their predictions. Roosevelt had opposed what seemed to be an overwhelming popular sentiment and his critics could not believe that a public man could do that and not invite political ruin. Roosevelt himself had grave doubts on the subject but they had not influenced his action. When, in 1918, I was going over with him the account here given of this portion of his career, we read together the passages I have cited from this memorable speech. After a moment's thought he said: "Let it stand. I expressed myself more strongly at the time than I would have done had the incident occurred later in my life, but I am willing to have what I said go into the record unchanged for the position I took then I have always held and hold to-day."
Among his letters I find one to his son Theodore at Harvard, written on October 20, 1903, which contains an interesting allusion to this episode in his legislative career:
"Immediately after leaving college I went to the Legislature. I was the youngest man there, and I rose like a rocket. I was reelected next year by an enormous majority in a time when the Republican party as a whole met with great disaster; and the Republican minority in the Assembly, although I was the youngest member, nominated me for Speaker, that is, made me the leader of the minority. I immediately proceeded to lose my perspective, and the result was that I came an awful cropper and had to pick myself up after learning by bitter experience the lesson that I was not all-important and that I had to take account of many different elements in life. It took me fully a year before I got back the position I had lost, but I hung steadily at it and achieved my purpose."
Another man who took a leading part in the incident and who, like Roosevelt, was destined to attain the highest office in the gift of the people of the nation, was Grover Cleveland. Many years later, in the fall of 1891, in the course of an intimate conversation with him at his residence in New York City, I spoke of his veto of the five-cent fare bill. With that unrestrained frankness which was characteristic of him, he said:
"I was convinced that the bill was wrong, that it was unjust and might lead to practical confiscation. I had no choice but to veto it, but I had not a doubt in the world that by so doing I was ruining my political career. As I got into bed that night after writing and signing my veto message I said to myself, 'Grover Cleveland, you've done the business for yourself to-night.' The next morning I went down to the Executive Office feeling pretty blue but putting a smiling face on it. I didn't look at the morning papers, didn't think they had anything to say that I cared to see. I went through my morning mail with my secretary, Dan Lamont, pretending all the time I didn't care about the papers but thinking of them all the time just the same. When we had finished I said, as indifferently as I could, 'Seen the morning papers, Dan?' He said 'yes.' 'What have they got to say about me, anything?' 'Why, yes, they are all praising you.' 'They are! Well, here, let me see them!' I tell you I grabbed them pretty quickly and felt a good deal better."
Roosevelt soon made it apparent that whatever might be the effect upon his political fortunes, the affair had not in the slightest degree lessened his courage or modified his determination to follow his own convictions in spite of all obstacles. He continued to be himself, and in doing so demonstrated very quickly that he had not lost his popularity, neither had his fighting vigor abated. Several acts and utterances during the remainder of the session are worthy of record for they were the keynotes of his subsequent career.
One that all the veteran politicians regarded as '' suicidal'' had occurred during his first term in the Legislature and was repeated in the second. An item was included in the regular Supply Bill appropriating a sum of money for a private institution called the Catholic Protectory. Roosevelt objected to it on the ground that it was unconstitutional because it violated the stipulation of the State constitution, which forbade the use of public money for a private institution. Furthermore, such proposals brought into the Legislature the question of politics and religion. He had opposed a similar grant to a Protestant institution on precisely the same grounds and he should continue to fight all such tooth and nail. He had many warm personal friends in the Catholic faith and the man who had done more for him politically than any one else was a Catholic. He believed that he was acting in unison with the sentiment of those intelligent members of the Catholic Church who indorsed the utterances of one of the greatest of Catholics, Daniel O'Connell, that religion ought to be kept from politics.
Roosevelt's opposition did not avail to defeat either the Catholic or Protestant appropriation, both being voted by a large majority. This early stand is noteworthy as being the first assertion of a rule of conduct, which he maintained inflexibly throughout his career, and which, be it said to the honor of the great body of both Catholics and Protestants, won for him their confidence and esteem.
On several other occasions he gave utterance to convictions and principles of conduct which he ever afterwards upheld, showing that at this early stage of his career his character was already established on immutable lines. A bill was introduced to amend the Penal Code so as to permit publishers and editors of newspapers to be sued for libel in any place in the state in which their newspapers circulated. This was declared to be an effort to gag the press, and a motion was made to kill the bill by striking1 out its enacting clause. In supporting this motion, Roosevelt said: '' Taking it for granted that this is a bill for gagging the newspapers, I trust that the motion will prevail. I think that if there is one thing we ought to be careful about it is in regard to interfering with the liberty of the press. We have all of us at times suffered from the liberty of the press, but we have to take the good and the bad. I think we certainly ought to hesitate very seriously before passing any law that will interfere with the broadest public utterance. I think it is a great deal better to err a little bit on the side of having too much discussion and having too virulent language used by the press, rather than to err on the side of having them not say what they ought to say, especially with reference to public men and measures. I heartily agree with the proposition to have the enacting clause of the bill stricken out."
The motion was carried without a division. Thirty-four years later, during the European War, Roosevelt upheld the same position in regard to criticism of the Wilson Administration's conduct of the war, having never varied from his first adherence to it.
Roosevelt succeeded in getting before the Assembly at this session a bill reforming the Civil Service of New York City by applying to it the provisions of the national Civil Service law. He could not get it passed by the Democratic body, but he was able, at a committee hearing on its provisions, to get his views on the subject placed upon record. "My object," he said, "in pushing this measure is less to raise the standard of the civil service than it is to take the office-holders out of politics. It is a good thing to raise the character of our public employees but it is better still to take out of politics the vast band of hired mercenaries whose very existence depends on their success, and who can almost always in the end overcome the efforts of men whose only care is to secure a pure and honest government, for in such a contest the discipline of regulars, fighting literally for their means of livelihood, is sure in the end to overcome the spasmodic ardor of volunteers."
This was a thoroughly bad session of the Legislature and the most that Roosevelt and the little band of men whom he led could accomplish was to defeat some of the worst jobs. Roosevelt, instead of being a ruined man, came out of the session standing higher in public esteem than ever before. One of the press commentators said: "Mr. Roosevelt lasted to the end, when he was stronger than at the beginning." Another: "Mr. Roosevelt enjoys the distinction of having convictions and living up to them." Another: "Mr. Roosevelt's voice and vote are sure for what is honest, wise and progressive." 

CHAPTER  FOUR LEGISLATURE—THIRD TERM,.
in the State election of 1883 the Republicans secured a majority in both houses of the Legislature. Roosevelt was reelected, in spite of the opposition of some of the party machine leaders of his district whose interests and schemes he had antagonized. It was quite generally admitted that his course in the two preceding Legislatures had been the chief influence in causing the Democratic defeat. One of the most influential of the Republican newspapers outside the city of New York said: "It should not be forgotten that Theodore Roosevelt led the Republican minority in the last Assembly and that the minority has grown into a powerful majority. Much of the success of the Republicans in the recent elections was due to the record made by these legislators in opposition to Democratic schemes of extravagance and corruption. Much of that record was due to the sleepless activity of their intrepid leader, Theodore Roosevelt. He led the minority to victory, and it is only fitting that he should now receive a grateful acknowledgment of his services by being elevated to the Speakership."
He frankly declared himself a candidate for Speaker and received the warm support of all except the most avowedly partisan of the Republican journals of the State. But from the outset of the canvass, the old leaders of the party who represented the interests, which he had antagonized in his fearless opposition to "deals" with Tammany Hall and other disreputable partisan doings, formed a combination against him and in the end adroitly compassed his defeat. They brought this about by having the most discredited of the machine leaders in his district pretend to support him till the vote in caucus was reached, when they deserted him and nominated the rival candidate.
The Speaker thus chosen soon revealed his obligations to the members of the combination to which he owed his election. He could not refuse to appoint Roosevelt to the chairmanship of the Committee on Cities, but in placing him there he associated him with a body of men who were known not to be in harmony with his views and who could be depended upon to hinder rather than help him in work of great importance which he had avowed his intention to undertake. Once again, the newspapers that had persistently assailed him since his appearance in public life, indulged joyfully in prophecy of his ruin, either as accomplished or speedily to ensue. "This will not be a Happy New Year to the exquisite Mr. Roosevelt," said the chief of them, "but Mr. Roosevelt is comparatively young, and time is a kind physician." This prophet was not long in discovering that this year was destined to be, if not the happiest of Roosevelt’s life thus far, the most active and most useful of his Legislative career.
The Speaker, in addition to "packing" the Committee on Cities against Roosevelt, sought to thrust upon him a clerk whom he had not chosen and did not desire, but energetic personal protest persuaded the Speaker to abandon his purpose. It soon became apparent that, whatever might be the predilections of the members of the Committee, the chairman had views of his own and was determined to put them into practice. His first act was to introduce two measures of great importance to New York City, one giving the Mayor absolute power of appointment and removal of heads of departments, abolishing the confirming power over such appointments exercised by the Board of Aldermen. The other was a High License bill, greatly increasing the liquor license fees in cities of over 100,000 inhabitants. Few measures could be devised that would be more certain to incur the bitter hostility of corrupt political interests than these two. Through their confirming powers, the Aldermen were able to thwart all efforts for good government of the city that a Mayor might make. They would confirm the appointment only of men of their own sort and a worse sort could not be imagined. They gave a bad Mayor full excuse for all objectionable selections that he might make for he could always say that no others would be confirmed. In regard to high license, the politicians of both parties catered to and were in close alliance with the liquor-dealers, and viewed with wrath and alarm any measure that threatened to disrupt those relations.
Closely following the organization of the Legislature, special committees were appointed in both houses to investigate municipal departments in the city of New York. Roosevelt was placed at the head of the Assembly Committee and he entered at once upon the task assigned to it with enthusiasm and determination. There had been many such committees in the past but few of them had accomplished much of permanent value, for the reason that as soon as- they began to make revelations that were damaging to the city's rulers, the political machinery of both parties was put in operation to "call them off," that is, stop the inquiry or sidetrack it into comparatively harmless channels. An attempt was made at the outset to establish a check on the Assembly Committee by a proposal to have it work jointly with the Senate Committee. Roosevelt defeated this by flatly declining the proposal, a proceeding which was fully justified by the obvious fact that the Senate Committee had been made up, not for a genuine investigation, but for one of the old kind.
He took full control of the Assembly Committee from the start, and began at once to make revelations, which startled the city and ultimately attracted the attention of the country. Various well-established devices were tried by the disreputable politicians of both parties to arrest his progress, but for the first time in the history of legislative investigations they failed utterly because of his vigilance in foreseeing and thwarting them. Within a few weeks he had aroused such an overwhelming popular sentiment in Ms support that all efforts to hamper him ceased. His committee made a report summing up in the plain and vigorous language of its chairman the results of its labors and proposing for enactment seven measures of reform which provided for a complete change in the methods of city government, abolishing the old system under which the corrupt politicians of both parties had been robbing the city for many years. These became known as the Roosevelt reform bills. The city press, with a few insignificant exceptions, supported these measures. Great mass meetings of citizens were held to advocate their passage as well as that of the bill abolishing the confirming powers of the Aldermen and that decreeing high liquor licenses. In the end, the seven, as well as the Aldermanic measure, were passed, but the High License bill, although favored by the Church Temperance Society and the leading Protestant clergymen of the city, failed of final passage. This was many years before the appearance of the prohibition wave, which later swept over the country and Roosevelt’s position at the time was in harmony with that held by the great body of temperance advocates.
In addition to the city reform bills, Roosevelt succeeded in securing the passage of a civil service bill, applying the provisions of the national Civil Service law to all cities of the State having a population of 20,000 or more. A desperate effort was made to have the police force of New York City exempted from the provisions of the law, but Roosevelt defeated this by investigating the Police Department and showing that the worst evils in the force were due to the practice of making appointments to it on political influence alone. He tried also to have the Police Department put under a single head and to abolish the Bureau of Elections, which was under the control of an expert Republican "dealer," the most pernicious and rascally specimen of his class and time, but the political mercenaries of the two parties, grievously crippled in their business as they were by the other Roosevelt reform bills, were able to rally sufficient strength to defeat these additional assaults.
   It is worth while, in order to show the high place which Roosevelt had won in public estimation during this third session, to quote a few of the comments which the press of all parties and shades of opinion, in New York and elsewhere, made upon him at the time. The Democratic journal, which had so often predicted his ruin and had informed him that his New Year was not to be a happy one, was one of the warmest in his praise. When his seven bills were before the Legislature, this journal said of him:
"Mr. Roosevelt, to whom the credit of the bills already passed or certain to pass is due, has displayed a boldness, directness and energy of which much older and more experienced politicians might well be proud. We are willing to accord honor wherever it is due. We only wish we had a Democratic House of Representatives at Washington as efficient and vigorous as the Republican State Legislature, and a Democratic Congressman as active, resolute and practical as Assemblyman Roosevelt."
Another city journal, which was later to become one of his most captious critics, spoke of his work in the Legislature as "influential and memorable," adding: "There have been no disagreements among the members of his Investigating Committee. He has been able to inspire his associates with something of his own zeal for reform, and has apparently had no difficulty in securing their complete faith in the fearless disinterestedness of his labors."
During the exciting scenes in the Legislature when the Roosevelt bills were on final passage, with all the "dealers" seeking, sometimes with the covert aid of the Speaker, to defeat them, the city newspapers placed their Albany despatches under such headlines as "A Big Day for Roosevelt"; "Under Roosevelt's Whip"; "Roosevelt's Brilliant Assault on Corruption"; "Theodore, the Cyclone Hero of the Assembly."
In sections of the country outside of New York State, the newspapers held up Roosevelt as a model for imitation by young men everywhere. A Boston journal said of his political career, "Though less than three years in length, it is long enough to show how much can be achieved by a young man of ability and integrity, who has the wit to organize practical reforms, the faculty to inspire others with his own faith in his measures, and the tact and persistency to secure their adoption by the requisite majority." Another journal in the same city called attention to a purely Rooseveltian method, which he followed throughout his career: "His example and career should stimulate others equally favorably situated to do something in the line where he has wrought so well. We never heard that Roosevelt sneered at American politics or affected to deride those engaged in the comparatively humble business of law-making. On the contrary, he has sought to elevate politics by turning it into right channels and has honored the office of State representative." Another New England journal said: "Mr. Roosevelt is rapidly making toward the front rank of leadership in New York. And his progress comes as the natural result of vigorous, effective and unimpeachably honest work for the city in which he dwells. He has been called a ' swell,' but it would be well if every State had just such swells who are not afraid of the people, know what they want and, more than that, know how to satisfy the popular desire for relief from municipal burdens."
A Philadelphia newspaper said: "The career of this young man, who has gone boldly and honorably into public life, ought to shame thousands who complain that politics are so dirty that no decent gentleman can engage in them.'' A "Western journal said: "Mr. Roosevelt, like William Pitt, is accused of the awful crime of being a young man. It is a very great pity that we have not some more young men like him in public life. Let them all come to the front and take part in the government.''
The weekly-illustrated journals broke out in full page cartoons of Roosevelt in various guises. One of them represented him with a huge pair of scissors clipping the claws of the Tammany Tiger; another as Ajax defying the corrupt influences behind police corruption; another as a woodman cutting down a huge tree of municipal graft and rascality; another represented him garbed as a policeman, entitled "Our New Watchman, Roosevelt," in the act of dismissing the political bosses. When Governor Cleveland signed the Roosevelt bills, Nast published a cartoon, representing Roosevelt standing with the bills before Cleveland, who was seated at his desk, pen in hand, in the act of signing. This was entitled " Reform without Bloodshed."
The action of the highest court of the State in regard to the constitutionality of a measure which he had succeeded in having made a law during his final term in the Legislature is worthy of special record here for reasons which will be stated presently. The measure, which had been proposed by the Cigar-Makers' Union, prohibited the manufacture of cigars in tenement houses. Roosevelt was appointed one of a committee of three to investigate conditions in tenement houses and see if the legislation was desirable. He made several visits to the houses in which the work was carried on, going sometimes with other members of the committee and at other times alone. What he saw convinced him that the legislation was not only desirable but vitally necessary if the children of the workers in question were to grow up fitted for the duties of American citizenship. He ardently championed the bill and persuaded Governor Cleveland to sign it, though it was a crudely drawn measure. When it was carried to the Court of Appeals, on a question of its constitutionality, the court in 1885, held that it was not a proper exercise of the police power, that it interfered with the profitable and free use of his property by the owner or his lessee, and that a constitutional guaranty was violated. In rendering its decision, the court said:
"It cannot be perceived how the cigar-maker is to be improved in his health or his morals by forcing him from his home and its hallowed associations and beneficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere."
As Roosevelt in his personal visits to the tenement houses had found that in nearly all cases the work had been carried on by men, women and children living, working, eating and sleeping in the' same rooms, sometimes in one room, and in one instance, by two families in one room, two women, two men, several children and an adult male boarder, his disgust and wrath at these remarks about "hallowed associations" and "beneficent influences of his home" were deep and abiding. He says in his 'Autobiography':
"It was this case which first waked me to a dim and partial understanding of the fact that the courts were not necessarily the best judges of what should be done to better social and industrial conditions. The judges who rendered this decision were well-meaning men. They knew nothing whatever of tenementhouse conditions; they knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and labor, of three fourths of their fellow-citizens in great cities. They knew legalism but not life . . . This decision completely blocked tenement-house reform legislation in New York for a score of years. It was one of the most serious set-backs which the cause of industrial and social progress and reform ever received."
Viewed in the light of his subsequent career the lasting impression that his legislative experience had made upon Roosevelt's mind can easily be traced. His early view that the laws of the land, as expounded in text books and classrooms and interpreted by lawyers and courts, operated often against rather than in favor of the attainment of justice, had been confirmed by that experience. This was the inevitable effect of his unsuccessful attempt to secure the impeachment of a judge notoriously guilty of improper dealings with a railway corporation, and equally so of the decision of the Court of Appeals upon the measure cited above. His course as President in regard to the regulation and control of great corporations, and his later views in regard to the recall of judicial decisions, were no new developments of opinion, but the logical result of many years of serious thought. Equally so was the stand which he took during his service as President and maintained with undiminished zeal afterwards, in favor of social and industrial betterment or reform. Whatever opinion may be held in regard to his course on these questions, no one can say truthfully that it was due to sudden impulse, or was inspired by a desire to gain temporary political capital. His conduct was based on precisely the same ideas and principles that had actuated his course in the Legislature many years earlier, and was inherent in the character of the man. 

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CHAPTER FIVE,.
FIRST APPEARANCE IN NATIONAL POLITICS—MR. BLAINE'S CANDIDACY,.
at the end of his third term in the Legislature, Roosevelt had become a distinct personality in national politics. His advance had been remarkably rapid. When in the summer of 1881 he decided to take an active part in political affairs he was, as I have said, practically unknown outside the limits of his own Assembly district. Before the end of his third term his fame had extended over the entire country. He had won such a position of leadership in his party in the State that when the time came to elect delegates to the Republican National Convention in the spring of 1884, he was, with the hearty approval of the great mass of his party, chosen as the chief of the four delegates-at-large. So strong was popular sentiment in his favor that he easily overcame an organized effort by the old machine leaders in the State Convention to prevent his selection.
He went to the National Convention an avowed advocate of the nomination of Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont as the Republican candidate for the Presidency in preference to James Or.  Blaine, who was the favorite of a majority of the delegates. The  Blaine supporters were in control of the National Republican Committee and sought to organize the Convention in their interest by having a man of their choice, ex-Senator Powell Clayton, of Alabama, made temporary Chairman. The National Committee submitted this selection to the Convention for approval. Senator H. C. Lodge, a delegate from Massachusetts and like Roosevelt an avowed Edmunds supporter, nominated a colored man, ex-Congressman John R. Lynch of Mississippi. In support of Senator Lodge's motion, Roosevelt took the floor and made his first speech in a national convention. As this was his first appearance in the field of national politics the impression which he made upon his audience is worthy of record. The New York Times of June 4, 1894, published this account from its convention correspondent:
"Up from the midst of the Empire State delegates rose a slight, almost boyish figure. It was that of an active, nervous, light-haired, gray-eyed man who had just thrown off a straw hat and scrambled to his perch on the chair, with juvenile activity. Everybody knew the man, for there is not a State headquarters which he has not visited in his canvass for Edmunds, and scarce an influential delegate with whom he has not conversed in a straightforward, manly way, carrying conviction even when he could not convert. It was Theodore Roosevelt, of New York, the leader of the younger Republicans, and he was greeted with a rousing burst of applause as he stood waiting to speak. When he spoke it was not the voice of a youth, but of a man—and a positive, practical man. His sensible speech was in delightful contrast with the plausible apologies of the men who had endeavored to excuse the outrage which the National Committee had committed."
The speech itself is of historic value for in it Roosevelt established a precedent for a similar position, which he took 28 years later in another national convention. Its full text was as follows:
"I trust that the motion made by the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lodge) will be adopted, and that we will select as chairman of this convention that representative Republican, Mr. Lynch, of Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, it has been said by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Stewart) that it is without precedent to reverse the action of the National Committee. Who has not known numerous instances where the action of a State committee has been reversed by the State convention? Not one of us but has known such instances. Now there are, as I understand it, but two delegates to this convention who have seats on the National Committee; and I hold it to be derogatory to our honor, to our capacity for self-government, to say that we must accept the nomination of a presiding officer by another body; and that our hands are tied, and we dare not reverse its action.
"Now, one word more. I trust that the vote will be taken by individual members, and not by States. Let each man stand accountable to those whom he represents for his vote. Let no man be able to shelter himself behind the shield of his State. What we say is, that one of the cardinal doctrines of the American political government is the accountability of each man to his people; and let each man stand up here and cast his vote, and then go home and abide by what he has done.
"It is now, Mr. Chairman, less than a quarter of a century since, in this city, the great Republican party for the first time organized for victory, and nominated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, who broke the fetters of the slave and rent them asunder forever. It is a fitting thing for us to choose to preside over this convention one of the race whose right to sit within these walls is due to the blood and the treasure so lavishly spent by the founders of the Republican party. And it is but a further vindication of the principles for which the Republican party so long struggled. I trust that the Honorable Mr. Lynch will be elected temporary chairman of this convention."
The effect of the speech was shown in the result of the ballot, for Mr. Lynch was elected by a vote of 431 to 382. The convention asserted its right to reverse the action of the National Committee, even if by doing so it "violated precedent.''
By the nomination of Mr. Blaine, which followed later, Roosevelt was confronted with what in many respects was the most serious crisis of his career. He had to decide which of two courses he should choose. He must separate himself completely from his party and become an absolute Independent, or stay within his party and support its regularly nominated candidate. The nomination of Mr. Blaine had been fairly won. He was unquestionably the choice of the convention. There was no claim that the will of the majority had been subverted either through the action of a committee on contested seats or in any other way. The problem before him was thus a quite different one from that presented to him twenty-eight years later in the National Republican Convention of 1912. In opposing the nomination of Mr.  Blaine he and his Republican associates had been acting with a considerable body of professional Independents, that is, men without allegiance to either of the great political parties. Though he had been during his brief public career an avowed Republican, seeking to accomplish all his reforms through Republican aid and inside party lines, his Independent associates, as soon as the Blaine nomination was made, assumed that he would leave his party and join them in seeking to accomplish  Blaine's defeat by supporting the Democratic candidate. In fact, they not merely asked but demanded that he abandon the course, which he had followed since his entry into political life and upon which he had built his public career. They were sincere in their belief that he should do this. It seemed incredible to them that he could do anything else. He gave them full credit for sincerity, but declared that the question was one that he must insist upon deciding for himself. He admitted frankly that he had worked hard for the nomination of Edmunds and was savagely indignant at his defeat, but he declined to say at once what course he should pursue in regard to the nomination of Mr.  Blaine. Various devices were used to force him to declare his intentions, some by Republican politicians, and others, not entirely creditable, by leading Independents, but all in vain. He insisted upon deciding the question for himself, and in his own way and time. He went direct from the convention in Chicago to his ranch in Dakota, and several weeks later put forth a formal statement in which he defined his decision as follows:
"I intend to vote the Republican Presidential ticket. While at Chicago I told Mr. Lodge that such was my intention, but before announcing it I wished to have time to think the matter over. A man cannot act both without and within the party; he can do either, but he cannot possibly do both. Each course has its advantages and each has its disadvantages, and one cannot take the advantages or the disadvantages separately. I went in with my eyes open to do what I could within the party; I did my best and got beaten, and I propose to stand by the result. It is impossible to combine the functions of a guerilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army; one has a greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective. In certain contingencies the one can do most good, in certain contingencies the other; but there is no use in accepting a commission and then trying to play the game out on a lone hand.
'' During the entire canvass for the nomination Mr.  Blaine received but two checks—one was at the Utica Convention, the other was the Powell Clayton incident. I had a hand in both, and I could have had a hand in neither had not those Republicans who at Utica elected me as the head of the New York State delegation supposed that I would in good faith support the man who was fairly made the Republican nominee. I am by inheritance and by education a Republican; whatever good I have been able to accomplish in public life has been accomplished through the Republican party; I have acted with it in the past, and wish to act with it in the future; I went as a regular delegate to the Chicago Convention, and I intend to abide by the outcome of that Convention. I am going back in a day or two to my Western ranch, as I do not expect to take any part in the campaign this fall."
This determination not to take part in the campaign he recalled later, for reasons, which were eminently characteristic. "When I started out to my ranch two months ago," he said in October, "I had no intention of taking any part whatever in the Presidential canvass, and the decision I have now come to is the result of revolving the matter in my mind during that time. It is altogether contrary to my character to occupy a neutral position in so important and exciting a struggle, and besides my natural desire to occupy a positive position of some kind, I made up my mind that it was clearly my duty to support the ticket."
His decision called forth bitter denunciation from the Independents, who declared that he had deserted his principles, and predicted with absolute conviction that he had wrecked his career. The Democratic press took a similar view of his future and declared that he had always been a "humbug" and a "political charlatan," a "reform fraud" and a "Jack-in-the-box politician," who had now been thoroughly found out. He faced the storm of disapproval and abuse calmly, and in a reply to an open letter of regret and remonstrance from an Independent he wrote:
"I thank you for your good opinion of my past services. My power, if I ever had any, may or may not be as utterly gone as you think, but most certainly it would deserve to go if I yielded any more to the pressure of the Independents at present, when I consider them to be wrong, than I yielded in the past to the pressure of the machine when I thought it wrong."
He declined a re-nomination for the Assembly, which he could have had without opposition, and two separate offers of a nomination for Congress in as many districts in which he was eligible as a candidate, on the ground that his private interests, which had been neglected during his service in the Legislature, demanded all of his attention.

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CHAPTER SIX,.
LITERARY LABORS—TILT WITH  JEFFERSON DAVIS-CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR
during his first term in the Legislature Roosevelt published, in May, 1882, "The Naval War of 1812," the opening chapters of which he had written while a student in Harvard. He had finished it while engaged in his tussle with machine politics in the Legislature, demonstrating thus early in his career his ability to turn aside from public and political duties and concentrate his mind upon literary work. This was merely the first of many instances of the kind which occurred quite regularly in his subsequent career. The publication of the Naval History came at the moment when his efforts to secure the impeachment of a judge were nearing their climax and when the fight over his other reform measures was absorbing public attention. The book was everywhere well received and the complimentary reviews of it in the press appeared side by side with comments, favorable and unfavorable, upon his legislative achievements. The book is notable as containing a warning to the nation of the need of thorough preparedness for war as the surest guaranty of peace—a warning which he repeated at every opportunity during the succeeding thirty-five years, the wisdom of which was amply justified when the folly of persistent disregard of it was demonstrated with such disastrous consequence at the entry of the United States into the European War in 1917. In his preface, written in 1882, he said:
"The operations of this war on land teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson that miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money which, after all, comes too late to more than partially off set the evils produced by the original shortsighted parsimony. It was criminal folly for Jefferson and his follower, Madison, to neglect to give us a force either of Regulars or of well-trained Volunteers during the 21 years they had in which to prepare for the struggle that any one might see was inevitable."
"The necessity for an efficient Navy is so evident that only our almost incredible shortsightedness prevents our at once preparing one."
In a condensed history of the same war, which he wrote for an English Naval History in 1897, fifteen years later, he reiterated his earlier views, saying:
"There never was a better example of the ultimate evil caused by a timid effort to secure peace and the refusal to make preparations for war than that afforded by the American people under the Presidencies of Jefferson and Madison."
Another notable passage in this condensed history was the following in regard to pacifists, who many years later played so harmful and despicable a part in the European War:
"Both Britain and America have produced men of the 'peace-at-any-price' pattern, and in America, in one great crisis at least, these men cost the Nation more in blood and wealth than the political leaders most recklessly indifferent to war have ever cost it."
After the close of the Presidential campaign of 1884, Roosevelt returned to his ranch in Dakota, spending much of his time there for several years, making occasional visits to his home in New York. He took charge of two cattle ranches and varied his duties as ranchman with hunting trips and in writing magazine articles and books. In 1885 he published "The Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," two volumes; in 1886, the "Life of Thomas H. Benton"; in 1887, the "Life of Gouverneur Morris"; in 1888, "Ranch Life and Hunting Trail"; in 1890, "History of New York"; and in 1893,«' The Wilderness Hunter.'' All of these books were written in whole or in part during this period.
In his Life of Benton, written thirty years before the entry of the United States into the European War, there appears this additional reference to pacifists:
"A class of professional noncombatants is as hurtful to the healthy growth of a nation as a class of fire eaters, for a weakness or folly is nationally as bad as a vice, or worse. No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free country."
Two manuscript letters of rare interest appear in Roosevelt's correspondence of 1885. One is from Jefferson Davis, written apparently in his own hand, and the other is a copy, in Roosevelt's own hand, of his reply. They are:
beauvain, Miss.,
 September 29, 1885. 
Mr. Theodore Roosevelt,
New York, New York. sir:
You have recently chosen publicly to associate the name of Benedict Arnold with that of Jefferson Davis, as the only American with whom the traitor Arnold need not fear comparison.
You must be ignorant indeed of American history if you do not know that the career of those characters might be aptly chosen for contrast, but not for similitude; and if so ignorant, the instinct of a gentleman, had you possessed it, must have caused you to make inquiry before uttering an accusation so libelous and false.
I write you directly to repel the unproved outrage, but with too low an estimate of you to expect an honorable retraction of your slander.
Yours, etc.,
(Signed)    
Jefferson Davis.
new York, October 8, 1885.
"Mr. Theodore Roosevelt is in receipt of a letter purporting to come from Mr. Jefferson Davis, and denying that the character of Mr. Davis compares unfavorably with that of Benedict Arnold. Assuming the letter to be genuine Mr. Roosevelt has only to say that he would indeed be surprised to find that his views of the character of Mr. Davis did not differ radically from that apparently entertained in relation thereto by Mr. Davis himself. Mr. Roosevelt begs leave to add that he does not deem it necessary that there should be any further communication whatever between himself and Mr. Davis."
In the autumn of 1886 he was offered and accepted the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York City. He was also nominated for the office by a Committee of Business Men and an Independent Committee of Citizens. His nomination was based upon his record in the Legislature, and in his letter of acceptance and campaign speeches he pledged himself, if elected, to devote all his energies to securing honest and efficient city government without regard to partizan considerations of any sort. The contest was a three-cornered one, with Abram S. Hewitt as the nominee of Tammany and other Democratic organizations, and Henry George as the nominee of labor and socialist organizations. The Independents, or Mugwumps as they were called, unable to forgive Roosevelt for his advocacy of  Blaine, supported Mr. Hewitt, who was elected. He was a man of ability and probity, who had made an excellent record in Congress, and the Independents took the ground that even with his Tammany support he could be depended upon to be a better and more useful Mayor than Roosevelt would be able to be with the support of the Republican Machine. Time was to show within a few years that Roosevelt as a city official could be depended upon so thoroughly to give the city valuable service in spite of Republican Machine support that the same Independents would lament his departure from municipal administration.

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CHAPTER SEVEN,.
 CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER,.
in May, 1889, President Harrison appointed Roosevelt a member of the United States Civil Service Commission. The conditions of the civil service at this time were such as to make the position an alluring one to Roosevelt. He had been an active and zealous advocate of civil service reform since the moment of his entry into public life. Various efforts had been made for twenty years or more to overthrow the spoils system as applied to the civil service of the country, but with only slight success. In 1871, President Grant yielded sufficiently to the demands of civil service reform advocates to appoint a Civil Service Advisory Board of seven members, with George William Curtis as chairman. This Board proposed a set of rules and regulations, which in the following year were enlarged so as to make them applicable to the Departments at Washington and the Federal offices in New York City. These rules and regulations were put in force, with a very moderate amount of success, and continued in force till 1875, under constant assault by the politicians of both parties. In 1875 the opposition of the politicians became so formidable that Congress yielded to it and refused to grant an appropriation for the expenses of the Advisory Board, whereupon President Grant suspended the operation of the rules.
There was organized immediately in New York, under the leadership of Mr. Curtis, the Civil Service Reform Association, which developed into The National Civil Service Reform League with Mr. Curtis as President. Roosevelt was a member of this League and took a leading part in the campaign of education, which it conducted throughout the country. Its agitation of the reform resulted in January, 1883, in the introduction, by Senator Geo. H. Pendleton of Ohio, of a bill to establish the merit system in the civil service of the Government. It was passed by both houses of Congress and went into effect in July, 1883. As recorded in previous chapters, Roosevelt endeavored in the same year to have the provisions of this law applied to the civil service of New York City, but was prevented by the opposition of the Democratic majority. In the succeeding Legislature, that of 1884, which had a Republican majority in both houses, he succeeded in having a bill passed which applied the provisions of the law to all cities of the State having a population of 20,000 or more. There were 23 such cities at the time.
When the Pendleton law went into effect it brought about 14,000 Government employees into the classified service, but the enforcement of its provisions was fiercely and persistently obstructed by the politicians of both parties. When Hayes entered upon the Presidency under pledges of support to the reform, high hopes were cherished by its advocates that valuable progress would be made during his administration, but these were not realized. Little progress was made. President Garfield did not live long enough to take action in the matter, and only slight progress was made under President Arthur. He appointed an efficient Commission of three members, with Dorman B. Eaton, one of the leading advocates of the reform, as chairman, but beyond drawing up a set of rules this Commission was able to accomplish little. President Cleveland came into office with the confident hope of the Mugwumps, who had given his candidacy valuable support, that he would greatly enlarge the scope of the rules. By Executive Order he brought 7,000 additional places into the classified service, and during his term, by natural growth, 4,500 others were included. At the close of his term he extended the rules so as to include employees in the railway mail service. He had during this, his first term, greatly disappointed the advocates of the reform by making what was very nearly a "clean sweep" in the Presidential appointees and unclassified offices in the service, including fourth class postmasters.
When Harrison became President he extended the time for enforcing Cleveland's order in regard to the inclusion of railway mail service employees for so long a period that before it went into effect nearly all Democratic employees had been removed.
When Roosevelt entered upon his duties, on May 13, 1889, the situation of affairs in the Commission was one quite satisfactory to the politicians. There had been at the time of his appointment only a single member of the Commission. One had resigned in October, 1888, and one had been removed in February, 1889. The work of the Commission, which had been dallying on in a merely perfunctory manner, had come to virtual stagnation. The appropriation for it was quite inadequate for effective service, and the salary of a Commissioner, which had been fixed purposely at $3,500, was so small as to give reasonable assurance that no one with an alarming amount of ability or force would be likely to accept the position. The contingency of a young man of private means, with a patriotic desire to perform useful public service, as was the case with Roosevelt, being willing to accept such a place, had not been foreseen. During the six years of the law's existence its enforcement had been quite uniformly so gentle that the business of practical politics had not been seriously disturbed. The various Commissions had been composed of men of quiet disposition and mature years, whose natural inclination was to follow the lines of least resistance in all matters of policy. They were affected more or less by the attitude of both the politicians and the public generally toward the law as being not a real law but a kind of sentimental proposition put forth to please a lot of "fool reformers.'' For many years declarations in the national platforms of both political parties had been composed and adopted on this basis alone. The law of 1883 had been passed with the same general idea in the minds even of those who had voted for it. It would serve as a sop for a few "long-haired cranks," and would amount to nothing in practise.
The manner in which the law was enforced during the first six years justified this view. In many instances its administration was a sham, and in all instances no effort was made to detect, expose and punish violations of either its letter or spirit. There was no more peaceful abode of official life in Washington in May, 1889, than the serene home of the Civil Service Commission when Theodore Roosevelt, in abounding health and vigor from his six years of ranching and hunting life, walked in and took possession, after the retirement of the incumbents. While he was nominally one of a Commission of three members, from the moment of his entry he was, in the words of the newspaper correspondents at Washington, himself the whole Commission. This was true, so far as leadership in its activities was concerned, but he was cordially supported by Hugh S. Thompson, whom President Harrison had appointed a member at the same time, and later by John E. Proctor, who was added to the Commission in December, 1893.
Of these two associates Roosevelt always spoke in the highest terms. In his 'American Ideals' he says:
"I was myself a Republican from the North. Messrs. Thompson and Proctor were from the South, and were both Democrats who had served in the Confederate armies; and it would be impossible for any one to desire as associates, two public men with higher ideals of duty, or more resolute in their adherence to those ideals."
When in 1869 Charles W. Eliot became President of Harvard University and introduced radical changes, Oliver Wendell Holmes said of him that he "turned the whole University over like a flapjack." A revolution, no less complete, took place immediately in the Commission's peaceful home. Roosevelt entered upon his duties on May 13, 1889. Accompanied by Commissioner Thompson, he went almost immediately to New York and conducted an investigation of the manner in which the Civil Service Law was administered in the Custom House there. On June 5, the Commission published a report in which it declared that examinations for admissions to the service, as conducted by the local board, were characterized by "great laxity, negligence and fraud;" that the "members of the board openly sneered at and ridiculed the law which they were supposed to enforce;" that the testimony adduced as to the misconduct of three employees was conclusive and they should be removed by the Collector; and that one of them should be prosecuted by the U. S. District Attorney for "criminal violation of the law." This action was so radical a departure from the established procedure of the Commission that it caused a genuine sensation. It was the first formal notice that the Civil Service Law was a real law and capable of enforcement by the courts like any other law. From New York City, the Commissioners visited various post offices in New York State, finding irregularities, and on June 18 they started on a tour of the principal Western cities, inquiring into the manner in which the law was enforced in the Government service in each. On the eve of departure Roosevelt made a frank statement for the press in regard to the Commission's ideas and purposes. "We have," he said, "to do two things. One is to make the officials themselves understand that the law is obligatory, not optional, and the other is to get the same idea into the heads of the people.'' The tour was a veritable campaign of education, for full publicity was given to its proceedings and discoveries, and a convincing demonstration was made that the full power of the Commission would be exerted to have the law rigidly enforced and violators of it punished. Several postmasters were convicted of violations and were removed, and a great awakening of public interest was caused.
During 1889, 1890 and 1891, Roosevelt pushed this campaign forward relentlessly, without regard to the political character of the persons affected. When he inquired into the methods pursued in the Baltimore Post Office, he became involved in a controversy with the Secretary of the Treasury, Charles Foster, and John Wanamaker, the Postmaster General, both of President Harrison's Cabinet, and a tremendous uproar filled the entire land. The wrath of the politicians of the Republican party, which had been steadily rising since Roosevelt began his campaign, fairly burst into flame. Mr. Foster and Mr. Wanamaker protected the accused officials in Baltimore, whose removal was demanded by the Commission, and in doing so Mr. Wanamaker made assertions that Roosevelt, speaking for the Commission, declared to be false. An investigation was conducted by a Committee of Congress, and Roosevelt’s position was sustained. He had not only assailed members of the Cabinet, who were his superiors in the Harrison Administration, but had charged one of them with seeking to condone wrongdoing in his department, and, what was more, had proved his charge. This treatment of a man who was not only a Cabinet officer, but the founder of the famous Bethany Sunday-School in Philadelphia, shocked the sensibilities of every Republican politician in the country and the outcry for Roosevelt’s official head was vociferous and insistent. Fury was added to the demand by the shrieks of joy, which came from the Independent or Mugwump press, whose editors forgot their lack of faith in Roosevelt because of his Blaine support and hailed him as the nation's most valiant reformer. The very citadel of spoils politics, the hitherto impregnable fortress that had existed unshaken since it was erected on the foundation laid by Andrew Jackson, was tottering to its fall under the assaults of this audacious and irrepressible young man. In Congress and in the party press, in all quarters where politicians gathered, a situation existed like that described by Thackeray in his "White Squall":
"Then all the fleas in Jewry Jumped up and bit like fury."
The biting of the spoils fleas in Congress was especially sharp. An investigation of the Commission was proposed, and eagerly welcomed by Roosevelt, who met his accusers face to face and demolished ruthlessly all their assertions as to the character of his work. He demonstrated that the examinations for admission to the service, which the Commission conducted, were thoroughly practical and designed especially to test the fitness of each candidate for the work that he was to do. He showed that in each instance in which fraud or misconduct had been charged against employees ample proof had been adduced, and that in each and every instance the offender had been recommended for punishment without regard to his political affiliations. The good old spoils doctrine of asking in regard to a rascal before inflicting punishment, "Whose rascal is he—ours or the other party's1?" had been utterly disregarded by him.
Some of the efforts made by the distracted Congressmen to save their cherished system reveal how complete was their misconception of the man with whom they had to deal. In the first annual report of the Commission, under date of June 30, 1889, occurs this passage, evidently penned by Roosevelt:
"The object of the law is to give to the average American citizen what it takes away from the professional politician. How little this object is understood by some men in public life may be gathered from recent proposals to parcel out all the offices among the different Congressional districts according to the political faith of the Congressmen representing them. This would, of course, simply mean a revival of the patronage system, with an added touch of chaos. It is apparently brought forward in the simple faith that all that is needed is to divide the offices among the politicians of both parties instead of among those of only one, and ignores the very common-sense view, which insists that the offices are not the property of the politicians at all, whether of one party or of the other or of both; but, on the contrary, that they belong to the people, and should be filled only with reference to the needs of public service."
While defending himself in Congress, Roosevelt made frequent addresses in various parts of the country, explaining and expounding his acts and policy, and contributed promptly to the newspapers various replies to all attacks of consequence made through their columns. Before many months had passed he had won to his support all the more reputable and influential newspapers of the country, and had secured both the attention and confidence of the great body of public intelligence. So strong was public opinion in his favor that even the irate Congressmen felt compelled to bow to it, for when in 1890 a proposal was made to repeal the Pendleton law they almost unanimously declined to support it.
Heroic efforts were made by the editors of extreme partisan Republican newspapers to find language adequate to the needs of the occasion. One editor in a single article spoke of Roosevelt, as "Mr. Theossehoss Roosevelt;" "Rosy Koosy;" "Tintinnabulating Ted;" "Rollicking Ranchman ;" "Scion of a diluted ancestry who has slapped Mr. Harrison and Mr. Wanamaker;" "Terrapin Teddy;" "Favorite-son-of-a-gun of reformer;" "Descendant of the way-back Roosevelts from Rooseveltville," and a "Jane dandy."
Other partisan editors, less gifted in the use of vituperative epithets, assumed to believe that Roosevelt’s rigorous enforcement of the law would have the beneficent effect of securing its repeal by showing what a foolish and impracticable statute it was. One of these, in the Albany Evening Journal, whose publisher, William Barnes, was destined later to develop into one of Roosevelt’s most bitter political enemies, was particularly strong in holding this view. '' Go it, Roosevelt,'' he said. '' If any man can repeal the Pendleton law during the coming four years his name is Teddy. If Teddy Roosevelt is not chained down, no power under heaven can prevent the repeal of the law before President Harrison's term shall have expired. The American idea of party, party power and party responsibility will survive the Mugwump attack made under the guise of Civil Service reform."
Another editor, in the New York Sun, which was an open defender of the spoils system, said:
"Mr. Roosevelt deserves the thanks of the spoils men. He is proving almost every week that the Civil Service Law is incapable of enforcement. The only men who could live up to it are the Mugwumps, and they do not appoint to office or get appointed.
"Mr. Roosevelt and his brethren in belief simply postulate a state of things which does not exist. They assume that the American people are poor unfortunates who suffer from the spoils system. The American people are all right and they know it. The professors of Chinese quackery cannot persuade them that they are ill. Besides the Government of the United States belongs to them; and don't you forget it."
The enraged spoils men, including Senators and Representatives in Congress, descended in swarms on President Harrison and besought him to remove Roosevelt for the sake of party and country. They pointed out to him that he had ample justification for such a course in Roosevelt's treatment of Mr. Wanamaker, which was virtually an attack on the President himself. They started a report that the President had decided on his removal and the partisan press warmly commended such action. When such action failed to be taken, they began to express pity, even contempt for him and represented him as in a state of great irritation about Roosevelt's course but lacking the courage to get rid of him. "Poor Harrison!" said the New York Sun. "If he has erred he has been punished. The irrepressible, belligerent, and enthusiastic Roosevelt has made him suffer and has more suffering in store for him."
Whatever may have been the feelings of the President— and there is little doubt that he had no idea when he appointed Roosevelt that he would prove to be so veritable a bull in a china shop—he refused to remove him and stood by him firmly till the end of his term.
When Cleveland succeeded him in 1893, it was declared by the partisan press of both parties that he would not think for a moment of retaining Roosevelt. The most earnest advocates of his retention were the civil service reformers. Carl Schurz, who was President of the Civil Service Reform League, was especially active, as the following letter, written two months before Cleveland's inauguration, shows:
"Solitude," 
pocantico hills, westchester,
January 4, 1893. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I trust you will not take it as an indiscretion on my part that I communicated to Mr. Cleveland what you had written me about calling upon him. I have just received his answer. He writes: "I want to see Mr. Roosevelt and if he will indicate when and where he can meet me I am quite sure I can suit my engagements to his convenience."
I take this to indicate that Mr. Cleveland wishes very much to see you, and I would suggest that you meet him as soon as possible. You might communicate with him directly in order to agree with him as to the when and where. Or, if you prefer to make the necessary arrangement through me, I am perfectly willing to serve as an intermediary and shall do so with pleasure.
I must confess that the tone of Mr. Cleveland's invitation to you gratifies me exceedingly. It is a very good sign of his disposition. I have had no conversation with him upon the subject and do not know whether he intends to ask you to remain a member of the Civil Service Commission during his presidency. That part of his letter, which I have quoted, seems to suggest that such a thing is possible. If he should make such a request then I most earnestly hope— and I think this is the universal feeling of the civil service reformers throughout the country—that you will not a moment think of saying no. I trust you will consider what a great work you can do, and that there is not another man in the country who can do it as well as you can. Your continuance in your position at Mr. Cleveland's request would be a great event, and in itself a large program for the next four years.
Perhaps we may meet before you see Mr. Cleveland.
Sincerely yours,
C. schitRz.
Cleveland retained Roosevelt as Commissioner and he remained in the position till May 5,1895, when he resigned to accept the position of Police Commissioner in New York City. Cleveland, like Harrison, stood by Roosevelt when in 1894 he assailed John G. Carlisle, Secretary of the Treasury, for removing subordinates in his department for political reasons. Roosevelt says in his 'Autobiography': "I was treated by both Presidents with the utmost consideration."
When he resigned in 1895, the classified service had been extended to practically the entire executive forces throughout the United States, including approximately 85,000 places. The great value of his six years of service, however, did not lie in the increased number of places brought within the rules but in the revolution that he had accomplished in the minds of both the politicians and the people regarding the law and its merits. The old idea that it was a "fool law," the outcome of the impracticable dreams of a lot of "crank reformers," had been dispelled forever. Its character as a real law with beneficent effects, was firmly established. The time-honored theory that "to the victors belong the spoils," if not completely destroyed, had received shocks from which it could never recover. Not only had there been created a public sentiment in favor of the law and its enforcement, but against such features of the spoils system as levying assessments upon office-holders and members of the civil service and the slavish employment of them for partisan political work,—against these practises a vigilant moral sense had been aroused which made it not only difficult but dangerous for party bosses to continue them, lest the severe penalties of the law be incurred. Whatever violations were committed subsequently, were conducted with extreme caution and in lessening number as time advanced. If civil service reform had not been completely accomplished, it had been placed upon a firm foundation and its steady progress in the future in spite of all attempts to overthrow it had been assured.
   When in the spring of 1895, it was announced that the Mayor of New York had offered the position of Police Commissioner to Roosevelt and the latter had declared his purpose to accept it, the Washington correspondent of the New York Sim, a newspaper often conspicuously unfriendly to Roosevelt, wrote, under date of April 23: "What will become of the Civil Service Commission when Mr. Roosevelt leaves it can only be conjectured. He has been the only vital force in the Commission since it came into existence, and any man who shall take the place after him must show extraordinary enthusiasm, ability, and moral principle, or suffer in comparison."
Roosevelt's correspondence during the six years that he was Civil Service Commissioner, like that of all other periods of his career, reveals him as the eager and indefatigable reader of books and the interested companion of writers of them. An essayist, critic and author in whose work he took keen interest was Brander Matthews, and from a large number of letters, many of them in his own hand, that Roosevelt wrote to him at this time, I am courteously permitted by Mr. Matthews to make a few citations which I have chosen as showing both the wide range of his reading and the irrepressible play of his humor.
His interest in Revolutionary War history was disclosed in many letters, notably so in some that he wrote while he was President to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, author of 'The American Revolution,' from which I shall quote in later chapters of this narrative. Writing to Mr. Matthews, on May 7,1893, in reference to a work on the Revolutionary period that had appeared recently, he said:
"There is a wealth of picturesque incident which has never been utilized in the fighting between Tarleton's red dragoons, Ferguson's riflemen, Cornwallis's admirable grenadiers of the line, and the stolid, well drilled, valiant Hessian infantry on the one side, and on the other the continental line troops of Greene and Wayne, the light horse of Harry Lee, the homespun militia-men, and the wild riflemen of the backwoods, with their wolfskin caps, and their hunting tunics, girded in with bead-worked belts; while the painted Indian tribes add yet another element. It ought to be written up purely from the military side, by some one able to appreciate brave deeds by whomsoever done, and the equal valor displayed by friend and foe."
In another letter to Mr. Matthews, on June 29, 1894, he says of a volume of essays by a young writer who was winning his way to fame:
"Mr. Blank is entirely wrong in thinking that Shakespeare, Homer and Milton are not permanent. Of course they are; and he is entirely in error in thinking that Shakespeare is not read, in the aggregate, during a term of years, more than any ephemeral author of the day. Of course every year there are dozens of novels, each one of which will have many more readers than Shakespeare will have in the year; but the readers only stay for about a year or two, whereas in Shakespeare's case they have lasted, and will last, quite a time! I think that Mr. Blank's ignorance, crudity and utter lack of cultivation make him entirely unfit to understand the effect of the great masters of thought upon the language and upon literature. Nevertheless, in his main thought, as you say, he is entirely right. We must strike out for ourselves; we must work according to our own ideas, and must free ourselves from the shackles of conventionality, before we can do anything. As for the literary center of the country being New York, I personally never had any patience with the talk of a literary center. I don't care a rap whether it is New York, Chicago, or any place else, so long as the work is done. I like or dislike pieces in the Atlantic Monthly and the Overland Monthly because of what they contain, not because of one's being published in San Francisco or the other in Boston. I don't like Edgar Fawcett any more because he lives in New York, nor Joel Chandler Harris any the less because he lives at Atlanta; and I read Mark Twain with just as much delight, but with no more, whether he resides in Connecticut or in Missouri."
The joyous humor of Roosevelt is visible in the following citations from the letters to Mr. Matthews:
Washington, Aug. 26, 1893: "I have a rather good story for you. Recently a sister of a friend of mine was at a dinner in London, where there was also that somewhat heavy English wit, Comyns Carr. He began inveighing against the 'higher education of women,' and stated that he was going to introduce a society to promote their lower education. She sweetly asked what women he meant—• English, French or American? He fixed her with an eye of cold disapproval, and, prancing into the trap, responded: 'I should begin with American women!' to which she, with a merely explanatory air: 'Oh, but you know, Mr. Carr, American women are not at all too highly educated for American men!'
"Washington, Dec. 9, 1894: "When you see your friend Kipling again tell him that his 'Walking Delegate' has been used as a tract in the Senate. Manderson, of Nebraska, first saw its possibilities. Do you know him? He has a most gallant record in the Civil War, where he was badly wounded; and now has at last overthrown the populists in his State, in a square knock-down-and-drag-out fight, and is going to leave the Senate, as he finds he can't afford to stay in politics. He tried the article on Peffer, who is a well-meaning, pinheaded, anarchistic crank, of hirsute and slab-sided aspect; it didn't do Peffer any good—he isn't that kind—but it irritated him, and so it pleased Manderson. Wolcott, of Colorado, whom you met here, is now going to try it on Kyle, of South Dakota, Lodge would like to use it, but he is anathema to the populists anyhow, as he comes from Massachusetts and is a Harvard man— a record that would taint anything."
Washington, June 7,1904: "I simply must send you this choice bit of wisdom from a British brother. It comes in a letter of Mrs. Edith Wharton's to young Lodge:
" 'I sat last night next to a Mr. F., Lord S's son, who had been all over the South African War and was very keen about military matters. We talked about Conan Doyle's book, and then I asked him if he had ever read Sir George Trevelyan's history of the 'American Revolution.' No, he hadn't, but would make a note of it. Capital book, eh? I said the descriptions of the fights were wonderful; that I had told Sir G. T. that I thought his 'Battle of Bunker Hill' was the best battle picture I knew and he had answered that Lord Wolseley had told him the same thing.
"Mr. F. (keenly interested). 'Oh, really? I must read that. Trevelyan's an army man himself, I suppose?'
"Me.   'No, I think not.   You know he was* blank*	'
"Mr. F. 'Oh, of course. Out there as a correspondent, I suppose.' " ! ! !
"Is not this really too good to be true?" 

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CHAPTER EIGHT,.
POLICE COMMISSIONER,.
with the entrance of Roosevelt upon his service as Police Commissioner in New York City, in the spring of 1895, there began between him and myself a close personal friendship which continued unbroken throughout his career, growing steadily in mutual confidence and affection with time. The present narrative from this point onward will be written in the light which this intimacy threw upon his motives and character, and its statements will be illuminated and corroborated by citations from confidential letters written by him both to myself and to other persons, and by authentic anecdotes and episodes which have hitherto either not been made public or given publication in inaccurate form.
Kipling once said of New York City, as the result of his observations during several visits, that it had a government of the worst elements of the population tempered by occasional insurrections of respectable citizens. An insurrection of this kind occurred in November, 1894, when a reform Mayor, William L. Strong, was chosen on a non-partisan ticket. The uprising of righteous indignation had been caused by revelations of shameful misconduct on the part of the Tammany government, especially in the Police Department, and in the care of the city's streets. Mayor Strong at first asked Roosevelt to accept the office of Street Cleaning Commissioner but he, feeling that he had no special fitness for it, declined. The Mayor then appointed him a Police Commissioner in a Board of four members, he to be the President of the Board. As this was a position in the line of good municipal government to which he had devoted himself while in the Legislature, he accepted gladly and with the distinct understanding that he should administer the affairs of the department with entire disregard of partisan politics and solely as a good citizen interested in promoting the welfare of good citizens.
The task before him was not a light one. For many years, in fact from the very beginning of its organization, the Police Department had been subjected to political influences of the most demoralizing sort. Its powers of administration were vested in a bi-partisan board, composed of two members of each political party, selected by the party bosses for the position. They divided both the spoils of the department and the appointments to the force. When Roosevelt took office there was a regular tariff for appointments and promotions, and these could be obtained only by its payment. The entire force was permeated with corruption in every department of activity. A very large revenue was collected by the force from vice and crime and the unlawful sale of liquor, and this was divided among the higher officials of the force and the political leaders. In fact, the entire Department was organized for the purpose of exercising a licensing power, outside of the law, which was far more valuable in pecuniary results than the license laws of the city themselves. As both party organizations shared in these illicit gains, to attack the system was to assail both and to challenge the furious wrath and bitter hostility of both.
This was a fight after Roosevelt's own heart. It was in essence the counterpart of his fight in the Legislature and his subsequent fight in the Civil Service Commission—a fight against political criminals and lawbreakers, corrupt methods in politics and corrupt politicians, wherever found and without regard to party names or affiliations. He began the fight at once, using in it the weapons he had employed in its predecessors, full publicity, strict enforcement of law, and utter disregard of partisan political considerations. Trials of members of the force on various charges of neglect or misconduct, which had previously been conducted in secret, were conducted before the full Board in public. Appointments and promotions were made after examinations and on merit and fitness alone. Neither the payment of money nor the word of a political boss was any longer sufficient to "get a man on the force," or to secure his promotion in its service.
One of the chief sources of blackmail by the police, in fact, the fundamental source, was the law requiring liquor saloons to be closed on Sunday. This law was in 1895 the bulwark of the most stupendous system of political blackmail any modern city has known. The largest saloons were owned by the great breweries, and these paid blackmail in large sums to the party bosses as the price of immunity from police interference with Sunday side door selling. The small saloons, operated by their owners, were left to the police to blackmail as they chose. This state of affairs was well known, but all efforts to put an end to it by so amending the law as to permit the sale of liquor during certain hours on Sunday were defeated in deference to the religious sentiment of the State, and were not supported by more than a small portion of the religious elements of the city itself. It was held to be a "compromise with evil" to legalize any degree of selling on Sunday. In fact, it was held, perhaps not openly but tacitly, that illegal selling through side-doors on Sunday was preferable to open selling by permission of law.
If police blackmail had been confined to Sunday liquor-selling, the evil would have been serious enough, but this was not the case. From blackmailing the illegal liquor-dealer the police turned naturally for additional revenue to all other forms of illegal industry,—vice, gambling, crime of all kinds, pedlers, merchants who wished to make forbidden use of sidewalks and streets, and to every practise or proceeding that depended upon police favor. The revenue from these sources ran up into the millions, and the politicians of both parties were sharers of it.
When, therefore, Roosevelt declared his intention to enforce the Sunday-closing law rigorously, the outcry from all political quarters was tremendous. The politicians and the newspapers that they were able to control were as furious in their wrath as their kind had been when Roosevelt began to enforce the Civil Service law. They declared that the attempt was pure foolishness, that the law was obsolete, a mere "blue law," and was never intended to be enforced anyway. A Tammany spokesman said, "We believe the law should be enforced, but with intelligence and discrimination," to which Roosevelt retorted: "That is a good deal like believing in truthful mendacity." To another objector who advocated less rigor, he replied: "You cannot half obey the law." To another: "I am enforcing honestly a law that hitherto has been enforced dishonestly." It was predicted that the proceeding was useless because it was not possible to enforce the law, but for several months it was enforced with beneficial results, as the records of crime and disorder showed. At the end of that period a magistrate was discovered who was able to decide that under the law a drink could be had with a meal and that a sandwich or a pretzel constituted a meal, and Sunday selling was partially resumed; but the main object, the stopping of blackmail, had been largely attained. Although Sundayselling through side-doors of saloons was gradually resumed, it was done more furtively than before and never again attained anything approaching its former dimensions.
At the outset of his police administration Roosevelt had what seemed to be the cordial support of his three associates in the Board. They professed full agreement with him, and he accepted their professions in good faith, believing them to be as sincere as he was himself. They continued to work in harmony with him for several months, but at the end of that period two of them, yielding to the demands of the political organizations to which they owed their selection for their positions, broke away and sought to defeat his purposes by causing a permanent deadlock in the Board. This was the method the political bosses, who found themselves powerless to control Roosevelt's action, or to persuade the Mayor to attempt to control it, resorted to as the only means of defeating his policy and saving the illicit profits from total annihilation. They had tried in various other ways to get rid of him. One was a proposal for the Legislature to pass a law abolishing the City Police Board and creating a State police force with a head appointed by the Governor. This was defeated by an overwhelming popular protest. They subsequently succeeded in getting the Civil Service law impaired, under the guise of amendments, which "took the starch out of it." Roosevelt says in his 'Autobiography': "They attempted to seduce or frighten us by every species of intrigue and cajolery, of promise of political reward and threat of political punishment."
I had intimate personal knowledge on this point for I was closely associated with Roosevelt during the entire period of his police service. The Evening Post, of which I was at the time a subordinate editor, was cordially supporting his policy and I was in almost daily confidential conference with him. Having as a journalist of many years' experience in the devious ways of New York politicians, acquired an exact knowledge of many of them, I had warned Roosevelt when he entered upon his duties to be on his guard against one of his fellow commissioners who was in the Board as the representative of a small and particularly vicious political organization. In accordance with an invariable and incurable tendency—which he was never able to overcome—he persisted in placing full confidence in this man, simply because the man professed full devotion to him. "He may be, as you say," he replied to my repeated warnings, "a tricky politician, but I am sure that he is loyal to me." To this I could only say, as I did many times: "He is a snake in the grass, and sooner or later he will smite you."
It was this member that the enraged politicians selected as their first agent for the undermining and paralyzing of Roosevelt's policy. The man was a political schemer by nature, possessing a certain order of low cunning, and covering his designs with plausible professions of virtuous convictions. He was frequently present at the conferences with Roosevelt and myself and always expressed accord with us. On one occasion when the three of us had been dining together, he accompanied me toward my home after we had separated from Roosevelt. As soon as we were alone, he said: "You have great influence with Roosevelt. I wish you would stop him from talking so much in the newspapers. He talks, talks, talks all the time. Scarcely a day passes that there is not something from him in the papers about what he is doing and the Police Board is doing, and the public is getting tired of it. It injures our work."
I laughed and said: "Stop Roosevelt talking? Why, you would kill him. He has to talk. The peculiarity about him is that he has what is essentially a boy's mind. What he thinks he says at once, thinks aloud. It is his distinguishing characteristic, and I don't know as he will ever outgrow it. But with it he has great qualities, which make him an invaluable public servant—inflexible honesty, absolute fearlessness, and devotion to good government, which amounts to religion. We must let him work in his own way for nobody can induce him to change it. Furthermore, he is talking for a purpose. He wishes the public to know what the Police Board is doing so that it will have popular support."

The commissioner said nothing further and we parted rather coldly. About noon of the following day, Roosevelt called me on the telephone and asked me to lunch with him. As soon as we were seated at a narrow table he leaned forward, bringing his face close to mine, and with appalling directness said: "P	came into my office this morning and said: 'You think Bishop is a friend of yours, don't you ?' ' Yes,' I replied. ' Well, you know what he said about you last night? He said you had a boy's mind and it might never be developed.' "

Roosevelt's eye-glasses were within three inches of my face and his eyes were looking straight into mine. Knowing my man, I did not flinch. "Roosevelt, I did say that. Did he tell you what else I said?" "No, that is what I want to hear." When I had told him, he brought his fist down on the table with a bang, exclaiming: "By George, I knew it!" "There, Roosevelt," said I, "is your snake in the grass, of which I warned you—the meanest of mean liars, who tells half the truth."
I relate this incident fully because of the light it throws upon a dominating element in Roosevelt's character—its unflinching directness. How many men in like situation
would have acted as he did? P	surely did not suspect
such a proceeding. His hope was to put an end to the publicity which Roosevelt was systematically giving to the Police Board's work for the purpose of securing popular support and thus making it both difficult and dangerous for the politicians to stop it.
When the scheme failed, this commissioner threw off all disguise and became an open opponent of the Roosevelt policy. He was soon afterwards joined by a second member who succumbed to the pressure of the Republican boss, and the two established a permanent deadlock in the Board by refusing to attend its meetings. The conduct of the first revolting commissioner became so notoriously bad that the Mayor preferred charges against him and after public hearings on the same, recommended his removal by the Governor. The Governor, who was the man who had originated the proposal to "take the starch out" of the Civil Service law, declined to approve the Mayor's recommendation.
While the deadlock paralyzed to considerable extent further progress of Roosevelt's policy, it did not undo the very important results which had been achieved. Not only had the practise of blackmail been to a great extent banished permanently from the force but there had been created throughout its members a distinct morale, which had been almost totally lacking when he entered upon his duties. This had been accomplished not only by making appointments and promotions on merit and fitness but by prompt recognition in all cases of individual service, which displayed courage and devotion in the performance of duty. Everyman in the force had become convinced that faithful performance of duty was certain to receive quick recognition and full reward—that promotion was sure along that line, and that it could be obtained in no other way. The members of the force discovered that the Roosevelt policy was securing for them what they had not formerly possessed,— the respect of the public, and this knowledge gave them the most powerful of all incentives to upright conduct,—a feeling of self-respect. When he resigned from the Board in April, 1897, Roosevelt left in the Department a force that had to a large extent undergone a moral transformation. It had received a large transfusion of members who had come into it under honorable conditions, free from all debasing characteristics, and who owed their presence to their personal merits and not to the favor of bosses and not to the payment of money. Not all the old evils had been eradicated, for the evil results of years of corrupt management could only be completely removed by the abolition of the force, but a new standard had been set which was destined to endure. Although under a partial reversion to the old order of control, which followed his exit, some of the former evils were restored, the force never reverted to the disgraceful condition in which he found it. Appointments and promotions were never again made on the basis of boss favor and cash payment alone, but mainly on merit, and the levying of blackmail as a general police practise was never resumed.
A clear statement of Roosevelt's method of dealing with members of the force appears in a letter which he wrote, on January 10,1898, while Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to John McCullagh on his appointment to the position of Chief of Police. After expressing his delight at the promotion, he said:
"Now, Chief, I want you to let me say a word to you merely as a man who has backed you and been your friend. You have drawn one of the big prizes; and in my opinion you have fairly won it by courage, ability and good conduct. The Chief of the Police of Greater New York is the foremost police officer in the entire world, and he is one of the six or eight most important men in New York itself. You have reached the pinnacle. Your place is assured. You will leave a name and a great reputation to your children. Now, on the other hand, it is a place of great temptation,—political, and worse than political, temptation. All kinds of chances to go crooked without much risk of detection will offer themselves. I have the utmost confidence in you. I feel that in the future, as during my own two years of service, your conduct will amply and -over and over justify the attitude your friends took on your behalf. But I do want you to realize most seriously that you must not ever make the least slip, for if you make even a small one it will give men a hold upon you. Both Byrnes and Conlin had very great chances before them, but they could not stand the strain; only a man of indomitable will, of great power, and a resolute purpose for integrity, can. I am very sure you are such a man, and I confidently look forward to the event proving my belief to be right, and that every man of us will be able to be proud of you and proud of the officers under you."
An ultimate result, not by any means the least beneficial of the Roosevelt policy, was the abolition a few years later of the bi-partisan board method of control and a substitution of control by a single commissioner responsible solely to the Mayor. This reform was due in large measure to the demonstration, which had been made during Roosevelt's term of the evils of bi-partisan management through a board of four members. It was a demonstration of the evils of divided responsibility, rather than of bi-partisan control, for his board had not divided on partisan lines, one of his opposing members being a Democrat and the other a Republican. His faithful and loyal supporter, Avery D. Andrews, was a Democrat, a graduate of West Point, and an honest and fearless man who proved himself as inhospitable to partisan political influences as Roosevelt himself.
While Police Commissioner, Roosevelt continued and deepened the interest in the welfare of the poorer classes of the Community, which he had developed while member of the Legislature. As President of the Police Board he was also a member of the Health Board, and in the latter capacity he was brought into close relations with conditions of life in the tenement house districts. He had made personal visits to these districts as a member of a legislative investigating committee about ten years earlier and the impressions, which had then been made upon his mind as to the crying need of reform and betterment remained unimpaired. These impressions had been strengthened by the revelations made in a very remarkable book by Jacob A. Riis, entitled "How the Other Half Lives," which was published in 1890. He formed an intimate friendship with Riis, which lasted throughout the latter's life, and spoke of him when he died as next to his father the best man he had ever known, saying of his book that it had been to him both an enlightenment and an inspiration for which he could never be too grateful. In company with Riis he visited the tenement house regions, often at midnight, in order to see for himself just what conditions were, just what the police were doing in regard to them, and what the Health Department was doing to regulate and improve them. That a fresh and powerful impetus was imparted to his interest in the social welfare of the masses by these visits is recorded in his 'Autobiography':
"My experience in the Police Department taught me that not a few of the worst tenement houses were owned by wealthy individuals who hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade the courts that it was 'unconstitutional' to insist on the betterment of conditions. These businessmen and lawyers were very adroit in using a word with fine and noble associations to cloak their opposition to vitally necessary movements for industrial fair play and decency. They made it evident that they valued the Constitution, not as a help to righteousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became more set than ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers, judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the Constitution a fetich for the prevention of the work of social reform, for the prevention of work in the interest of those men, women, and children on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ freely every governmental agency."
A striking tribute to Roosevelt's character and public usefulness was paid to him at the time of his departure from the Police Department by Mr. E. L. Godkin, Editor of the New York Evening Post, who had been on many occasions one of his most severe critics. When it was announced that Roosevelt had been nominated by President McKinley as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Godkin wrote him an earnest letter of protest, in which he said:
"I have a concern, as the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief that 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."
That he firmly believed during his service as Police Commissioner that he would never again hold a public office, I have personal knowledge. Toward the end of that service he said to me during a long and intimate conversation relative to the difficulties and obstacles he was encountering: "This is the last office I shall ever hold. I have offended so many powerful interests and so many powerful politicians that no political preferment in future will be possible for me. All the liquor interests, including the great breweries, and all the party bosses will oppose me, and no political party will venture to defy an opposition so fatal as that is. I realized this when I began my fight for the enforcement of the Sunday law and against police bribery arid corruption, but it was the only course I could honestly pursue and I am willing to abide by the consequences."
An interchange of views between Roosevelt and President Cleveland in regard to the importance of strict maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine, which took place while Roosevelt was Police Commissioner, may be noted here. When in December, 1895, Cleveland startled the country with his famous Venezuela message, Roosevelt wrote of his action: "It would be difficult to overestimate the good done in this country by the vigorous course taken by the National Executive and legislature in this matter." In recognition, President Cleveland wrote to Roosevelt, on March 26, 1896:
"I note with pleasure what you write in regard to the Venezuela affair and thank you for it. It has taken a little time and thought for the good people to understand our position in the matter but as usual they are coming around.
"It seems to me that you and I have both been a little misunderstood lately."

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CHAPTER NINE,.
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY,.
soon after the election of McKinley to the Presidency in 1896, friends of Roosevelt began to urge upon the new President the desirability of appointing him to some position in his administration, preferably in the Navy Department, because of his well-known interest in naval matters. Chief among these friends was Senator H. C. Lodge, who was as earnest an advocate of the building of an efficient navy as Roosevelt himself. Senator Lodge made a visit to McKinley, at the latter's home in Canton, Ohio, in December, 1896, and had an intimate conversation with the President-elect which he set forth in a confidential letter to Roosevelt under date of December 2. This letter is of historical interest as revealing McKinley's attitude of mind not only toward Roosevelt, but toward the most pressing question that was to confront the new President on taking office—the situation in Cuba.
"He asked me about Cuba," wrote Senator Lodge, "and we went over the whole of that very perplexing question. It is very much on his mind and I found he had given it a great deal of thought. He very naturally does not want to be obliged to go to war as soon as he comes in, for, of course, his great ambition is to restore business and bring back good times, and he dislikes the idea of such interruption. He would like the crisis to come this winter and be settled one way or the other before he takes up the reins, but I was greatly pleased to see how thoroughly he appreciates the momentous character of the question."
Striking evidence of the reputation for "driving force" which Roosevelt had earned for himself by his conduct in public office, is furnished in this passage from the Senator's letter:
"He (McKinley) spoke of you with great regard for your character and your services and he would like to have you in Washington. The only question he asked me was this, which I give you: 'I hope he has no preconceived notions which he would wish to drive through the moment he got in.' I replied that he need not give himself the slightest uneasiness on that score, that I knew your views about the Navy, and they were only to push on the policies which had been in operation for the last two or three administrations."
The possibility mentioned by the President-elect, that Roosevelt might prove too strong a man for the place, was urged by opponents of his appointment in Washington when he was proposed for Assistant Secretary of the Navy, after McKinley had been inaugurated and his Cabinet announced. A letter from Senator Lodge at Washington to Roosevelt, under date of March 8, 1897, gives interesting information as to the high character of his supporters and the arguments used in opposition to his selection:
"I have seen Long (Secretary of the Navy) and he is entirely open-minded—has not yet taken the question up— will not for some little time—says that McKinley will appoint, but he supposes he will be consulted. He spoke in the highest terms of you. The only thing resembling criticism was this queer one: 'Roosevelt has the character, standing, ability and reputation to entitle him to be a Cabinet Minister—is not this too small for him!'
"The hitch, if there be one, is not with Long but with the White House. Whether there is any real resistance I cannot tell, and absolutely the only thing I can hear adverse is that there is a fear that you will want to fight somebody at once.
"You have enough friends earnest for you to make a Secretary of State. John Hay has written and spoken and urged in the most earnest way at all opportunities. Hanna is entirely friendly and wants you here. Platt is not lifting a finger against you. I saw Bliss (Cornelius N., Secretary of the Interior) this morning. He spoke of you in the warmest terms and in the most affectionate way—said you were just the man. Hobart (Vice-President) after adjournment today, came up to me and said: 'You are, I know, interested in Roosevelt. He is a splendid fellow—I think everything of him—just the sort of man we ought to get. What can I do?' He said he had an appointment with the President this afternoon and would urge you then upon him.
"I believe we are coming out all right. In any event, you have, I think, a right to be proud of such support as that I have described and you have not raised a finger and it has all come voluntarily. All I have done is to plan and direct it a little."
President McKinley sent Roosevelt's name to the Senate on April 6, 1897, and the nomination was confirmed on April 8. He assumed the duties of the office on April 19.
On the day of the Senate's confirmation of the nomination, the Washington Post, which had bitterly opposed Roosevelt while Civil Service Commissioner, made him the subject of an editorial article in which it said that it was "by no means sure" that his appointment was a "matter of regret," and that while "of course he will bring with him to Washington all that machinery of disturbance and upheaval which is as much a part of his entourage as the very air he breathes, who knows that the service will not be a little better for a little dislocation and readjustment?" Of Roosevelt's qualities, the editor added:
'' He is inspired by a passionate hatred of meanness, humbug, and cowardice. He cherishes an equally passionate love of candor, bravery and devotion. He is a fighter, a man of indomitable pluck and energy, a potent and forceful factor in any equation into which he may be introduced. A field of immeasurable usefulness awaits him—will he find it?"
As soon as Roosevelt had familiarized himself with the detail work of his office he began a series of visits to the various navy-yards and to vessels of the fleet. Early in May he took a trip on a torpedo-boat which he had been inspecting because of a slight injury caused by an accident, and made an official report to the Secretary of the Navy which marked a new departure in documents of that kind, for instead of being a dry, formal record of an accident, it contained decided views as to the qualities and dispositions of the men who should command naval vessels, and especially torpedo-boats. After saying that no practical damage had been caused, he added:
"Boats so delicate, which, to be handled effectively must be handled with great daring, necessarily run great risks, and their commanders must, of course, realize that a prerequisite to successfully handling them is the willingness to run such risks. That they will observe proper precautions is, of course, required, but it is more important that our officers should handle these boats with dash and daring than that the boats should be kept unscratched. There must be developed in the men who handle them that mixture of skill and daring which can only be attained if the boats are habitually used under circumstances, which imply the risk of an accident. The business of a naval officer is one which, above all others, needs daring and decision and if he must err on either side the nation can best afford to have him err on the side of too much daring rather than too much caution."
This report was hailed by the press with expressions of delight as revealing a new spirit in the Navy Department. One newspaper correspondent said it had '' snap and vigor that made it read more like a page out of one of Mr. Roosevelt 's books than the ordinary red-tape document." An editor hoped that the report would prove to be the first of a series of papers setting forth his views of naval men and things in general, because "we have been running along in a groove for altogether too many years."
This hope was soon realized, and the interest which the report had aroused in naval matters was greatly stimulated a few weeks later when Roosevelt delivered a carefully prepared address before the Naval War College, at Newport, B. I., at the opening exercises on June 2, 1897. This address is so notable as the first elaborate expression of Roosevelt's views on the subject of national preparedness that somewhat liberal quotation from it is desirable in order to show the lifelong consistency of his course on this question. He had first given expression to those views in his history of "The Naval War of 1812," in 1882, and had repeated them in his "Life of Benton," in 1887, and in his condensed history of the war of 1812, which he wrote in 1896 for the English Naval History, but in each of these instances he had written briefly and in general terms. The Naval War College address was clearly the result of several years of serious thought and study of the subject. Bead in the light of his virtually continuous advocacy of the same subject during the years which intervened between our war with Spain and the outbreak of the great European War in 1914, it is found to contain all the principal ideas which he expounded with such tireless energy during that period, and especially when he foresaw that Germany's conduct was certain to force the United States into the war. A few citations will demonstrate the accuracy of this statement:
"A century has passed since Washington wrote 'To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace.' We pay to this maxim the lip-loyalty we so often pay to Washington's words; but it has never sunk deep into our hearts. Indeed of late years many persons have refused it even the poor tribute of lip-loyalty, and prate about the iniquity of war as if somehow that was a justification for refusing to take the steps which alone can in the long run prevent war or avert the dreadful disasters it brings in its train.''
"In this country there is not the slightest danger of an over-development of warlike spirit, and there never has been any such danger. In all our history there has never been a time when preparedness for war was any menace to peace. On the contrary, again and again we have owed peace to the fact that we were prepared for war; and in the only contest which we have had with a European power since the Revolution, the war of 1812, the struggle and all its attendant disasters, were due solely to the fact that we were not prepared to face, and were not ready instantly to resent, an attack upon our honor and interest; while the glorious triumphs at sea which redeemed that war were due to the few preparations which we had actually made."
"The danger is of precisely the opposite character. If we forget that in the last resort we can only secure peace by being ready and willing to fight for it, we may some day have bitter cause to realize that a rich nation which is slothful, timid, or unwieldy is an easy prey for any people which still retains those most valuable of all qualities, the soldierly virtues."
"Preparation for war is the surest guarantee for peace. Arbitration is an excellent thing, but ultimately those who wish to see this country at peace with foreign nations will be wise if they place reliance upon a first-class fleet of first-class battle-ships rather than on any arbitration treaty which the wit of man can devise."
"A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor."
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin, and a wilful failure to prepare for danger may in its effects be as bad as cowardice. The timid man who cannot fight and the selfish, shortsighted or foolish man who will not take the steps that will enable him to fight, stand on almost the same plane."
"As yet no nation can hold its place in the world or can do any work really worth doing unless it stands ready to guard its rights with an armed hand. That orderly liberty which is both the foundation and the capstone of our civilization can be gained and kept only by men who are willing to fight for an ideal; who hold high the love of honor, love of faith, love of flag, and love of country."
"It has always been true, and in this age it is more than ever true, that it is too late to prepare for war when the time of peace has passed."
"Tame submission to foreign aggression of any kind is a mean and unworthy thing; but it is even meaner and more unworthy to bluster first, and then submit or else refuse to make those preparations which can alone obviate the necessity for submission."
"In public as in private life a bold front tends to insure peace and not strife. If we possess a formidable navy, small is the chance indeed that we shall ever be dragged into a war to uphold the Monroe Doctrine. If we do not possess such a navy, war may be forced on us at any time."
"Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier."
'' No nation should ever wage war wantonly, but no nation should ever avoid it at the cost of the loss of national honor. A nation should never fight unless forced to; but it should always be ready to fight."
'' Every feat of heroism makes us forever indebted to the man who performed it. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, all devotion to the ideal of honor and of the glory of the flag, make for a finer and nobler type of manhood."
"If ever we had to meet defeat at the hands of a foreign foe, or had to submit tamely to wrong or insult, every man among us worthy of the name of American would feel dishonored and debased."
"We ask for a great navy, partly because we think that the possession of such a navy is the surest guarantee of peace, and partly because we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure, and tears like water rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown."
Published in full in the principal newspapers of the land, the address attracted wide attention and aroused animated discussion. It was universally recognized as sounding a new note in the conduct of national affairs. Nothing similar to it had been heard in the deliverances of other public men. It was the voice of Roosevelt, and of Roosevelt alone, and it stirred the country like the sound of a trumpet. There had been many addresses by naval officials at the War College, but never before had an Assistant Secretary of the Navy or any other navy official made an address like this. What did it mean? To an apparent majority of the people, if the comments of the newspapers were an accurate reflection of popular sentiment, it meant a welcome change. With few exceptions, the leading journals of the country expressed warm approval of the address. The New York Sun, seldom friendly to Roosevelt, called it a "manly, patriotic, intelligent and convincing appeal to American sentiment in behalf of the national honor, and for the preservation of the national strength by means requisite for self-defense and vigorous aggressive resistance to efforts to interfere with our progress and natural dominion.'' The New York Herald said: '' The current of this fine address is filled with a flow of splendid patriotism, from its opening sentence to its close, and its careful reading can scarcely fail to inspire the youth of America with the same lofty spirit of devotion to our country's honor, glory and prosperity that actuated its utterance by the speaker." The Washington Post, dropping its uniformly captious attitude toward Roosevelt, declared that in his address he had "honored both himself and the country," and exclaimed: "Well done, nobly spoken! Theodore Roosevelt, you have found your proper place at last—all hail!" From Maine to California, the general verdict was expressed in similar terms.
That Roosevelt was endowed, in a really marvelous degree, with the gift of vision his correspondence indubitably shows. He saw clearly what men would do because he had accurate knowledge of and calm judgment upon what men had done. He saw clearly into the motives and actions of men and nations because he had mastered their history and could gage their conduct in the future by that of the past. He had read human history, not for the purpose of strengthening his prejudices, but of informing his mind, and from fulness of mind and matured conviction he spoke.
When Roosevelt entered upon his duties as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, trouble with Spain over conditions in Cuba was visibly impending, and the possibility of war was foremost in his mind when he made his Naval War College address. That he was keeping close watch upon developments in other countries, especially in Germany, is shown by his letters. In his correspondence during the months immediately following his assumption of office, reference to ultimate trouble with Germany is of frequent occurrence. On August 2,1897, in a letter to Captain B. H. McCalla, U. S. N., he wrote: "I entirely agree with you that Germany is the power with which we may very possibly have ultimately to come into hostile contact. How I wish our people would wake up to the need for a big navy!"
A few days later, August 11, he wrote a long letter, remarkable for the intimate knowledge that it displayed of conditions in European countries, to Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, then with the British Legation at Berlin and afterward British Ambassador at Washington. In it he said. "As an American I should advocate—as a matter of fact do advocate—keeping our navy at a pitch that will enable us to interfere promptly if Germany ventures to touch a foot of American soil. I would not go into the abstract rights or wrongs of it; I would simply say that we did not intend to have Germans on the continent, excepting as immigrants, whose children would become Americans of one sort or another, and if Germany intended to extend her empire here she would have to whip us first.''
The same idea was repeated in a letter to General James H. Wilson on August 23, 1897: "We cannot rival England as a naval power . . . but I do think we ought to stand ahead of Germany."
In two letters, written early in 1898, he predicted trouble with Germany in South America if the Kaiser should attempt to acquire territory there. In one, February 5, 1898, addressed to F. C. Moore, New York City, he wrote: "Of all the nations of Europe it seems to me Germany is by far the most hostile to us. With Germany under the Kaiser we may at any time have trouble if she seeks to acquire territory in South America."
In another, addressed to Charles A. Moore, New York City, February 14, 1898, the prediction was repeated. The literal accuracy of the prophecy was confirmed in 1902, when the Kaiser attempted to acquire territory in Venezuela and was prevented by the prompt action of Roosevelt, as President, in serving notice upon him that unless he desisted the American fleet under Admiral Dewey would sail for Venezuela and oppose his project by force of arms.
Writing again to F. C. Moore, on February 9, 1898, he gave this comprehensive statement of his views in regard to an American foreign policy:
"I should myself like to shape our foreign policy with a purpose ultimately of driving off this continent every European power. I would begin with Spain, and in the end would take all other European nations, including England. It is even more important to prevent any new nation from getting- a foothold. Germany as a republic would very possibly be a friendly nation, but under the present despotism she is much more bitterly and outspokenly hostile to us than is England.
"What I want to see our people avoid is the attitude taken by the great bulk of Americans at the beginning of this century, and the end of the last, when the mass of the Jeffersonian put the interests of France above the interest and honor of America, and the mass of the Federalists did the same thing in England. I am not hostile to any European power in the abstract. I am simply an American first and last, and therefore hostile to any power which wrongs us. If Germany wronged us I would fight Germany; if England, I would fight England."
It should be said in regard to this reference to England, that after what he considered to be the handsome way in which England acted toward the United States during the Spanish War, Roosevelt's attitude toward that country underwent a radical change—a change that was strengthened later by England's course in the war with Germany.
The most striking of Roosevelt's predictions at this time appears in his letter to Mr. Spring-Rice, already alluded to. In his review of conditions in foreign countries, he paid especial attention to Russia, a country which Mr. Spring-Rice had recently visited, and in concluding foreshadowed, with remarkable accuracy, twenty years in advance, the revolution of 1918:
"If Russia chooses to develop purely on her own line and to resist the growth of liberalism, then she may put off the day of reckoning; but she cannot ultimately avert it, and instead of occasionally having to go through what Kansas has gone through with the Populists, she will some time experience a red terror which will make the French Revolution pale."
These predictions in regard to the course of events in foreign countries, interesting as they are, occupied only casual space in the great mass of correspondence that Roosevelt conducted during the year in which he held the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His dominating idea during the early part of that period was the condition of affairs in Cuba and the imperative necessity of American interference. He was frankly and ardently in favor of interference in Cuba on the ground of humanity,' and, after the blowing up of the Maine, in favor of war with Spain in defense of the national honor. He was virtually alone in the McKinley Administration in advocating this policy. So completely was this the case that he might have said of his function in the Administration during the year which preceded the war with Spain what Socrates in his 'Apology' said of his function in the Athenian state: "The state is exactly like a powerful high-bred steed, which is sluggish by reason of his very size, and so needs a gadfly to wake him up. And as such a gadfly does God seem to have fastened me upon the state;, wherefore, besetting you everywhere the whole day long, I arouse and stir up and reproach each one of you."
In his 'Autobiography' Roosevelt calls the war with Spain '' The War of America the Unready." It might with equal truth be called "The War of McKinley the Unwilling," for he and his official associates refused to engage in it till refusal was no longer possible without dishonor. They were supported in this course by Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and by a group of Senators under the leadership of the Senate's most powerful member, Eugene Hale, of Maine. Secretary Long, Roosevelt's superior officer, was more than lukewarm upon the question of building up the navy, which Roosevelt considered to be of the highest importance. Upon all these persons Roosevelt acted as the persistent and irritating gadfly. The full story of his efforts and of the developments of this interesting period stands revealed in his correspondence.
Roosevelt had been an earnest and persistent advocate of a big navy for ten years or more before he entered the Navy Department, and it was inevitable, therefore, that in assuming office his first thought should be in that direction. One of his early letters, addressed to the editor of the New York Sun, August 16, 1897, contains this passage: "I am rather afraid that there is a very foolish feeling growing that we now have enough of a navy. It would be horrible folly to stop building up our navy now.''
Secretary Long's lukewarm attitude on the subject was revealed quite early in their official intercourse, and on August 26, 1897, Roosevelt mildly expressed his regret in a letter to the Secretary who was away on a vacation: "I know you will excuse my saying that I can't help being sorry you have reached the conclusion that we are not to go on at all in building even, say, one battleship and five torpedo-boats."
A letter to Senator Lodge, written a few weeks later, September 15, 1897, reveals the fact that Roosevelt had brought the subject to the President's attention and secured the overruling of the Secretary. This letter is interesting also for the glimpse it affords of McKinley's personality:
'' The President has returned and yesterday I went driving with him. Generally, he expressed great satisfaction with what I had done, especially during the last seven weeks that I have been in charge of the Department. Of course the President is a bit of a jollier, but I think his words did represent a substratum of satisfaction.
'' He is evidently by no means sure that we shall not have trouble with Spain; and though he wants to avoid both, yet I think he could be depended upon to deal thoroughly and well with any difficulty that arises. ... I told him that I would guarantee that the Department would be in the best possible shape that our means would permit when war began, and that, as he knew, I myself would go to the war. He asked me what Mrs. Roosevelt would think of it, and I said that both you and she would regret it, but this was one case where I would consult neither. He laughed and said that he would do all he could to guarantee that I should have the opportunity I sought if war by any chance arose.
"To my great pleasure he also told me that he intended we should go on building up the Navy, with better ships and torpedo-boats, and that he did not think the Secretary would recommend anything he (the President) did not approve of."
Two efforts were made by Roosevelt in the latter part of September, 1897, when the Cuban situation seemed threatening, to induce Secretary Long to take decisive action of some sort in the direction of naval preparedness. On September 20 he wrote to him at Hingham, Mass.:
"From what the President and Judge Day (Secretary of State) say it would seem that advices from Spain are not altogether satisfactory. I do not anticipate any trouble, but if there is we should have warning just as far in advance as the President will permit, and should be ready to take the initiative at once. If in the event of trouble we wait to receive the attack we will have our hands full, and the greatest panic would ensue, but if we move with the utmost rapidity with our main force on Cuba, say under Admiral Walker, and a flying squadron under Evans, or some such man, against Spain itself, while the Asiatic squadron operates against the Philippines, I believe the affair would not present a very great difficulty."
And on September 30, he sent a long and formal letter urging the steady and rapid up building of the Navy, and saying:
"A great Navy does not make for war but for peace. It is the cheapest kind of insurance. No coast fortifications can really protect our coasts; they can only be protected by a formidable fighting Navy.
"I believe Congress should at once give us 6 new battleships, 6 large cruisers,- and 75 torpedo-boats, 25 for the Pacific and 50 for the Atlantic. I believe we should set about building all these craft now, and that each one should be, if possible, the most formidable of its kind afloat."
About the same time he saw the President again, writing to Senator Lodge on September 21: "The President has been most kind. I dined with him Friday evening, and yesterday he sent over and took me out to drive. I gave him a paper showing exactly where all our ships are and I also sketched in outline what I thought ought to be done if things looked menacing about Spain, urging the necessity of taking an immediate and prompt initiative if we wished to avoid the chance of some serious trouble."
In December the outlook was even more threatening and, with a side glance still on Germany, he wrote on the 17th, to Lieutenant-Commander W. W. Kimball, II. S. N.: "I doubt if those Spaniards can really pacify Cuba, and if the insurrection goes on much longer I don't see how we can help interfering. Germany is the power with whom I look forward to serious difficulty; but oh, how bitterly angry I get at the attitude of some of our public men and some of our publicists!"
On January 14, 1898, Roosevelt again sent a formal letter to Secretary Long, giving the location and armament of the various ships of the Navy at the moment, and fairly imploring him to act:
"I feel that I ought to bring to your attention the very serious consequences to the Government as a whole, and especially to the Navy Department—upon which would be visited the national indignation—for any check, no matter how little the Department was really responsible for the check—if we should drift into a war with Spain and suddenly find ourselves obliged to begin it without preparation, instead of having at least a month's warning, during which we could actively prepare to strike. Some preparation can and should be undertaken now on the mere chance of having to strike.
"Certain things should be done at once if there is any reasonable chance of trouble with Spain during the next six months. For instance, the disposition of the fleet on foreign stations should be radically altered, and altered without delay. For the past six or eight months we have been sending small cruisers and gunboats off to various parts of the world with a total disregard of the fact that in the event of war this would be the worst possible policy to have pursued. ... If we have war with Spain there will be immediate need for every gunboat and cruiser that we can possibly get together to blockade Cuba, threaten or take the less protected ports, and ferret out the scores of small Spanish cruisers and gunboats which form practically the entire Spanish naval force around the island."
On February 15, 1898, the battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor, and on the following day Roosevelt wrote to a friend: "Being a Jingo, as I am writing confidentially, I will say, to relieve my feelings, that I would give anything if President McKinley would order the fleet to Havana tomorrow. This Cuban business ought to stop. The Maine was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards, I believe; though we shall never find out definitely, and officially it will go down as an accident."
Secretary Long had returned to Washington and was on duty when the Maine explosion occurred. On February 19, Roosevelt addressed a formal letter to him which was the most solemnly earnest of the series of prods thus far administered to him. One passage, which I have placed in italics was especially significant in view of the Secretary's well-known attitude toward building up the navy:
"In reference to our conversation of yesterday, and to a brief conversation which I had with Judge Day this morning before you came, let me again earnestly urge that you advise the President against our conducting any examination in conjunction with the Spaniards as to the Maine's disaster. I myself doubt whether it will be possible to tell definitely how the disaster occurred by an investigation, and it may be that we could do it as well in conjunction with the Spaniards as alone. But I am sure we could never convince the people at large of this fact.
"There is another subject of which I spoke to you yesterday, and about which I venture to remind you. This is in reference to additional warships. I was informed that both Speaker Reed and Senator Hale had stated that we should cease building any more battleships, in view of the Disaster to the Maine. I cannot believe that the statement is true, for of course such an attitude, if supported by the people, would mean that we had reached the last pitch of national cowardice and baseness. I earnestly wish that you could see your way clear now, without waiting a day, to send in a special message, stating that in view of the disaster to the Maine (and perhaps in view of the possible needs of this country) instead of recommending one battleship you ask for two, or better still, that four battleships be authorized immediately by Congress."
This letter evidently alarmed Secretary Long, for a few days later, on February 25, he wrote a personal note to Roosevelt in his own hand, saying he should be absent from the Department for a day's quiet rest, directing him to revoke an order Roosevelt had issued in regard to getting the naval vessels ready for action, and adding: "Do not take any such step affecting the policy of the Administration without consulting the President or me. I am not away from town and my intention was to have you look after the routine of the office while I get a quiet day off. I write to you because I am anxious to have no unnecessary occasion for a sensation in the papers." The passage which I have placed in italics is especially significant.
Writing to Henry White, then Secretary of the American Embassy at London, on March 9, 1898, Roosevelt said: "Of course I have nothing to say as to the policy of the Government, but I hope this incident (Maine} will not be treated by itself, but as part of the whole Cuban business. There is absolutely but one possible solution of a permanent nature to that affair, and that is Cuban independence. The sooner we make up our minds to this the better. If we can attain our object peacefully, of course we should try to do so; but we should attain it one way or the other anyhow."
When the news arrived of the sailing of the Spanish torpedo flotilla from the Canaries for Porto Rico, on March 15, 1898, Roosevelt went at once to the President, and, as he wrote to Captain E. D. Evans of the navy on the following day, told him that "we ought to treat the sailing of the flotilla exactly as a European power would the mobilizing, of a hostile army on its frontier." He did not confine his exhortations to the President, but, as appears from the subjoined extract from a letter to Brooks Adams, on March 21, 1898, extended them to the Cabinet as well:
"Personally, I feel that it is not too late to intervene in Cuba. What the Administration will do I know not. In some points it has followed too closely in Cleveland's footsteps to please me, excellently though it has done on the whole. In the name of humanity and of national interest alike, we should have interfered in Cuba two years ago, a year and a half ago last April, and again last December. The blood of the Cubans, the blood of women and children who have perished by the hundred thousand in hideous misery, lies at our door; and the blood of the murdered men of the Maine calls not for indemnity but for the full measure of atonement which can only come by driving the Spaniard from the New World. I have said this to the President before his Cabinet; I have said it to Judge Day, the real head of the State Department; and to my own Chief. I cannot say it publicly, for I am of course merely a minor official in the Administration. At least, however, I have borne testimony where I thought it would do good."
The response that he received was clearly not encouraging, for on March 24 he wrote to Captain A. T. Mahan, who was a cordial sympathizer in his efforts: "I think I told you that I advised the President and the Secretary to treat the sailing of the torpedo flotilla from the Canaries for Porto Rico as an act of hostility. I have repeated the ad-vice to-day. I do not think it will be regarded.''
His inability to stir the Administration to action was both discouraging and depressing to him. On March 27, he received a letter, written the day before, from William Tudor, an old and valued friend in Boston, in which the writer said:
"It is hard to credit the newspaper reports that the Cabinet by a large majority intend to pass over the blowing up of the Maine. Those of us who are not speculating in the stock market believe that this is merely put forward by the Administration to gain time.
"I believe that the blowing up of the Maine with the connivance of the Spanish authorities cannot be passed over. With wholesale murder there can be no question of arbitration. If you allow Spain to get her torpedo fleet across the Atlantic the Administration will be responsible for the loss of more ships. The first act of war was the blowing up of the Maine; the second is the sending of this torpedo fleet to Porto Rico. Are we to wait until more of our ships are destroyed before acting? I protest against this peace-at-any-price policy of the Government, which does not represent the views of a tenth of the American people.''
To this Roosevelt responded on March 28: "I agree from the bottom of my heart with all you say. I feel humiliated and ashamed. Every argument you advance I have personally advanced with all the force there was in me, both to the President and the Cabinet; and in vain."
To his brother-in-law, Captain W. S. Cowles, of the navy, he wrote in similar strain on March 29:
"I am utterly disgusted at the present outlook in foreign relations. I can only hope that the Senate, under the leadership of men like Lodge, will rise to the needs of the hour and insist upon immediate independence for Cuba and armed intervention on our part. Nothing less than this will avail. Shilly shallying and half measures at this time will merely render us contemptible in the eyes of the world; and what is infinitely more important, in our own eyes too. Personally I cannot understand how the bulk of our people can tolerate the hideous infamy that has attended the last two years of Spanish rule in Cuba; and still more how they can tolerate the treacherous destruction of the Maine and the murder of our men!   I feel so deeply that it is with very great difficulty I can restrain myself."
On the following day, March 30, he wrote again to Captain Cowles:
"Of course I cannot speak in public, but I have advised the President in the presence of his Cabinet, as well as Judge Day and Senator Hanna, as strongly as I knew how, to settle this matter instantly by armed intervention; and I told the President in the plainest language that no other course was compatible with our national honor, or with the claims of humanity on behalf of the wretched women and children of Cuba. I am more grieved and indignant than I can say at there being any delay on our part in a matter like this. A great crisis is upon us, and if we do not rise level to it, we shall have spotted the pages of our history with a dark blot of shame.''
On the same day, to another brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, of New York, he wrote:
" Neither I nor any one else can give you more than the merest vague forecast of events. The President is resolute to have peace at any price. As far as he is concerned, unless the Spaniards declare war, we will not have it. Congress, however, is in an entirely different temper. The most influential man in it, Tom Reed, is as much against war as the President, and the group of Senators who stand closest to the President are also ferociously against war. Nevertheless, Congress as a whole wishes either war or action that would result in war. Their most patriotic and able men take this view, and I doubt if they can be much longer restrained. Therefore I think it about a toss-up whether we have war or peace. The trend of events is for war. Congress is for war. All it needs is a big leader; but the two biggest leaders, the President and the Speaker, both of whom have enormous power, are almost crazy in their eagerness for peace, and would make almost any sacrifice to get peace."
Writing to Elihu Root, on April 5, 1898, he reveals the sources from which came the most powerful pressure against war and to which the Administration was yielding:
"You would be amazed and horrified at the peace-at-any-price telegrams of the most abject description which come in multitudes from New York, Boston, and elsewhere to the President and Senators.
"Not only is the peace sentiment of the eastern seaboard not the sentiment of the country at large, but I doubt whether this sentiment exists in the strata lower than the wealthiest even in the East.
"The President has taken a position from which he cannot back down without ruin to his reputation, ruin to his party, and, above all, lasting dishonor to his country; and I am sure he will not back down.
"Thank Heaven, this morning it looks as if the Administration had made up its mind to lead the movement instead of resisting it with the effect of shattering the party and of humiliating the nation. Judge Day, who together with that idol of the Mugwumps, Secretary Gage, has been • advocating peace under almost any conditions, has just told me that he has given up and that the President seems to be making up his mind to the same effect. Of course from the military standpoint it is dreadful to have delayed so long."
To a college classmate, Dr. Henry Jackson, of Boston, who had written to him in support of peace-at-any-price, he sent this characteristic rejoinder on April 6, 1898:
"I believe it criminal for us to submit to the murder of our men, and to the butchery of Cuban women and children. The resources of diplomacy have been exhausted. This nation has erred on the side of over-bearance. When you talk of this war being undertaken to satisfy the political greed of a parcel of politicians you show the most astounding ignorance of the conditions. The only effective forces against the war are the forces inspired by greed and fear, and the forces that tell in favor of war are the belief in national honor and common humanity."
The pre-war portion of the correspondence closes with this despondent view of the situation as it appeared to him on April 7, 1898: "If you are puzzled you can imagine the bitter wrath and humiliation which I feel at the absolute lack of plans. We have our plans in the Navy, and beyond that there is absolutely nothing. The President doesn't know what message he will send in or what he will do if we have war.''
Four days later, April 11,1898, President McKinley, left with no alternative by the obviously tricky conduct of the Spanish government in proposing an armistice which was a sham on its face, made up his mind that war was inevitable, and sent a message to Congress asking it to empower him to end hostilities in Cuba and to secure the establishment of a stable government "capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations." Congress, after full discussion, adopted, on April 19, joint resolutions declaring the people of Cuba free and independent, demanding the surrender of all Spanish authority in the island, and directing and empowering the President to enforce the resolutions by using the full land and naval forces of the United States. Spain declared war formally on April 24, and the United States did the same on April 25.

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CHAPTER TEN,. 
THE WAR WITH SPAIN,.
that the Navy was reasonably well prepared for the war solely because of the efforts of Roosevelt, is clearly revealed by these citations from his correspondence. For months he had been working unceasingly with the hearty co-operation of the ablest men in the service to get material in readiness and have the ships properly equipped and commanded. It was due solely to him also that Admiral Dewey was in command of the Asiatic squadron and that that squadron was ready to sail from Hong Kong to the Philippines at a moment's notice and was in condition to win the battle of Manila. There is abundant proof in support of these statements.
When the question of appointing a commander of the Asiatic squadron arose in the fall of 1897, Roosevelt, in accordance with his established policy of gathering from every source information as to who were the best men to occupy the fighting positions, ascertained that sound naval opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of Dewey for the command of a squadron. He had been struck by an incident in Dewey's career in which he had, without authority from the Navy Department and on his own responsibility, bought a supply of coal in preparation for a threatening emergency. "The incident," Roosevelt says in his 'Autobiography,' "made me feel that here was a man who could be relied upon to prepare in advance, and to act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own responsibility when the emergency arose. Accordingly I did my best to get him put in command of the Asiatic fleet, the fleet where it was most essential to have a man who would act without referring things back to the home authorities."
The manner in which Roosevelt's desire was accomplished is told as follows by Admiral Dewey himself in his 'Autobiography' (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913):
"The most influential officer in the distribution of assignments was Rear Admiral A. S. Crowninshield, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and a pronounced bureaucrat, with whose temperament and methods I had little more sympathy than had the majority of the officers of the navy at that time. He would hardly recommend me to any command; and his advice had great weight with John D. Long, who was then Secretary of the Navy.
"Theodore Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was impatient of red tape, and had a singular understanding both of the importance of preparedness for war and of striking quick blows in rapid succession once war was begun. With the enthusiastic candor, which characterizes him, he declared that I ought to have the Asiatic Squadron. He asked me if I had any political influence. I expressed a natural disinclination to use it. He agreed with the correctness of my view as an officer, but this was a situation where it must be used in self-defense. One letter from an influential source in favor of Howell had already been received by the department.
" 'I want you to go,' Mr. Roosevelt declared. 'You are the man who will be equal to the emergency if one arises. Do you know any Senators?'
"My heart was set on having the Asiatic Squadron. It seemed to me that we were inevitably drifting into a war with Spain. In command of an efficient force in the Far East, with a free hand to act in consequence of being so far away from Washington, I could strike promptly and successfully at the Spanish force in the Philippines.
"'Senator Proctor is from my State,' I said to Mr. Roosevelt. ' He is an old friend of the family, and my father was of service to him when he was a young man.'
" 'You could not have a better sponsor,' Mr. Roosevelt exclaimed. 'Lose no time in having him speak a word for you.'
"I went immediately to see Senator Proctor, who was delighted that I had mentioned the matter to him. That very day he called on President McKinley and received the promise of the appointment before he left the White House.
"When I next met Crowninshield he told me that although I was to have the appointment—a fact which did not seem to please him any too well—Secretary Long was indignant because I had used political influence to obtain it. I went at once to see Mr. Long and said to him: ,
" 'Mr. Secretary, I understand that you are displeased with me for having used influence to secure command of the Asiatic Squadron. I did so because it was the only way of offsetting influence that was being exerted on another officer's behalf.'
" 'You are in error, Commodore,' said Mr. Long. 'No influence had been brought to bear on behalf of any one else.'
"Only a few hours later, however, Mr. Long sent me a note in which he said that he had just found that a letter had been received at the Department which he had seen for the first time. It had arrived while he was absent from the office and while Mr. Roosevelt was Acting Secretary, and had only just been brought to his attention."
Dewey was appointed, sailed for his post on December 7,1897, and in February began to assemble the fleet at Hong Kong, doing so '' entirely on my own initiative, without any hint whatever from the department that hostilities might be expected. It was evident that in case of emergency Hong Kong was the most advantageous position from which to move to the attack."
News of the blowing up of the Maine did not reach him officially till February 18, 1898, when he received the following cable message:
Dewey, Hong Kong:
Maine destroyed at Havana February 15th by accident. The President directs all colors to be half masted until further orders.   Inform vessels under your command by telegraph.	long.
Of this message Dewey writes: "Its wording shows how carefully our government was moving in a moment of such intense excitement.'' What happened next, is described by him as follows:
"Though President McKinley was still confident that war could be averted, active naval measures had already begun, so far as navy-yard work upon ships and initial inquiries with regard to the purchase of war material was concerned. But the first real step was taken on February 25, when telegraphic instructions were sent to the Asiatic, European, and South Atlantic Squadrons to rendezvous at certain convenient points where, should war break out, they would be most available.
"The message to the Asiatic Squadron bore the signature of that Assistant Secretary who had seized the opportunity, while Acting Secretary, to hasten preparations for a conflict which was inevitable. As Mr. Roosevelt reasoned, precautions would cost little in time of peace and would be invaluable in case of war. His cablegram was as follows:
washington, February 25, 1898. 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.
"The reference to keeping the Olympia until further orders was due to the fact that I had been notified that she would soon be recalled to the United States."
Dewey obeyed these instructions and proceeded to get his fleet in readiness for sailing for Manila at a moment's notice, so that when the following order came from Secretary Long, on April 25, two months after Roosevelt's message to Dewey, he was ready to obey:
"War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to Philippine Islands. Commence operations particularly against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavor."
Thus was the famous battle of Manila fought and won by a commander whose appointment had been secured by Roosevelt against the wishes of Secretary Long and whose fleet had been thoroughly equipped for the conflict by an order that Roosevelt had sent on his own responsibility in the absence of his chief.
A few months later Secretary Long's personal attitude toward the course pursued by his assistant was revealed in the following letter to Roosevelt from Senator Lodge, decidedly the most interesting and illuminating letter in the present collection: (The italics are mine.)
nahant, mass., September 21, 1898. Dear Theodore:
I am going to ask for five minutes of your crowded time to read this letter and give me a little help. I am getting together of course the necessary materials for my war articles. The second one will be about Manila, and as the first is well advanced I am already gathering facts for the second. I intended to begin by a reference to your order to Dewey of February 25th. You no doubt remember that memorable Saturday afternoon when I came in and found you and Crowninshield sending out this order, which was of such enormous importance and value in the subsequent operations. I wrote to Crowninshield that I knew the purport of the order, but that as a matter of caution I should be much obliged if I could have its exact terms. Here is a copy of what he said in reply. If you do not smile when you read it I shall be surprised:
" Replying to your note of September 19th, I have spoken to the Secretary and he is unwilling to give you the exact language of the order referred to. You will probably see yourself that to do so might appear to put us in a light of being almost over-prepared; in other words, it might seem that the Department, had as early as February 25th, the date of the order, made up its mind that there was to be war anyway. Other orders issued about this time could only be called precautionary, but by some this particular order might be construed as indicated above."
Here follows what I have said in reply to him, which I think will make you smile also:
"Many thanks for your letter of September 19th. I only asked for the language of the order of February 25th to Admiral Dewey out of a spirit of caution which many years of historical studies have cultivated in me. I know the purport of the order as I happened to be in the office that afternoon when you and Mr. Roosevelt were sending it off, and a general statement such as I can make from memory will serve my purpose perfectly well. I confess that now that the war is over and when one of the things of which everybody is most proud and for which the Department received the most unstinted praise was the state of preparation in which the Navy found itself, I cannot conceive that any human being should criticize the Department for being over-prepared, but of this no doubt the Department is the better judge. I shall speak of the order sent out by you and Mr. Roosevelt in my articles as one of the wisest things that was done, a proposition, which I consider proved by the little affair at Manila on the 1st of May. My intention was simply to refer to it as an order of the Department, but if the Secretary has the slightest objection to my doing so I will say that the order was sent by Mr. Roosevelt as Acting Secretary, and / have no doubt the Colonel of the Rough Riders will accept the responsibility of being over-prepared with perfect equanimity."
Now what I want of you is to give me your best recollection of the general purport of the order. I remember it Pretty well myself, but I want to have your memory to confirm mine, and that will be all-sufficient for the statement I wish to make. There is something very comic in our dear Secretary thinking he will be criticized for being over-prepared and precipitating the war if that order is published.
H. C. lodge.
In his book, "The War with Spain" (Harper & Brothers, 1899), Senator Lodge records the incident as follows:
"On February 25 a cable message was sent to Commodore Dewey by Mr. Roosevelt directing him to assemble his squadron at Hong Kong, retain the Olympia which had been ordered back to San Francisco, and be prepared in case of war for offensive operations in the Philippines. On the 3d of March the Mohican was sent with ammunition to Honolulu, there to await the Baltimore, which was to take the ammunition on board and proceed at once to join the Asiatic Squadron. No wiser or more far-sighted precautions were ever taken by an administration than these, and it was all done so quietly that no one on the outside knew what was happening."
Writing to John Hay, Secretary of State, on July 1,1899, Roosevelt gave his own view of what would have been the outcome at Manila if Dewey had not been in command and if the fleet had not been in a condition of thorough preparation.
"In last year's fighting, as the President knows, there was a good deal of hesitation in sending Dewey to the Asiatic Squadron. It was urged very strongly by the Bureau of Navigation that Howell was entitled to go. Finally, and most wisely, the Secretary decided to disregard the argument of seniority and to send Dewey. If he had not done so, there would have been no Philippine problem at present, for our fleet would have done nothing more than to conduct a solemn blockade of Manila until our coal gave out, and then go away."
An additional instance of Secretary Long's personal attitude toward Roosevelt was revealed several years later in an article, which he published in the Outlook magazine. Concerning this Roosevelt wrote to him on October 12,1903:
"In the Outlook, in an article written by you, there has appeared this statement about me when I was Assistant Secretary to you: 'Just before the war he, as well as some naval officers, was anxious to send the squadron across the ocean to sink the ships and torpedo-boat destroyers of the Spanish fleet while we were yet at peace with Spain.' I am sure that you did not intend to state the proposition just as it is here expressed. My memory is that I wished to treat the sending over by Spain of her battleships and destroyers as a cause of war. My memory is also that when two or more of the armor-clads of Spain were in Havana— not on the coast of Spain—just before the outbreak of hostilities, I desired some of our ships sent down to watch them. Do you not refer to these two facts?
"I would not bother you about this, my dear Governor, but it seems to me to be a very serious accusation, when brought against me by a gentleman of your high standing, my former chief; and it has seemingly been so accepted by the public at large, if I am to judge by the activity of the gentlemen of the press in seeking interviews with me this morning."
To this letter Mr. Long wrote a reply in which he professed to see no difference between what he had written and what Roosevelt thought he should have written. In a second letter, October 15, 1903, Roosevelt wrote:
"I thank you for your letter. I am sure I need not tell you how well I know your kindly feelings toward me, which feelings found full expression in the general tenor of your article. I think, however, that it was a pity that in such an important matter as this I was not given a chance to try to refresh your memory on any point where we differed. It is perfectly true that I wished a declaration of war long before we did declare it; and I also desired notice to be sent to the Spanish Government that we should treat the sailing of the fleet as an act of war, and then meet the fleet on the seas and smash it before it could act on the defensive. It was to my mind obvious that armed cruisers and torpedo-boats could not be used against the insurgents, and could only be intended for use against us. But this last is aside from the point. Don't you think the two statements you have made as to my attitude are in themselves a little inconsistent? You speak in one case as if I wished to send a fleet over to Spain and sink the Spanish boats while we were still at peace. In the other case you speak of the Spanish vessels as having sailed, and my being anxious to meet them on the sea and smash them. I am sure that you will recall that I had been urging a declaration of war for some time—that is, urging a declaration that we should take certain acts, or failures to act, as warranting such declaration after notice had been given. In the case of the sailing of the torpedo-boats, I did wish us to notify the Spanish Government that we should treat their being sent as an act of war. In the form in which the statement is made in the Outlook, I cannot admit that either I or any naval officer whom I was associated with made it—indeed I do not recall such a suggestion made by any one, and certainly I never made any such suggestion myself, as that we should send a squadron across the ocean to sink the ships and torpedo-boat destroyers while we were yet at peace with Spain. As I recall it and all that I remember any naval officer urging, was that we should notify the Spanish Government that we should treat their sailing as an act of war and that we should then conduct ourselves accordingly."
As shown in his correspondence, Roosevelt had resolved very early in the controversy about Cuba that if there should be a war with Spain he would take part in it. He had mentioned this purpose to McKinley in his interview with him in September, 1897, quoted above, and in January following, when the probability of war became strong, he sought to get into the service in a New York militia regiment as a major under Colonel Francis Vinton Greene, saying he "was going to go somehow." On March 9, 1898, he wrote to Captain C. H. Davis of the navy that'' if there is a war I want to get away from here and get to the front if I possibly can.'' On the following day he wrote to General Whitney Tillinghast, Adjutant-General of New York: "Of course I can't leave this position until it is perfectly certain we are going to have a war, and that I can get down to it. I don't want to be in office during war, I want to be at the front; but I would rather be in this office than guarding a fort and no enemy within a thousand miles of me. Of course being here hampers me. If I were in New York City I think I could raise a regiment of volunteers in short order when the President told me to go ahead, but it is going to be difficult from here."
Colonel Greene had written that for various reasons it was not practicable for Roosevelt to go to war under him, and on March 15 Roosevelt again wrote to him:
"I don't agree with you as to my post of duty. I don't want to be in an office instead of at the front; but I dare say I shall have to be, and shall try to do good work wherever I am put. I have long been accustomed, not to taking the positions I should like, but to doing the best that I was able to do in a position I did not altogether like, and under conditions, which I didn't like at all. But I shall hope still that in the event of serious war I may have a chance to serve under you."
Writing to Adjutant-General Tillinghast again on March 26, he said:
"It looks to me as though matters were coming to a climax, and we should soon see actual trouble with Spain. I wish the Governor would say whether or not he believes that the State militia would be sent out of the State, that is, down to Cuba as part of an expeditionary force, or whether we shall raise volunteers. If the latter, will you present my regards to him and ask if I may not be allowed to raise a regiment? I think I can certainly do it."
On the same date he wrote as follows to William Astor Chanler, a member of Congress from New York: "Things look as though they were coming to a head. Now, can you start getting up that regiment when the time comes? Do you want me as Lt.-Colonel? Also, remember that to try to put toughs in it—still worse to try to put political heelers in—will result in an utterly unmanageable regiment, formidable to its own officers and impotent to do mischief to the foe."
His reasons for desiring to get into the war were set forth in full in a very striking letter which he wrote, on March 29, 1898, to Doctor Sturgis Bigelow, in Boston. There is much material for sober thought in this letter for those critics of Roosevelt who have charged him with favoring war because of sheer love of fighting:
" I do not know that I shall be able to go to Cuba if there is a war. The army may not be employed at all, and even if it is employed it will consist chiefly of regular troops; and as regards the volunteers only a very small proportion can be taken from among the multitudes who are even now coming forward. Therefore it may be that I shall be unable to go, and shall have to stay here. In that case I shall do my duty here to the best of my ability, although I shall be eating out my heart. But if I am able to go I certainly shall. It is perfectly true that I shall be leaving one duty, but it will only be for the purpose of taking up another. I say quite sincerely that I shall not go for my own pleasure. On the contrary, if I should consult purely my own feelings I should earnestly hope that we would have peace. I like life very much. I have always led a joyous life. I like thought and I like action, and it will be very bitter to me to leave my wife and children; and while I think I could face death with dignity, I have no desire before my time has come to go out into the everlasting darkness. So I shall not go into a war with any undue exhilaration of spirits or in a frame of mind in any way approaching recklessness or levity.
"Moreover, a man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals in so far as he can. Now, I have consistently preached what our opponents are pleased to call 'Jingo doctrines' for a good many years. One of the commonest taunts directed at men like myself is that we are armchair and parlor Jingoes who wish to see others do what we only advocate doing. I care very little for such a taunt, except as it affects my usefulness, but I cannot afford to disregard the fact that my power for good, whatever it may be, would be gone if I didn 't try to live up to the doctrines I have tried to preach. Moreover, it seems to me that it would be a good deal more important from the standpoint of the nation as a whole that men like myself should go to war than that we should stay comfortably in offices at home and let others carry on the war that we have urged.''
A way was opened for Roosevelt to get into the war when Congress authorized the raising of three National Volunteer Cavalry Regiments, wholly apart from State contingents. The Secretary of War, General Alger, offered him the command of one of these regiments, but Roosevelt declined it, saying that after six weeks' service in the field he would feel competent to handle the regiment, but that he did not at the time know how to equip it or how to get it into the first action. He recommended for the command his friend Leonard Wood, who was as eager to get into the war as he was, saying to the Secretary that if he could appoint Wood Colonel he would accept the Lieutenant Colonelcy. This was done, and the famous regiment of Rough Riders was formed. Its official name was the 'First United States Volunteer Cavalry, but because it was largely composed of Western ranchmen, it was promptly nicknamed Rough Riders, and under that picturesque title passed through the war and into history.
When he sent in his resignation from the Navy Department he received, among others, the following letters:
navy department, washington,
May 7, 1898. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I have your letter of resignation to the President, but as I have told you so many times, I have it with the utmost regret. I have often expressed, perhaps too emphatically and harshly, my conviction that you ought not to leave the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, where your services have not only been of such great value, but of so much inspiration to me and to the whole service. But now that you have determined to go to the front, I feel bound to say that, while I do not approve of the change, I do most heartily appreciate the patriotism and the sincere fidelity to your convictions, which actuate you.
Let me assure you how most profoundly I feel the loss I sustain in your going, for your energy, industry and great knowledge of naval interests, and especially your inspiring influence in stimulating and lifting the whole tone of the personnel of the Navy have been invaluable.
I cannot close this reply to your letter without telling you also what an affectionate personal regard I have come to feel for you as a man of the truest temper and most loyal friendship. I rejoice that one who has so much capacity for public service and for winning personal friendships has the promise of so many years of useful and loving life before him.
My heart goes with you, and I am,
Very sincerely yours,
john D. long. hon. theodORe roosevelt,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Navy Department.
executive mansion, washington,
May 9, 1898. 

My Dear Mr. Secretary.
Although the President was obliged to accept your resignation of recent date, I can assure you that he has done so with very great regret. Only the circumstances mentioned in your letter and your decided and unchangeable preference for your new patriotic work have induced the President to consent to your severing your present connection with the Administration.
Your services here during your entire term in office have been faithful, able and successful in the highest degree, and no one appreciates this fact more keenly than the President himself. Without doubt your connection with the Navy will be beneficially felt in several of its departments for many years to come.
In the President's behalf therefore I wish at this time to thank you most heartily and to wish you all success in your new and important undertaking, for which I hope and predict a brilliantly victorious result.
With sincere respect and cordial esteem, believe me, always
Faithfully yours,
john   addison   poRteb,
Secretary to the President. hon. theodore roosevelt,
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C.
Among the many letters of congratulation that Roosevelt received at the close of the war were the following from John Hay, then United States Ambassador to England, and James Bryce, afterwards Viscount Bryce, author of the "American Commonwealth":
american embassy, london, July 27, 1898. Dear Roosevelt:
I am afraid I am the last of your friends to congratulate you on the brilliant campaign which now seems drawing to a close, and in which you have gained so much experience and glory. When the war began I was like the rest; I deplored your place in the Navy where you were so useful and so acceptable. But I know it was idle to preach to a young man. You obeyed your own daemon, and I imagine we older fellows will all have to confess that you were in the right. As Sir Walter wrote:
One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
You have written your name on several pages of your country's history, and they are all honorable to you and comfortable to your friends.
It has been a splendid little war; begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that Fortune which loves the brave. It is now to be concluded, I hope, with that fine good nature, which is, after all, the distinguishing trait of the American character.
Faithfully yours,
john hay.
hindleap  lodge, forest Row, sussex,
September 12, 1898. 
My dear Roosevelt:
Our hearty congratulations on your safe return and on the laurels you have won. I was sorry you retired from a post in which you were doing so much first-rate work as the Assistant Secretary-ship of the Navy. But you have justified your action, and have had an experience which will be of the utmost service to yourself and I hope to your country, too.
How stupendous a change in the world these six months have brought. Six months ago you no more thought of annexing the Philippine Isles and Porto Rico than you think of annexing Spitzbergen to-day. In the interest of the United States, I am uneasy at the change, because the new enterprises you will enter on are enterprises for which your Constitution and government have not been framed; and mistakes may be made, many and serious, before you develop the institutions needed. Perhaps it is because we have had such a lot of experience, some of it most unsatisfactory, with our tropical colonies, that I am more anxious to see the American people purify city government and do certain other jobs at home than to see them civilize the Malays and aborigines of Luzon. However, you are clearly "in for it," and what I hope you will do is to have a healthy despotism governing these tropical semi-savages and even the Spanish Creoles. No talk of suffrage or any such constitutional privileges for them, but steady government by the firmest, most honest men you can find, and no interference if possible by Congress when the firm and honest men have been found.
It is a happy result of the last six months that your people and ours seem nearer together in sympathy than ever before. You will have noticed that nearly every one here applauds your imperialistic new departure. We are here growing more imperialistic than ever.
My wife joins in best regards—I hope by next year to be writing to you to Albany.
Sincerely yours,
james bRyCE.
An amusing side-light upon the military conduct of the operations in Cuba during the Spanish War is cast in this letter from Roosevelt to Senator Lodge under date of March 3, 1899:
"Lee, the British Military Attache, told me a lovely story the other day. He met the Russian Military Attache in London and gave him a dinner, at which the Russian waxed eloquent over his sufferings at Santiago, and, as capping the climax, described how, when he went to pay his respects and say good-by to General Shafter, the latter looked at him with his usual easy polish and grace, and remarked: 'Well, good-by. Who are you, anyway, the Russian or the German?' I shouted. Think of the feelings of Yemiloff, the nice little military and diplomatic pedant, on the one hand, and on the other, of good, vulgar Shafter's magnificent indifference to ethnic and diplomatic niceties!"
One further citation from Roosevelt's correspondence relating to this period may properly be made here. When in March, 1901, General Funston executed his brilliant feat of capturing Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine insurgents, thus completing the American conquest of the Philippines, Roosevelt wrote, on March 30, 1901, a letter of congratulation to Funston, in which he predicted a national condition of unpreparedness which was strikingly like that in which the country found itself when it was compelled to declare war with Germany in 1917:
"This is no perfunctory or formal letter of congratulation. I take pride in this crowning exploit of a career filled with cool courage, iron endurance and gallant daring, because you have added your name to the honor roll of American worthies. Your feat will rank with Cushing's when he sank the Albemarle. Otherwise, I cannot recall any single feat in our history which can compare with it.
"Our people as a whole are unquestionably very shortsighted about making (war) preparations. Under such circumstances it is always possible that we may find ourselves pitted against a big military power where we shall need to develop fighting material at the very outset, and then I am one of many millions who would look with confidence to what you would do. Incidentally, if that day is not too far distant, I shall hope to be serving under or alongside of you. I think I could raise at once a brigade of three or four such regiments as I commanded at Santiago."
As Colonel Roosevelt's active participation in the war with Spain has been set forth by himself in his 'Autobiography' and in his book, 'The Rough Riders,' no account of it is included in the present narrative. 

***,.

**,.

CHAPTER ELEVEN,.
GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK—FIRST YEAR,.
on his return from the war with Spain, in September, 1898, Roosevelt was greeted with great popular enthusiasm, and was offered almost immediately two nominations for the Governorship of the State. The first offer was made tentatively by an emissary from T. C. Platt, then United States Senator and absolute boss of the Republican organization in the State. The emissary said he had come, not to offer the nomination, but to ascertain if Roosevelt desired it, and, if in the event of nomination and election, he would "make war" on Mr. Platt and the organization, or would confer with them and give fair consideration to their views of party policy and the public interest; he asked for no pledges but simply for a frank definition of Roosevelt's attitude toward existing party conditions. It was well known at the time that Platt had been forced, quite unwillingly, to turn to Roosevelt as the only candidate who could save his party from what seemed to be certain defeat because of the unpopularity of the existing Republican administration under a subservient Platt man in the Governorship. Roosevelt replied to the emissary that he would like to be nominated, and that if elected he would not make war upon Platt or anybody else, if war could be avoided; that he desired to be Governor and not a faction leader; that he would confer with the organization men, as with everybody else who seemed to him to have knowledge of and interest in public affairs, and that as to Platt and the organization leaders, he would do so in the sincere hope that there might result always harmony of opinion and purpose; but that while he would try to get on well with the organization, the organization must with equal sincerity strive to do what he regarded as essential for the public good; and that in every case, after full consideration of what everybody had to say who might possess full knowledge of the matter, he should have to act finally as his own conscience and judgment dictated and administer the State government as he thought it should be administered. This was reported to Platt and ultimately accepted by him.
While this nomination was pending, the independent organizations of the city of New York, on September 9, put forth a statement in the press declaring that after full consideration they had agreed to offer the nomination for Governor to Roosevelt for the following, among other reasons:
"Mr. Roosevelt's magnificent record makes him the natural candidate for Governor. We need not describe Theodore Roosevelt. Our reasons for nominating him are plain. We think that the evils of our public life can be traced to the exclusive control over nominations by party bosses and their creatures. While Roosevelt is a party man, he is one in whom the masses of the people of both parties feel a confidence amounting to devotion, and who in his person represents independence and reform.
"There is nothing which his mind sees as evil that he would not expose as readily in his own party as in that of his opponents. To have such a man for Governor, with the experience in administration which he possesses, would be of incalculable benefit to the State."
To this declaration there was appended a full state ticket with Roosevelt at its head for Governor and candidates for all other State offices. It was an anti-Republican organization ticket throughout and compelled Roosevelt, if he should accept the nomination, to run as an out-and-out independent candidate without hope of support from the Republican party, and consequently without hope of election. The inevitable result of his candidacy under these conditions would have been the election of the Democratic ticket.
After putting forth their declaration, the Independents took no further action, making no formal nomination of their ticket. In the meantime, Platt had accepted Roosevelt's terms and, on September 24, Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Independents, in which, after saying that it was somewhat embarrassing to decline a nomination which had never been offered to him, he found himself unable to accept for the following, among other reasons:
"It seems to me that I would not be acting in good faith toward my fellow candidates if I permitted my name to head a ticket designed for their overthrow; a ticket, moreover, which cannot be put up because of objections to the character or fitness of any candidate, inasmuch as no candidate has been nominated.
"I write this with great reluctance, for I wish the support of every Independent. If elected Governor, I would strive to serve the State as a whole, and to serve my party by helping it serve the State."
The leaders of the Independents, ignoring what they had said in their declaration of September 9,—that while he waa a party man he "represented in his person independence and reform," and that he would "expose evil as readily in his own party as in that of his opponents"—turned upon him in wrath and declared that he had "surrendered to Platt." They ignored also, what was well known to all men, that he was acting in strict accord with the line of conduct which he had followed unvaryingly from the outset of his political career, that is, fighting evil inside of his party rather than fighting the party itself because some of its leaders and members were guilty of evil deeds. He had followed this policy as a member of the Legislature, as Civil Service Commissioner, and as Police Commissioner. All efforts to induce him to act as a chartered Independent and not as a party man had failed. "My desire," he declared in response to these efforts, "is to achieve results,, not merely to issue manifestoes of virtue." Nobody knew better than the Independents what his attitude was, for he had stated it directly to them many times, but on every succeeding occasion for stating it, they persisted" in accusing him of deserting his principles. This method of treatment they persisted in after he became President, in spite of the fact that in every public office that he held he accomplished more of the results which they professed to desire than any other public man of his time. They would not reconcile themselves to his refusal to follow their method of political conduct in preference to his own. In the case of the Governorship nomination, they had sought to force Platt to endorse their nomination of Roosevelt instead of having him nominated by the Republican party, and when they failed in this effort they refused to support Roosevelt because Platt had nominated him in another way. Finally, they put in the field a complete Independent ticket and when election day arrived it polled a total vote of 2,103, which was less than an average of one vote for each election district of the State.
Roosevelt was nominated unanimously for Governor by the Republican Convention on September 27, and made a vigorous campaign. Platt says in his 'Autobiography' :
"Roosevelt made a dramatic campaign. He fairly pranced about the State. He called a spade a 'spade,' a crook a ' crook.' The Rough Rider romped home on election day with over 17,000 plurality.
"I have always maintained that no man besides Roosevelt could have accomplished that feat in 1898.''
Immediately following the election, John Hay, then Secretary of State, wrote to him as follows:
"While you are Governor, I believe the party can be made solid as never before. 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."
Roosevelt was inaugurated Governor on January 1, 1899, and in a brief address he outlined clearly the course of action that he had maintained throughout his political career:
"We must realize, on the one hand, that we can do little if we do not set ourselves a high ideal, and, on the other, that we will fail in accomplishing even this little if we do not work through practical methods and with a readiness to face life as it is, and not as we think it ought to be. Under no form of government is it so necessary thus to combine efficiency and morality, high principle and rough common sense, justice and the sturdiest physical and moral courage, as in a republic. It is absolutely impossible for a republic long to endure if it becomes either corrupt or cowardly; if its public men, no less than its private men, lose the indispensable virtue of honesty, if its leaders of thought become visionary doctrinaires, or if it shows a lack of courage in dealing with the many grave problems which it must surely face both at home and abroad, as it strives to work out the destiny meet for a mighty Nation.
"It is only through the party system that free governments are now successfully carried on, and yet we must keep ever vividly before us that the usefulness of a party is strictly limited by its usefulness to the State, and that in the long run he serves his party best who helps to make it instantly responsive to every need of the people and to the highest demands of that spirit which tends to drive us onward and upward."
It is perhaps worthy of note that in his inaugural address he recommended the admission of women to the suffrage in voting upon school matters. Not till many years later, in 1911, did he come out openly in favor of general suffrage for women.
His first message to the Legislature, sent in on January 4, attracted unusual attention and was warmly commended by the press, by none more so than the few Independent journals, which had not found themselves able to support his candidacy. The part of his message which commanded heartiest approval was that in which he condemned the law "taking the starch out of the Civil Service," of which his Platt predecessor in the Governorship had secured the enactment, and recommended its repeal and the restoration of the original law.
In considering Roosevelt's administration as Governor it should be borne in mind that he came into office when the boss system of political control was at the very summit of its power. Senator Platt was the absolute owner of the Republican party in the State. When it was in office, he was the real ruler of the State. He dictated all appointments, including those for the bench, and exercised all the powers of the Legislature. Under the- guise of campaign contributions, he collected vast sums from the corporations and these he used to defray the election expenses of candidates for the Legislature, with the tacit or implied understanding that when elected they should follow his "orders" in all cases in which he chose to issue them. If they disobeyed, they knew they would not be re-nominated. The corporations gave their contributions also with the tacit understanding that their interests would be protected, that legislation which, they desired would be enacted, and that legislation which they considered hostile would fail. They sent no agents to Albany, but personally saw Platt in his New York office. The corporations not only made heavy campaign contributions to him as the Republican boss, but to the Democratic boss as well, so that whatever party was in power in the State, the interests of the corporations were protected. In emergencies, both party bosses worked together to give the desired and paid for protection. Roosevelt knew all about this combination of Big Bosses and Big Business because of his experience in the Legislature, where he had on more than one occasion found both bosses united in defense of their "invisible government" against his efforts to impair its unlawful and corrupt privileges. He entered upon his duties with full knowledge of the evil with which he had to contend. His two years in the Governorship mark the beginning of an epoch in American history, for during those years he dealt the first of a series of deadly blows at the "invisible government" which ended finally in its destruction and permanent disappearance from American political life. The Big Boss is no more. He survives in modified form in Tammany Hall, and perhaps in other local organizations, but as a national power he has passed from the scene. His downfall dates from the advent of Governor Roosevelt at Albany, as this narrative will show as it proceeds. That of Big Business, as the partner in political and business misconduct, dates also from the same advent, for a new era in governmental regulation and control was inaugurated then.
Senator Platt was not long in discovering that Roosevelt and not Platt was thenceforth Governor of the State. A short time before the inauguration, Platt, who at the time was an old and feeble man, asked Roosevelt to call on him, which he did. One of the important positions that the new Governor would have to fill was that of Superintendent of Public Works. Under the previous administration there had been gross scandals in the canal construction work, which was in charge of this department of the State government, and the selection of a new head for it was the most important one that Roosevelt would have to make. When he called upon Platt the latter informed him that he was glad to say he had found an admirable man for the place, had offered it to him and had just received a telegram from him saying he would accept it. Roosevelt, realizing the importance of the crisis thus created, replied that he was very sorry but he could not appoint the man. An explosion followed, but Roosevelt remained calm, saying again that he must decline to accept any man chosen for him and must choose one for himself. He politely and firmly maintained his position. Platt ultimately yielded and Roosevelt appointed the man of his own choice, an eminent engineer and veteran of the Civil War, who administered the office with honesty and efficiency. Roosevelt also appointed a commission consisting of two Democratic lawyers of high standing to investigate the conduct of the Republican officials who had mismanaged canal affairs and whom he had declined to reappoint, for the purpose of ascertaining if they were criminally liable under the law. His desires in appointing this commission were set forth in a letter which he wrote, on January 3, 1899, to Benjamin B. Odell, Jr., who was then Chairman of the Republican State Committee and the foremost of Platt's trusted lieutenants: "I would like to appoint a counsel to represent me in this canal business, and in view of the possibility and even probability of failure, I want to get a strong man, one who is not identified in any way with my interests, so that there shall be no possible question as to our having made every effort to get a conviction, so far as the effort can properly and honestly be made. With this end in view I think I shall appoint X., of Buffalo. They say he is a very big lawyer, and I believe he supported Bacon (the Independent candidate for Governor)—a harmless form of entertainment on his part."
The investigation was made and the Commission reported that it would be inadvisable to prosecute for criminal conduct because of the impossibility of securing a conviction.
From the beginning of his administration Roosevelt consulted Platt in regard to appointments and other matters, meeting him generally in New York City at the end of the week, usually at breakfast at a hotel or in a private house. He did this because Platt being in Washington and Roosevelt himself in Albany, it was the most convenient meeting-place, especially for the Senator, who was in infirm health. There was never any secrecy about these meetings, Roosevelt insisting that full publicity be given to them; nevertheless they were uniformly interpreted by the Governor's Independent critics as affording indubitable evidence of his complete subserviency to Platt and as proof of his infidelity to his virtuous professions. They were nothing of the sort. Frequently other persons were present, men who were interested in various reform measures, and the invariable object was to get Platt's unwilling consent to legislation and other acts, which were distasteful to him. No impartial person can examine the records of Roosevelt's administration at Albany and not reach the conclusion that in all matters of serious controversy with Platt, at these breakfasts and elsewhere, Roosevelt came out victor. As he says in his 'Autobiography':
"My object was to make it as easy as possible for him (Platt) to come with me. As long as there was no clash between us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came or was imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was always a prelude to some active warfare. In every instance I substantially carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way I had originally hoped."
Platt himself bears similar testimony, for in his 'Autobiography,' he says:
"Roosevelt had from the first agreed that he would consult me on all questions of appointments, Legislature or party policy. He religiously fulfilled this pledge, although he frequently did just what he pleased. In consulting me, Roosevelt proved himself the antithesis of X., who repudiated every contract he ever made with me."
An impartial and just verdict was pronounced in the same matter many years later by the New York Times. When in September, 1918, a member of Tammany Hall was made the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York, the Evening Post reverted to its original contention that the breakfasts were proof for Roosevelt's subserviency to Platt by saying: "Will he (the Tammany candidate) come down to the city to lunch regularly with Murphy (the Tammany boss) as Theodore Roosevelt used to come to breakfast with Platt." On this the Times commented: "If he does, and the luncheons don't do Murphy any more good than the breakfasts used to do Platt, there is not much for us to worry about."
   Roosevelt's method of dealing with the Senator is clearly shown in the letters he wrote to Platt from time to time. One under date of February 10, 1899, when the question of appointing a new Surrogate for New York City was under consideration, runs as follows:
"Let me again say, my dear Senator, what I know you are aware of, that in this business about the Surrogate, I have not the slightest purpose beyond getting a thoroughly good man who will do the work well, who is a Republican, but who is also a man thoroughly satisfactory to the bar and to the people."
Precisely such a man was ultimately appointed.
Similar ideas of public service are expressed in a letter which he wrote on January 26, 1899, to William M. Collier, whom he had appointed a member of the State Civil Service Commission:
"I am sure you will justify my choice. I believe you to be a thoroughly excellent man. We must keep the management of the law up to the highest point; I want to make civil service reform a big feature of my administration."
Early in his administration a very persistent and formidable effort was made to induce him to pardon a woman convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a member of her own sex. Some of his most devoted friends joined in this effort, among them Jacob A. Riis, to whom he wrote as follows on February 8, 1899:
"This is a woman convicted of a very cruel murder of another woman. I have exactly the same feeling that you have about womanhood and about the burdens which nature has placed upon woman and the duty of man to make them as light as possible. For instance, where a poor seduced girl kills her child to hide her shame, I would infinitely rather punish the man who seduced her than the poor creature who actually committed the murder. But there are some fiends among women, and I hardly think, old man, that we help womanhood by helping these exceptions."
To another of the petitioners, who had clearly aroused his righteous wrath by a suggestion of political consequences, he wrote on February 21, 1899:
"You may rest assured that the last thing that will influence me will be any statement that no man can become President if he allows a woman to be executed. In the first place, being myself sane, I have no thought of becoming President. In the next place, I should heartily despise the public servant who failed to do his duty because it might jeopardize his own future."
He refused to pardon the woman and she was executed as sentenced, and no harmful political consequences ensued.
A very interesting letter, written on February 10, 1899, to Andrew D. White, U. S. Ambassador at Berlin, gives a frank revelation of his ambition as Governor and his views of his own political future:
'' So far I am getting along well but it means an infinity of hard work and a great deal of resolution with no small amount of tact and good nature. The satisfaction, which I have is that I don't look for anything more in politics. People are continually writing me that my career has only begun, and they make me almost angry, for my usefulness in my present office is largely conditional in the fact that I don't expect to hold another, and so nobody has got a twist on me in any way. I could not get along at all if I had to try and shape my course with a view to favors to come, either from the people or from the politicians. I hope to keep the party united and to make a good Governor, and if I can go out having done that, I shall be more than contented."
One of Roosevelt's most valued and devoted friends was James C. Carter, who for many years was universally recognized as the leader of the bar of New York City and as one of the ablest and most highly honored of its citizens. Mr. Carter had written to the Governor a friendly criticism upon some of his public utterances and in reply, on June 7, 1899, Roosevelt wrote:
"I am very much obliged to you for your letter of the 2nd instant and genuinely appreciate it. I realize just the danger that you speak of in making such utterances as I make; but it has always seemed to me that an almost greater danger is that of hypocritically stating that one can do more than one intends or can possibly be done. I have gone on the principle of telling the reformers just as I tell the politicians, exactly what I will do, and then doing it right' up to the handle. Of course I have made mistakes and I will make more, but I don't think they will be vital, and at any rate the whole game will be played on the table and not under it—if you will pardon the simile."
The dominating achievement of Roosevelt's first year in the Governorship was his success in compelling the Legislature to pass a law taxing as realty the franchises of the public service corporations of the State. For many years valuable franchises of this kind had been granted by the Legislature without provision for just compensation to the State, generally through arrangements made by the recipients with the party bosses, often by direct bribery of legislators. Roosevelt had become familiar with this abuse while member of the Legislature and had entered upon the Governorship with a clear conviction that the abuse should not only be arrested but that means should be devised for enabling the State to secure the income of which it had been deprived. He refused to permit the grant of new franchises on the old terms and turned his attention to the preparation of remedial measures. The most valuable of these franchises had been granted to street railway companies in the city of New York, made enormously more valuable by the substitution of electric for other power.
A bill had been introduced in the Legislature of 1898 providing a form of taxation on public service franchises but it had made no progress. It was reintroduced in 1899. Roosevelt gave it careful examination, and became convinced of its wisdom and justice, or, as he expressed it, what it proposed to do was "a matter of plain decency and honesty." As under the rules of the Legislature a bill could always be taken up out of its turn and passed if the Governor sent in a special emergency message on its behalf, Roosevelt decided to take that course. The moment his purpose was made known to Platt and his machine leaders, they • implored him, threatened him, and used every means they could devise to turn him from his purpose. They assured him that if he took this action he could never again be nominated for any public office, as no corporation would subscribe to a campaign fund if he was on the ticket, and all corporations would subscribe to a fund of the opposite party to beat him.
This was frank recognition of the real cause of their wrath and dismay, namely, that the bill aimed a deadly blow at the very center of the Big Boss and Big Business combination, for if it were to pass the Legislature, no corporation would buy protection in future because of uncertainty that the goods would be delivered.
Roosevelt saw all and listened to all, but declined to be swerved. The bill had passed the Senate and had been "hung up" in the Assembly. The Legislature was on the eve of adjournment, and the opponents of the bill were sure that its doom was sealed. On the evening of April 28, the Legislature being in session, Roosevelt sent an emergency message to the Assembly, demanding the immediate passage of the bill. The machine leaders were beside themselves with wrath, and the Platt Speaker tore up the message without sending it to the Assembly. At seven o'clock the next morning the Governor was informed of what had occurred. At eight o'clock he reached his office, and sent immediately by the hand of his secretary another emergency message to the Speaker, which opened as follows: "I learn that the emergency message which I sent last evening to the Assembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax Bill has not been read. I therefore send hereby another message on the subject.  I need not impress upon the Assembly the need of passing this bill at once.''
The secretary conveyed to the Speaker an intimation from the Governor that if this were not promptly read the Governor would appear in person and read it. The opposition collapsed and the bill was taken up and passed by a large majority.
The outcry against the bill had not been confined to' the bosses of the two parties who had united for its defeat through the instinct of preservation. A large portion of the press had also opposed it, treating it as a demagogic measure, conceived in the spirit of unreasoning hostility to wealth and advocated by Roosevelt in the hope of gaining popular support. As soon as it was passed, the party bosses and the lawyers of the corporations affected, united in impressing upon the Governor their profound convictions that it contained inadvisable provisions in regard to the methods of levying taxation, urging him not to sign it, but to wait a year until a more perfect measure could be passed at the next session. The Governor had 30 days in which to sign the bill. He told the objectors that he agreed with them as to the defective provisions, but that he would rather have it with them than not have it at all; that he was not willing to trust to what might be done a year later, and that he would, therefore, reconvene the Legislature in special session and seek to have the bill amended; that if the Legislature declined to amend it, he would sign it in its present form. On May 22, 1899, he issued a call for a special session in which he set forth his attitude toward the form of taxation embodied in the bill, in a statement which is of permanent interest as showing the motives which actuated him not only then but in other efforts in the direction of governmental control and regulation which he made a few years later as President of the United States:
"I am perfectly well aware, as Chief Justice Marshall says, 'The power of taxation is the power of destruction.' But this applies to every species of property. If demagogues or ignorant enthusiasts who are misled by demagogues, could succeed in destroying wealth, they would, of course, simply work the ruin of the entire community, and, first of all, of the unfortunates for whom they profess to feel an especial interest. But the very existence of unreasoning hostility to wealth should make us all the more careful in seeing that wealth does nothing to justify such hostility. We are the true friends of the men of means; we are the true friends of the lawful corporate interests, which do good work for the community, when we insist that the men of means and the great corporations shall pay their full share of taxes and have their full share of the public burdens. If this is done, then, sooner or later, will follow public recognition of the fact that it is done; and when there is no legitimate basis for discontent the American public is sure, sooner or later, to cease feeling discontent."
The critics and opponents of his course in securing the enactment of the bill had charged, while the measure was pending, among other things, that he was acting from impulse and in a reckless disregard of consequences, not fully realizing what he was doing. When his call for a special session appeared they declared that it was a humiliating confession of ignorance on his part, of his own inability to frame an effective measure. On this form of attack the Tribune of May 23, 1899, commented as follows:
"Governor Roosevelt's course in calling the extra session of the Legislature is in sharp contrast with what would be regarded as 'good policy' by 'sharp politicians.' His engaging frankness in dealing with public problems takes their breath away.
"It is easy to say that the Governor has called the extra session to get himself out of a scrape, and people who want him to be in a scrape are quick to say it. As a matter of fact, the extra session was called at the suggestion of the franchise-holders.''
Efforts were made when the special session came together to outwit and defeat the Governor by various devices. One was to withdraw the law and thus prevent him from signing it in its present form. Another was to pass amendments that would nullify its effect. He defeated all of these by holding the original bill as a whip over the heads of the machine leaders, saying it could not be withdrawn and he would sign it at once unless such changes as he desired were made. The bill was amended as he requested and was passed by large majorities in the two houses.
No sooner had it become law than the lawyers of the corporations who had asked for the changes, challenged its constitutionality in the courts and based their challenge on the changes which they themselves had requested. One of these legal luminaries was David Bennett Hill, at various times Democratic Governor, Democratic Boss and United States Senator. For six years the constitutionality of the law was disputed in the courts. It was sustained first in the Supreme Court of the State; then, on April 23, 1903, unanimously sustained by the Court of Appeals of New York; and, finally, on May 29, 1905, also unanimously, by the Supreme Court of the United States. Among the counsel assailing the constitutionality of the act were several of the most eminent corporation lawyers of New York City.
When the final decision was rendered there was paid over to the State Treasury taxes which had been withheld, amounting with interest for six years, to more than $26,000,000.
In addition to the Franchise Tax Law the Governor, by persistent personal effort, secured the passage by the Legislature of 1899 of a new Civil Service Law which he pronounced the "best in the Nation." He had during his service as Governor continued his investigations of tenement house conditions in New York and had secured the passage of a law, which was the first effective exercise of real and intelligent supervision of industries carried on in tenement-houses. It abolished "sweat-shops" from New York City for all time. "Not a single law," he said in reviewing the Legislature's work, "has been put on the statute books which ought not to be put there, and not a single appointment had been made which ought not to have been made." After the adjournment of the Legislature and before the special session was called, Senator Platt wrote a long letter to Roosevelt which is of interest not only in revealing Platt's mental attitude toward the Franchise Tax measure but in revealing also the fact that in forcing the Legislature to act in the matter the Governor had not consulted the boss. In his letter the Senator said:
"When the subject of your nomination was under consideration, there was one matter that gave me real anxiety. I think you will have no trouble in appreciating the fact that it was not the matter of your independence.
"The thing that did bother me was this: I had heard from a good many sources that you were a little loose on the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and combinations, and, indeed, on those numerous questions which have recently arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the right of a man to run his own business in his own way, with due respect of course to the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code. Or, to get at it even more clearly, I understood from a number of business men, and among them many of your own personal friends, that you entertained various altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, but which before they could safely be put into law needed very profound consideration. . . . You have just adjourned a Legislature which created a good opinion throughout the State. I congratulate you heartily upon this fact because I sincerely believe, as everybody else does, that this good impression exists very largely as a result of your personal influence in the Legislative chambers. But at the last moment, and to my very great surprise, you did a thing which has caused the business community of New York to wonder how far the notions of Populism, as laid down in Kansas and Nebraska, have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State of New York."
The Senator's curious use of the word "altruistic" caused Roosevelt much amusement. In his reply he assured the Senator that he was as much opposed to Populism in every stage as the greatest representatives of corporate wealth were, and defined his real position as follows:
 "I do not believe that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing) that, whereas the Populists, Socialists and others really do not correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand perfectly that such an attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long run the only wise attitude. ... I appreciate absolutely (what Mr. Platt had said) that any applause I get will be too evanescent for a moment's consideration. I appreciate absolutely that the people who now loudly approve of my action in the franchise tax will forget all about it in a fortnight, and that, on the other hand, the very powerful interests adversely affected will always remember it."
 When preparations were in progress for the parade in New York City in honor of Admiral Dewey, the hero of the Battle of Manila, Governor Roosevelt wrote on August 8, 1899, this characteristic letter to Avery D. Andrews, his former associate in the Police Board and at the time Adjutant General of the State:
"Everybody seems to be united in wanting me to ride at the head of the militia in the Dewey parade. What do you think of it ? If you think well of it, will you, in the first place, engage for me that black horse I rode up to camp as my steed, and will you in the next place tell me what I should wear? I know I have got to wear a black coat and a top hat. Would it do for me to wear a black cutaway coat, gray riding breeches and black top boots, or do I have to wear a black frock coat, which is an uncomfortable thing to ride in? The average Governor, I suppose, rides in gray trousers. Is this necessary? I suppose I have got to make up my mind to look either like a fake riding school master, or else like the president of a St. Patrick's day procession on parade. Which of these disagreeable alternatives is the best?"
His experience with the Franchise Tax question had turned Roosevelt's mind naturally to the consideration of trusts. On August 15, 1899, he wrote to Charles F. Scott, a Kansas friend:
"I have been in a great quandary over trusts. I do not know what attitude to take. I do not intend to play a demagogue. On the other hand, I do intend, so far as in me lies, to see that the rich man is held to the same accountability as the poor man, and when the rich man is rich enough to buy unscrupulous advice from very able lawyers; this is not always easy."
In the midst of his struggles with Senator Platt and the Legislature he began during his first term as Governor to write the "Life of Oliver Cromwell," completing it in the summer of 1899.

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CHAPTER TWELVE,.
GOVBENOR OP NEW YORK—SECOND YEAR,.
roosevelt's second year as Governor opened with the fiercest fight that he had yet had with Senator Platt. It arose out of a difference of opinion between the two concerning the reappointment of an official, Payn, who was one of the most devoted of Platt's followers, a county boss in the Platt machine, and a thoroughgoing old-time spoils politician. He had held the office of Superintendent of Insurance for several years and his conduct in its administration, as shown by investigations, which the Governor had instituted, was far from being what it should have been. His term was about to expire and the Governor announced in advance of the meeting of the Legislature in January, 1900, his determination not to reappoint him. Platt at once issued an ultimatum to Roosevelt that he must be reappointed or he would fight the Governor, saying that the incumbent would remain in office anyway, since under the Constitution he could only be removed with the consent of the Senate and he would continue in office till his successor was confirmed by the Senate, and he, Platt, could control the Senate absolutely. Roosevelt kept his temper, allowing Platt to do the threatening and blustering, and selected a candidate for the position who was a man of character, a Republican and a friend of Platt's, whose position in the party was such as to make it difficult for the Senate to reject him. Platt, in a stormy interview with Roosevelt in New York City, refused to accept the man, saying to Roosevelt that if he insisted, it would be war to the knife, and his (Roosevelt's) destruction and possibly the destruction of the party. Roosevelt replied that he was sorry he could not yield, that if the war came it would have to come, and that he should send to the Senate the name of his chosen candidate on the following morning.
Following closely on the heels of the interview, Roosevelt received a message from Platt's chief agent, asking for an appointment for the evening. Roosevelt named the Union League Club, and the two met there. The agent went over the same ground that Platt had covered, declaring that Platt would never yield, that he was certain to win the fight, that Roosevelt's reputation would be destroyed, and that he wished to save him from such a lamentable smash-up as an ending to his career. Roosevelt repeated his decision, and saying that nothing was to be accomplished by further talk, arose to go away. The agent repeated that it was Roosevelt's last chance, that ruin was ahead of him if he refused it, but that if he accepted everything would be easy. Roosevelt shook his head and answered : '' There is nothing to add to what I have already said." "You know it means your ruin!" said the agent. "Well, we will see about that," answered Roosevelt. "You understand," continued the agent, "the fight will begin tomorrow and will be carried to the bitter end." "Yes," replied Roosevelt, as he reached the door, adding "Good night" as he opened it. Before he could pass out, the agent exclaimed: "Hold on! We accept. Send in Blank's name. The Senator is very sorry, but he will make no further opposition."
The name of Roosevelt's candidate was sent to the Senate and confirmation followed. Platt's own account of the incident, as given in his 'Autobiography,' shows that after the struggle was over he was able to take a humorous view of it. Speaking of Roosevelt's "whirlwind fashion of cleaning house" at Albany, he says:
"He threw Superintendent of Insurance Louis F. Payn out of his job so quickly as to send that official to me with a cry: ' I warned you that fellow would soon have you dangling at his chariot wheel. You would not believe me. He has begun by scalping members of your ' Old Guard.' He '11 get you, too, soon.'
"Roosevelt told me that he proposed to remove Lou Payn. I protested, but he was removed, and I was consulted about the appointment of his successor."
While Roosevelt's private struggle with Platt was in progress the Independent leaders and newspapers were demanding that he must make open war on the boss as the only way of political and moral salvation for himself. At the very moment of his triumph he received on January 24, 1900, from the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst a telegram, which was also given to the press, which ran as follows:
"If you distinctly, uncompromisingly and frankly throw down the gauntlet to T. C. Platt the whole State will stand by you. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve."
Just what would have been the result if the Governor had followed this advice, proffered in the unruffled serenity and assurance of absolute ignorance of actual conditions, was explained by Roosevelt in a letter which he wrote several months later, on June 11, 1900, to Henry L. Nelson:
"I needed 26 votes. By canvass I found that I would have two Democratic votes for me and 21 against me, and that I should lose in any event two Republican votes whom Payn could control without any reference to Platt or the organization. This left me a leeway of just one vote, and it is of course unnecessary to say that in any mere fight between Platt and myself he could have controlled several, votes, no matter how strong I made the issue. On the other hand, I had succeeded in making the case so strongly that as long as I resolutely declined to mix it in any way with a factional fight in the Republican party and simply took the ground that I would support any thoroughly upright and competent man against Payn, I was in a position of impregnable strength and could win out. What conceivable object or purpose even the brain of Dr. Parkhurst could see in my, at such a time, wholly changing the issue and securing the irrevocable retention of Payn by a denunciation of Platt, who had just assented to my proposition to take the man I had first suggested, it is impossible for me to imagine."
This incident is of value as an illustration of the persistent inability or unwillingness of the professional Independents to discover any merit in Roosevelt's method of fighting evil men and evil practises in his own party. They could not fail to see that he was accomplishing results, but because he was accomplishing them in his own way rather than in the way that they told him he should adopt, they saw no virtue in him. Like Dr. Parkhurst, they were constantly declaring when a crisis arose between him and evil powers in his party, that he was "at the parting of the ways," and that if he did not select their way he would enter on the broad road that led to destruction. He invariably chose his own way, but in spite of the fact that destruction never followed, the prediction of ruin was repeated with undiminished confidence whenever a new "parting" was discerned.
This method of treatment continued with unvaried persistency after he became President, greatly to his amusement. After a particularly enjoyable instance of it in 1902 he wrote to me on April 23 of that year:
"One delightful feature about the editorials in the Evening Post on this perpetual 'parting of the ways' is that each time there is an unconscious assumption that they must have been mistaken the time before; for I have always gone down what they consider the wrong road, yet on each occasion they speak as if I had hitherto been doing right, but was now about to commit a criminal blunder!"
A concise and comprehensive statement of his course iri regard to Senator Platt during the period of his Governorship was made by Roosevelt in a letter to the Rev. Dr. T. E. Slicer on June 29, 1900:
"I have never done and shall never do one thing I ought not to do at the request of Senator Platt, and the whole success of my administration has been due, as much as to any other one cause, to the fact that I have been able to work with the organization. It was because of this fact, coupled, of course, with the fact that I intended resolutely without wavering to have my own way on questions of deep principle, that I have been able to carry my point as regards every important matter."
Writing again to his friend, James 0. Carter of New York City, on March 19, 1900, he gave a general statement of his tribulations with reformers, enclosing a striking quotation from Macaulay:
"The other day I came across something in Macaulay about Scotland in 1690, which runs as follows:
" 'It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes of human nature. Even in things indifferent the Scotch Puritan would hear of no compromise ; and he was but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand the Scotchmen of that generation who made a figure in Parliament were the most dishonest and unblushing time servers that the world has ever seen. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent vice should be found in the near neighborhood of unreasonable and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business.'
"It seems to me that this paragraph portrays pretty well the conditions which make self-government so difficult in New York City. On the one hand we have the sodden masses of poor, ignorant and sometimes vicious people who are the ready-made tools for Tammany or any other machine. On the other, we have good men, or at least well-meaning men, who have permitted the practical capacity for self-government to atrophy. In Scotland in the last quarter of the 17th century, the existence of the unreasonable Puritan did not tend to make public life better, but, for the reasons given by Macaulay, to make it worse; and it was not until he lost some of the very qualities of which I complain in many reformers to-day, that he became a practical force for righteousness. Heaven knows I appreciate the need of disinterestedness, of public spirit, of all that we associate with the name of reform; and it is because I do appreciate the need that I hate to see men in New York who ought to be forces on the right side, not only decline to go with decent men who are striving practicably for decency, but by their course alienate shrewd and sensible men from all reform movements."
During his second year he gave careful consideration to a bill, which had been introduced in the Legislature which aimed to limit the aggregate of insurance that any company could assume. After a thorough study of the subject he reached the conclusion that whatever evils might exist in the insurance business they were not due to the volume of it but to the methods employed in obtaining it. He reached the conclusion then, which he adhered to without variation or modification afterwards in all his efforts to regulate and control big business, that the line should not be drawn on size but on conduct. He declined to favor the pending bill. Several years later, during the Governorship of Mr. Hughes, a bill of the same nature was made law but it worked so badly that Governor Hughes himself signed its repeal near the end of his second term.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN,.
 NOMINATED AND ELECTED VICE-PRESIDENT,.
early in the second year of his term as Governor, in fact, near the close of the first year, Roosevelt's peace of mind began to be disturbed by proposals to have him nominated for Vice-President. On December 29, 1899, he wrote as follows about it to Senator Lodge:
"Platt told me that you and Chandler wanted me nominated; that some of the far-Western Senators wanted me because they thought I would strengthen the ticket in their States; but that the general opinion was that it would not be a wise move for me personally as I should be simply shelved as Vice-President and could do nothing, for if I did anything I should attract suspicion and antagonism. All my Western friends keep writing me to the same effect. I do not think I have had a letter from any of them advising me to take the nomination, and I have had scores advising me not to take it."
Writing again to Senator Lodge, on January 22, 1900, he said:
"On Saturday Platt for the first time stated to me very strongly that he believed I ought to take the Vice-Presidency both for national and for State reasons. I believe Platt rather likes me, though I render him uncomfortable for some of the things I do."
On February 1, 1900, he wrote a long letter to Senator Platt giving his reasons for not desiring the nomination:
"I can't help feeling more and more that the Vice-Presidency is not an office in which I could do anything and not an office in which a man still vigorous and not past middle life has much chance of doing anything. I have thoroughly enjoyed being Governor. I have kept every promise, expressed or implied, I made on the stump and I feel that the Republican party is stronger before the State because of my incumbency. Certainly everything is being managed now on a perfectly straight basis and every office is as clean as a whistle. Now, I should like to be Governor for another term, especially ,if we are able to take hold of the canal in serious shape. But as Vice-President I don't see there is anything I can do. I would be simply a presiding officer and that I should find a bore."
Writing again to Senator Lodge, on February 2, 1900, he said:
"In the Vice-Presidency I could do nothing. I am a comparatively young man yet and I like work. I do not like to be a figure-head. It would not entertain me to preside in the Senate. I should be in a cold shiver of rage at
inability to answer hounds like P *blank*	 and scarcely more
admirable  M*blank*and H*blank*. So, old man, I am going to declare decisively that I want to be Governor and do not want
to be Vice-President."
On the following day, February 3, 1900, in a letter to Senator Lodge, he explained why Senator Platt was in favor of the nomination:
"I have found out one reason why Senator Platt wants me nominated for the Vice-Presidency. The big moneyed men with whom he is in close touch and whose campaign contributions have certainly been no inconsiderable factor in his strength, have been pressing him very strongly to get me put in the Vice-Presidency, so as to get me out of the State. It was the big insurance companies, possessing enormous wealth, that gave Payn his formidable strength, and they to a man want me out. The great corporations affected by the franchise tax, have also been at the Senator. In fact, all the big moneyed interests that make campaign contributions of large size and feel that they should have favors in return, are extremely anxious to get me out of the State. I find that they have been at Platt for the last two or three months and he has finally begun to yield to them and to take their view. Outside of that the feeling here is very strong against my going. In fact, all of my friends in the State would feel that I was deserting them, and are simply unable to understand my considering it."
Writing to Senator Platt on February 7, 1900, he expressed a decided preference for some other position:
"The more I have thought over it, the more I have felt that I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than Vice-President.''
On April 3, 1900, he sent to Senator Marcus A. Hanna, who was opposed to his nomination, his reasons for not desiring it:
"Let me point out that I am convinced that I can do most good to the national ticket by running as Governor of this State. There will be in New York a very curious feeling of resentment both against myself and against the party leaders if I run as Vice-President, and this will affect our vote I believe; whereas if I run as Governor I can strengthen the national ticket more than in any other way. I do not think we can afford to take liberties in this State."
In common with his other friends I was strongly opposed to the nomination of Roosevelt for Vice-President. Throughout his service as Governor I had been in constant and intimate association with him and had been fully informed of every step that he had taken in his efforts to put his ideas into practise, including his struggles with Senator Platt. There was no doubt in my mind that desire to get him out of the State was the chief if not the sole cause of the movement to nominate him for the Vice-Presidency. His usefulness to the State had been shown to be so great that it seemed to me nothing less than a public misfortune to take him away at what was really only the opening stage of his work, and in the hope of defeating the movement, I wrote letters to men of influence in the Republican party at Washington and elsewhere entreating them to oppose it. Among others I wrote to my long-time friend John Hay, then Secretary of State. He was a close friend and admirer of Senator Hanna, and his reply, which undoubtedly reflected the views of the Senator, is of interest as demonstrating the risk involved in political prophecy.
department of state, washington, April 14, 1900. My dear Bishop:
I have your letter of the 10th of April, and I think you are unduly alarmed.
There is no instance on record of an election of a Vice-President by violence, and I think people here are looking in quite another direction.
Yours sincerely,
john hay.
If there was at that time no record of an election of a Vice-President by violence, a record was soon to be made of the nomination of a candidate for that office by precisely that method.
Only a few days earlier, April 11, 1900, Roosevelt, who cordially approved my efforts to secure opposition to the Vice-President movement, wrote to me:
"The dangerous element, as far as I am concerned, comes from the corporations. The (naming certain men) crowd and those like them have been greatly exasperated by the franchise tax. They would like to get me out of politics for good, but at the moment they think the best thing to do is to put me into the Vice-Presidency. Naturally I will not be opposed openly on the ground of the corporations' grievance; but every kind of false statement will continually be made, and men like (naming the editors of certain newspapers) will attack me, not as the enemy of corporations, but as their tool! There is no question whatever that if the leaders can they will upset me.''
In similar vein he wrote to John Proctor Clarke, on April 15, 1900:
"There is unquestionably a strong desire to make me take the Vice-Presidency. Many corporations have served notice on the Republican leaders that they won't contribute if I am nominated for Governor, and that they will do their best to beat me. This is mainly on account of the franchise tax, but also on account of various other acts which I am bound to say I still regard as extremely creditable—as, to be frank, I do their whole opposition, if it comes to that."
Senator Platt's perturbed state of mind is revealed in the following letter from Roosevelt to Senator Lodge, on June 9, 1900:
'' Senator Platt is not in a pleasant frame of mind with me, chiefly because of the franchise tax. He told me last night that he thought it would lose me so many votes as to jeopardize my election."
On June 12, 1900, a week before the assembling of the National Republican Convention, Roosevelt wrote to General F. V. Greene:
"The Organization, pressed by the corporations, is still very anxious to have me nominated for the Vice-Presidency. .It is, however, entirely too late now for me to alter my position. I will not accept under any circumstances, and that is all there is about it."
The National Republican Convention met at Philadelphia on June 19, 1900. Roosevelt attended as a delegate from New York and was genuinely surprised to discover on arrival that there was a very strong sentiment among the delegates in favor of his nomination. Just what happened subsequently is best told in letters that he wrote to his friends after the convention adjourned. Writing to the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott on June 27, 1900, he said:
   "The nomination came to me at Philadelphia simply be cause the bulk of the enormous majority of the delegates were bent upon having me whether I wished it or not, and all the more because Senator Hanna objected to it. Senator Platt wished me nominated and, as you saw, I absolutely upset him and stood the New York machine on its head, forcing them without one exception to stand against me and support another candidate. "When I did this I supposed that it completely dissipated the possibility of my nomination. The effect was just the opposite. The delegates who had already been saying that they would not have Senator Hanna dictate whom they should or should not nominate, now merely said: ' So Roosevelt has stood Platt on his head, has he? Well, that settles it. We might not wish him placed on the ticket by Platt, but now we have got to have him anyway.' "
To Hon. Geo. H. Lyman, he wrote on June 27, 1900: "Every real friend of mine will consistently speak of me as exactly what I am—the man chosen because it is believed he will add strength to a cause which, however, is already infinitely stronger than any strength of his—a man absolutely and entirely, in the second place, whom it is grossly absurd and unjust to speak of in any other capacity. This is the attitude which must be assumed in the most emphatic way."
On the same date he wrote to Senator Hanna proffering his campaign services:
"I wish in this campaign to do whatever you think wise—• whatever is likely to produce the best results for the Republican ticket. I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit. One side of the problem is the fact that I must not seem to neglect my duties as Governor of New York."
While the nomination had not been welcomed by him, Roosevelt accepted it philosophically and regarded it as marking the end of his political career. He said to me at the time that he felt neither disappointment nor depression ; that he had won a modest amount of military honor, had been Governor of New York, as well as held other important public offices, and could leave to his children the record of a career of which they would not be ashamed. As for occupation, he proposed to resume study of the law and enter upon active practise of that profession. He added: "If I have been put on the shelf, my enemies will find that I can make it a cheerful place of abode.''
To Edward S. Martin, he wrote in similar vein on November 22, 1900:
"I do not expect to go any further in politics. Heaven knows there is no reason to expect that a man of so many and so loudly and not always wisely expressed convictions on so many different subjects should go so far! But I have had a first-class run for my money, and I honestly think I have accomplished a certain amount."
Among the first to congratulate Roosevelt on his nomination was Secretary Hay who wrote to him on June 21, 1900:
"As it is all over but the shouting, I take a moment of this cool morning of the longest day in the year to offer you my cordial congratulations. The week has been a racking one to you. But I have no doubt the future will make amends. You have received the greatest compliment the country could pay you, and although it is not precisely what you and your friends desire, I have no doubt it is all for the best. Nothing can keep you from doing good work wherever you are—nor from getting lots of fun out of it.
"We Washingtonians, of course, have our own little point of view. You can't lose us; and we shall be uncommonly glad to see you here again."
To which Roosevelt replied on June 25, 1900, from Sagamore Hill:
"Well, I now join the innumerable throng of New York's Vice-Presidential progeny in esse or posse. I should like to have stayed where there was real work; but I would be a fool not to appreciate and be deeply touched by the way I was nominated; and the one great thing at the next election is to reelect the President, and if my candidacy helps toward that end, well and good.
"If only the New York machine (which I had to stand on its head, as a preliminary) will defer its policy of feeding grudges fat until after election! I earnestly hope they will nominate in my place some man who will strengthen, not weaken, the national ticket."
Before finishing his duties as Governor, Roosevelt had an opportunity, which he was prompt to improve to the utmost, to show his mettle, as the Chief Executive of the State. On the eve of the Presidential election in November, 1900, the Tammany Chief of Police issued an official order to his subordinates directing them to disregard orders that had been issued by the Chief of the State Bureau of Elections, orders that were essential to the securing of an honest election in the city. Roosevelt had, as Governor, no power over the Chief of Police but he had power over the Mayor of the city, and from his residence in Oyster Bay where he was at the time, he sent the following letters:
state of new york
oyster bay, November 5, 1900.
To the Mayor of the City of New York.
sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief of Police Devery, in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies. Unless you have already taken steps to secure the recall of this order, it is necessary for me to point out that I shall be obliged to hold you responsible as the head of the city government for the action of the Chief of Police, if it should result in any breach of the peace and intimidation or any crime whatever against the election laws. The State and city authorities should work together. I will not fail to call to summary account either State or city authority in the event of either being guilty of intimidation or connivance at fraud or of failure to protect every legal voter in his rights. I therefore hereby notify you that in the event of any wrongdoing following upon the failure immediately to recall Chief Devery's order, or upon any action or inaction on the part of Chief Devery, I must necessarily call you to account.
Yours, etc.,
theodore roosevelt.
state of new yobk
oyster bay, November 5, 1900. To the Sheriff of the County of New York.
sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief of Police Devery, in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies.
It is your duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the law, and I shall hold you strictly responsible for any breach of the public peace within your county, or for any failure on your part to do your full duty in connection with the election to-morrow.
Yours truly,
theodore roosevelt.
state oF new york
oyster bay, November 5, 1900. To the District Attorney of the Cowity of New York.
sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief of Police Devery, in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies.
In view of this order I call your attention to the fact that it is your duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the law, and there must be no failure on your part to do your full duty in the matter.
Yours truly,
theodore roosevelt.
The effect of the letters was instantaneous. The Mayor directed the Chief of Police to rescind his order, and the Sheriff also took prompt action. The District Attorney refused to heed the letter addressed to him, assumed an attitude of defiance of the Governor, and Roosevelt removed him from office. A quiet and honest election followed.
Secretary Hay wrote a congratulatory letter to the Governor on his performance, and to this Roosevelt replied on November 10, 1900:
"I am really grateful to Croker for making Devery commit an overt act which put the whole gang in my power. I immediately took some secret steps which have never come out, getting into communication with the Adjutant General instantly, so that in the event of need I could have any regiment of the National Guard out at once. I believed that they would take water as they actually did. If they had not, I would have taken off the heads of the Mayor, Sheriff and District Attorney within 48 hours—that is, just long enough for the legal formalities of a trial to be complied with, and if by any possible construction I could have gotten at Croker and Hearst, I should have done all that was within my power to make them pay to the last cent for any misconduct, which really would have been due to them."
While devoting his energies unremittingly to his duties as Governor, Roosevelt followed closely all developments in national and international affairs and expressed his views thereon freely in his correspondence with friends. When the first Hay-Pauncefote treaty was published, in 1900, he took a position in regard to its provisions which foreshadowed accurately the course that he followed later as President in securing the fortification of the Panama Canal. Writing to Capt, A. T. Mahan on February 14, 1900, he said:
'' As you know, I am heartily friendly to England, but I cannot help feeling that the State Department has made a great error in the canal treaty. We really make not only England but all the great continental powers our partners in tb.6 transaction, and I do not see why we should dig the canal if we are not to fortify it so as to insure its being used for ourselves and against our foes in time of war."
He gave public expression also to his disapproval of the treaty, with effects described in the following letter to Dr. Albert Shaw:
"My published statement about the canal treaty has, as I anticipated it would, caused no little trouble. Hay has written me a confidential letter of grieved protest. To me his position is simply incomprehensible."
To Secretary Hay's remonstrance Roosevelt replied as follows on February 18, 1900:
state of new york,
executive chamber, albany,
February 18, 1900.
I hesitated long before I said anything about the treaty through sheer dread of two moments—that in which I should receive your note, and that in which I should receive Cabot's (Senator Henry Cabot Lodge). But I made up my mind that at least I wished to be on record; for to my mind this step is one backward, and it may be fraught with very great mischief. You have been the greatest Secretary of State I have seen in my time—Olney comes second—but at this moment I cannot, try as I may, see that you are right. Understand me. When the treaty is adopted, as I suppose it will be, I shall put the best face possible on it, and shall back the Administration as heartily as ever; but oh, how I wish you and the President would drop the treaty and push through a bill to build and fortify our own canal.
My objections are twofold. First, as to naval policy. If the proposed canal had been in existence in '98, the Oregon could have come more quickly through to the Atlantic; but this fact would have been far outweighed by the fact that Cervera's fleet would have had open to it the chance of itself going through the canal, and thence sailing to attack Dewey or to menace our stripped Pacific Coast. If that canal is open to the warships of an enemy, it is a menace to us in time of war; it is an added burden, an additional strategic point to be guarded by our fleet. If fortified by us, it becomes one of the most potent sources of our possible sea strength. Unless so fortified it strengthens against us every nation whose fleet is larger than ours. One prime reason for fortifying our great seaports is to unfetter our fleet, to release it for offensive purposes; and the proposed canal would fetter it again, for our fleet would have to watch it, and therefore do the work which a fort should do; and what it could do much better.
Secondly, as to the Monroe Doctrine. If we invite foreign powers to a joint ownership, a joint guarantee, of what so vitally concerns us but a little way from our borders, how can we possibly object to similar joint action say in Southern Brazil or Argentina, where our interests are so much less evident? If Germany has the same right that we have in the canal across Central America, why not in the partition of any part of Southern America? To my mind, we should consistently refuse to all European powers the right to control, in any shape, any territory in the Western Hemisphere which they do not already hold.
As for existing treaties—I do not admit the "dead hand" of the treaty making power in the past. A treaty can always be honorably abrogated—though it must never be abrogated in dishonest fashion.
Yours ever,
theodore Roosevelt.
A few weeks after the election, on November 22, 1900, Roosevelt wrote this characteristically frank and generous letter to ex-President Grover Cleveland:
"During the last campaign I grew more and more to realize the very great service you had rendered to the whole country by what you did about free silver. As I said to a Republican audience in South Dakota, I think your letter on free silver prior to your second nomination was as bold a bit of honest writing as I have ever seen in American public life. And more than anything else it put you in the position of doing for the American public in this matter of free silver what at that time no other man could have done. I think now we have definitely won out on the free silver business and, therefore, I think you are entitled to thanks and congratulations."
It may not be inappropriate for me to add to this just tribute a brief account of a personal interview which I had with Mr. Cleveland, at his house in New York City, in the winter of 1891. It was soon after he had written his letter on the silver question in which he had come out squarely for the maintenance of the gold standard. I told him that I had been watching with great interest the reception given to the letter by Democratic newspapers throughout the country and had been surprised by the small amount of adverse criticism it had aroused. He said, as nearly as I can recall his words and I am sure that I give the substance accurately:
"Well, I have been tempted to say something of the kind for several months, but I refrained because I knew if I said it there would be a cry raised ' Oh, he wants to be President again!' Now, Bishop, I've been President, and a man who has had it once is not overanxious to have it again. But the time seemed to have arrived when I ought to speak and so I let 'em have it.' Then, with a complete change of manner, and with a twinkle in his eye, he grasped me by the knee and in a confidential tone said: Bishop, you'll find there's some pretty good politics in that letter too!"
And there was, for it secured for its writer a unanimous nomination for the Presidency and a triumphant reelection a year later.
Roosevelt's service as Vice-President was destined to be very brief. His anticipatory fears lest he should find the duty of presiding over the Senate a bore were never realized, for he occupied the chair only a week. "Writing, on March 16, 1901, to his friend, Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, he thus described his experience:
"I have really enjoyed presiding over the Senate for the week the extra session lasted. I shall get fearfully tired in the future no doubt and of course I should like a more active position."
He adhered to his purpose of resuming the study of the law, and wrote to John Proctor Clarke on the subject, on March 29, 1901:
"Just a line in reference to my studying law. I have been one year in the law school and at that time was also in my cousin John's office. Now, could I go into an office in New York—say Evarts & Choate—or study in New York or here in Oyster Bay, so as to get admitted to the bar before the end of my term as Vice President?"
He also wrote on the same subject to Alton B. Parker, then Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals of New York, and three years later his Democratic opponent for the Presidency, and was advised by him to study in the District of Columbia Law School. He accepted this advice in a letter dated May 31, 1901:
"As soon as I get back to Washington I shall begin to attend the law school there and when I have completed my two years' course and feel myself fit I shall apply for the examination.'' 

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN,. 
PBESIDENT—EARLY DECLARATIONS OF POLICY,.
president McKinley, while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, on September 6, 1901, was shot by an anarchist. Roosevelt went at once to Buffalo, as did also several members of McKinley's Cabinet. The wound was not regarded by the physicians in attendance as mortal and for a day or two the President's condition seemed so favorable that they declared him to be practically out of danger. On receiving this assurance Roosevelt joined his family in the Adirondacks. A day or two afterwards, September 14, 1901, he went on a long tramp through the forest, climbing Mount Tahawus. As he was descending the mountain and was resting upon a shelf of land which overlooked the surrounding country, he saw a guide approaching on the trail from below. When the guide reached him he handed him a telegram saying that the President was worse and that he should go at once to Buffalo. He was ten miles away from the clubhouse at which he was lodging, and it was then late in the afternoon. It was dark when he reached the clubhouse and it was some time before a horse and wagon could be procured by which he could be conveyed to the nearest railway station, North Creek, which was between forty and fifty miles away. The night was dark and the roads, being the ordinary ones of the wilderness, were far from good. He and the driver were the sole occupants of the vehicle. The horses were changed three times, and the station was reached at dawn, where Roosevelt learned that McKinley was dead, and that he was President of the United States. A special train was awaiting to take him to Buffalo. On the evening of the same day, in the house of a friend, Ansley Wilcox, in Buffalo, he took the oath of office in the presence of Secretary Root and other members of McKinley's Cabinet, and a few other persons. After taking the oath, he said:
"In this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity and honor of our beloved country."
One of the first letters to reach him was the following from Secretary Hay, written from Washington on September 15,1901, a letter such as only John Hay could write, and which touched Roosevelt very deeply:
My dear Roosevelt:
If the Presidency had come to you in any other way, no one would have congratulated you with better heart than I. My sincere affection and esteem for you, my old-time love for your father—would he could have lived to see you where you are!—would have been deeply gratified.
And even from the depths of the sorrow where I sit, with my grief for the President mingled and confused with that for my boy, so that I scarcely know, from hour to hour, the true source of my tears—I do still congratulate you, not only on the opening of an official career which I know will be glorious, but upon the vast opportunity for useful work which lies before you. With your youth, your ability, your health and strength, the courage God has given you to do right, there are no bounds to the good you can accomplish for your country and the name you will leave in its annals.
My official life is at an end—my natural life will not be long extended; and so, in the dawn of what I am sure will be a great and splendid future, I venture to give you the heartfelt benediction of the past.
God bless you.
Yours faithfully,
john hay.
The new President left Buffalo for Washington on September 16, 1901, and on the following day he called a meeting of the members of the Cabinet and asked them to remain in office, which they consented to do, Hay with the others. He attended the funeral of President McKinley at Canton, Ohio, and on September 20, took up his residence in the White House. In accordance with an invitation which he had sent to me on his journey from Buffalo, I was his guest in the White House on the evening of that day, no one else being present, for his family had not arrived and no other guest had been asked. We had a long and intimate conversation in which he talked freely of his policies and purposes as President. I said to him that no man had ever entered upon the office more absolutely free of all obligation to any one than he had; that he owed his possession of it to no one, but that, on the contrary, he had acceded to it in spite of persistent efforts of his most zealous enemies to prevent him from ever reaching it; and that he would enter upon his duties with the certainty of holding the office for seven years. He replied at once, and with great emphasis:
"I don't know anything about seven years. But this I do know—I am going to be President for three years, and I am going to do my utmost to give the country a good President during that period. I am going to be full President, and I rather be full President for three years than half a President for seven years. Now, mind you, I am no second Grover Cleveland. I admire certain of his qualities, but I have no intention of doing with the Republican party what he did with the Democratic party. I intend to work with my party and to make it strong by making it worthy of popular support."
He went on to say that he should not abandon a single one of the principles that had formed the basis of his public career, and that no matter how powerful might be the influences brought to bear to induce him to waver on a single one of them, he should not yield a hair's breadth. When I dwelt upon the fact that influences which were certain to combine against him were far more powerful than any that he had encountered hitherto, he replied that he was perfectly well aware of that but had no fear of ultimate victory since he was sure that the people would be on his side, and he should always let the people know what he was trying to accomplish.
That he was deeply impressed with the great responsibilities, which had been placed upon him was apparent in all he said to me, and the same feeling found expression in the letters which he wrote at the time. To his friend, Senator Lodge, he wrote on September 23, 1901:
"It is a dreadful thing to come into the Presidency in this way; but it would be a far worse thing to be morbid about it. Here is the task, and I have got to do it to the best of my ability, and that is all there is about it."
To Richard Olney, who had been Secretary of State in President Cleveland's Cabinet, and who had sent him a letter of confidence and good wishes, he replied on the same date:
"I know I need not tell you that I appreciate to the full the burdens placed upon me. All that in me lies to do will be done, to make my work a success. That I shall be able to solve with entire satisfaction to myself or any one else each of the many problems confronting me, I cannot of course hope for, but I shall do my best in each case, and in a reasonable number of cases I shall hope to meet with success. At any rate, I want you to know one thing. I can conscientiously say that my purpose is entirely single. I want to make a good President and to keep the administration upright and efficient; to follow policies external and internal which shall be for the real and ultimate benefit of our people as a whole, and all party considerations will be absolutely secondary."
There was general recognition, not only in Washington but throughout the country, that Roosevelt's accession to the Presidency meant the opening of a new epoch in national history. The Republican party had been for many years becoming more and more the party not merely of conservatives but of reactionaries. Its policy was controlled by the great industrial and commercial interests which had grown into enormous proportions during the preceding quarter of a century. These, with the allied railway interests, constituted a veritable imperium in imperio, an invisible government more powerful than the government itself. The representatives of these interests argued, with all the sincerity of profound conviction, that since under their guidance and through their development the country had attained the greatest prosperity it had ever known, it was only just that the country should be given the kind of government most favorable to them. Their reasoning had never found more complete acceptance than was the case under President McKinley's administration.
The first note of protest lifted by any Republican official and leader had come from Roosevelt while he was Governor of New York. The entire country had heard it, and the powerful interests whose dominion it threatened had combined in a determined effort to render him powerless by "placing him on the shelf" of the Vice-Presidency, thus retiring him from public life. Knowing the man through his course in the Governorship they knew what confronted them when he became the Executive of the nation. The period of complacent acquiescence in things as they were had closed.
A new period, of action in the field of the things that ought to be, was about to open. Henry Adams, who had known Roosevelt long and intimately, in his very remarkable book, "The Education of Henry Adams," says of him as he entered upon the Presidency:
"Power when wielded by abnormal energy is the most serious of facts, and all Roosevelt's friends knew that his restless and combative energy was more than normal. Roosevelt, more than any other living man within the range of notoriety, showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter—the  quality that mediaeval theology assigned to God—he was pure act.''
The record of his first year in the Presidency amply confirms this view of Roosevelt's dominant quality, for it is crowded with action, most of it in directions hitherto carefully selected for inaction.
From the very beginning, the new President left no room for doubt as to his unchanged attitude toward public office and public duty. He stood, as he had throughout his career, for honest, decent and efficient government in the interest of all the people, and whatever change was necessary to secure it, that change he should seek. Regarding his policy towards the new insular possessions, he announced on September 24, 1901, in reply to some inquiries by politicians on the subject, that "absolutely no appointments in the insular possessions will be dictated or controlled by political considerations." On September 26, 1901, he wrote to William H. Hunt, Governor of Porto Rico:
"In dealing with the Philippines, Cuba and Porto Rico my purpose is to give Taft and Wood and yourself the largest liberty of action possible, and the heartiest support on my part. In taking up the question of the lesser appointments I want to consult especially you three men, for I have the utmost confidence in each of you. I shall certainly not appoint any man whom any one of you who has to be over or with that man disapproves of."
In accordance with his purpose of working with the leaders of his party whenever possible rather than against them, he wrote a cordial letter to Senator Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio, requesting an early conference with him. Senator Hanna had been universally recognized as the "power behind the throne'' in the McKinley administration and there was much speculation as to the maintenance of harmonious relations between him and the new President owing to supposed radical differences of opinion concerning the proper use of public offices. Senator Hanna's response to the President's request, made from Cleveland, date of October 12, 1901, is an interesting document:
"I am in receipt of yours of the 8th inst. and reply that I will see you at the earliest time possible consistent with my duties here. Have had a full talk with Mr. Payne (Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and subsequently Postmaster General in Roosevelt's Cabinet) there are many important matters to be considered from a political standpoint and I am sure we will agree upon a proper course to pursue. Meantime 'go slow.' You will be besieged from all sides and I fear in some cases will get the wrong impression. Hear them all patiently but reserve your decision—unless in cases which may require immediate attention. Then if my advice is of importance Cortelyou can reach me over the 'long distance.' "
The politicians of the Republican party had early information concerning the new President's ideas about the proper use of public office. On the first day that he held a reception for visitors, September 21, 1901, he said to three Southern Congressmen who asked about his policy in regard to appointments in the South:
"I am going to be President of the United States and not of any section. I don't care that (snapping his fingers) for sections or sectional lines. When I was Governor of New York I was told I could make four appointments in the army. When I sent in the names three of the four men were from the South and the other was from New York. They were brave men who deserved recognition for services in the Spanish War and it did not matter to me what States they were from.
"Half my blood is Southern and I have lived in the West, so that I feel that I can represent the whole country.
"If I cannot find Republicans I am going to appoint Democrats. I intend to make such appointments as will induce every Southern man to respect the Republican party.''
In accordance with this declaration, he announced on October 7, 1901, that he should appoint as Judge of the United States District Court in Alabama, Thomas G. Jones, a liberal Democrat and an ex-Confederate. This selection was made without consulting Senator Hanna and in violation of the established custom of consulting him about all Southern appointments. The Senator wrote asking why there had been such haste in the matter, and the President, under date of October 8, 1901, replied:
"The reason I wanted to decide about the judgeship in Alabama quickly was because my experience has taught me that in such a case a quick decision really prevents bitterness."
On the day following the appointment a letter was received by the President from Grover Cleveland commending Mr. Jones for the position. Replying to this on October 9, 1901, the President wrote:
"I hardly know whether to say I am glad or sorry that I had appointed Mr. Jones Judge before I received your letter. But this I can say, that it was the greatest gratification to find that you would be glad of the appointment and thought so well of him."
About this period, the President said to an Illinois Representative who was pressing the claims of a constituent to office:
"I want it thoroughly understood that no Presidential appointee has a prescriptive right to hold office. I intend to consult only the public welfare in making appointments. As long as a man proves himself fit and efficient his position is safe. When he shows himself unfit and inefficient he will be removed."
A few days later a Senator from Illinois who was urging the appointment of a constituent to a position said: "He
is backed, Mr. President, by the Illinois organization	"
but before he could get any farther, the President interrupted him: "I wish to say, Senator, that I want to stand well with the organization, and all that, but I wish it distinctly understood that I will appoint no man to office, even if recommended by the organization, unless he is wholly qualified for the position he seeks and is a man of integrity. ''
Another and very powerful Senator from a Western State approached the President with a request that a favorite army officer be advanced to the rank of Brigadier General. He seemed to think that the favor was to be granted merely for the asking but he found the President antagonistic. He was forced to argue the matter and had started on that line when the President, with a wave of the hand, motioned him to subside. "It is of no use, Senator, for you to talk any longer. I simply will not do it and that is all there is about it. I have refused every Senator who called to see me on similar missions, and I must refuse you. It is not worth while to argue about the matter."
Senator Bailey of Texas went to the President with a similar request, saying that the promotion, which he sought was favored by the entire Legislature of Texas. "But," said the President, "it is opposed by all the man's superior officers." "I don't give a damn for his superior officers!" exclaimed the Senator. "Well, Senator," said the President, "I don't give a damn for the Legislature of Texas." He refused to promote the Senator's man, and promoted an officer who hailed from Texas and who had performed excellent service in the war with Spain.
In refusing to promote army officers on personal grounds, the President put an end to an abuse, which had been growing steadily for several years. As he said to the Senator above mentioned, he had denied similar requests from other Senators. One of these was a Senator from Maine, who was joined in the request by a Representative from the same State. To the latter Roosevelt wrote under date of November 9, 1901:
"General X. has been in several times to see me, more often than any other candidate for promotion. He has an excellent record but seems unable to understand the utter impropriety of doing what he asks, which is, not to promote him to a vacancy but to punish some man now in the service by forcing him to retire in order to do a favor to General X. It is barely possible that some case would arise of so extreme a character as to justify such a proceeding, but I can hardly imagine it. There is no warrant, whatever for doing it in General X. 's case as an exception, and it surely cannot be advocated as a general policy. It is not a question of giving General X. a promotion. It is a question of doing him a favor to which he has no more claim than hundreds of other officers, by doing a serious wrong and injustice to a man now in office."
On the same day he sent a similar letter to the Maine Senator.
Writing to a friend in Kansas, on October 9, 1901, he stated again his policy in regard to Southern appointments:
"I want to get hold of some man or men in Arkansas who will give me an absolutely square deal, when I ask for information about applicants for public office. Of course, where I can find a thoroughly fit and proper Republican to appoint I want to appoint him. If I cannot find one, then I want to take the best Democrat there is. Under no circumstances do I intend to make an improper appointment or to put an inefficient or corrupt man into office. I want to have the same high standard in office in the South as in the North."
Writing to Senator Lodge, on October 11, 1901, he outlined briefly his general policy on economic subjects and appointments :
"On the general economic questions I shall do just about what I outlined in my letter of acceptance (as nominee for Vice-President) and in my speeches on the stump, unless some good reason can be shown why I should change at any point. In the appointments I shall go on exactly as I did while I was Governor of New York. The Senators and Congressmen shall ordinarily name the men, but I shall name the standard, and the men have got to come up to it."
A few weeks later, when the question of reappointing the occupant of an important Federal office in New York City was under consideration and the President was known to be in favor of a change, a volatile young politician who was acting as errand boy from Senator Platt called upon the President in the interest of the incumbent. In the course of the conversation, the visitor threatened the President with the vengeance of the party organization if he did not reappoint the official. The President sprang from his chair, saying that in the selection of officers for the public service he was guided only by the fitness of the applicants, and adding: "If you come here to threaten me, I will ask you to withdraw immediately and let me go on with my work." The visitor began to stammer an apology but before he could find expression he found himself in the hallway outside the President's office.
One letter which the President wrote during the first weeks of his administration is worthy of record as showing his early desire to have Germany made fully aware of his attitude on the Monroe Doctrine. It was addressed, on October 11, 1901, to Baron H. S. von Sternburg, then German Consul at Calcutta, India, afterwards German Ambassador at Washington:
"I most earnestly desire to have Germany and the United States work hand in hand. I regard the Monroe Doctrine as being equivalent to open door in South America. That is, I do not want the United States or any European power to get territorial possessions in South America but to let South America gradually develop on its own lines, with an open door to all outside nations, save* as the individual countries enter into individual treaties with one another."
Very soon after Roosevelt's accession to the Presidency, representatives of the powerful financial interests already alluded to called upon him and sought to persuade him to modify his views in regard to trusts and kindred matters. He told them frankly that he should not do so, and offered for their perusal those passages on such subjects that he had prepared for his first message to Congress in December. Among others, these passages were submitted to Senator Hanna, who wrote to him advising him not to give so much prominence as he had to them, advice that was disregarded. In a confidential letter to his brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson of New York City, on October 14, 1901, he gave an entertaining account of one valiant but fruitless effort to get him to go back on himself and his record:
"I am very fond of X. He is one of the men whom I most respect. But, to be perfectly frank, he did not appear to advantage in the talk he had with me on the evening in question. This is no reflection on him. He was occupying exactly the same attitude that Y. occupies on this question. Both of them are men of the highest character, who are genuine forces for good as well as men of strength and weight. But on this particular occasion they were arguing like attorneys for a bad case, and at the bottom of their hearts each would know this if he were not personally interested; and especially if he were not the representative of a man of so strong and dominant a character as W. In plain English, what W. wanted me to do was to go back on my messages to the New York Legislature and on my letter of acceptance of the nomination for the Vice-Presidency, as well as on the Minneapolis speech, which was by no means as strong as either the messages or the letter.
"Now if I felt convinced that I had been wrong in what I had hitherto said, or even if I were doubtful about it, I should not have the slightest hesitation in announcing that I have changed my mind; but as a matter of fact I was right. I intend to be most conservative, but in the interests of the big corporations themselves and above all in the interest of the country, I intend to pursue, cautiously but steadily, the course to which I have been publicly committed again and again, and which I am certain is the right course. I may add that I happen to know that President McKinley was uneasy about this so-called trust question and was reflecting in his mind what he should do in the matter. X. wanted me to do nothing at all, and say nothing except platitudes; accept the publication of what some particular company chooses to publish, as a favor, instead of demanding what we think ought to be published from all companies as a right."
On the eve of the assembling of Congress the President invited me to the White House, saying that he would like to have me go over the message. After reaching Washington I called upon John Hay, Secretary of State, who had been my honored and valued friend for many years. When I said to him that I was going to read the message, he remarked: "You will be greatly interested. The President has written every word of it himself. Under McKinley, all of us in the Cabinet contributed portions relating to matters in our departments; the message was thus a composite document. Roosevelt has written the whole of his himself; it is the most individual message since Lincoln."
The message had been awaited with great interest, not only by the members of both houses of Congress, but by the general public as well, because of the universal recognition of the entry of a new force in national administration. It was the first Presidential message sent to Congress in print rather than in script. This was a new departure, ordered by Roosevelt, as in keeping with the times. His action caused mild comment at the time, and was the forerunner of a much more radical departure five years later, which caused far more agitated comment, when he sent in a special message illustrated with photographic reproductions, giving the results of his trip to Panama to inspect the canal work which had just begun.
The reception of the message by Congress revealed the deep interest with which it had been awaited. The account sent out to the country by the Associated Press read:
"It was listened to with marked respect in the Senate. Not in many years have the members of the House listened with such rapt attention to the annual message of a President of the United States as they did to-day to the reading of the first message of President Roosevelt. Every word was followed intently from the announcement of the tragic death of President McKinley in the opening sentence, to the expression of the closing wish that the relations of the United States with the world should continue peaceful. The reading occupied two hours, but not over a dozen members left their seats until it was finished. Several times there was applause, and at the close there was an enthusiastic demonstration on the Republican side."
The "Washington correspondent of the Chicago Record-Herald wrote:
"President Roosevelt's message to Congress has one universal and enthusiastic approval at the National Capital. Not for many years has a similar State paper aroused greater interest or met with warmer reception. The praise accorded it comes from men of both political parties.
"Usually the annual message of a President is treated with scant courtesy by the commoners. They listen a while, then succumb to the allurement of the smoking-room or restaurant. To-day they sat still and when the end came there was applause loud and hearty. Democrats joined in it, which they had a right to do, for he is their President, too; and in all the 20,000 words they had searched in vain for the party leader, the politician, the mere phrase-maker. They knew they had listened to a man who thinks, to a man who can write, to a man who writes well and clearly because he thinks well and clearly; and every word of it from the head of the Government, not a word from the head of a political organization."
There was in the message an entirely unmodified re-affirmation of his previously expressed views about trusts. A few of the more important passages only are cited here, as the full text is available in the volumes of his public papers:
"There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This springs from no spirit of envy or uncharitable ness, nor lack of pride in the great industrial achievements that have placed this country at the head of the nations struggling for commercial supremacy. It does not rest upon a lack of intelligent appreciation of the necessity of meeting changing conditions of trade with new methods, nor upon ignorance of the fact that combination of capital in the effort to accomplish great things is necessary when the world's progress demands that great things be done. It is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right."
"Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions."
"The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts-publicity. In the interest of the public, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business."
'' There is utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about them. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over, all corporations doing an interstate business."
He recommended the creation of a new Cabinet officer, to be called the Secretary of Commerce and Industries, and suggested the adoption of a Constitutional Amendment giving powers of regulation and control of corporations in  case such powers could not be exercised under authority of Congress.
Soon after he became President the following amusing correspondence passed between him and his long-time and cherished friend, Owen Wister:
Monday, September 23, 1901.
Dear Theodore: I don't know the crime of yours, which this earnest ass reveals. I shall not answer him because silence has a cumulative eloquence ,which I prefer. But make yourself gay over the solemn screed.
Ever yours,
o. w.
(Enclosing the following letter)
boston, mass., September 22, 1901. Owen Wister, Esq., dear sir:
I observe, at the end of an article bearing your signature, the following:
"He (Theodore Roosevelt) has striven in his books to do honor to great Americans in the past."
I am informed, on authority that seems conclusive, that Mr. Roosevelt, in one of his works, speaks of Thomas Paine as a "dirty little Atheist": that, on having it proven to him by a more careful, or more truthful historian, that in these three words he had made three mis-statements (or a triple misi-statement), and that Mr. Paine was neither "dirty," "little," or "Atheist," he has never made for them any apology, correction, or even withdrawal.
For any other than an illiterate man to declare Paine to be an atheist, seems impossible; for an educated historian to do so, when page after page of his best known work is devoted to argument in favor of the existence of a God, seems hardly compatible with honesty.
Like Mr. Roosevelt, I have no agreement or even sympathy with Paine's religious ideas; but, unlike him, I do not consider disagreement with them a legitimate excuse for libelling and vilifying one of the greatest men of his time.
In the opinion of thoughtful scholars, Mr. Roosevelt's ignorant and spiteful mis-statements about Thomas Paine effectually discredit him as a historian; and they seem also to contradict the paragraph from your article, which I quote at the beginning of this letter.
Yours truly,
P. G. P *blank*
Personal.
September 25, 1901. Dear Dan:
This is delightful. I ought not to have used the exact word atheist. He admitted the existence of an unknown God, but denied there was a God of the Christians. As to whether he was dirty or not, it is a mere matter of private judgment. I was recording in the sentence the fact that he had stayed several weeks in bed without getting out for any purpose, and that as a consequence a swine in a sty was physically clean by comparison.
Faithfully yours,
theodoRe Roosevelt.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN,.
THE BOOKER WASHINGTON INCIDENT,.
No act of Roosevelt during his entire career in the Presidency was more thoroughly characteristic or created a greater commotion throughout the land than his having Booker T. Washington, the negro educator and orator, as his guest at dinner in the White House on October 18, 1901. The news of it roused the South to fury, and even in the North there was a division of opinion in regard to the propriety of the act. That Roosevelt anticipated no such outburst of disapproval when he invited Mr. Washington, I have personal knowledge. I had been spending a day and a night with him in the White House and on the morning of the 18th he asked me if I could not stay over another night, saying that Booker Washington was coming to dinner and he would like to have me meet him. I replied that I was extremely sorry I could not, for there was no man in the country whom I respected more highly or whom I would more gladly meet, but it was imperative that I return to New York. Neither one of us alluded to Washington's color, and it did not occur to me for a moment that there could be any objection to his presence at the White House table. No intimation of doubt on the point came from the President, but in a letter, which I shall quote he says he felt a moment's qualm. When the storm burst I wrote him expressing my astonishment, and in reply he said: "I really felt melancholy for the South at the way the Southerners behaved in the matter."
A few weeks later, November 8,1901, he wrote a letter on the subject to Albion W. Tourgee, who was the United States Consul at Bordeaux, France. Mr. Tourgee was an American lawyer and jurist and a veteran of the Civil War, who had acquired wide fame as the author of a book on the reconstruction of the South after the war, entitled 'A Fool's Errand.' He had written in remonstrance to the President because of his general policy toward the negro. Roosevelt's letter, aside from its reference to the Booker Washington incident, is of interest and value because of its impressive statement of his views upon the entire negro problem. I quote the following passages:
"When I asked Booker T. Washington to dinner I did not devote very much thought to the matter one way or the other. I respect him greatly and believe in the work he has done. I have consulted so much with him it seemed to me that it was natural to ask him to dinner to talk over this work, and the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him because of his color made me ashamed of myself and made me hasten to send the invitation. I did not think of its bearing one way or the other, either on my own future or on anything else. As things have turned out, I am very glad that I asked him, for the clamor aroused by the act makes me feel as if the act was necessary.
"I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that inasmuch as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have. I say I am 'sure' that this is the right solution. Of course I know that we see through a glass dimly, and, after all, it may be that I am wrong; but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong. At any rate, while I am in public life, however short a time that may be, I am in honor bound to act up to my beliefs and convictions. I do not intend to offend the prejudices of any one else, but neither do I intend to allow their prejudices to make me false to my principles." 
I have said that there was a division of opinion in the North on the subject of the famous dinner. A striking illustration of this is afforded in the comment which the New York World, the foremost Democratic newspaper of the North, made editorially on October 20, 1901:
"An American named Washington, one of the most learned, most eloquent, most brilliant men of the day—the President of a college—is asked to dinner by President Roosevelt. And because the pigment of his skin is some shades darker than that of others a large part of the United States is convulsed with shame and rage.
"The man is a negro. Therefore in eating with him the President is charged with having insulted the South. This man may cast a ballot but he may not break bread. He may represent us in the Senate Chamber, but he may not 'join us at the breakfast table.' He may educate us, but not eat with us; preach our Gospel, but not be our guest; enlighten our minds, but not entertain our bodies; die for us, but not dine with us.
"Truly Liberty must smile at such broad-minded logic, such enlightened tolerance. Or should she weep?"
An interesting corollary to this disturbing incident is afforded in a letter that Roosevelt wrote, two years later, on October 29, 1903, to Dr. Lyman Abbott:
"Yesterday the Episcopal Bishops and clergymen called to see me. The Bishops of Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, etc., etc., were all there. Among them was an archdeacon from North Carolina and a clergyman from Maryland, both of them negroes. They came into the White House in line among the rest of the bishops, deacons, and doctors of divinity. Nobody shrank from them; nobody seemed to think it unnatural that I should receive them in the White House. These high prelates of the Episcopal church brought their wives and daughters along in their company. They did not sit down at the table, but they all were received by Mrs. Roosevelt and myself on the same terms. If any of them took any refreshment the colored men doubtless did so too. I wonder whether these same Southern bishops and clergymen were shocked when, two years ago, Booker "Washington sat down at my table with me ? In South Carolina, at Florence, I have just reappointed a negro postmaster with the approval of the entire community. Why South Carolina should go crazy over the appointment of an equally good negro as collector of the port of Charleston I do not know. Why the Southerners should be glad to visit the White House in company with a colored archdeacon, and yet feel furious because I received in only slightly more intimate fashion a great colored educator I am again at a loss to understand.''
Subsequently the President wrote two notable letters, from which I shall quote, defining fully his views in regard to the treatment of the colored race and the appointment of colored men to public office. The first was to Mr. E. G. Rhett, of Charleston, S. C., under date of November 10, 1902:
"How any one could have gained the idea that I had said I would not appoint reputable and upright colored men to office, when objection was made to them solely on account of their color, I confess I am wholly unable to understand.
'' So far as I legitimately can I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the likes and dislikes of the people of each locality, but I cannot consent by my action to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon all men, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of color. Such an attitude would according to my conviction be fundamentally wrong. The question of 'negro domination' does not enter into the matter at all. You yourself know that the enormous majority of my appointments in South Carolina have been of white men, and so far as I know, of white men whose good character and uprightness were not questioned. The question simply is whether it is to be declared that under no circumstances shall any man of color, no matter how good a citizen, no matter how upright and honest, no matter how fair in his dealings with all his fellows, he permitted to hold any office under our government. I certainly cannot assume such an attitude, and you must permit me to say that in my view it is an attitude no one should assume, whether he looks at it from the standpoint of the true interest of the white men of the South or of the colored men of the South—not to speak of any other section in the Union. It seems to me that it is a good thing from every standpoint to let the colored man know that if he shows in marked degree the qualities of good citizenship—the qualities which in a white man we feel are entitled to reward—then he himself will not be cut off from all hope of similar reward."
The second letter was written under date of February 23, 1903, to Mr. Clark Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution:
"Now as to what you say concerning Federal appointments in the South. Frankly, it seems to me that my appointments speak for themselves and that my policy is self-explanatory. So far from feeling that they need the slightest apology or justification, my position is that on the strength of what I have done I have the right to claim the support of all good citizens who wish not only a high standard of Federal service but fair and equitable dealing to the South as well as to the North, and a policy of consistent justice and good will toward all men. In making appointments I have sought to consider the feelings of the people of each locality so far as I could consistently do so without sacrificing principle. The prime tests I have applied have been those of character, fitness and ability, and when I have been dissatisfied with what has been offered within my own party lines I have without hesitation gone to the opposite party—and you are of course aware that I have repeatedly done this in your own State of Georgia. I certainly cannot treat mere color as a permanent bar to holding office, any more than I could so treat creed or birthplace—always provided that in other respects the applicant or incumbent is a worthy and well-behaved American citizen. Just as little will I treat it as conferring a right to hold office. I have scant sympathy with the mere doctrinaire, with the man of mere theory who refuses to face facts; but do you not think that in the long run it is safer for everybody if we act on the motto, ' All men up,' rather than that of 'Some men down'?"

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN,.
CONTROVERSIES WITH GENERAL MILES,.
an incident which excited much attention and varying comment occurred in December, 1901, during the prolonged controversy between Admirals Sampson and Schley concerning the conduct of the latter in the naval battle of Santiago during the war with Spain. The Naval Court of Inquiry, which investigated the case, made a report on December 16, which was adverse to Schley. In a published interview on December 17, General Nelson A. Miles, who was then the Lieutenant-General of the army, its highest officer, condemned the finding of the Court and upheld Schley's side in the controversy. He was rebuked officially by the Secretary of War, Elihu Root, for this expression on the ground that it was in violation of the army regulations which forbid expression by military men of opinions of any kind, either of praise or censure, in matters of the kind. The President approved the order of rebuke. General Miles went to the White House to protest to the President, and was shown into the reception room, where he found the President in conversation with a number of persons. Striding up to the President, and interrupting the conversation, the General said: "Mr. President, I have come here to protest against that order of Secretary Root." Before he could get any further, the President, noticing his excited condition, said quietly: '' Step into the Cabinet room, General, and I will see you there presently." Instead of heeding this request, the General said again, loudly for all to hear: "Mr. President, I am here to protest, etc." Again the President said, this time impressively: "General, I advise you to step into the Cabinet room!" Again the General declined to do so, repeating his previous utterances, whereupon the President, stepping closely to him and speaking with emphasis and distinctness, said, in substance: "General Miles, you are a veteran with a distinguished record. I wish to show you courtesy, but if you insist upon my telling you what I am about to, I shall do so. Your conduct has been not merely silly but insubordinate and un-military. You have done what you could to damage the navy and damage the army. Secretary Root is absolutely right, and you deserve a severe reprimand from the standpoint of the discipline absolutely essential to the army's welfare."
No account of this interview was given out from the White House, but General Miles allowed a version of his own to reach the press in which it was made to appear that the President had turned upon him in anger when he entered the room and had subjected him to humiliation by administering a rebuke to him publicly. The President never took the trouble to contradict this inaccurate report. The version herewith given is authoritative and strictly truthful. To a Western editor who had written to the President in the interest of General Miles, Roosevelt replied, December 10, 1901:
"I take it for granted that you will cordially agree with me that such action as that of General Miles is to be reprimanded severely, from the standpoint of the discipline absolutely essential if the Army and Navy are to amount to anything; and this without regard to which side he takes.
"As for the Schley matter, most emphatically I shall endeavor to do absolute justice. But you must let me say that in doing justice I should be ashamed to take into consideration whether what I did was popular or not. I hope I shall not have to take any part at all in a matter that purely refers to President McKinley's administration, and with which I have nothing whatever to do; but if I do have to take it up I shall decide the case absolutely on its merits, and I shall no more consider whether a majority of the people are for or against a given man than I should consider it if I were a judge sitting upon the bench deciding the rights or wrongs of a particular case.''
The verdict of the Sampson-Schley court of inquiry, after having been approved by the Secretary of the Navy, was, at Schley's request, referred to the President for review on January 7,1902, and on February 18 following the President confirmed it on the ground that it decreed substantial justice.
General Miles got himself into further trouble with the War Department a few weeks later. He made formal application on February 17, 1902, to the Secretary of War to be sent to the Philippines, with ten men of his own selection from Cuba and Porto Eico, to take full control there from the military and civil authorities, conduct a thorough inquiry, and return with such a number of native Filipinos as seemed desirable, and then enter into consultation with members of Congress as to a plan for the future control of the islands.
Secretary Root, in a memorandum dated March 5, 1902, which was approved by the President, denied the application, saying that to grant it would practically be to supersede Governor Taft and General Chaffee, who were in charge of the Philippines, and would be a reflection on their successful conduct of affairs in the islands. To this General Miles replied in a letter, March 24, 1902, reviewing the action of the President and Secretary, endeavoring to show it had been wrong, and assuming as evidence of his contention that certain charges which had been made of official misconduct in the Philippines were true, although they were at the time under investigation and unproved. On this letter Secretary Root made a memorandum, on March 25, 1902, reviewing the General's conduct in the matter and saying:
"In the interest of good discipline and effective service such a course is much to be regretted. Such charges ought not to be published against our countrymen, whom we have sent to labor and fight under our flag on the other side of the world, before they can be heard in their own defense."
On this memorandum the President wrote, March 27, 1902:
"The memorandum of the Secretary of War is approved as a whole and as to every part. Had there been any doubt before as to the wisdom of denying General Miles's request, these papers would remove such doubt."
General Miles brought it about that this correspondence was made known to members of Congress, and its publication was called for and procured. He also was believed to have been instrumental in securing the publication in the press of a letter containing the charges alluded to in his second letter to the Secretary of War, charges which were withdrawn later by the writer of the letter because no evidence could be adduced to sustain them.
While this episode in the career of General Miles was in progress, the President wrote a confidential letter to Secretary Root in which a very strong light is thrown on the mental peculiarities of the General. It is now published for the first time:
Private and Confidential.
March 7, 1902. My dear Mr. Secretary:
It seems to me that, for your private use at the present time, and with a view to making a permanent record of certain facts, I ought to send this memorandum to you in connection with the request of General Miles which you have so properly disapproved. This is the request which General Miles first showed me in a far more offensive form; the request at that time being couched in language which amounted to an endorsement by .the head of the army of some of the most offensive and most unfounded slanders which have been put forth on the stump and in Congress by the violent traducers of the army and of the nation. The course of General Miles in giving his endorsement to these utterly baseless slanders against the army of which he is himself the head was precisely on a parallel with his recent memorandum, in which he impliedly endorsed the statements of the least responsible demagogues, to the effect that the army was gathered near great cities for the purpose of overawing workingmen.
During the six months that I have been President, General Miles has made it abundantly evident by his actions that he has not the slightest desire to improve or benefit the army, and to my mind his actions can bear only the construction that his desire is purely to gratify his selfish ambition, his vanity, or his spite. His conduct is certainly entirely incompatible, not merely with intelligent devotion to the interests of the country, but even with intelligent devotion to the interests of the service. President McKinley and you yourself have repeatedly told me that such was the case during the period before I became President.
To show the animus of General Miles in these matters and the extreme unwisdom of trusting him in any position where he can imagine it to be for his interest to discredit the American Government or the American Army, I recapitulate here what I have already told you and President McKinley as to something that occurred about three years ago. At that time I had testified or was about to testify as to certain shortcomings in the "War Department during the Spanish War. General Miles seemingly construed this, not as a desire to tell the truth, whoever was affected, but as a championship of himself against Secretary Alger and President McKinley. I was Governor of New York, and had come on here to visit Senator Lodge. At the time, our army was engaged in the hard fighting which accompanied the outbreak of the Filipino insurrection. General Miles made repeated efforts to see me, and finally succeeded and had a long conversation with me, in Lodge's house, on the afternoon of Sunday, February 26, 1899. He proposed to me that we should join forces and that he should run for President while I ran for Vice-President. His estimate of the political situation was utterly fatuous, and the proposition was interesting only because, in the first place, it showed the man's political folly, and, in the second place, it gave me a glimpse of. a most unpleasant side of his character as Major-General commanding the army. He based his main hope of being able to upset President McKinley and deprive him of a re-nomination or reelection upon what he regarded as the probable failure of our arms in the Philippines. He repeated again and again, obviously with the utmost satisfaction, that disaster would certainly befall our troops and that possibly they might be driven out of the islands, and that this would discredit the administration of President McKinley and further the ambition of any one who was against him.
After listening to him for some time, I remarked that of course every one was bound to work for the success of our arms in the Philippines and to hope for it. This called forth the most perfunctory acquiescence on his part; and after a minute's pause he harped back to what he had been saying already and repeated two or three times, that disasters were certain to come; that there would be disgrace to the nation and that then President McKinley would suffer ; and that the disgrace which befell our army would vindicate himself (Miles) and help the opponents of the Administration.
His attitude was so foolish, and from a political standpoint he was so vague in his notions as to what should be done to achieve his ambition, and so ignorant of the fact that if the country did become hostile to McKinley the advantage was bound to accrue to somebody other than himself, that I should not have thought of the matter again had it not been for the very unpleasant impression which his conduct necessarily made upon me in view of his being the commanding general of the army. I told Senator Lodge of the matter at the time. The following July you came into your present office; and I was impressed more and more, as I thought over the matter, by the danger which might result from the fact that the general commanding the army, who was advising you in the most confidential manner as regards the course you were to follow in the Philippines, was really counting on the failure of that course as the stepping-stone to his own political ambition. I finally became convinced that, inasmuch as General Miles was in a frame of mind, which caused him to take delight in disasters to the American arms unless success would redound to his own personal advantage, it would be well to caution President McKinley against him. I accordingly told the facts to the President. Later on the President told me that Miles had tried his best to persuade him (President McKinley) to accept Miles as a candidate for Vice-President on the same ticket with him.
In view of these facts, I think that General Miles ought only to be employed when we are certain that whatever talents he may possess will be used under conditions which make his own interests and the interests of the country identical.
Faithfully yours,
theodore Roosevelt.
The closing episode in the public career of General Miles occurred in 1903. On August 8 of that year he was retired by limit of age, Secretary Root issuing the regulation formal order to that effect. A great clamor was at once raised in and out of the press because no letter or word of commendation of the General accompanied the order. The New York Times was especially vehement, saying the retirement of this "splendid soldier" without a word of praise was "an amazing blunder which may even assume the proportions of a veritable calamity to the administration." Two letters which the President wrote at the time may be cited in explanation of his course. The first was to Clarke Davis, editor of the Public Ledger of Philadelphia, under date of August 24, 1903:
"I had no knowledge that any one would suggest my writing a letter to Miles any more than to any of the other Generals I had retired. The matter merely did not occur to me, and of course I did not speak about it to Mr. Root. But if I had spoken about it to Mr. Root, I should most certainly have backed him in refusing to give any special recommendation to General Miles. It does not seem to me that the matter of General Miles's disloyalty to the army is one the knowledge of which is confined to the Administration. Take his last report on the Philippines, which was made public with the findings upon it. Therein it appears conclusively that this old soldier has devoted himself to a venomous slander of the army under his supposed control.
"As I told you in my last letter, General Miles asked me to go in with him, he as Presidential candidate and I as Vice-Presidential candidate, to upset McKinley for re-nomination. Of course he had a perfect right to make this proposition; although I do not think it is advisable for the General commanding the army, who has just been commissioned Lieutenant-General by the President, to seek a nomination at the expense of that President. But assuming that his conduct was proper in this regard, the thing that I minded was the sinister pleasure he showed at the thought that McKinley would be hurt by disasters to the army in the Philippines, and his eager belief that these disasters were coming and would hurt McKinley so that he (Miles) might step into McKinley's place. In other words, the General commanding the army was hoping for political preferment at the expense of the President, whose adviser he was supposed to be, through disaster to the army of which this same General was in titular command.
"When I came in as President I was willing to forget all this; to remember only Miles's gallant conduct forty years before in the Civil War and the fact that he had also done well in the Indian warfare—although not as well, for instance, as Crook, whose intriguing and underhanded enemy he ever showed himself to be. Accordingly I tried my best to keep on good terms with him. But it was absolutely impossible. The man has not one feeling which should characterize an officer and a gentleman, save that only of physical courage. He is a foolish creature possessing only the power for intrigue and for demagogy, but not of military capacity.
"But what counts for a hundredfold more than this, I became convinced that there was no single recommendation he was making which had in view anything but his own advancement. He was anxious not to benefit the army, but to harm Secretary Root, and to gratify his spite on the various officers of whom he disapproved. I have never met any officer of the army as wholly indifferent to its welfare as is Miles; and this, whether the matter at issue be the putting down of Filipino bandits, or the use and abuse of the canteen, or establishing a cavalry school, or anything else. I do not believe he is capable of considering anything but his own personal interest. In particular the course he has followed, again and again, seeking to discredit our troops in the Philippines and giving currency to reports of outrages by them which he well knew to be unfounded, has been such as to have warranted me in removing him from his position as Lieutenant-General. I am not sure that I did right in letting him serve out his term, but most certainly I should have been wrong and I should have inflicted harm on the army if I had thanked him for his treachery and misconduct."
The second letter was to Senator Lodge, who was then in London, serving as member of the Alaskan Boundary Commission. This was under date of September 3, 1903:
"The public generally and the soldiers in particular have gone frantic because we did not single Miles out for special commendation when he retired from the service—a thing we have done in the case of none of the other generals with Civil War records who have retired. We are a queer, emotional, hysterical people on occasions, and in the Miles . matter as in the Schley matter we have shown at our worst. Miles has for the two years of my Presidency, and of course for some years before that, shown himself the most dangerous foe and slanderer of the army which he was supposed to command. Nothing will hire me to praise him.
There has been really a great gust of popular anger against me; I am not writing too strongly when I say popular anger. The feeling against me, especially in the Grand Army, is so bitter that certain of my friends in Illinois and Indiana have told me that they believe that if the election were held at present I should lose both those States! However, I cannot help thinking that such folly will burn itself out before a year is over."
A final demonstration of personal idiosyncrasy on the part of General Miles occurred a few weeks later and is recorded in the following correspondence. On October 8, 1903, the President wrote to Governor Franklin Murphy of New Jersey:
"A few days ago General Miles went to one of the leading men in New York and told him, as illustrating my attitude toward property, that you had recently said that I had informed you that I was certain I was going to win the Northern Securities suit and thereby ruin Pierpont Morgan and Jim Hill, or, to use his exact words, 'turn Morgan and Hill into the street.' My informant was somewhat upset over the matter and at first declined to allow me to see you about it. I told him that I should insist upon this, because I was absolutely certain that the story was merely a lie of Miles and that you had never said one word such as you were represented as saying. Indeed, my memory is that we did not speak of the Northern Securities suit at all, and of course I never at any time used any such language as that imputed to me about Hill or Morgan, or expressed the slightest feeling of vindictiveness or personal hostility toward either.
"I am half ashamed to bring such an absurd falsehood to your notice. I wish you to understand that if I alone were cognizant of it, I should not bother you to deny it, for I should never think a second time of it; but it is astonishing what some sensible men are capable of believing, and so I should like you to write me just a line on the matter."
To this Governor Murphy replied immediately: '' Thank you greatly for calling my attention to the report which has reached you. You are entirely correct in your opinion of it. It is a lie in its statement and in its inference."
In response to this, the President wrote, on October 10, 1903: " I thank you for your letter. It is exactly the letter I supposed I would get from you. Perhaps the report originated as you suggest—most likely General Miles simply made it up from the beginning."

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN,.
THE NORTHERN SECURITIES SUIT,.
when Roosevelt became President the vital question about the control of trusts or great corporations was whether the National Government had the power to exercise such control. A decision of the Supreme Court in 1895, in a suit brought under President Cleveland's administration against the Sugar Trust, held in effect that under the Constitution the National Government had not such power. The suit had been brought under the Sherman anti-trust law of 1890, which was designed to destroy monopoly and curb industrial combinations like the Sugar and Tobacco Trusts. The decision of the Supreme Court, known as the Knight decision, was in effect that the National Government had no power over the corporations, and it was so interpreted by them, for under it, virtually all the trusts in the country were formed later. One of them, known as the Northern Securities Company, was formed shortly before Roosevelt became President, and was a union or merger of practically the entire railway system of the Northwest, the chief lines being the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Roads.
Early in 1902 the President took up with the Attorney General, Philander C. Knox, the question of testing the legality of this merger in the courts. The Attorney General advised him that, in his judgment, an action would be sustained. Without consultation with other members of his Cabinet, the President directed the Attorney General to begin the suit. No intimation of his purpose had reached the public, and when, on the late afternoon of February 19, 1902, Mr. Knox gave out through the press a brief announcement that the President had so directed him, a tremendous commotion followed. Mr. Knox simply said that some time previous the President had requested an opinion from him as to the legality of the merger and that he had recently given him one to the effect that, in his judgment, the merger violated the Sherman Act of 1890; whereupon, the President had directed him to have suitable action taken to have the question judicially determined; a bill in equity was in preparation, and it was probable that proceedings would be instituted in a Federal Court in Minnesota,
This announcement was published in the morning newspapers of February 20, 1902, its publication having been withheld till after the close of the stock market for obvious reasons. It fell upon the financial world literally like a bolt from the blue. The members of the President's Cabinet, with the single exception of the Attorney General, got their first intimation of the President's purpose from the newspapers. The chief personages in the merger were J. Pierpont Morgan and James J. Hill, undisputed kings of the financial and railway worlds. They employed as legal advisers the ablest lawyers in the country, recognized leaders of the bar throughout the land. Not one of these advisers, it was shown subsequently, shared the view taken by Mr. Knox. Many of them were openly vocal in their indignation and contempt, declaring that the President had been led into an act of folly on the advice of "an unknown country lawyer from Pennsylvania," Precisely this statement was made to me by one of them, and when I reported it to the President, he replied: '' They will know this country lawyer before this suit is ended," a prophecy which was amply fulfilled.
The effect of the news of the suit in Wall Street was thus recorded in the stock market report of the Tribune on February 21:
"Not since the assassination of President McKinley has the stock market had such a sudden shock as was caused by the announcement on Wednesday night of President Roosevelt's purpose to proceed to test the legality of the merger of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Roads. Not the slightest intimation of the President's proposed move reached Wall Street in the course of the day on Wednesday."
For the first time in many years the National Administration had acted in a matter of great financial importance without any advance news of its purpose reaching Wall Street. That in itself was a disturbing fact for it showed that all existing avenues of "inside information" had been closed.
The Attorney General filed a bill in equity in the United States Circuit Court at St. Paul on March 10. The defense was based expressly on the ground that the Supreme Court in the Knight case had explicitly sanctioned the formation of such a company as the Northern Securities Company. The representatives of privilege intimated, and sometimes asserted outright, that in directing the action to be brought the President had shown a lack of respect for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue by a vote of eight to one.
J. Pierpont Morgan went to Washington and had an interview with the President, Attorney General Knox being present. Mr. Morgan protested against the President's conduct in acting without letting him know of his purpose in advance. The President replied: "That is just what we did not want to do." "If we have done anything wrong," said Mr. Morgan, "send your man (meaning the Attorney General) to my man (naming one of his lawyers) and they can fix it up." "That can't be done," said the President. "We don't want to fix it up," added Mr. Knox, 1' we want to stop it.'' Then Mr. Morgan asked: '' Are you going to attack my other interests, the Steel Trust and the others'?" "Certainly not," replied the President, "unless we find out that in any case they have done something that we regard as wrong."
When Mr. Morgan retired, the President said to Mr. Knox: "That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator, who either intended to ruin all his interests or else could be induced to come to an agreement to ruin none."
I v/as informed later by one of Mr. Morgan's counsel that Mr. Morgan went to his hotel and wrote a very indignant and violent letter to the President which was never delivered because it was stopped on the way by my informant, who persuaded the irate financial magnate of its unwisdom.
The case was first tried in the United States Circuit Court at St. Paul and a decision in favor of the Government was rendered on April 9, 1903. It was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States and was argued in behalf of the Northern Securities Company by the ablest corporation lawyers in the country. It was admitted that the contention of these lawyers that the merger had been sanctioned by the Knight decision was sound, and the question presented to the Supreme Court was simply whether it would reverse itself by reversing that decision. This it decided to do, by a vote of 5 to 4, on March 14, 1904, when it rendered a majority decision that the merger had been formed in violation of the Sherman- Law. The power of the Government to exercise control over combinations was thereby permanently established, and the result was hailed as a notable triumph for the President and the Attorney General. The New York Tribune said of it on March 15, 1904:
"The decision completely justifies the much denounced action of President Roosevelt. It is not he who stops the merger, but the Supreme Court. The highest tribunal in the nation decides that the plan to control these competing railroads is illegal. Those who formed it may think that a hard saying and a wrong one, but they cannot blame the President as an irresponsible disorganizer for taking the same view of the law as the Supreme Court, nor complain because he requires them to obey the law, and when he thinks they are disobeying it submits the question to judicial decision."
The action of the President was subjected to sharp criticism until the final verdict was rendered but he was able to retain his equanimity under it, as his private correspondence shows. On May 6, 1902, he sent this letter of introduction to the Attorney General:
"This is my good friend, Mr. Smalley, a correspondent of the London Times. I want him to have a talk with you, because in New York he lives at the Metropolitan Club and meets largely the gentlemen who since the merger suit have crossed themselves at the mention of our names."
On June 3, 1902, he wrote to General James H. Wilson: "I am sorry that the financial men should be tempted to criticize me but I have never been more certain of anything than that I was right in taking the actions which they criticize. It is above all to the interests of the men of great wealth that the people at large should understand that they also have to obey the law."
Following closely upon the decision in favor of the Government by the St. Paul Circuit Court, the Attorney General, on May 10, 1902, began proceedings against the Beef Trust, filing a petition to restrain it in the United States Circuit Court of the Northern District of Illinois. A decision in favor of the Government was rendered by this court on May 26, 1903, and affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States on January 31, 1905. Other similar suits of minor importance were instituted at this time and won by the Government. During the years following 1903, there were others of large importance instituted and won by the Government.
When, in April, 1903, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision upholding the New York Franchise Tax Law, the news of the court's action reached President Roosevelt while he was on a speaking tour in the West. He expressed his natural gratification in a letter to Secretary Knox, which is notable also for its reference to educational influences which may affect the minds of judges as well as laymen:
ottumwa, iowa, April 28, 1903.
"I have just received a telegram to the effect that the Franchise Tax Law in New York has been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court. This was something very near my heart for I felt that the Franchise Tax Law was the most definite and important contribution to decent and intelligent government made by me while I was Governor. I am, therefore, very much pleased with the news. I write you because I think that the reflex action of what you have done during the past year and a quarter is in no small degree responsible for the decision. The courts can be educated just as the public can be educated, and the suits you have carried on and the decisions you have secured in the United States Courts have had, I am convinced, a very profound effect elsewhere. Unless I am greatly mistaken one of the places where this effect is visible is this Franchise Tax decision."

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN,. 
INCIDENTS OF A BUSY YEAR,.
the year 1902 was one of incessant activity for Roosevelt and was fairly crowded with events of far-reaching importance. Next in importance to the beginning of proceedings against the trusts was the settlement of the great anthracite coal strike, which will be considered comprehensively in the next chapter. In the midst of these larger activities the President was able to find time for the consideration of many matters of scarcely less vital moment. He had recommended earnestly in his first annual message to Congress that reciprocal trade relations be established with Cuba. A bill granting reciprocity passed the House but was held up in the Senate through the influence of the powerful beet-sugar interests. While it was pending, ex-President Cleveland wrote a letter, on January 21, 1902, which was published, in which he came to the support of the President very heartily, saying:
"It seems to me that this subject involves considerations of morality and conscience higher and more commanding than all others.
"The obligations arising from these considerations cannot be better or more forcibly defined than was done by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress, nor better emphasized than has been done by Secretary Root, and yet Congress waits, while we occasionally hear of concessions which rich sugar interests might approve in behalf of trembling Cuba."
The President sent a special message to the Senate in June, urging the passage of the bill on the ground of simple justice to Cuba, but the Senate refused to heed the request. A year later, however, a treaty of reciprocity with Cuba, together with a treaty with Colombia in regard to an Isthmian Canal, was negotiated and both were ratified by the Senate in February, 1903, after the President had sent an ultimatum to that body saying that if the treaties were not ratified by March 4 he should call an extra session for their consideration.
On March 11, 1902, the President sent his first veto message to the Senate, refusing to sign a bill removing the charge of desertion from the naval record of a man who had deserted during the Civil War. Being his first deliverance of the kind the President's words attracted wide attention and elicited general approval:
"There can be no graver crime than the crime of desertion from the army and navy, especially during war; it is then high treason to the Nation, and justly punishable by death. No man should be relieved from such a crime, especially when nearly forty years have passed since it occurred, save on the clearest possible proof of his real innocence. In this case the statement made by the affiant before the committee does not in all points agree with his statement made to the Secretary of the Navy. In any event it is incomprehensible to me that he should not have made effective effort to get back into the Navy. He had served but little more than a month when he deserted, and the war lasted for over a year afterward. Yet he made no effort whatever to get back into the war. Under such circumstances it seems to me that to remove the charge of desertion from the Navy and give him an honorable discharge would be to falsify the records and do an injustice to his gallant and worthy comrades who fought the war to a finish. The names of the veterans who fought in the Civil War make the honor list of the Republic, and I am not willing to put upon it the name of a man unworthy of the high position."
The President did not permit the pressure of matters of really momentous importance to turn his attention from his inflexible purpose to have appointments in the public service based on merit and fitness alone. One of his earliest acts after taking office was to write to Cardinal Gibbons, and to heads of the Protestant Church, asking their aid in securing for the army and navy as chaplains men of character and special fitness for the position. On June 10,1902, he wrote a letter to the Secretaries of "War and the Navy, of like import, saying:
"I want to see that hereafter no chaplain is appointed in the Army (and Navy) who is not a first-class man—a man who by education and training will be fitted to associate with his fellow-officers, and yet who has in him the zeal and the practical sense which will enable him to do genuine work for the enlisted men. Above all, I want chaplains who will go in to do this work just as the best officers of the line or staff or the medical profession go in to do their work. I want to see that if possible we never appoint a man who desires the position as a soft job. How would it do to have the applicants of the different creeds pass some kind of examination before really high-grade clergymen of their own creeds? That is, to see that any Episcopal chaplain has the backing of some such man as Bishop Potter, Bishop Satterlee, or Bishop Doane; that a Methodist was backed in the same way; and so on through the different creeds."
Concerning a letter which the Postmaster General had referred to him for comment, he sent on March 20, 1902, this suggestion:
"How would it do to answer this letter by pointing out the extreme difficulty of adopting a rule in reference to the Illinois Senators which we adopt in reference to no other Senators whatever? We do not remove any postmasters unless on charges, but when it comes to a new appointment we confine ourselves to asking whether the man recommended is a thoroughly fit and proper man, giving preference to the man who is in where we legitimately can."
Conditions in the Philippine Islands, where the United States Government was engaged in suppressing a native insurrection, were attracting much attention in the spring of 1902, and reports of barbarous cruelties by American soldiers upon native prisoners were published in the press. An order was also published in April, 1902, which General J. H. Smith, nicknamed "Hell-Roaring Jake," had issued to his troops directing them to "kill and burn and make a howling wilderness of Samar." This naturally aroused much indignation throughout the country, and the anti-Imperialist faction that had vehemently opposed the taking over of the Philippines instead of making them an independent nation, raised a great clamor about it, demanding that the United States troops be withdrawn at once and the Filipinos be left to rule themselves. The President acted at once, sending this order to the Secretary of "War:
"Please instruct Governor Taft when he returns to the Islands to appoint a Commission, say, of three men of the highest integrity and capacity to report on the conduct of the military government at the present time toward the natives and as to whether or not any brutalities or indignities are inflicted by the army upon the natives."
On May 9, 1902, he wrote to Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts :
"I hope it is unnecessary to say that no one in the country can be more anxious than I am—save perhaps Secretary Root—to discover and punish every instance of barbarity by our troops in the Philippines. No provocation, however great, can be accepted as an excuse for misuse of the necessary severity of war, and above all not for torture of any kind or shape. Long before any statements had been made public, and before any action had been taken by Congress, the War Department had ordered a rigid investigation of certain of the charges; the orders-of investigation having gone out over three months ago. The investigation will be of the most thorough and sweeping character, and if necessary, will be made by the civil as well as by the military representatives of the Government in the Islands."
When the clamor over the charges was at its height the President, on May 30, 1902, delivered the Memorial Day address in Arlington Cemetery, in which he said:
"Determined and unswerving effort must be made, and has been and is being made, to find out every instance of barbarity on the part of our troops, to punish those guilty of it, and to take, if possible, even stronger measures than have already been taken to minimize or prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future.
"Is it only in the army in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans to regret? No! From time to time there occur in our country, to the deep and lasting shame of our people, lynchings carried on under circumstances of inhuman cruelty and barbarity—cruelty infinitely worse than any that has ever been committed by our troops in the Philippines; worse to the victims, and far more brutalizing to those guilty of it. The men who fail to condemn these lynchings, and yet clamor about what has been done in the Philippines, are indeed guilty of neglecting the beam in their own eye while taunting their brother about the mote in his. Understand me. These lynchings afford us no excuse for failure to stop cruelty in the Philippines. But keep in mind that these cruelties in the Philippines have been wholly exceptional, and have been shamelessly exaggerated. We deeply and bitterly regret that they should have been committed, no matter how rarely, no matter under what provocation, by American troops. But they afford far less ground for a general condemnation of' our army than these lynchings afford for the condemnation of the communities in which they occur. In each case it is well to condemn the deed, and it is well also to refrain from including both guilty and innocent in the same sweeping condemnation."
*
This denunciation of lynchings in the South was greeted with commendation in the North as a characteristically brave utterance of ideas which many entertained but few had the courage to express in public. In the South it was denounced bitterly as a sectional utterance, unjust and ill-timed, but the effect of it throughout the country, including the South, was to impress forcibly upon the minds of all thinking persons the real nature of the Southern lynchings and hence to arouse effective sentiment against them.
As Secretary of "War, Mr. Root was responsible for the administration of affairs in the Philippines, and his staunch defense of the military and civil authorities there subjected him to a large share of the hostile criticism. The President replying to one critic, a Boston clergyman, who had written to him on the subject, wrote as follows, on June 17, 1902:
"Just at the moment Mr. Root has been savagely attacked. Now Mr. Root, by himself and through Governor Taft and General Wood and other military and civilian assistants, has done work which I regard as making the United States always his debtor. He gave up the position of leader of the New York bar, with a practise which brought him in over $100,000 a year, to come down here. If he serves through my term he will have made a pecuniary sacrifice of over half a million dollars in order to do the work he has undertaken. He has worked so as almost to wear himself out. I am obliged continually to try to make him ease up and to get him to go out riding with me. He has not one thought save how to benefit the public service, how to see that the Army is kept up to the highest standard, how to secure the faithful fulfilment of our obligations to Cuba, how to help bring peace and enlightenment and self-government in the Philippines. During these three years he has performed a mass of work such as has been performed by no other minister of any civilized nation during the same time, nor has any other minister in any government of any civilized nation had a task so important which at the same time he has fulfilled so well. Yet, in spite of this, he has been most cruelly attacked, usually without any basis at all, sometimes because an occasional subordinate has done wrong—or even, as with every other public man from Washington and Lincoln down, because an occasional mistake has been made under him in the Department itself. '' There is plenty to criticize in our public life, but I have never met in any occupation a higher standard of fidelity to the public good than I meet in many of the men with whom I have been brought into intimate contact—judges, Senators, Congressmen, executive officials."
To another, a head of the Catholic Church in a Western State, he wrote on August 5, 1902:
"Most assuredly, my dear sir, all that I can do will be done to see that the Philippine Islands are administered in the interest, moral and spiritual no less than material and intellectual, of their inhabitants, and wherever possible, in accordance with the wishes of the Filipinos. As you doubtless know, when we took over the Islands there was practically no indication of system at all, so far as the bulk of the people were concerned. There was no foundation on which to build. We had to start absolutely new."
When the flood of criticism was at its height, the President declared in an address: "The Republic has put up its flag in those Islands, and the flag will stay there. Where wrong has been done by any one the wrongdoer shall be punished, but we shall not halt in our great work because some man has happened to do wrong."
As soon as the news of General Smith's order to "kill and burn" reached him, the President, on April 15, 1902, directed that a court of inquiry be instituted to investigate it, and when the court returned a verdict of guilty, the President, on June 16, 1902, ordered the General's retirement, saying that "while it is impossible to tell exactly how much influence the order had in inciting the commission of deeds which we all regret, his worse than injudicious procedure has destroyed his further usefulness in the active service of the army."
   After the storm of criticism had subsided he received a cordial letter of confidence and approval from Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University, to which he replied on October 30, 1902:
"The President is not in a position to know how he is regarded, and moreover, if he has any sense at all he is entirely aware of the way in which public favor veers and changes. I have not the slightest idea how I am really regarded now and of course no human being can tell how I shall be regarded in a year or two hence. But this is not the important thing. If a man is worth his salt in such a position as mine he must appreciate the well-nigh terrible responsibilities upon him so deeply as to lose all uneasiness about his own personal fortunes. If I can keep the sincere good will of men like yourself I shall feel tolerably confident that I have deserved it. In that case I shall be more than rewarded, no matter what comes in the future.''
In June, 1902, the President attended the Commencement exercises of Harvard University, his Alma Mater, and was given the honorary degree of LL.D. In conferring it President Eliot said: "President of the United States, from his youth a member of this society of scholars, now in his prime a true type of the sturdy gentleman and the high-minded public servant of a democracy." Speaking at the alumni dinner on June 25, 1902, President Roosevelt, after saying that it was "a liberal education in high-minded statesmanship to sit at the same council table with John Hay," devoted himself mainly to eulogizing the work of three men who were performing distinguished public service under his administration—Leonard Wood, Governor of Cuba; Elihu Root, Secretary of War, and William H. Taft, Governor of the Philippines.
In closing his address he said: "Those three men have rendered inestimable service to the American people. I can do nothing for them. I can show my appreciation of them in no way save the wholly insufficient one of standing up for them, and for their work; and that I will do as long as I have tongue to speak!"
Secretary Hay, who was present on the occasion, wrote to the President from Boston, on the following day:
hotel touRaine,
June 26, 1902. Dear Theodore:
I must congratulate you with all my heart on yesterday's triumph—it was nothing less. That great company was a corps d'elite, and you had them with you from start to finish. President Eliot, when you sat down, said, "What a man! Genius, force, and courage, and such evident honesty!''
And another thought was in everybody's mind, also. "He is so young and he will be with us for many a day to come." We are all glad of that, even the old fellows, who are passing.
I can never tell you how much I thank you for your kind reference to me. But your splendid defense of Root, Wood, and Taft touched me still more deeply. It was the speech of a great ruler, and a great gentleman—and will not be forgotten.
I am feeling better this morning and expect a few days in Newbury, N. H., will set me up—for the end of the session.
Yours affectionately,
john hay.
On August 22 President Roosevelt left Oyster Bay for a speaking tour through New England, delivering addresses in the principal cities and towns. In all of them he explained fully his views in regard to the chief questions, which he had been pressing upon Congress, laying special stress upon the necessity for legislation affecting trusts, Cuba and the Philippines and Porto Eico, and securing the building of the Isthmian Canal. While near Pittsfield, Mass., on September 3, he escaped, literally by a hair's breadth, from instant death. A trolley car, going at a high rate of speed, collided squarely with the carriage in which he was riding, an open landau drawn by four horses, smashing the vehicle, killing instantly a secret service man who sat on the box with the driver, and throwing out with great violence the occupants of the carriage, the President, Governor W. Murray Crane, and Mr. Cortelyou, private secretary to the President. The President was thrown fully forty feet, falling on his right cheek, and escaped death almost by a miracle. Governor Crane and Mr. Cortelyou were bruised but not seriously injured. The President was on his feet at once, crying out: "I am not hurt," and asking eagerly for the safety of his companions. He was deeply pained by the death of the secret service man, "William Craig, who had been a most faithful attendant upon him in all his journeyings. He returned to Oyster Bay, arriving there in the evening, with the whole right side of his face swollen and colored a deep purple, and one leg badly bruised. In spite of his injuries, he started on the following day, September 4, for a tour in the South and West, speaking first at Wheeling, West Va., on September 6. He visited during the ensuing three weeks, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, and ended his tour at Indianapolis on September 24, when an abscess that had developed on his injured leg; and which threatened to affect the bone, compelled him to return to Washington. His addresses during this tour were similar to those delivered in New England in their emphasis upon the leading questions of his administration. 

***,.

**,.

CHAPTER NINTEEN,. 
COAL STRIKE  SETTLEMENT,.
in the fall of 1902 President Roosevelt performed a service to the nation which ranks in history as one of the most patriotic and beneficent of his career, but which, when he entered upon it, was denounced with more bitterness than almost any other of his public acts. A universal strike of the miners in the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania, involving about 150,000 men, was instituted in the spring of that year and continued, with steadily increasing animosity between the mine operators and mine workers, through the summer and into the autumn, with no prospects of settlement. Its progress was marked with many acts of violence on the part of the strikers against the non-union laborers whom the operators were trying to employ. The Governor of Pennsylvania had been appealed to and had sent militia to the mines for the protection of life and property, but though there were in the later stages of the strike about 2,000 of these troops, they had shown themselves unable to put a stop to violence. It was estimated that during the rioting twenty persons had been killed and about forty injured, and that much property had been destroyed. The Governor was subjected to sharp criticism for the inefficiency of the force and was accused of sympathy with the strikers. Although called upon repeatedly to confess the inadequacy of the State militia to restore and preserve order, and to appeal to the National Government to come to the aid of the State, he refused to do so. "With the approach of winter, a general feeling of alarm began to spread over the land, especially in the East, for in all States east of the Mississippi River anthracite coal was the almost exclusive fuel, and the supply had fallen so low by September 1 that it was practically impossible to obtain any except in small quantities. Total failure of the supply seemed imminent, and this meant appalling distress in the entire East, with peril of rioting in all the large cities. All persons in authority were seeking anxiously for some powerful means by which to bring about a settlement. The operators of the mines, who had united in an association of their own, were deaf to all appeals, believing that if they held out a little longer the sufferings of the miners would compel them to yield—that they would be starved into submission. They persisted in declaring, in spite of indisputable evidence to the contrary, that there was no danger of a coal famine, that there was an existing supply ample for the winter's needs, and that they were determined to permit no outside interference with the management of their own business.
President Roosevelt had been watching the situation with much solicitude for several weeks-, and his anxiety had been increased by appeals which came to him when the advent of cold weather drew near, to take some action to avert the calamities which were threatening. The Governor of Massachusetts, the Mayors of New York and other large cities in the imperiled region, sent word to him that if the existing coal scarcity continued and became, as seemed likely, a famine, the misery throughout the East would become appalling and the consequent public disorder so great that frightful consequences might ensue.
Writing to Senator Lodge, on September 27, 1902, the President gave this account of the difficulties in the way of action on his part and the political considerations which were hindering a settlement:
"The real concrete trouble is in connection with the coal strike. There is literally nothing, so far as I have yet been able to find out, which the National Government has any power to do in the matter. I have been in consultation with Quay, on the one hand, and with Sargent on the other, as to what I can do, each of them having been in touch with both the representatives of the operators and with Mitchell.
One of the great troubles in dealing with the operators is that their avowed determination in connection with the present matter is to do away with what they regard as the damage done to them by submitting to interference for political reasons in 1900. From the outset they have said that they are never going to submit again to having their laborers given a triumph over them for political purposes, as Senator Hanna secured the triumph in 1900. They are now repeating with great bitterness that they do not intend to allow Quay to bully them into making any concession for his political ends, any more than they would to allow Hanna do it for his.
"Unfortunately the strength of my public position before the country is also its weakness. I am genuinely independent of the big moneyed men in all matters where I think the interests of the public are concerned, and probably I am the first President of recent times of whom this could be truthfully said. I think it right and desirable that this should be true of the President. But where I do not grant any favors to these big moneyed men which, I do not think the country requires that they should have, it is out of the question for me to expect them to grant favors to me in return. I treat them precisely as I treat other citizens; that is, I consider their interests so far as my duty requires and so far as I think the needs of the country warrant. In return they will support me in so far as they are actuated purely by public spirit simply as accordingly they think I am or am not doing well; and so far as they are actuated solely by their private interests they will support me only on points where they think it is to their interest to do so. The sum of this is that I can make no private or special appeal to them, and I am at my wits' end how to proceed.''
On September 27, 1902, he wrote also to Senator Hanna on the same subject:
"What gives me the greatest concern at the moment is the coal famine. Of course, we have nothing whatever to do with this coal strike and no earthly responsibility for it. But the public at large will tend to visit upon our heads responsibility for the shortage in coal precisely as Kansas and Nebraska visited upon our heads their failure to raise good crops in the arid belt, eight, ten, or a dozen years ago. I do not see what I can do, and I know the coal operators are especially distrustful of anything, which they regard as in the nature of political interference. But I do most earnestly feel that from every consideration of public policy and of good morals they should make some slight concession."
To this Senator Hanna replied on September 28, 1902: "I am in receipt of yours of the 27th inst. and reply that I share with you the anxiety in regard to the coal situation. After leaving Oyster Bay I spent the balance of the week in New York raising money for the Congressional Committee, and trying to see what more could be done with the strike. Confidentially, I saw Mr. Mitchell (the public knows nothing about that). I got from Mr. Morgan a proposition as to what he would do in the matter. And I got Mitchell to agree to accept it if the operators would abide by the decision. I really felt encouraged—to think I was about to accomplish a settlement. I went to Philadelphia and saw Mr. Baer (George F. Baer, President of the Reading Railroad) and to my surprise he absolutely refused to entertain it. Yon can see how determined they are. It looks as if it was only to be settled when the miners are starved to it. And that may be weeks ahead as they are getting liberal supplies from their fellow workmen all over the country.
'' I am not unmindful of the importance of this coal situation and will not miss an opportunity to help it if I can. But the position of the operators from the beginning has put all efforts of mine in a false light before the public so I am only able to hold the confidence of the men, and serve them if I can."
From this point to its successful conclusion, the story of the President's efforts is best told in the letters that he wrote and received during their progress. On September 30, 1902, he wrote to Senator Lodge:
"After consultation with Root, Knox, Murray Crane and others on the one side, and after previous consultation with Senator Quay, Sargent and others from their standpoint, I have been inclined to think that there was a chance of my doing something anyhow. I have not yet worked the matter out perfectly clearly in my mind, but yesterday Root went to see Morgan and explained to him that in three or four days I should take some action, probably by inviting the operators to come to see me and requesting in good faith an effort on their part to come to an agreement, by arbitration or otherwise, with the miners. Thus I shall have a free hand to do what I deem best. I may be unable to do anything now, but I may tell them that I shall advise action along the lines I have explained in my speeches but of a much more radical type in reference to their business unless they wake up. I am also, however, to see the representatives of the coal miners. At any rate I am thoroughly awake and will do what I can.''
On October 1, he invited the operators and representatives of the mine workers to come to Washington on October 3, for consultation with him for the purpose of endeavoring to reach a settlement. When this was announced, a storm of protest came from the newspapers, which had been upholding the cause of the operators in the strike. They declared that his course was without authority under the Constitution, that its immediate effect would be to prolong the strike by encouraging the strikers to persist, and that for a President to interfere in the affairs of private corporations was a proceeding so unconstitutional as to make him liable to impeachment.
The invitation was accepted by both parties to the controversy, and in a brief address to them on assembling the President made it very clear that he did not for a moment assume that he had any authority whatever for his action:
   "I disclaim any right or duty to intervene in this way upon legal grounds or upon any official relation that I bear to the situation; but the urgency and the terrible nature of the catastrophe impending over a large portion of our people in the shape of a winter fuel famine impel me, after much anxious thought, to believe that my duty requires me to use whatever influence I personally can to bring to an end a situation which has become literally intolerable. With all the earnestness there is in me I ask that there be an immediate resumption of operations in the coal mines in some such way as will, without a day's unnecessary delay, meet the crying needs of the people. I do not invite a discussion of your respective claims and positions. I appeal to your patriotism, to the spirit that sinks personal consideration and makes individual sacrifices for the general good."
The operators showed very plainly that they resented the President's action and had come in a thoroughly belligerent and uncompromising mood. Immediately after the close of the conference, the President wrote to Senator Hanna, October 3, 1902:
"Well, I have tried and failed. I feel downhearted over the result, both because of the great misery made for the mass of our people, and because the attitude of the operators will beyond a doubt double the burden on us while standing between them and socialistic action. But I am glad I tried anyhow. I should have hated to feel that I had failed to make any effort. What my next move will be I cannot yet say. I feel most strongly that the attitude of the operators is one which accentuates the need of the Government having some power of supervision and regulation over such corporations. I should like to make a fairly radical experiment on the anthracite coal companies to start with! At the meeting to-day the operators assumed a fairly hopeless attitude. None of them appeared to such advantage as Mitchell, whom most of them denounced with such violence and rancor that I felt he did very well to keep his temper. Between times they insulted me for not preserving order (and they evidently ignored such a trifling detail as the United States Constitution) and attacked Knox for not having brought suit against the Miners Union as violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law."
Reports of the conference were published in the newspapers of October 4, and on the following day the President received, what was undoubtedly one of the most welcome and gratifying letters of his life, the following from Grover Cleveland:
princeton, October 4, 1902. My dear Mr. President:
I read in the paper this morning on my way home from Buzzard's Bay, the newspaper account of what took place yesterday between you and the parties directly concerned in the coal strike.
I am so surprised and "stirred up" by the position taken by the contestants that I cannot refrain from making a suggestion, which perhaps I would not presume to make if I gave the subject more thought. I am especially disturbed and vexed by the tone and substance of the operators' deliverances.
It cannot be that either side, after your admonition to them, cares to stand in their present plight, if any sort of an avenue, even for temporary escape, is suggested to them.
Has it ever been proposed to them that the indignation and dangerous condemnation now being launched against both their houses might be allayed by the production of coal in an amount, or for a length of time, sufficient to serve the necessities of consumers, leaving the parties to the quarrel, after such necessities are met, to take up the fight again where they left off "without prejudice" if they desire?
This would eliminate the troublesome consumer and public; and perhaps both operators and miners would see enough advantage in that, to induce them to listen to such a proposition as I have suggested.
   I know there would be nothing philosophical or consistent in all this; but my observation leads me to think that when quarreling parties are both in the wrong, and are assailed with blame so nearly universal, they will do strange things to save their faces.
If you pardon my presumption in thus writing you, I promise never to do it again. At any rate it may serve as an indication of the anxiety felt by millions of our citizens on the subject.
I have been quite impressed by a pamphlet I have lately read, by a Mr. Champlin of Boston, entitled, I believe, "The Coal Mines and the People." I suppose you have seen it.
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,	I
gRoveR cleveland.
To the pResident.
This letter was not given out to the public, of course; neither was any hint given of its existence. If it had been published, the effect upon the furious denouncers of the President's course would have been ludicrous in the extreme, for they were declaring that he was doing what no other President had ever done, or had ever thought of doing; and yet here was the only living Democratic ex-President upholding him in what they called his unconstitutional and revolutionary course!
To Mr. Cleveland's letter, the President replied on October 5, 1902, in a letter which gives what may be called the historic account of the proceedings at the conference. It is here published in full for the first time.
October 5, 1902. My dear Mr. Cleveland:
Your letter was a real help and comfort to me. Throughout this matter I have been thinking of what you and Mr. Olney did in the Pullman car strike, and have been going over with Carroll D. "Wright what, from his inside knowledge, he believed were your views at that time; and if ever the necessity arises for my interference to restore order in Pennsylvania on the call of the constituted authorities or to protect government property by force of the United States regular army, I shall try to use this force with the same firmness that you showed. But it has been rather exasperating to have our more foolish friends yelling that it was my business to send troops into Pennsylvania, when there is as yet no more warrant for doing so than there is for Mayor Low to send his New York police there. Of course, as a matter of fact, I cannot send them in at present, when no government property has been menaced and when there has been no appeal to me by the constituted authorities. I would have just as much right to send them to Troy when there was a railroad strike; or to have demanded them when I was Police Commissioner and there was a clothing cutters' strike.
The attitude of the coal operators at the conference before me was very exasperating. They used language toward Mitchell and his colleagues, which was well calculated to make them so angry that they would consent to nothing. They refused point blank to even consider what I regarded as Mitchell's entirely fair proposition. Some of them assailed me for not having put troops into Pennsylvania—they might just as well have assailed you for not leading an independent body of coal and iron police thither—and one, Mr. Wilcox, made a long argument to show that the Attorney General was derelict in his duty in not bringing suit to dissolve the labor union on the ground that-it was violating the Sherman Law. This last proposition, by the way, may be considered as an offset to the proposition contained in Mr. Champlin's pamphlet to which you refer. Under the Sherman Act Mr. Wilcox, on behalf of the operators, wishes me to bring suit against the miners, and Mr. Champlin that I should bring suit against the operators in the interest of the miners. Of course, if I brought suit against either I should probably have to bring suit against both, and under the decision in the sugar case it seems to me perfectly clear that neither the miners nor the operators, as such, could possibly be held to have violated the Sherman Law.
I am very reluctant in view of the operators' attitude toward me to propose any plan to them at all. Curiously enough, if they had given me an opportunity I should have proposed just the plan you outlined, that is, that there should be a resumption of operations until April first, up to which time the two parties might seek to reach an agreement; and then, when the distress of the public would not be so terrible on account of the approach of warm weather, there would be less damage from their going on with their quarrel.
By the way, you may have noticed that your old friend, The Sun, is now attacking me with the same infamous disregard of truth that it used in its assaults upon you.
I think I shall now tell Mitchell that if the miners will go back to work I will appoint a commission to investigate the whole situation and will do whatever in my power lies to have the findings of such commission favorably acted upon. This seems to be the only step I can now take, or at least the best step at the moment to take. I feel the gravest apprehension concerning the misery pending over so many people this winter and the consequent rioting which may and probably will ensue.
Now, my dear sir, let me thank you again for the real aid and comfort you have given me. You know what a pleasure it is to hear from you at any time. By the way, I was very glad to be able to make your friend O'Reilly Surgeon General. I know how well you think of him.
"With warm regards to Mrs. Cleveland,
Faithfully yours, (Signed)      theodoRe roosevelt.
hon. gRoveR cleveland, Princeton, N. J.
P. S. Of course, if the Pennsylvania authorities would do their whole duty, there would be no need to appeal to me at all.
Writing to Robert Bacon, on October 5, 1902, the President said:
"The situation is bad, especially because it is possible it may grow infinitely worse. If when the severe weather comes on there is a coal famine I dread to think of the suffering, in parts of our great cities especially, and I fear there will be fuel riots of as bad a type as any bread riots we have ever seen. Of course, once the rioting has begun, once there is a resort to mob violence, the only thing to do is to maintain order. It is a dreadful thing to be brought face to face with the necessity of taking measures, however unavoidable, which will mean the death of men who have been maddened by want and suffering."
The radical nature of some of the appeals that reached him is shown in a letter to Senator Lodge on October 7, 1902:
"I am feeling my way step by step trying to get a solution of the coal matter. Most of my correspondents wish me to try something violent or impossible. A minor but very influential part desire that I send troops at once without a shadow of warrant into the coal districts, or that I bring suit against the labor organization. The others demand that I bring suit against the operators, or that under the law of eminent domain, or for the purpose of protecting the public health, I seize their property, or appoint a receiver, or do something else that is wholly impossible. My great concern is, of course, to break the famine; but I must not be drawn into any violent step which would bring reaction and disaster afterward."
In a statement of his position which he wrote to me on October 13, 1902, he left no doubt as to his attitude toward violence: '' Most emphatically I shall not compromise with lawlessness. I have been told, on excellent authority, that the disorder has been very great and of very evil kind. On equally good authority, I am told the exact contrary. I shall speedily find out for myself. I stand against socialism; against anarchic disorder."
   The President wrote again to Mr. Cleveland on October 10, regretting that he could not, because of the injury to his leg, accept the latter's invitation to be his guest at Princeton during the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson to the Presidency of Princeton University on the 25th of that month, and adding:
"Now I am going to requite you ill for your hospitality by asking you to do a service which I know you will be most reluctant to undertake, and which I only ask because I feel we are in the midst of so serious a crisis and one so deeply affecting the welfare of our people.
"My efforts to get the operators and miners to agree failed, chiefly through the fault of the operators. I then asked the miners to go back to work so that the pressing necessities of the public might be met, promising at once to appoint such a commission as Mr. Mitchell had suggested and stating that I would do all in my power to have the recommendations of that commission adopted, of course meaning that I should do all in my power to have whatever legislation they advocated enacted, as well as making up their recommendations in all other ways. But Mitchell refused on behalf of the miners to entertain this proposition. In other words, both sides have resolutely persisted in regarding first their own interests and treating the interests of the public as wholly secondary, and indeed as not to be considered at all.
'' I shall now direct Carroll D. Wright to make a full and careful investigation of the present conditions and of the causes that have led to these conditions, including the question whether there has been violence and if so to what extent ; and what if any steps should be taken to prevent the recurrence of these conditions. I wish to join with him two eminent men—men of such character that save in a crisis like this I would not dream of appealing to them to render any Government service. In all the country there is no man whose name would add such weight to this inquiry as would yours. I earnestly beg you to say that you will accept. I am well aware of the great strain I put upon you by making such a request. I would not make it if I did not feel that the calamity now impending over our people may have consequences which without exaggeration are to be called terrible; and I feel that your services may be invaluable to the nation at this time."
Replying on October 12, 1902, Mr. Cleveland wrote:
My dear Mr. President:
Since the receipt of your letter yesterday I have given its subject matter serious consideration.
You rightly appreciate my reluctance to assume any public service. I am also quite certain that if my advice was asked as to the expediency of naming me in the connection you mention, I should, as a matter of judgment, not favor it.
I cannot, however, with proper deference to your opinion, consider this phase of the question as open to discussion. I have therefore felt that I had only to determine whether your request involved a duty which I ought not to avoid, and whether my engagements and the present demands upon my time would permit me to undertake it.
So far as the latter are concerned this is my situation: I am to take part and say something at President "Wilson's inauguration on the 25th inst., and I have agreed to do the same at the opening of the new building of the Chamber of Commerce in New York on the llth of November. My preparation for the inaugural exercises is complete; but for the other occasion it is hardly begun. I am absurdly slow in such work.
I have no idea of the time, which would be exacted by a compliance with your request, nor how early you would expect a result from the Commission.
I feel so deeply the gravity of the situation, and I so fully sympathize with you in your efforts to remedy present sad conditions, that I believe it is my duty to undertake the service if I can do so and keep the engagements I have already made.
   This I will leave for your decision—only suggesting that I ought to have the next week at least for preparation to keep my New York engagement.
If after reading this you shall notify me that you still think I can undertake the duty you suggest, will you deem it amiss if I hint that I should be glad to know who the third member of the Commission will be?
Your obedient servant,
grover cleveland.
This letter contains a reference to a plan, which the President had formed, but had not disclosed, when his efforts with the operators and mine workers had failed. He had decided that if they would not consent to the appointment of a commission, he would resort to drastic measures, assume powers which the Constitution did not specifically give him, and appoint an investigating or arbitrating com-' mission without regard to whether or not the operators asked for it or agreed to abide by its decisions. He asked Mr. Cleveland, in the letter quoted above, to accept a place on such a commission, with Carroll D. Wright and one other person. Mr. Cleveland's reply, which is given above, shows that he was not troubled with doubts about the uncon-stitutionality of the President's proposal, for he gave his consent to serve.
This commission was only part of the President's plan. The investigation which, it was to conduct would take time. In order that mining operations might be resumed as speedily as possible, the President consulted with Senator Quay, who was all powerful in Pennsylvania politics, and was assured by him that whenever the President desired him to do so he would have the Governor of the State notify the President that he could not keep order in the coal regions and needed Federal interference. The President then informed Major-General John M. Schofield that in case of Federal interference he wished to send him to the coal regions with the regular army troops with instructions to act as receiver of the mines, take full charge, put down all violence, and disregard any orders from the operators. The President asked the General if, in case the operators went to court and had a writ served on him, he would do as was done under Lincoln, simply send the writ on to the President. After a little thought the General replied that he would. Roosevelt said: "All right, I will send you."
No one except Senator Quay, General Schofield and two members of Roosevelt's Cabinet had knowledge of this part of the President's plan. He had arranged with Senator Quay, who was in Pennsylvania, to telegraph to him when the moment arrived at which he (Roosevelt) wished the Governor to notify him of his need of -Federal interference; the message was to be: "The time for the request has come." The President had all preparations made for starting the troops within half an hour.
Whether knowledge of the President's purpose leaked out or not cannot be stated, but something acted as a powerful incentive upon the operators, producing a sudden change of front. It may have been a hint of Mr. Cleveland's willingness to stand openly with the President.
After receipt of Mr. Cleveland's letter of consent, Secretary Root, at the President's request, went to New York on a private mission. In a letter, written to the President on June 23, 1903, to contradict some erroneous assertions about the coal strike settlement that had been made in a newspaper, Secretary Root described this mission and its results as follows, showing that the operators refused to accept Mr. Cleveland as a member of the commission, being naturally unwilling to have such convincing evidence as would thereby be given to the public of the wisdom and justice of the President's course:
"I went to New York and spent the better part of a day with Mr. J. P. Morgan on his yacht Corsair, and during this interview we drafted an agreement of arbitration for a commission to be appointed by you. Mr. Morgan got the signature of the operators to this paper with a single modification. The modification required that the arbitrators appointed by you should belong to certain specified classes—an army engineer, a business man familiar with the coal business, a Judge of the locality, a sociologist, etc., etc. When this paper was presented to the miners they in turn wished for some modification of the proposal, and it appeared that they would be satisfied to enter into the agreement if Bishop Spalding could be added to the list of arbitrators, and Mr. Clark could be appointed to the place which called for a sociologist. As the operators' signatures had been obtained by Mr. Morgan, in order to ascertain whether the operators would assent to these appointments I telegraphed for some member of Mr. Morgan's firm to come to Washington, and Mr. Bacon and Mr. Perkins came, and upon learning the situation they opened telephonic communication with the representatives of the operators in New York, and secured their assent to the appointment of Bishop Spalding and Mr. Clark. When that had been done you asked Mr. Bacon and Mr. Perkins if the operators would not consent to have Mr. Cleveland appointed in lieu of an appointment of an army engineer, saying that you had already asked him to act on a committee of investigation and had secured his assent, and that you would like to appoint him as one of the arbitrators. They went away, and after a short time came back and said they had communicated with the operators by telephone, and the operators would not assent to the appointment of Mr. Cleveland in lieu of an army engineer, or to any further change in their proposal."
When the refusal of the operators to accept Mr. Cleveland was communicated to the President, he sent the following telegram and letter to him on October 16, 1902:
the white house,
washington, October 16, 1902. Hon. Grover Cleveland, Princeton, N. J.
Deeply grateful for your letter. Propositions that have been made since have totally changed situation so that I will not have to make the demand upon you which three days ago it seemed I would have to for the interest of the nation. I thank you most deeply and shall write you at length.
theodore Roosevelt.
My dear Mr. Cleveland:
I appreciated so deeply your being willing to accept that it was very hard for me to forego the chance of putting you on the commission. But in order to get the vitally necessary agreement between the operators and miners I found I had to consult their wishes as to the types of men. Of course I knew that it was the greatest relief to you not to be obliged to serve, but I did wish to have you on, in the first place, because of the weight your name would have lent the commission, and in the next place, because of the effect upon our people, and especially upon our young men, of such an example of genuine self-denying patriotism— for, my dear sir, your service would have meant all this. I do not know whether you understand how heartily I thank you and appreciate what you have done.
Faithfully yours,
theodoRe Roosevelt.
An entertaining account of the final agreement is given by the President in this letter to Senator Lodge under date of October 17, 1902:
"The crisis came at the last moment. Between the hours of 10 p. m. and 1 a. m., I had Bacon and Perkins on here, on behalf of Morgan but really representing the operators. Neither Morgan nor any one else had been able to do much with those wooden-headed gentry, and Bacon and Perkins were literally almost crazy. Bacon in particular had become so excited that I was quite concerned over his condition. The operators had limited me down by a full proviso, to five different types of men, including 'an eminent sociologist.' This was a ridiculous proviso because I could have appointed bad men in every case and yet be kept to its letter; and they ought to have given me a free hand. The miners, on the other hand, wanted me to appoint at least two extra members myself, or in some fashion to get Bishop Spalding (whom I myself wanted), and the labor union man on the commission. I regarded their contention as perfectly reasonable, and so informed Bacon and Perkins and the operators. The operators refused point blank to have another man added, and Bacon and Perkins came on nearly wild to say that they had full power to treat on behalf of the operators, but that no extra man should be added. Finally it developed that what they meant was that no extra man should be added if he was a representative of organized labor; and argue as I could, nothing would make them change; although they grew more and more hysterical, and not merely admitted, but insisted, that the failure to agree meant probable violence and possible social war.
"It took me about two hours before I at last grasped the fact that the mighty brains of these captains of industry had formulated the theory that they would rather have anarchy than tweedledum, but if I would use the word tweedledee they would hail it as meaning peace. In other words, that they had not the slightest objection to my appointing a labor man as an 'eminent sociologist,' and adding Bishop Spalding on my own account, but they preferred to see the Red Commune come rather than to have me make Bishop Spalding or any one else 'the eminent sociologist' and add the labor man. I instantly told them that I had not the slightest objection whatever to doing an absurd thing when it was necessary to meet the objection of an absurd mind on some vital point, and that I would cheerfully appoint my labor man as the 'eminent sociologist.' It was almost impossible for me to appreciate the instant and tremendous relief this gave them. They saw nothing offensive in my language and nothing ridiculous in the proposition, and Pierpont Morgan and Baer, when called, up by telephone, eagerly ratified the absurdity; and accordingly, at this utterly unimportant price, we bid fair to come out of as dangerous a situation as I ever dealt with.''
Writing to 'Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") a few days after agreement was reached, October 20, 1902, the President revealed his thorough enjoyment of the final scene:
"I have not had the heart to write to you until this coal strike was out of the way. Now I feel like throwing up my hands and going to the circus; but as that is not possible I think I shall try a turkey shoot or bear hunt or something of the kind instead. Nothing that you have ever written can begin to approach in screaming comedy the inside of the last few conferences before I appointed the strike commission, and especially the complicated maneuvers by which, weaving in and out among the tender susceptibilities of the operators and the miners, I finally succeeded in reconciling both to the appointment of the president of the labor union as an 'eminent sociologist.' "
The appointment of the commission was hailed with universal relief and approval, for pending the investigation work in the mines was to be resumed at once. From one end of the country to the other the President was praised for his efforts, and there was not a dissenting voice anywhere, even the most zealous guardians of the Constitution joining in it. Foreign newspapers also joined in the chorus of approval, the London Times saying:
"In a most quiet and unobtrusive manner the President has done a very big and entirely new thing. We are witnessing not merely the ending of the coal strike, but the definite entry of a powerful Government upon a novel sphere of operation. President Roosevelt did not assume his task as the amateur mediator; he did not enter upon it without counting the cost, or without the support of convictions and ideas far outrunning the ostensible subject-matter of his action. His personal prestige and reputation are enormously enhanced by the immediate public service he has rendered, and they will be immeasurably enhanced when the American people grasp, as they rapidly will, the far larger issues involved in his striking departure from precedent.
"Let the Americans stick to their President and strengthen his hands. If there is any living man who can show them the way out of the dangers threatening them, that man is Mr. Roosevelt."
^
Writing to me on October 18, 1902, he said: "I am being very much overpraised by everybody, and although I suppose I like it, it makes me feel uncomfortable too. Mind you, I speak the literal truth when I say I know perfectly well I do not deserve what is said of me. It really seems to me that any man of average courage and common-sense, who felt as deeply as I did the terrible calamity impending over our people, would have done just what I did."
The Commission was announced on October 15, as follows:
“Brigadier General John M. Wilson, retired, formerly Chief of Engineers, 'U.S.A.; E. W. Parker, expert mining engineer, chief statistician of the coal division of the U. S. Geological Survey and editor of The Engineering and Mining Journal; George Gray, Judge of the United States Circuit Court, Delaware; E. E. Clark, Chief of the Order of Railway Conductors, sociologist; Thomas H. Watkins, practically connected with the mining and selling of coal; Bishop John L. Spalding, of Illinois; Carroll D. Wright, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, Recorder of the Commission.
The Commission, which was accepted by the operators, and by the mine workers in convention, came together at the White House on October 24, 1902, for organization and for instructions from the President. Judge Gray was chosen Chairman. In a brief address, the President said:
"By the action you recommend, which the parties in interest have in advance consented to abide by, you will endeavor to establish the relations between the employers and the wage workers in the anthracite fields on a just and permanent basis, and as far as possible to do away with any causes for the recurrence of such difficulties as those which you have been called to settle."
The Commission began its labors at once and continued them for nearly four months, hearing a great mass of testimony and thoroughly investigating all phases of the problem. Its report was completed in March, 1903, presented to the President on the 21st of the month, and published in the newspapers on the following day. As both parties to the Commission's inquiry had pledged themselves in advance to abide by its decisions, there was no question of acceptance, but both parties expressed themselves publicly as fully satisfied with the findings, each claiming a victory over the other.
The verdict by press and public was one of unanimous approval. That uttered by the Tribune, on March 22, 1903, may be cited as a fairly accurate sample of the whole:
" 'A sweeping victory for the miners!' exclaims one commentator upon the report of the President's Commission on the anthracite coal strike. 'A bomb in labor circles!' declares another with equal assurance. Both are wrong. The report gives victory to one of the parties to the controversy. But it is not the miners, nor is it the operators. It is rather that third party whose interests are permanent, though too often overlooked by both the others and their hot champions—the public. So far as the two parties first named are concerned, each has partly won and partly lost, as was to be expected. The public, whose demands were simply that justice should prevail, seems to have won on every point.
"It was a generous and patriotic act of the President to intervene in the strike, appoint this Commission, set the mines in operation again, and thus fill the empty coal bins throughout the land. It has also been a generous and patriotic act of the Commissioners to investigate the matter before them in so impartial and painstaking a manner, to make at the end so wise and just a report. To the President and to them the sincere gratitude of the nation is due."
The main points of the Commission's findings were that the miners should have a ten per cent increase in wages; that non-union labor and union labor should be treated on equal terms; that all disputes between operators and miners should be referred to a Board of Conciliation of six members, three chosen by the operators and three by the organizations of mine workers; in case of failure by the Board to agree, the question in dispute should be referred to a United States Circuit Judge of the District as umpire, and his decision should be final. The findings of the Commission were to be obligatory upon operators and workers for three years.
Time has completely justified the President's course. Not only did the findings of the Commission secure peace in the anthracite mines during the three stipulated years, but permanently, for since 1902 there has been no strike there and no serious labor trouble. The system of settling disputes has worked smoothly and with entire success. Among other direful predictions that were made anent the President's course was one that in interfering in a labor dispute he had established a precedent that would lead to constant interference of the same sort in future and would encourage all labor agitators to promote strikes in the confident belief that the President of the United States would intervene and settle them. • Not a single instance of the kind has occurred which can be traced to President Roosevelt's action as the inspiring cause. The great lesson of the settlement which the President had secured and which impressed the people of the land was that the labor problem had entered upon a new phase, was no longer only an economic problem, but a moral and human one. The workers had been compelled to unite to secure not merely their economic but their simple human rights, and a body of men who commanded the respect and confidence of the country had decreed that those human rights should be recognized and protected.
When the report of the Commission was received by the President, he wrote as follows to Judge Gray:
house, washington,
March 24, 1903. My dear Judge Gray:
Pray permit me through you to thank the members of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission for as important a piece of public service as any equal number of men have in our time rendered the country. When you were appointed, we were within measurable distance of a great national calamity. By your acceptance of the position, and the wisdom, fearlessness and absolute fairness of your course since, you not only averted that calamity but performed great and lasting service to the nation. This service was rendered at a heavy personal cost to each of you, and to those of your body who were in public service it was simply an additional burden. But such service as you gave could not be bought, and perhaps it is as well for the country that it should be given at a personal sacrifice, as was true in this case. Thanking you again most heartily, I am
Sincerely yours, (Signed)     theodore roosevelt.

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CHAPTER TWENTY,.
THE KAISER AND VENEZUELA,.
eaRly in December, 1902, an opportunity came for the President to assert the position he had held for many years in regard to the Monroe Doctrine, and he was quick to seize it. No publicity was given at the time, nor for many years afterward, to the manner in which he compelled the German Kaiser to execute a complete backdown. Details of the incident were published for the first time in 1915, in William Roscoe Thayer's "Life of John Hay." The publication would have attracted wide attention in ordinary times, and coming as it did in the first year of Germany's great war with the rest of the world, it aroused especial and very deep interest. There was some question raised as to the authenticity of the author's story, and to corroborate its truth and prevent all future denial, Roosevelt wrote a letter to Mr. Thayer in which he gave his personal version of the incident, and supplemented Mr. Thayer's version with some corroborative evidence which had recently come into his possession and which established its accuracy beyond dispute. This letter was published later as an appendix in a second edition of Mr. Thayer's book. In accordance with the expressed wish of Roosevelt it is reproduced here as the final and authoritative account of the incident:
sagamore hill, August 21, 1916. My dear Mr. Thayer:
There is now no reason why I should not speak of the facts connected with the disagreement between the United States and Germany over the Venezuela matter, in the early part of my administration as President, and of the final amicable settlement of the disagreement. 
At that time the Venezuelan Dictator—President Castro —had committed various offenses against different European nations, including Germany and England. The English Government was then endeavoring to keep on good terms with Germany, and on this occasion acted jointly with her. Germany sent a squadron of war vessels to the Venezuelan coast, and they were accompanied by some English war vessels. There was no objection whatever to Castro's being punished, as long as the punishment did not take the form of seizure of territory and its more or less permanent occupation by some Old-World power. - At this particular point, such seizure of territory would have been a direct menace to the United States, because it would have threatened or partially controlled the approach to the projected Isthmian Canal.
I speedily became convinced that Germany was the leader, and the really formidable party in the transaction; and that England was merely following Germany's lead in rather half-hearted fashion. I became convinced that England would not back Germany in the event of a clash over the matter between Germany and the United States, but would remain neutral; I did not desire that she should do more than remain neutral. I also became convinced that Germany intended to seize some Venezuelan harbor and turn it into a strongly fortified place of arms, on the model of Kiauchau, with a view to exercising some degree of control over the future Isthmian Canal, and over South American affairs generally.
For some time the usual methods of diplomatic intercourse were tried. Germany declined to agree to arbitrate the question at issue between her and Venezuela, and declined to say that she would not take possession of Venezuelan territory, merely saying that such possession would be "temporary"—which might mean anything. I finally decided that no useful purpose would be served by further delay, and I took action accordingly. I assembled our battle fleet, under Admiral Dewey, near Porto Rico, for "maneuvers," with instructions that the fleet should be kept in hand and in fighting trim, and should be ready to sail at an hour's notice. The fact that the fleet was in West Indian waters was of course generally known; but I believe that the Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Dewey, and perhaps his Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of State, John Hay, were the only persons who knew about the order for the fleet to be ready to sail at an hour's notice. I told John Hay that I would now see the German Ambassador, Herr von Holleben, myself, and that I intended to bring matters to an early conclusion. Our navy was in very efficient condition, being superior to the German navy.
I saw the Ambassador, and explained that in view of the presence of the German Squadron on the Venezuelan coast I could not permit longer delay in answering my request for an arbitration, and that I could not acquiesce in any seizure of Venezuelan territory. The Ambassador responded that his government could not agree to arbitrate, and that there was no intention to take "permanent" possession of Venezuelan territory. I answered that Kiauchau was not a "permanent" possession of Germany—that I understood that it was merely held by a 99 years' lease; and that I did not intend to have another Kiauchau, held by similar tenure, on the approach to the Isthmian Canal. The Ambassador repeated that his government would not agree to arbitrate. I then asked him to inform his government that if no notification for arbitration came within a certain specified number of days I should be obliged to order Dewey to take his fleet to the Venezuelan coast and see that the German forces did not take possession of any territory. He expressed very grave concern, and asked me if I realized the serious consequences that would follow such action; consequences so serious to both countries that he dreaded to give them a name. I answered that I had thoroughly counted the cost before I decided on the step, and asked him to look at the map, as a glance would show him that there was no spot in the world where Germany in the event of a conflict with the United States would be at a greater disadvantage than in the Caribbean Sea.
A few days later the Ambassador came to see me, talked pleasantly on several subjects, and rose to go. I asked him if he had any answer to make from his government to my request, and when he said no, I informed him that in such event it was useless to wait as long as I had intended, and that Dewey would be ordered to sail twenty-four hours in advance of the time I had set. He expressed deep apprehension, and said that his government would not arbitrate. However, less than twenty-four hours before the time I had appointed for cabling the order to Dewey, the Embassy notified me that his Imperial Majesty the German Emperor had directed him to request me to undertake the arbitration myself. I felt, and publicly expressed, great gratification at this outcome, and great appreciation of the course the German Government had finally agreed to take. Later I received the consent of the German Government to have the arbitration undertaken by The Hague Tribunal, and not by me.
At that time there was in New York as German Consul-General a very able and agreeable man, Dr. Buenz, a native of Holstein. He was intimate with a friend and then neighbor of mine, Mr. A. W. Callisen, whose father was born in Schleswig, and who, incidentally, was and is exactly as straight an American as I am. Mr. Callisen introduced Dr. Buenz to me; and I found the doctor an exceptionally well informed man about American matters and indeed about world affairs generally. He was at my house on several occasions, and I discussed many things with him, including the German and American navies. I had, however, no idea that he had any knowledge whatever of this phase of the Venezuelan affair until after your book appeared. Mr. Callisen happened to read it, was much interested in the part referring to Venezuela, and wrote to a friend of his, Mr. Ambrose C. Richardson, of Buffalo, a letter running in part as follows:
" 'A Chapter of Diplomacy' (Mr. Thayer's account) interested me greatly, all the more as I knew Dr. Holleben personally, and, what is still more to the purpose, his most intimate friend, Dr. Buenz, at that time German Consul-General at New York. The story is absolutely true, and here is the sequel.
"The German and British Governments firmly counted on our well established jellyfish squashiness and felt sure they had a free hand. The Kaiser and Junker party especially had everything cut and dried, and counted the affair as accomplished. The first time Holleben informed his government that probably Roosevelt's attitude was a bluff; but on second thought went to his friend Buenz for advice as B. knew the American people better than any German living, and was a close friend of Roosevelt's (I introduced him) and hence a good judge of the situation. Buenz at once assured him that Roosevelt was not bluffing, and that he could count on his doing as threatened; and that in a conversation Roosevelt had shown that he had an intimate knowledge of the strength and condition of the German fleet which was . . . (then) no match for ours.
"Holleben was obliged to eat his own words and telegraph in hot haste to Berlin, where his message fell like a bombshell. You know the rest. This resulted in Holleben's being recalled and dismissed from the diplomatic service. . . . When he sailed from Hoboken not a single member of the diplomatic corps or German official dared to see him off. Only Buenz (and I) dared to brave official disapproval, and went on board to bid him farewell. I went at Buenz's request."
A copy of this letter came into my possession and I showed it to Mr. Callisen when he was here, at my house, on May 7 last. He wrote alongside the part I have quoted: "The above is absolutely accurate. (Signed) A. W. Callisen." Mr. Callisen informed me that he had not intended the letter for publication, but that as the copy had been shown to several people I was at liberty to make whatever use of it I desired.
   After your book appeared some person wrote a letter to the press stating that at the time of the Venezuela incident the American fleet was not mobilized under Admiral Dewey in the West Indies. The letter was sent to Mr. Henry A. Wise Wood, of the National Security League, who thereupon wrote to Admiral Dewey for information on the subject. Admiral Dewey answered as follows:
office of
the admiRal of the navy washington,.
May 23, 1916.
mR. henRy A. wise wood, 25 Madison Avenue,
New York City. My dear Mr. Wood:
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of May 22, asking me to set you right respecting certain facts regarding Colonel Roosevelt's action over Venezuela.
I was at Culebra, Porto Rico, at the time, in command of a fleet consisting of over fifty ships, including every battle ship and every torpedo boat that we had, with orders from Washington to hold the fleet in hand and be ready to move at a moment's notice. Fortunately, however, the whole matter was amicably adjusted, and there was no need for action.
Hoping the above statement is exactly what you want, and thanking you for the compliments you pay me, I am,
Very truly yours,
geoRge dewey.
This letter was published in the press; and Mr. Wood then sent me copies of the correspondence.
Sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt.
It was on December 8, 1902, that Germany and England severed diplomatic relations with Venezuela. President Roosevelt soon afterwards had with the German Ambassador the first interview in which the Ambassador had claimed that Germany was establishing a "pacific blockade" and that its occupation of territory was only "temporary." That the President was correct in his estimate of England's attitude was shown ten days later, December 18, 1902, when Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, said in the House of Commons:
"I think it quite likely that the United States will think that there cannot be such a thing as a 'pacific blockade,' and I personally take the same view. Evidently the blockade involves a state of war.''
This declaration was received with general approval, showing that English opinion was in accord with it. It was published prominently in American newspapers and the German Ambassador undoubtedly saw it. On December 18, there also appeared in the newspapers a despatch from Washington saying that the fighting ships of Dewey's fleet had been ordered to rendezvous at the Island of Trinidad, directly off the coast of Venezuela. The German Ambassador doubtless saw this also. On the morning of December 19, 1902, the following, obviously inspired, Associated Press despatch from Berlin .was published:
"The answer of Germany to the arbitration proposal in behalf of Venezuela, received through the United States, is its acceptance. The delivery of this reply to the United States for transmission to Minister Bowen (American Minister to Venezuela) is delayed for a day or two for tactical reasons. Four days ago the German Gevornment was in favor of rejecting arbitration, and that is understood to have been the temper of the British Foreign Office, also. While it is impossible to trace the steps which led to the reversal of this view, it appears that it was caused by the state of public opinion in the United States, so far as Germany is concerned, as it is understood here."
Three days later, December 22, 1902, the Kaiser formally requested President Roosevelt to act as arbiter, but after careful deliberation he declined, on December 26, and the case was referred to The Hague Tribunal. There was no publicity given to the President's conversation with Dr. von Holleben. Even Admiral Dewey knew nothing except that he was instructed to hold his fleet in readiness for orders. In his annual message to Congress, December 7, 1903, the President thus stated the facts in the case, giving no hint of his personal diplomatic proceedings in bringing about a peaceful solution:
"It will be remembered that during the second session of the last Congress Great Britain, Germany, and Italy formed an alliance for the purpose of blockading the ports of Venezuela and using such other means of pressure as would secure a settlement of claims due, as they alleged, to certain of their subjects.
"Their employment of force for the collection of these claims was terminated by an agreement brought about through the offices of the diplomatic representatives of the United States at Caracas and the Government at Washington, thereby ending a situation which was bound to cause increasing friction and which jeopardized the peace of the continent. Under this agreement Venezuela agreed to set apart a certain percentage of the customs receipts of two of her ports to be applied to the payment of whatever obligations might be ascertained by mixed commissions appointed for that purpose to be due from her, not only to the three powers already mentioned, whose proceedings against her had resulted in a state of war, but also to the United States, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, and Mexico, who had not employed force for the collection of the claims alleged to be due to certain of their citizens.
"A demand was then made by the so-called blockading powers that the sums ascertained to be due to their citizens by such mixed commissions should be accorded payment in full before anything was paid upon the claims of any of the so-called peace powers. Venezuela, on the other hand, insisted that all her creditors should be paid upon a basis of exact equality. During the efforts to adjust this dispute it was suggested by the powers in interest that it should be referred to me for decision, but I was clearly of the opinion that a far wiser course would be to submit the question to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. It seemed to me to offer an admirable opportunity to advance the practise of the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations and to secure for The Hague Tribunal a memorable increase of its practical importance. The nations interested in the controversy were so numerous, and in many instances so powerful, as to make it evident that beneficent results would follow from their appearance at the same time before the bar of that august tribunal of peace.
"Our hopes in that regard have been realized. Kussia and Austria are represented in the persons of the learned and distinguished jurists who compose the Tribunal, while Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela are represented by their respective agents and counsel. Such an imposing concourse of nations presenting their arguments and invoking the decision of that high court of international justice and international peace can hardly fail to secure a like submission of many future controversies. The nations now appearing there will find it far easier to appear there a second time, while no nation can imagine its just pride will be lessened by following the example now presented. This triumph of the principle of international arbitration is a subject of warm congratulation and offers a happy augury for the peace of the world."
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CHAPTER TWENTY ONE,. 
POPULAR APPROVAL—VIEWS ON VARIOUS  SUBJECTS,.
the elections of November, 1902, showed unmistakably that the President had the hearty support of the people of the country in his course during the first year of his administration. The chief issues were his treatment of trusts and the settlement of the coal strike, and on these he won a signal triumph. Not only had all the Republican State conventions of the year strongly approved his policies but had declared in favor of his election to the Presidency in 1904. The Republicans elected the largest majority of members of the House of Representatives that their party had secured in a midway election during Republican administration for thirty-four years. A few days after election, on November 11, 1902, the President went to New York to participate in the dedication of a building which had been erected by the Chamber of Commerce of that city as its permanent home. At a banquet in the evening the President delivered the principal address. Fifteen years later, when the European war was in progress, the closing passages of this address were recalled as evidence of farsighted wisdom on the part of Roosevelt. It was:
"We are glad indeed that we are on good terms with all the other peoples of mankind, and no effort on our part shall be spared to secure a continuance of these relations. And remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor for peace largely in proportion to the way in which we make it evident that our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to defend ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrongdoing, a genuine desire for self-respecting friendship with our neighbors. The voice of the weakling or the craven counts for nothing when he clamors for peace.; but the voice of the just man armed is potent. We need to keep in a condition of preparedness, especially as regards our navy, not because we want war, but because we desire to stand with those whose plea for peace is listened to with respectful attention."
This was not the first utterance 'of the kind that Roosevelt had made, but was in fact a repetition of what he had said twenty years earlier in the preface to his "History of the War of 1812," which he wrote in 1882, quoted in Chapter SIX, and in his address before the Naval War College in 1897, quoted in Chapter NINE.
In his Chamber of Commerce speech the President gave an outline of his ideas on the subject of social and industrial reform—a question that was steadily growing to larger importance in his mind:
"No patent remedy can be devised for the solution of these grave problems in the industrial world; but we may rest assured that they can be solved at all only if we bring to the solution certain old-time virtues, and if we strive to keep out of the solution some of the most familiar and most undesirable of the traits to which mankind has owed untold degradation and suffering throughout the ages. Arrogance, suspicion, brutal envy of the well-to-do, brutal indifference toward those who are not well-to-do, the hard refusal to consider the rights of others, the foolish refusal to consider the limits of beneficent action, the base appeal to the spirit of selfish greed, whether it take the form of plunder of the fortunate or of oppression of the unfortunate—from these and from all kindred vices this Nation must be kept free if it is to remain in its present position in the forefront of the peoples of mankind. On the other hand, good will come, even out of the present evils, if we face them armed with the old homely virtues; if we show that we are fearless of soul, cool of head, and kindly of heart; if, without betraying the weakness that cringes before wrongdoing, we yet show by deeds and words our knowledge that in such a government as ours each of us must be in very truth his brother's keeper."
He went to Tennessee in November, speaking at Memphis on the 19th of that month, when he dwelt upon the Government's work in the Philippines, saying:
"There is no question as to our not having gone far enough and fast enough in granting self-government to the Filipinos; the only possible danger has been lest we should go faster and further than was in the interest of the Filipinos themselves. Each Filipino at the present day is guaranteed his life, his liberty and the chance to pursue happiness as he wishes, so long as he does not harm his fellows, in a way which the Islands have never known before during all their recorded history."
Speaking at a banquet of the Union League Club in Philadelphia on November 22, 1902, he paid high tribute to the ability and services of Attorney General Knox, adding:
"The question of the so-called trusts is but one of the questions we must meet in connection with our industrial system. There are many of them and they are serious; but they can and will be met. Time may be needed for making the solution perfect; but it is idle to tell this people that we have not the power to solve such a problem as that of exercising adequate supervision over the great industrial combinations of to-day. We have the power and we shall find out the way. We shall not act hastily or recklessly, and a right solution shall be found, and found it will be."
In his annual message to Congress, December 2, 1902, the President said that the views which he had expressed in his message of 1901, in regard to the desirability of national control and regulation of trusts and corporations, had, in his opinion, been emphasized by experience, and he defined his general attitude on the subject as follows:
   "Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth. Publicity can do no harm to the honest corporation; and we need not be over-tender about sparing the dishonest corporation."
To the Rev. Dr. W. S. Rainsford, of New York, who wrote him a letter criticizing the trust portions of his message as lacking in specific remedies, he replied, December 27, 1902:
"I thank you for your letter. You say it is difficult for the politicians in Washington to understand what is needed and not to be timid. I agree with you. But one of my main difficulties arises from the fact that thoroughly good outsiders do not understand what is possible to do or indeed what is done. I am glad you wrote frankly about my message. I know you expect me to write with equal frankness in return. Your letter was a genuine disappointment to me, because it showed you had misunderstood what most emphatically no man has a right to misunderstand. My message was absolutely clear. I spoke of the need of publicity. But are you aware that to make publicity an issue is mere nonsense unless I frame legislation, which will give us a chance to get it? Are you aware also of the extreme un-wisdom of my irritating Congress by fixing the details of a bill, concerning which they are very sensitive, instead of laying down a general policy? I said in my message just what I had said in my speeches, only I used the phraseology appropriate to the occasion. I went over every word with Attorney General Knox and went just as far as I thought we could with safety go. He and I are now in close consultation with the Congressional" committees having the legislation in charge.
"Don't you think that you will get a better idea of what I am after if you remember that I am seeking to secure action by Congress rather than to establish a reputation as a stump exhorter?"
The President's sense of humor, for which he was accustomed to give devout thanks as a genuine "very present help in time of trouble," is revealed constantly in his letters. I append two samples. The first was to Secretary Hay on May 19, 1902:
Dear John:
The enclosed papers of A *BLANK* ,B *BLANK*      in point of fervor
and number would quite justify his appointment as Secretary of State; but I understand he only wants the consulship at Fort Erie. Senator Platt and Congressman Alexander have nearly burst into tears at the thought of its going elsewhere—Congressman Alexander is listening to me as I pen this. If Hitt's man can be put elsewhere, can we not continue Erie as a feudal appanage of Buffalo?
Faithfully yours,
T. R.
The second was to Secretary Root on February 21, 1903, enclosing a letter of complaint:
To the Secretary of War:
This is austerely called to your attention by the President, who would like a full and detailed explanation, if possible with interjectional musical accompaniment, about the iniquity of making a promotion for the senior Senator from Maine and refusing to make one for the junior Senator. Your special attention is directed to the pathos of the concluding sentence of the junior Senator's letter. An early and inaccurate report is requested. 
T. R.
A correspondence which took place early in 1903 between the President and Senator Platt, of New York, is of interest as defining the attitude which the President habitually took with all the Senators of his party in the matter of appointments. He consulted them, and when they proposed to him men who met his test of character and fitness, he appointed them gladly, but as he said, in a letter already quoted in these pages: '' They may ordinarily name the men but I shall name the standard and the men have got to come up to it." He habitually exercised great care in the selection of nominees for the bench, making inquiries in all directions from which trustworthy information could be derived, and reaching a decision only when he thought the best man had been found. He pursued this course in regard to a vacancy in the United States District Court in New York in 1903. When he had decided upon the man he informed Senator Platt of his selection. The Senator, who was then broken in health and broken also in political power, and who had presented a candidate of his own choice for the place, wrote a querulous, even peevish letter to the President, to which the latter replied at length on February 22, 1903, saying among other things:
"You say that you 'cannot with any degree of equanimity consent to the appointment of a man whose chief claim to recognition is his social standing and whose unfitness for appointment is known to nearly every member of the bar in New York—i. e., to every member of the bar who is active and potential in the practise of the law.' I do not see how you can feel thus in view of the endorsements I have received. (The names of a large number of eminent lawyers in New York are then given.)
"You say that 'if Mr. H.'s appointment follows this protest, I shall view it with absolute disgust. I shall, moreover, experience a diminution of that interest in public affairs that has been for so many years a vital element of my life.'
"This, my dear Senator, seems hardly worthy of you. I cannot believe that you seriously mean that if I should, after careful and conscientious thought, conclude to nominate a man recommended as Mr. H. is recommended, and standing as high as I know him to stand, you would feel like losing interest in public affairs. My life has been much shorter than yours, yet I have seen a good many appointments made to Federal position, during the last twenty years, of which I by no means approve. But it never occurred to me, on account of any or all of those appointments, to refuse longer to take an interest in public affairs. It is, I trust, needless to say that I fully appreciate the right and duty of the Senate to reject or to confirm any appointment according to what its members conscientiously deem their duty to be; just as it is my business to make an appointment which I conscientiously think is a good one.
"Finally, my dear Senator, you say: 'If you cherish the belief that Mr. H. will be able to accomplish the political results that you have in mind, I simply wish to express the opinion that he cannot, and, moreover, will not, meet your expectations.'
"I am wholly at a loss to know what you mean by this sentence. The political results I shall have in mind if I appoint Mr. H. are those that I hope will follow the appointment of a first class man whom the community in general and the bar in particular will accept as a first class man in point of character and ability, and whose appointment they will feel reflects credit upon the bench. I do not see how bad political results can follow such action, and I should hope that on the whole the political results will be good. But I must frankly say that I feel, when the matter is one of the appointment of a judge, that the wisest and best politics is to appoint a thoroughly high grade man—if possible the best man obtainable. It is a matter of very keen regret to me that we seem unable to agree in this matter."
Three days later, February 28, 1903, he wrote again to the Senator, giving notice of his final decision:
   "I have been going over and over that judgeship situation. I am convinced that the bar and the people generally who are best competent to judge feel that H. is by all means the better man, and I do not see how I can avoid sending in his name. Many of your strongest friends wish him. It is a matter of the greatest regret to me that our judgments on this point do not seem to agree. I would not for one moment act against your wishes if it was a matter of personal preference, but here my conception of duty seems to me to require that I should nominate him."
Writing at this period to William H. Taft, then Civil Governor of the Philippines, he gave, under date of March 13, 1903, this judicial estimate of the character and services of the Republican leaders in both houses of Congress:
"My experience for the last year and a half, including the two sessions of the last Congress and the special session of the Senate which has just closed, has made me feel respect and regard for Aldrich as one of that group of Senators, including Allison, Hanna, Spooner, Platt, of Connecticut, Lodge and one or two others, who, together with men like the next Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon, are the most powerful factors in Congress. With every one of these men I at times differ radically on important questions ; but they are the leaders, and their great intelligence and power and their desire in the last resort to do what is best for the government, make them not only essential to work with, but desirable to work with. Several of the leaders have special friends whom they desire to favor, or special interests with which they are connected and which they hope to serve. But, taken as a body, they are broadminded and patriotic, as well as sagacious, skilful and resolute. Each of them is set in his ways on certain points. Thus, with both Hanna and Aldrich I had to have a regular stand-up fight before I could get them to accept any trust legislation; but when I once got them to say they would give in, they kept their promise in good faith, and it was far more satisfactory to work with them than to try to work with the alleged radical reformers. Aldrich, for in stance, has shied off from a number of propositions in which I was interested, but if I thought the matter vital and brought it before him fair and square, I have always found him a reasonable man, open to conviction and a tower of strength when thus convinced."
A letter which the President wrote to Secretary Hay, on March 13,1903, reveals his consistent devotion to the Monroe doctrine and especially his determination to keep the German Government fully informed as to his position in regard to it:
"Speck (von Sternburg, German Ambassador) was in to-day, evidently inspired from Berlin to propose for our consideration in the future the advisability of having the great Powers collectively stand back of some syndicate which should take possession of the finances of Venezuela. His statement was that he believed such action would put a stop to the motive for revolution in Venezuela, would make the country peaceful and therefore more or less prosperous, and would do away with the chance for a repetition of punitive expeditions by European powers to collect debts. He said he hoped America would take the initiative in such a movement, so that it could be begun with her in the lead. I told him I would not answer offhand but that at first blush my judgment was very strongly that our people would view with the utmost displeasure any such proposal, because it seemed to me that it would not only tend to produce complication among the guaranteeing powers but would pave the way for reducing Venezuela to a condition like that of Egypt, and that the American people interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as meaning of course that no European power should gain control of any American republics.''
At the end of March, 1903, the President left Washington for a tour in the Western States, and on the eve of departure he sent these letters of advice and caution to two admirals of the navy:
March 28, 1903. To Admiral Henry C. Taylor:
"I am going away and I want you and everybody around the Department to help me in seeing that no chance is given ignorant, foolish or reckless newspaper men to make statements which tend to embroil us with foreign nations. The last thing I want to see done is an impression conveyed that we are boasting, or saying anything that will hurt the feelings of powers with which we are at peace, and with which I hope we will continue on terms of friendship. I want to see every step possible taken to make us the most formidable of foes in the event of war, and at the same time to make it equally evident that no one need fear a war with us unless from his own fault."
March 30, 1903. To Admiral George Dewey:
"Good-by and good luck to you while I am gone! Now, my dear Admiral, do let me beg of you to remember how great your reputation is—how widely whatever you say goes over the whole world. I know that you did not expect the interview you had to be printed, but do let me entreat you to say nothing which can be taken hold of by those anxious to foment trouble between ourselves and any foreign power or who delight in giving the impression that as a nation we are walking about with a chip on our shoulder. We are too big a people to be able to be careless in what we say."
Speaking to a great audience in Chicago on April 2,1903, the President said:
"I believe in the Monroe Doctrine with all my heart and soul; I am convinced that the immense majority of our fellow-countrymen so believe in it; but I would infinitely prefer to see us abandon it than to see us put it forward and bluster about it, and yet fail to build up the efficient fighting strength which in the last resort can alone make it respected by any strong foreign power whose interest it may ever happen to be to violate it.
1' There is a homely old adage which runs: ' Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' If the American nation will speak softly and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy the Monroe Doctrine will go far."
The first mention of the "big stick" adage that I find in his correspondence is in a letter that he wrote while he was Governor of New York. During his Presidency the cartoonists of the daily press seized upon a part of it only and pictured him invariably with an immense club in his hand, oftentimes with spikes protruding from the sides of it. He was thus represented as the champion of the "Big Stick" policy in governmental administration, and in that forceful aspect he was placed continuously before the world.
During his Presidency I made collections of the press cartoons about him and took them to the White House with me on my occasional visits. Usually they were inspected by him in the presence of such members of the family as happened to be there and they were the cause of much merriment, he himself enjoying them as much as any one else. On one occasion, after a particularly large batch had been examined, he said,—I give his words from memory: "It is very curious. Ever since I have been in the Presidency I have been pictured constantly as a huge creature with enormous clenched teeth, a big spiked club, and a belt full of pistols—a blustering, roaring swashbuckler type of ruffian, and yet all the time I have been growing in popularity. I don't understand it at all."
The explanation seemed to me to be simple enough. All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of him; they were uniformly good-natured. He, as I have said, genuinely enjoyed their productions and had many of the original drawings framed and placed on the bookcases in his library, both in the White House and at Oyster Bay.
Writing from the Far West to Senator Lodge, he gave an interesting glimpse of the movement which was on foot at the time to make Grover Cleveland the Democratic Presidential candidate for a third term:
May 4, 1903.—"I enjoyed meeting Cleveland for I like the old fellow. It is evident he has the Presidential bee in his bonnet, and it is equally evident that a large number of people are desirous of running him again. Bryan would bolt him, but in spite of this I think he would be a very formidable candidate. In North Dakota, for instance, they told me they thought he would run better than any other Democrat. So they did in Missouri and Iowa.
"I have been well received, indeed, I might say, enthusiastically received. But, frankly, I have been too long in public life to be taken in by a good reception, and I have not the slightest idea how things really stand."
May 23, 1903.—"Most of the people out here believe that Cleveland will be nominated on the Democratic ticket, and that he will be a very formidable man to beat—probably the most formidable Democrat. If nominated he will drive certain Democrats away. For instance, the Governor of Nevada and the Mayor of Carson, both Democrats, told me that they should vote for me if Cleveland were nominated; but I find that Pierpont Morgan and other Wall Street men have been announcing openly within the past fortnight that they should support Mr. Cleveland against me with all their power. They would draw a great many votes both from the honest rich and the fool respectable classes."
The President had appointed as District Attorney for the State of Delaware, Mr. William M. Byrne, concerning whom there had been a heated partisan controversy because of his relations with political factional quarrels in the State. In a letter to him, on March 23, 1903, the President said:
"I have named you as District Attorney. Now there is one thing, and one thing only, that I demand. That is, that you keep clear of factional politics, and indeed do just as little political work as possible, and confine your attention to making the best record as district attorney that has been made by any district attorney of Delaware. There must not be a single legitimate or well-founded complaint against you. You will of course show neither fear nor favor in anything you do. Any offender of any kind whose case may be brought to your attention, or whom you can reach, is to be prosecuted with absolute indifference as to whether he is Republican or Democrat, Addicks man or anti-Addicks man. I have liked you and I think well of you, but under the circumstances of your appointment and the way in which it was fought, I have a right to demand that you walk even more guardedly than the ordinary public official walks, and that you show yourself a model officer in point of fearlessness and integrity, industry and ability.
"The question of your confirmation will come up when the Senate reconvenes. You can help yourself in it more than any other man can possibly help you; and you can help yourself only by making a record which will be a just source of pride to you and to me."
In accordance with the recommendation of the President in his first message to Congress, repeated in subsequent messages, Congress passed in February, 1903, an act creating a Department of Commerce and Labor, including a Bureau of Corporations, and the act was approved on February 19. The first head of it, George B. Cortelyou, who had been Secretary to the President, was appointed two days later.

***,.

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CHAPTER TWENTY TWO,. 

FOE PRESIDENT IN 1904—FUTILE OPPOSITION—HIS OWN ATTITUDE,.
the Republican State conventions of 1902 had quite generally commended Roosevelt as the party's candidate for the Presidency in 1904, and it became evident early in 1903 that he was so clearly the first choice of his party that his nomination was a foregone conclusion. Only one very short-lived effort was made to prevent it.
It was while the President was in the Far "West in May, 1903, that the first surface indication of this effort, whicn originated in Wall Street, made its appearance. All the Republican State conventions that had been held had adopted resolutions declaring in favor of his nomination in 1904. The Ohio convention was to meet on June 3, 1903. A week or more before that date two prominent Ohio Republican leaders, Senator Foraker and Congressman Grosvenor, had said in published interviews that the convention would endorse Roosevelt. Senator Hanna, whose relations with the New York opponents of Roosevelt were known to be intimate, and who had been spoken of in the press as their candidate for the Presidential nomination, declared in an interview that he was opposed to the endorsement of Roosevelt because the convention of 1903 had no right to assume the responsibilities of the convention of 1904, whose delegates would be chosen for the express purpose of choosing delegates to the National Convention, and that there was no precedent for such action except in the case of a "favorite son." As soon as the interview was published he sent this telegram to President Roosevelt: 
cleveland, ohio, May 23, 1903. The President,
Seattle, Wash.
The issue which has been forced upon me in the matter of our State Convention this year endorsing you for the Republican nomination next year has come in a way which makes it necessary for me to oppose such a resolution. When you know all the facts I am sure you will approve my course.
M. A. hanna.
To this telegram the President replied as follows:
seattle, wash., May 25, 1903 Hon. M. A. Hanna,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Your telegram received. I have not asked any man for his support. I have had nothing whatever to do with raising this issue. Inasmuch as it has been raised of course those who favor my administration and my nomination will favor endorsing both and those who do not will oppose.
theodore roosevelt.
Senator Hanna had no difficulty in comprehending what this message meant, and he responded immediately as follows:
cleveland, ohio, May 26, 1903. The President:
Your telegram of the 25th. In view of the sentiment expressed I shall not oppose the endorsement of your administration and candidacy by our State Convention. I have given the substance of this to the Associated Press.
M. A. hanna.
Writing confidentially to Senator Lodge, on May 27,1903, the President thus explains his reasons for the action he took:
   '' After the receipt of the first telegram I thought over the matter a full twenty-four hours, consulting with Mellen, Byrnes and Moody and decided that the time had come to stop shilly-shallying, and let Hanna know definitely that I did not intend to assume the position, at least passively, of a suppliant to whom he might give the nomination as a boon. I accordingly sent him my answer, and as you doubtless saw, made a similar statement for the public press, of course not alluding to the fact that Hanna had sent me the telegram, my statement simply going as one made necessary by Hanna's long interview in which he announced that he would oppose my endorsement by the Ohio Convention. I rather expected Hanna to fight, but made up my mind that it was better to have a fight in the open at once than to run the risk of being knifed secretly. Mellen and also Loeb were confident that he would not fight. The result proved that they were right, as his last telegram shows.
"I am pleased at the outcome as it simplifies things all around, for in my judgment Hanna was my only formidable opponent so far as the nomination is concerned."
The accuracy of the President's prediction was verified by subsequent events. All opposition to his nomination disappeared the moment that his reply to Hanna was known. As casting full light upon the incident, the following correspondence between the President and Senator Hanna is appended:
senator hanna's letter
cleveland, ohio, May 25, 1903.
"I wired you Saturday about the question which is coming up before our State Convention in regard to a resolution endorsing your candidacy. I was not consulted and heard nothing about it until Grosvenor's and Foraker's interviews came out in the papers. When asked about it I at once expressed my disapproval for the following reasons—that this State Convention had no right to assume the responsibilities of the Convention of 1904, whose delegates would be chosen for the express purpose of choosing delegates to the National Convention; that it is without precedent in our State (except in regard to a favorite son); that it places me in an embarrassing position as Chairman of the National Committee; and last but not least it is meant to be unfriendly toward me. You know the past history of several things of kindred nature so I will not dwell on the motives which are the real incentive to this action, only that I shall oppose the resolution and you may feel sure without anything but the best of motives and in what I consider your best interests. I am hearing from all over the country and where the source is most worthy of consideration. There is but one opinion that this is an attempt to put me in a false position and to your injury,
"I almost committed an 'impulsive' act myself by stating in my interview to the Associated Press (copy enclosed) that I felt sure you would not approve—(under the circumstances). It is not necessary to hesitate between good and bad judgment when the motives are known. I spent a few days in New York last week and remembered your suggestion to me. There is need of missionary work there. But with this embarrassment thrust upon me will make me a useless article. Our convention comes the 2nd and 3rd of June, and promises to be a hot time."
the peRsident's Reply,.
ogden, utah, May 29,1903.
"I thank you for your letter, which gave me the first gleam of light on the situation. I do not think you appreciated the exact effect that your interview and announced position had in the country at large. It was everywhere accepted as the first open attack upon me, and it gave heart, curiously enough, not only to my opponents, but to all the curious men who lumped you and me together as improperly friendly to organized labor and to the workingmen generally. The mischievous effect was instantly visible.
The general belief was that this was not your move, save indirectly; that it was really an attack by the so-called Wall Street forces on me, to which you had been led to give a reluctant acquiescence. I might not have said anything for publication at all had it not been for the statement that I approved your course. In the way the movement was interpreted this looked as if I was approving having my throat slit. My view was that you of course had an absolute right to be a candidate yourself, but that if you were not one you would be doing me and the Republican party serious harm by fighting and very probably beating the proposition to endorse me by the Ohio Convention.
"After thinking the matter carefully over I became sure that I had to take a definite stand myself. I hated to do it because you have shown such broad generosity and straightforwardness in all your dealings with me that it was peculiarly painful to me to be put, even temporarily, in a position of seeming antagonism to you. No one but a really big man—a man above all petty considerations—could have treated me as you have treated me during the year and a half since President McKinley's death. I have consulted you and relied on your judgment more than has been the case with any other man.''
The fact that he was on the verge of a campaign for his own election to the Presidency, did not prevent Roosevelt from taking action which might harm him politically and possibly cause his defeat at the polls. All appeals to him to lower his standard of appointments in the interest of his own nomination and election were rejected with vigor and finality. To a member of the National Republican Committee who was especially interested in the election of delegates from the South to the National Convention, he wrote on March 13, 1903:
"The most damaging thing to me any one can do is to give the impression that in what I have been trying to do for the negro I have been actuated by political motives. That is why I have been so insistent that neither you nor any one else shall take any step to secure a negro or any other delegation from the South. I do not want the nomination unless it comes freely from the people of the Republican States, because they believe in me, and because they believe I can carry their States. And in the South I want to make it as clear as a bell that I have acted in the way I have on the negro question simply because I hold myself the heir of the policies of Abraham Lincoln and would be incapable of abandoning them to serve political or personal ends."
To the Governor of a leading Northern State he wrote on March 23, 1903:
"I do not quite understand the serious tone in which you speak of the possibility of my appointments returning to cause trouble in the future. Do you mean as regards my nomination as President? I have followed your advice and given no thought whatever to that, agreeing with what you said, that the way for me to do was to make a first-class President and let the nomination take care of itself.''
A notable incident had arisen in Oregon. There had been a good deal of fraud and lax work in certain land offices in that State, and the President had informed the two United States Senators from Oregon that he would not reappoint a certain land official but would appoint in his place any fit man whom they might name. The two Senators declined to select a successor, believing that by so doing the President would permit the incumbent to remain in office. On August 25, 1903, the President considerably astonished the two Senators by sending to each of them a letter in which he said:
"I cannot permit the incumbent to retain his position because there is a deadlock about his successor. He will be removed at once. In appointing his successor, and in appointing all other officers to these places, I must keep in mind that it is I who am primarily responsible for the appointment, not the Senators. If I appoint a man who is unfit, then of course you must refuse to confirm him; and as a matter of fact, if you will give me a man of whom I can approve, I will gladly appoint him. There is no one of whom I am personally desirous of putting in any of these positions. But I do not merely desire, but am firmly determined to have, a thoroughly good type of man in the position; and I cannot surrender to any one the right to decide for me whether or not I believe the man to be a good one. I cannot permit any one to say to me that such and such a man shall be appointed and no one else; nor if I believe a man to be unfit can I accept any one else's judgment that he is fit. In return, I have of course no right to insist that the Senate shall accept my judgment as to a man's fitness. They can reject any nominee of mine; and if they do so I will try to find some thoroughly good man whom they will accept.''
The President also informed the Senators that, in default of their naming a successor he had chosen a man whom he hoped they would accept. Furthermore, as additional information concerning his attitude on land office affairs, he said it was reported to him that two other positions in the service were in a disgraceful condition, and added: "The incumbents must be removed forthwith. Will you kindly join with your colleague in recommending to me at once first-class men to put in their places? All I ask is that these men shall be first-class in every way?"
This open warfare upon the two Senators, an unprecedented proceeding a few months in advance of a campaign, did not prevent the State of Oregon from giving its electoral vote to Roosevelt in the election of the following year. Subsequently, Roosevelt's relentless pursuit of the land office thieves resulted in sending one of the Senators to the penitentiary.
Another incident of like character occurred in September, 1903. On May 18 of that year William A. Miller, Assistant Foreman of the Government Printing Office, was removed from his position by the Public Printer, the reason given for removal being that Miller had been expelled from a labor union. Miller filed a complaint with the Civil Service Commission, alleging that his removal was in violation of the Civil Service Law. The Commission investigated the case and decided that his removal was a violation of the law and requested his reassignment to his position. President Roosevelt ordered the Public Printer to reinstate Miller, saying in his letter to him: "There is no objection to the employees of the Government Printing Office constituting themselves into a union if they so desire; but no rules or resolutions of that union can be permitted to override the laws of the United States which it is my sworn duty to enforce."
The Washington Central Labor Bureau took up the case on the side of the union and, with the approval of the American Federation of Labor, sent circulars to more than 500 central labor unions throughout the United States, claiming a membership of two and a half millions of workingmen, in which was embodied the following:
"Whereas, The President of the United States has seen fit to reinstate W. A. Miller, who is an expelled member of a trades organization, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of his moral turpitude, and has also committed himself to the policy of the open shop, as shown by his letters,
"Resolved, that the order of the President cannot be regarded in any but an unfriendly light."
The President, in pursuance of a request by Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, granted an interview on September 29, 1903, to the members of the executive council of that body, during which the Miller case was brought up for consideration. The President made a statement in which he said:
"As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what I have already said. In dealing with it, I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely with the relation of the Government to its employees. I must govern my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people and cannot and must not be construed as permitting discrimination against some of the people. I am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social conditions. My aim is to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the employment and dismissal of men in the Government service I can no more recognize the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him. This is the only question now before me for decision; and as to this my decision is final."
Writing to his friend, L. Clarke Davis, of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, on September 21, 1903, a few days before the interview with the labor union representatives, he said:
"It is a sheer waste of time for these people, through such resolutions as those of the unions you quote, to threaten me with defeat for the Presidency next year. Nothing would hire me even to accept the Presidency if I had to take it on terms which would mean a forfeiting of self-respect. Just as I should refuse to accept it at the cost of abandoning the Northern Securities suit, or of repealing the trust regulatory legislation of last year, or of undoing what I did in the anthracite coal strike, so I should refuse to take it at the cost of undoing what I did in this matter of Miller and the Labor Union. The labor unions and the trust magnates may perhaps unite against me. If so, I shall do my level best to make the fight an open one and beat them—and I think I run a good chance of winning; and if I fail, I shall not regret the policy I have pursued."
In a letter to Baron d'Rstournelles de Constant, in France, on September 1,1903, the President gave a fuller outline of his attitude toward an election to the Presidency:
 "Of course I should like to be reelected President, and I shall be disappointed, although not very greatly disappointed, if I am not; and so far as I legitimately can I pay heed to considerations of political expediency—in fact I should be unfit for my position, or for any position of political leadership, if I did not do so. But when questions involve deep and far-reaching principles, then I believe that the real expediency is to be found in straightforward and unflinching adherence to principle, and this without regard to what may be the temporary effect. When the matter is one of elementary justice and decency, then there can be no compromise. Murder is murder, and theft is theft, and there should be no halfway measure with criminality. There are good and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man's heart and soul, the man's worth and action, determine his standing. I should be sorry to lose the Presidency, but I should be a hundredfold more sorry to gain it by failing in every way in my power to try to put a stop to lynching and to brutality and wrong of any kind; or by failing on the one hand to make the very wealthiest and most powerful men in the country obey the law and handle their property (so far as it is in my power to make them) in the public interest; or, on the other hand, to fail to make the laboring men in their turn obey the law, and realize that envy is as evil a thing as arrogance, and that crimes of violence and riot shall be as sternly punished as crimes of greed and cunning."
For several months an investigation had been in progress, in 1903, in the Post Office Department in regard to frauds of various kinds, which had been committed during the McKinley administration. President Roosevelt ordered a vigorous and unrelenting inquiry, and appointed special counsel, in the person of two lawyers of high character and standing, to take charge of it. Writing from Oyster Bay, on September 4, 1903, to the Postmaster General, Henry 0. Payne, he said:
"I would far rather incur the hostility of a Congressman or a Senator than do something we ought not to do. The Post Office Department is now under fire and there is much baseless distrust of it in the popular mind. Keally, you and I are not responsible for the misconduct. It happened before either of us came into office; but as long as this feeling exists we can a hundredfold better afford to incur the hostility of any politician than to give the slightest ground for belief that we are managing the Department primarily as a political machine. If the real or fancied need of any politician comes in conflict with what you regard as the good of the service or as equity to any individuals, disregard that politician utterly and if he complains send him to me. I shall take up any such case myself."
In many letters written at this time he expressed himself frankly concerning his political prospects, sounding in all the same note of inflexible devotion to his guiding principles of official conduct.
To W. W. Sewell, in Maine, he wrote on September 23, 1903:
"Sometimes I feel a little melancholy because it is so hard to persuade people to accept equal justice. The very rich corporation people are sore and angry because I refuse to allow a case like that of the Northern Securities Company to go unchallenged by the law; and in the same way the turbulent and extreme labor union people are sore and angry because I insist that every man, whether he belong to a labor union or not, shall be given a square deal in Government employment. Now, I believe in rich people who act squarely, and in labor unions which are managed with wisdom and justice; but when either employee or employer, laboring man or capitalist, goes wrong, I have to cinch him, and that is all there is to it.''
To his sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, he wrote from Oyster Bay on September 23, 1903: 
"Next Monday I go back to Washington. And for the thirteen months following there will be mighty little let up to the strain. But I enjoy it to the full. What the outcome will be, so far as I am personally concerned, I do not know. It looks as if I will be nominated. Whether I shall be re-elected, I have not the slightest idea. I know there is bitter opposition to me from many different sources. Whether I shall have enough support to overcome this opposition, I cannot tell. I suppose few Presidents can form the slightest idea whether, their policies have met with approval or not— certainly I cannot. But as far as I can see those policies have been right, and I hope that time will justify them. If it does not, why, I must abide the fall of the dice, and that is all there is about it."
One phase of his pursuit of persons involved in the frauds of the Post Office Department is described in a letter to Senator Lodge, under date of September 30, 1903:
"I had a very ugly time over the indictment of a State Senator of New York. He is a close personal, political and business friend of the Republican State Chairman, and of the State Comptroller. The Chairman is a heavy stockholder in the concern on behalf of which the crookedness was done, and he is very naturally bitter against me. Whether he himself was cognizant of the wrong-doing or not, I cannot say. It is greatly to be regretted that he is Chairman of the State Committee. The Comptroller came down to see me to explain that if the Senator were indicted it was his judgment that we should certainly lose the State next fall. I was as polite as possible, answering that of course I was more interested in carrying the State than any one else was, but that in the first place I should certainly not let up on any grafter, no matter what the political effect might be; and that in the second place, my judgment was that whereas we might lose the State if we did make it evident that we intended to prosecute every guilty man, we should certainly lose it if we did not.''
One of the most characteristic of all the letters written at this time was the following to L. Clarke Davis, of Philadelphia :
"There is one small point that I should like to speak to you about. The other day in a very kindly editorial you spoke of me as saying that I would do anything in the world not dishonorable or improper or in violation of my conscience to be reelected as President. I forget the exact word, but this was the sense. It seems to me that this is calculated to convey a somewhat wrong impression of what I said. I do not believe in playing the hypocrite. Any strong man fit to be President would desire a re-nomination and reelection after his first term. Lincoln was President in so great a crisis that perhaps he neither could nor did feel any personal interest in his own reelection. I trust and believe that if the crisis were a serious one I should be incapable of considering my own well-being for a moment in such a contingency. I should like to be elected President just precisely as John Quincy Adams, or McKinley, or Cleveland, or John Adams, or Washington himself, desired to be elected. It is pleasant to think that one's countrymen thought well of one. But I shall not do anything whatever to secure my nomination or election save to try to carry on the public business in such shape that decent citizens will believe I have shown wisdom, integrity and courage. If they believe this with sufficient emphasis to secure my nomination and election—and on no other terms can I3 or would I, be willing to secure either—why I shall be glad. If they do not I shall be sorry, but I shall not be very much cast down because I shall feel that I have done the best that was in me, and that there is nothing I have yet done of which I have cause to be ashamed, or which I have cause to regret ; and that I can go out of office with the profound satisfaction of having accomplished a certain amount of work that was both beneficial and honorable for the country." 

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CHAPTER TWENTY THREE,.
NOTABLE SENTIMENTS IN SPEECHES AND LETTERS-ALASKA BOUNDARY—WIDE RANGE OF READING,.
during 1903 the President made several speeches on occasions of special moment, in which he uttered sentiments which attracted wide approval, and are as self-revelatory as his letters. Speaking at the grave of Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, on June 4, he said:
"It seems to me eminently fitting that the guard around the tomb of Lincoln should be composed of colored soldiers. It was my own good fortune at Santiago to serve beside colored troops. A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to get a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have."
This declaration called forth the publication of a letter from Lincoln which was said to have been written in 1864, to General James S. Wadsworth, of New York, and which contained the following passage:
"How to better the condition of the colored race has long been a study which has attracted my serious and careful attention; hence I think I am clear and decided as to what course I shall pursue in the premises, regarding it as a religious duty, as the nation's guardian of these people who have so heroically vindicated their manhood on the battlefield, where, in assisting to save the life of the Republic, they have demonstrated their right to the ballot, which is but the humane protection of the Flag they have so fearlessly defended."
In a speech on Labor Day, September 7, 1903, at Syracuse, N. Y., the President said: 
"There is no worse enemy of the wage-worker than the man who condones mob violence in any shape or who preaches class hatred; and surely the slightest acquaintance with our industrial history should teach even the most short-sighted that the times of most suffering for our people as a whole, the times when business is stagnant, and capital suffers from shrinkage and gets no return from its investments, are exactly the times of hardship, and want, and grim disaster among the poor. If all the existing instrumentalities of wealth could be abolished, the first and severest suffering would come among those of us who are least well off at present. The wage-worker is well off only when the rest of the country is well off; and he can best contribute to this general well-being by showing sanity and a firm purpose to do justice to others."
Speaking at the unveiling of a statue of General W. T. Sherman, in Washington, on October 15, 1903, he said:
'' The greatest leaders, whether in war or in peace, must of course show a peculiar quality of genius; but the most redoubtable armies that have ever existed have been redoubtable because the average soldier, the average officer, possessed to a high degree such comparatively simple qualities as loyalty, courage, and hardihood. And so the most successful governments are those in which the average public servant possesses that variant of loyalty, which we call patriotism, together with common sense and honesty. We can as little afford to tolerate a dishonest man in the public service as a coward in the army. The murderer takes a single life; the corruptionist in public life, whether he be bribe-giver or bribe-taker, strikes at the heart of the commonwealth. ''
On November 10, 1903, the President convened Congress in advance of its regular date of meeting in order that it might consider the legislation necessary to put into operation the commercial treaty with Cuba which had been ratified at the previous session. This legislation was passed subsequently by both houses of Congress. In his message at the opening of the regular session, dated December 7, 1903, he took occasion to reassert, without modification, his policy in regard to the regulation of trusts and the enforcement of law with equal justice to all:
"The legislation (in regard to trusts) was moderate. It was characterized throughout by the idea that we were not attacking corporations, but endeavoring to provide for doing away with any evil in them; that we drew the line against misconduct, not against wealth; gladly recognizing the great good done by the capitalist who alone, or in conjunction with his fellows, does his work along proper and legitimate lines.
"Every man must be guaranteed his liberty and his right to do as he likes with his property or his labor, so long as he does not infringe the rights of others. No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor."
One of the problems that Roosevelt inherited from the McKinley administration was the Alaska boundary dispute between the United States and Canada. An effort to settle it through a Joint High Commission had failed, and in the last days of the McKinley administration a proposal was made by the British Government that the matter be submitted to arbitration. This was under discussion when Roosevelt acceded to the Presidency. He at once took control of the question, flatly declined arbitration, and secured in January, 1903, through the British Minister at Washington the negotiation of a treaty with Great Britain which provided for a mixed tribunal of six members, three Americans and three representatives of Great Britain, to consider the matter. The American members of the tribunal were Senator H. C. Lodge, Elihu Root, Secretary of War, and George Turner, formerly U. S. Senator from the State of Washington. The British members were Lord Alverston, Lord Chief Justice of England, and Sir L. A. Jette and A. B. Aylesworth of Canada. Roosevelt's attitude toward this tribunal and its possible outcome was frankly set forth in a letter that he wrote to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who at the time was in England and had sent to Roosevelt an account of a conversation that he had had on the subject with the Et. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain of the British Cabinet. As Roosevelt's letter is of historical value in showing the direct methods which he habitually employed in diplomatic matters, it is here reproduced in full:
Personal.
oyster bay, N. Y.,
July 25, 1903 My dear Judge Holmes:
I thank you very much for your letter, which I thoroughly enjoyed. There is one point on which I think I ought to give you full information, in view of Chamberlain's remark to you. This is about the Alaska boundary matter, and if you happen to meet Chamberlain again you are entirely at liberty to tell him what I say, although of course it must be privately and unofficially. Nothing but my very earnest desire to get on well with England and my reluctance to come to a break made me consent to this appointment of a Joint Commission in this case; for I regard the attitude of Canada, which England has backed, as having the scantest possible warrant in justice. However, there were but two alternatives. Either I could appoint a commission and give a chance for agreement; or I could do as I shall of course do in case this commission fails, and request Congress to make an appropriation, which will enable me to run the boundary on my own hook. As regards most of Great Britain's claim, there is not, in my judgment, enough to warrant so much as a consideration by the United States; and if it were not that there are two or three lesser points on which there is doubt, I could not, even for the object I have mentioned, have consented to appoint a commission. The claim of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of the Canadian coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim the island of Nantucket. There is not a man fit to go on the commission in all the United States who would treat this claim any more respectfully than he would treat a claim to Nantucket. In the same way the preposterous claim once advanced, but I think now abandoned by the Canadians, that the Portland Channel was not the Portland Channel but something else unknown, is no more worth discussing than the claim that the 49th Parallel meant the 50th Parallel or else the 48th. But there are points which the commission can genuinely consider. There is room for argument about the islands in the mouth of the Portland Channel. I think on this the American case much the stronger of the two; still, the British have a case. Again, it may well be that there are places in which there is room for doubt as to whether there actually is a chain of mountains parallel to the coast within the ten-league limit. Here again there is a chance for honest difference and honest final agreement. I believe that no three men in the United States could be found who would be more anxious than our own delegates to do justice to the British claim on all points where there is even a color of right on the British side. But the objection raised by certain Canadian authorities to Lodge, Root and Turner, and especially to Lodge and Root, was that they had committed themselves on the general proposition. No man in public life in any position of prominence could have possibly avoided committing himself on the proposition, any more than Mr. Chamberlain could avoid committing himself on the question of the ownership of the Orkneys if some Scandinavian country suddenly claimed them. If this claim embodied other points as to which there was legitimate doubt, I believe Mr. Chamberlain would act fairly and squarely in deciding the matter; but if he appointed a commission to settle up all those questions, I certainly should not expect him to appoint three men, if he could find them, who believed that as to the Orkneys the question was an open one. Similarly I wish to repeat that no three men fit for the position could be found in all the United States who would not already have come to some conclusion as to certain features of the Canadian claim—not as to all of them.
Let me add that I earnestly hope that the English understand my purpose. I wish to make one last effort to bring about an agreement through the commission, which will enable the people of both countries to say that the result represents the feeling of the representatives of both countries. But if there is a disagreement I wish it distinctly understood, not only that there will be no arbitration of the matter, but that in my message to Congress I shall take a position which will prevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter; a position, I am inclined to believe, which will render it necessary for Congress to give me the authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own people, without any further regard to the attitude of England and Canada. If I paid attention to mere abstract right, that is the position I ought to take anyhow. I have not taken it because I wish to exhaust every effort to have the affair settled peacefully and with due regard to England's dignity.
Faithfully yours,
theodore roosevelt.
hon. 0. W. holmes,    .
Care J. S. Morgan & Co., London, England.
It was known at the time that Roosevelt had sent troops to Alaska, and though the primary object in sending them was to maintain law and order among the great horde of gold-seekers in the Klondike, still it was believed that he would not hesitate to use them in support of his resolve to ask Congress for the power to "run the line as we claim it" in case the tribunal failed to reach an agreement. The tribunal met in London and reached an agreement on October 20, 1903. In his message to Congress on December 3, following, Roosevelt said of the settlement:
"The result is satisfactory in every way. It is of great material advantage to our people in the Far Northwest. It has danger a question liable to become more acutely accentuated with each passing year. Finally, it has furnished signal proof of the fairness and good-will with which two friendly nations can approach and determine issues involving national sovereignty to a third power for adjudication."
Another notable diplomatic triumph of the year was also recorded in the same message:
'' Early in July, having received intelligence, which happily turned out to be erroneous, of the assassination of our vise-consul at Beirut, I despatched a small squadron to that port for such service as might be found necessary on arrival. Although the attempt on the life of our vice-consul had not been successful, yet the outrage was symptomatic of a state of excitement and disorder which demanded immediate attention. The arrival of the vessels had the happiest result. A feeling of security at once took the place of the former alarm and disquiet; our officers were cordially welcomed by the Consular body and the leading merchants, and ordinary business resumed its activity. The government of the Sultan gave a considerate hearing to the representations of our minister; the official who was regarded as responsible for the disturbed condition of affairs was removed. Our relations with the Turkish Government remain friendly; our claims founded on inequitable treatment of some of our schools and missions appear to be in process of amicable adjustment.''
The cordial and mutually helpful relations that existed between the President and members of his Cabinet are revealed in correspondence which passed between him and them at various times. On July 11, 1903, he wrote from Oyster Bay, to Secretary Hay, who was in Washington:
"By this time it is absolutely needless for me to tell you not merely what an immense help you are to me, but what a perpetual delight and comfort. Of course, do not ever give a thought to the newspaper and other swine who delight to invent tales about our relation. Literally I never see them. When I came in I thought you a great Secretary of State, but now I have had a chance to know far more fully what a really great Secretary of State you are. As for those who first of all portray a wholly imaginary difference between us and then attack me because of that difference—for Heaven's sake, let them go on!"
To this Secretary Hay responded on July 13, 1903:
"Dear Theodore:
"I thank you a thousand times for your kind and generous letter of the llth. It is a comfort to work for a President who besides being a lot of other things, happened to be born a gentleman."
A letter to Secretary Hay on November 7, 1903, shows how careful Roosevelt was not to offend the susceptibilities of Congress in reference to its prerogatives concerning the conduct of foreign affairs:
"Uncle Joe Cannon was in this afternoon and was very nice indeed, but evidently slightly nervous lest the prerogatives of Congress in foreign affairs should be overlooked by us. I told him I should ask you to keep in close touch with Congressman Hitt (Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations) and consult with him on any point where there would be a chance of Congress feeling that it had power of action. Will you mind getting in touch with Hitt and advising with him on any point where such-a possibility could arise? I find that Congress is evidently prepared to be a little sensitive on the subject, and we might as well forestall possible criticism."
To Secretary Root, who resigned the war portfolio, his resignation taking effect in February, 1904, when he was succeeded by William H. Taft, the President wrote on August 24, 1903:
   "It is hard indeed for me to accept your resignation; and I do so not only with keen personal regret, but with a lively understanding of the gap your withdrawal will create in public life. My sense of personal loss is very great; and yet my sense of the loss to the Nation as a whole is even greater. You have been over four years Secretary of War. I wonder if you yourself realize how much you have accomplished during that period. If you will turn to your first reports and will read therein the recommendations you made in order that the army might be put on an effective basis, you cannot but be pleased at the way in which these recommendations have now been adopted by Congress as well as by the administration, and have become enacted into law or crystallized into custom. We have never had a public servant of the government who has worked harder than you have worked during these four years and a half, and this not merely in point of time, but above all in point of intensity; and your success has been equal to your labor. The only reward you have had, or can have, is the knowledge of successful achievement, of the performance in fullest fashion of a great public duty, the doing of which was of vital importance to the nation's welfare.
"Your duties have included more than merely the administration of the Department and the reorganization of the army on an effective basis. You have also been the head of the Department which dealt with the vast and delicate problems involved in our possession of the Philippine Islands, and your success in dealing with this part of your work had been as signal as your success in dealing with the purely military problem. To very few statesmen indeed in any country is it given at one and the same time to achieve signal and striking triumph in the administration and reform of the military branch of the government and in the administration of what was in effect a department of insular dependencies, where the problems were new to our people and were in themselves of great difficulty.
"Moreover, aside from your work in these two divisions of the government service, I appreciate most keenly the invaluable advice and assistance you have rendered me in innumerable matters of weight not coming directly in your departmental province, but in which I sought your aid with the certainty of not being disappointed. Your position on the Alaska Boundary Commission at the present moment is an illustration of these services.
"May all good fortune attend you wherever you are; the American people wish you well and appreciate to the full the debt due you for all that you have done on their behalf."
Incessant and exacting as were the official activities of the President during the first two years of his service, he still was able to find time for a really extraordinary amount of miscellaneous reading as the following letter, under date of November 4,1903, to Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, shows:
"You remember speaking to me about reading and especially about the kind of books one ought to read. On my way back from Oyster Bay on election day I tried to jot down the books I have been reading for the past two years, and they run as follows. Of course, I have forgotten a great many, especially ephemeral novels which I have happened to take up; and I have also read much in the magazines. Moreover, more than half of the books are books, which I have read before. These I did not read through, but simply took out the parts I liked. Thus, in ' Waverley,' I omitted all the opening part; in 'Pickwick' I skipped about; going through all my favorite scenes. In Macaulay I read simply the essays that appealed to me, while in Keats and Browning, although I read again and again many of the poems, I think there must be at least eighty or ninety per cent of the poetry of each, as far as the bulk is concerned, which I have never succeeded in reading at all. The old books I read were not necessarily my favorites; it was largely a matter of chance. All the reading, of course, was purely for enjoyment, and of most desultory character. With this preliminary explanation, here goes!
"Parts of Herodotus; the first and seventh books of Thucydides; all of Polybius; a little of Plutarch; Eschylus's 'Orestean Trilogy,' and the 'Seven against Thebes'; Euripides' 'Hippolytus and Bacchae,' and Aristophanes' 'Frogs'; parts of the 'Polities' of Aristotle; (all of these were in translation); Ridgeway's 'Early Age of Greece'; Wheeler's 'Life of Alexander'; some six volumes of Mahaffey's 'Studies of the Greek World'—of which I only read chapters here and there; two of Maspero's volumes on the Early Syrian, Chaldean and Egyptian civilizations— these I read superficially; several chapters of Froissart; the 'Memoirs' of Marbot; Bain's 'Life of Charles the Twelfth'; Mahan's 'Types of Naval Officers'; some of Macaulay's Essays; three or four volumes of Gibbon; three or four chapters of Motley; the 'Life of Prince Eugene,' of Admiral de Ruyter, of Turenne, and of Sobieski (all in French); the Battles in Carlyle's 'Frederick the Great'; Hay and Nicolay's 'Lincoln,' and the two volumes of Lincoln's 'Speeches and Writings'—these I have not only read through, but have read parts of them again and again; Bacon's 'Essays'—curiously enough, I had really never read these until this year; Mrs. Roosevelt has a volume which belonged to her grandfather, which she always carries around with her, and I got started reading this; 'Macbeth'; 'Twelfth Night'; 'Henry IV; 'Henry V; 'Richard II'; the first two cantos of 'Paradise Lost'; some of Michael Drayton's poems—there are only three or four I care for; portions of 'Nibelungenlied'; portions of Carlyle's translation of Dante's 'Inferno'; Church's 'Beowulf; Morris' translation of the 'Heimskringla,' and Dasent's translation of the 'Sagas of Gisli and Burnt Njal'; Lady Gregory's and Miss Hull's 'Cuchulain Saga,' together with the 'Children of Lir,' the 'Children of Tuirenn,' the 'Tale of Deirdre,' etc.; the 'Precieuses Ridicules,' 'Le Barbier de Seville'; most of Jusserand's books—of which I was most interested in his studies of the 'King's Quhair'; Holmes' 'Over the Teacups'; Lounsbury's 'Shakespeare and Voltaire'; various numbers of the Edinburgh Review from 1803 to 1850; Tolstoi's 'Sebastopol and the Cossacks'; Sinkiewicz's 'Fire and Sword' and parts of his other volumes; 'Guy Mannering'; the 'Antiquary'; 'Rob Roy'; 'Waverley'; 'Quentin Durward'; parts of 'Marmion' and the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel'; Cooper's 'Pilot'; some of the earlier stories and some of the poems of Bret Harte; Mark Twain's 'Tom Sawyer'; 'Pickwick Papers'; 'Nicholas Nickleby'; 'Vanity Fair'; 'Pendennis'; 'The New-comes'; 'The Adventures of Philip'; Conan Doyle's 'White Company'; Lever's 'Charles O'Malley'; 'Romances of Brockden Brown' I read when I was confined to my room with a game leg; for motives of curiosity and no real enjoyment; an occasional half hour's reading in Keats, Browning, Poe, Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling, Bliss Carman; also in Poe's 'Tales' and Lowell's 'Essays'; some of Stevenson's stories, and of Allingham's 'British Ballads'; Wagner's 'Simple Life.'
"I have read aloud to the children, and often finished afterwards to myself, 'The Rose and the Ring'; Hans Andersen; some of Grimm; some of 'Norse Folk Tales'; stories by Howard Pyle; 'Uncle Remus' and the rest of Joel Chandler Harris' stories (incidentally I would be willing to rest all that I have done in the South as regards the negro in his story 'Free Joe'). Two or three books by Jacob Riis; also Mrs. Van Vorst's 'Woman Who Toils,' and one or two similar volumes; the 'Nonsense Verses' of Carolyn Wells, first to the children and afterward to Mrs. Roosevelt and myself; Kenneth Grahame's 'Golden Age'; those two delightful books by Somerville and Ross, 'All on the Irish Shore,' and 'Experiences of an Irish M. P.'; Townsend's 'Europe and Asia'; Conrad's 'Youth'; 'Phoenixiana'; 'Artemus Ward'; Octave Thanet's stories, which I always like when they deal with labor problems; various books on the Boer War, of which I like best Viljoen's, Stevens', and ' Studies' by the writer. signing himself Linesman; Pike's 'Through the Sun-Arctic Forest,' and Peer's 'Cross Country with Horse and Hound'; together with a number of books on big game hunting, mostly in Africa; several volumes on American outdoor life and natural history, including the reading of much of John Burroughs; Swettenham's 'Real Malay'; David Gray's 'Gallops'; Miss Stewart's 'Napoleon Jackson'; Janvier's 'Passing of Thomas and Other Stories'; 'The Benefactors'; 'People of the Whirlpool'; London's 'Call of the Wild'; Fox's 'Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come'; Hamlin Garland's 'Captain of the Gray Horse Troop'; Tarkington's 'Gentleman from Indiana'; Churchill's 'Crisis'; Beming-ton's 'John Ermine of the Yellowstone'; Wister's 'Virginian,' 'Bed Men and White,' 'Philosophy Four,' and 'Lin McLean'; White's 'Blazed Trail,' 'Conjurer's House,' and 'Claim Jumpers'; Trevelyan's 'American Bevolution.' Often I would read one book by chance and it would suggest another.
"There! That is the catalogue; about as interesting as Homer's catalogue of the Ships, and with about as much method in it as there seems in a superficial glance to be in an Irish Stew."
A scarcely less notable letter, as disclosing the dimensions of the President's omnivorous reading, is the following to the Bt. Hon., afterwards Lord, John Morley, under date of January 17, 1904:
"It is a temptation to me to write you at inordinate length about your 'Life of Gladstone.' Incidentally, you started me to rereading Lucretius and Finlay. Lucretius was an astounding man for pagan Borne to have produced just before the empire. I should not myself have thought of comparing him with Virgil one way or the other. It would be too much like comparing, say, Herbert Spencer with Milton, excepting that part dealing with death, in the end of the third book (if I remember right), I am less struck with the work because of its own quality (as a finished product, so to speak) than I am with the fact that it was opening up a totally new trail—a trail which for very many centuries, irtdeed down to modern times, was not followed much farther. He had as truly a scientific mind as Darwin or Huxley, and the boldness of his truth-telling was astonishing. As for Finlay, I have always been fond of him. But I would not like to be understood as depreciating Gibbon. Personally I feel that with all their faults Gibbon and Macaulay are the two great English historians, and there could be no better testimonial to their greatness than the fact that scores of authors have each made a comfortable life reputation by refuting some single statement of one or the other.
"Of course, in reading the Gladstone, I was especially interested because of the ceaseless unconscious comparisons I was making with events in our own history, and with difficulties I myself every day encounter. A man who has grappled, or is grappling, with Cuba, Panama and the Philippines, has a lively appreciation of the difficulties inevitably attendant upon getting into Egypt in the first place, and then upon the impossibility of getting out of it, in the second. Perhaps I was interested most of all in your account of the closing years of Gladstone's career, in which 'Home Rule' was the most important question he had to face. I suppose I am one of a large multitude to whom your book for the first time gave a clear idea of what Gladstone's actual position was in the matter, and of the gross injustice of the assaults upon him. You make it clear, for instance, that from the standpoint of Gladstone's assailants, even, there was far more to be said against the consistency and frankness of the leaders who opposed him and the leaders who deserted him than against his. To my mind you prove your case completely,—and I have always been inclined to criticize Gladstone on this point, although I have personally been a Home-Euler ever since reading Lecky's account of Ireland in the eighteenth century. On no position do I feel more cordial sympathy with Gladstone's attitude than as regards Turkey and the subjugated peoples of the Balkan peninsula."

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CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR,.
SECURING THE PANAMA CANAL,.
the year 1903 marks what Theodore Roosevelt always considered the most notable and widely beneficent achievement of his Presidential career the possession of the Isthmus of Panama and the consequent construction of an inter-oceanic canal across it. His interest in the project began long before he became President.   While he was Governor of New York, he entered an emphatic protest against a treaty, which  Secretary Hay had  negotiated  with  the British   Government   and  which   was   presented  to the United  States   Senate  for ratification  on  February 5, 1900. This is known   as   the   first   Hay-Pauncefote treaty, designed to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 and make possible the construction of an Isthmian Canal. Under the provisions of this first treaty the canal was not to be fortified and its neutrality was to be guaranteed by all nations using it.   As soon as the text of the treaty was published, Governor Roosevelt wrote a friendly but most earnest letter to Secretary Hay in opposition to it, pointing out what he regarded as very serious defects in it. This letter is published in full in Chapter Thirteen of this volume.  It outlined with clearness and force the course which Roosevelt as President was to carry to success a few years later when he secured a canal built with American money and operated and fortified by Americans without the cooperation or interference of any foreign nation. The Senate refused to ratify the first treaty in the form submitted,   and   added   amendments   which   did   away with the neutrality provision and authorized specifically the fortifying of the canal.   These amendments the British Government declined to accept, and the treaty failed. Secretary Hay was greatly chagrined at the failure and submitted his resignation to President McKinley, who refused to accept it. Negotiations were resumed and on November 18, 1901, the second Hay-Pauncefote treaty was completed. Roosevelt had in the meantime acceded to the Presidency and in laying the treaty before the Senate he said of it in his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1901: "In this treaty, the old Clayton-Bulwer treaty, so long recognized as inadequate to supply the base for the construction and maintenance of a necessarily American ship canal, is abrogated. It specifically provides that the United States alone shall do the work of building and assume the responsibility of safeguarding the canal and shall regulate its neutral use by all nations on terms of equality without the guaranty or interference of any outside nation from any quarter."
The treaty was ratified by the Senate on December 16, 1901. While it did not in terms authorize the fortifying of the canal, the British Government consented to the omission of a clause in the first treaty forbidding fortification, and subsequently acquiesced in the assumption by the American Government that it was entitled to fortify under the provision which declared that the United States "shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder."
As soon as the treaty was ratified, attention became concentrated upon the question of routes for an Isthmian Canal. A Commission, with Bear Admiral A. G. Walker at its head, which had been appointed by President McKinley in March, 1899, for the purpose of ascertaining and reporting as to the "most feasible and practicable route," reported in December, 1901, to the effect that the cost of constructing a canal at Nicaragua was $189,864,062, and of one at Panama, $144,233,000; that the new reorganized Panama Canal Company offered to sell its rights, property and franchises for $109,141,500, which would bring the cost of a canal by the Panama route up to $253,374,858; that the Commission estimated the value of the new Panama Canal Company's property at $40,000,000; and that in view of the terms offered by that company, the Commission was of the opinion that the "most practicable and feasible route'' was by way of Nicaragua.
This report was transmitted to Congress by President Roosevelt on December 4, 1901. On January 4, 1902, the president of the new Panama Canal Company sent word by cable from Paris to Rear Admiral Walker that the company was willing to sell its properties and concessions to the United States Government for $40,000,000. On January 18 the Walker commission rendered to President Roosevelt a supplementary report, transmitting the offer of the French company to sell for $40,000,000, and declaring it to be the commission's opinion, in view of the changed conditions, that the "most practicable and feasible route" for a canal was that by way of Panama.
In the meantime, while these negotiations with the French company were in progress, the House of Representatives, on January 8, 1902, passed by a vote of 225 to 25 a bill authorizing the President to proceed with the construction of a canal by way of Nicaragua, at a cost of $180,000,000, and appropriating $10,000,000 on account for immediate use. When the bill reached the Senate it encountered vigorous opposition. The supplementary report of the Walker commission was sent to Congress on January 20, and proved to be the doom of the Nicaraguan project. An amendment to the House bill was offered by Senator Spooner, which converted it virtually into a new measure.
After a long debate, marked at times by some animosity, the Spooner bill passed the Senate on June 19, 1902, by a vote of 67 to 6, and passed the House of Representatives on June 26 by a vote of 259 to 8. It was signed by President Roosevelt on June 28. In substance it authorized the President to acquire for and in behalf of the United States, at a cost not exceeding $40,000,000, all the rights, privileges, franchises, concessions, and property on the Isthmus of Panama owned by the new Panama Canal Company; to acquire from the Republic of Colombia, on such terms as he might deem reasonable, control of a strip of land, not less than six miles in width, between the two oceans, in which to construct and operate a canal; to acquire such additional territory and rights from Colombia as in his judgment would facilitate the general purpose; and, when a satisfactory title had been secured from the new Panama Canal Company, to proceed to construct a canal of sufficient capacity and depth to afford "convenient passage for vessels of the largest tonnage and greatest draft now in use, and such as may be reasonably anticipated." In case satisfactory title could not be obtained from the French company, the act authorized the President to take the necessary steps to permit of the construction of a canal at Nicaragua.
Immediately following the enactment of the Spooner law Secretary Hay opened negotiations with Dr. Tomas Herran, Charge d'affaires of the Colombian Government at Washington, for the conclusion of a treaty between the United States and Colombia in accordance with the terms of that law. The negotiations resulted in what is known as the Hay-Herran convention, which was signed on January 22, 1903, Dr. Herran signing with the authority of the Colombian Government. The treaty was sent to the Senate on January 23. Writing to Secretary Hay, who was absent from Washington, on March 12, 1903, the President said:
"I am now sweating blood in the effort to get the two treaties (Cuban Reciprocity and Colombian) confirmed. Senator Blank, of course, had been filled with distrust at the last moment and wanted to propose one or two amendments to the Panama treaty. He is an admirable man of great intellect; but I wish that every tom-cat in the path did not strike him as an unusually large and ferocious lion. The Democrats are doing their best to get into shape to vote solidly against both treaties. They cannot possibly do this against the Panama treaty, and I think they will find it difficult to do so against the Cuban treaty, although the latter is as yet by no means out of the woods. Gorman is a very smooth article, and though he will exercise some control over the yahoos, he will have to do much as they desire, and unfortunately, the addition of his ability to their loose-lipped abhorrence of decency, does not make a really attractive combination.''
The President's prediction as to the fate of the Panama treaty was verified, for it was ratified without change on March 17, 1903. It authorized the new Panama Canal Company to sell and transfer to the United States all its rights, privileges, properties and concessions, as well as the Panama Railroad; ceded to the United States for the purpose of canal construction a strip of land thirty miles in width between the two oceans, over which the United States should have administrative control for police and sanitation purposes, but of which the sovereignty should remain vested in Colombia; stipulated that upon the exchange of ratifications, the United States should pay to Colombia $10,000,000 in gold, and in addition, beginning nine years after the date of ratification, should pay annually, $250,000 in gold. It was pointed out by Secretary Hay, after the rejection of the treaty by Colombia, that the bonus of $10,000,000 was a sum equivalent to two-thirds of what was reputed to be the Colombian public debt, and that the annual payment of $250,000 was equivalent to the interest on $15,000,000 at the rate at which loans could be obtained by the American Government.
The Colombian Congress met in extra session, convened for the purpose of considering the treaty, on June 20, 1903. It was known that a large majority of its members were opposed to ratification, and that the Colombian Government controlled it absolutely. The treaty itself was withheld on a pretext that it must be signed by the Vice President before being sent to the Congress. In the meantime a general clamor was raised for more favorable terms for Colombia and for amendments that should grant them.
On June 10, 1903, the agent of the new Panama Canal Company at Bogota received from the Colombian Government an official note saying that it did not think the convention would be ratified, because of the opinion that the compensation was insufficient, but that, if the new Panama Canal Company would pay to Colombia $10,000,000, ratification could be secured.
On July 9, 1903, General Rafael Reyes, spokesman of the government, requested the American Minister at Bogota to say to Secretary Hay, as the Minister did at once by cable, that he (Reyes) did not think the treaty could be ratified without two amendments—one stipulating the payment of $10,000 gold by the new Panama Canal Company for the right to transfer its isthmus property to the United States, and the other increasing the bonus which the United States was to pay to Colombia from $10,000,000 to $15,000,000. These direct attempts to extort more money as the price of ratification were unsuccessful. Secretary Hay replied, on July 13, 1903, that neither of the proposed amendments would stand any chance of acceptance by the Senate, while any amendment whatever or unnecessary delay in ratification of the treaty would greatly imperil its consummation.
Two days later, July 15, 1903, the treaty was submitted to a special committee of nine in the Colombian Senate. It was reported to the Senate on August 4, 1903, with a series of amendments, which completely changed the character of the treaty. On July 31, 1903, Secretary Hay sent the following cable message to the American Minister at Bogota:
"Instructions heretofore sent to you show the great danger of amending the treaty. This government has no right or competence to covenant with Colombia to impose new financial obligations upon canal company and the President would not submit to our Senate any amendment in that sense, but would treat it as voiding the negotiation and bringing about a failure to conclude a satisfactory treaty with Colombia. No additional payment by the United States can hope for approval by the United States Senate, while any amendment whatever requiring reconsideration by that body would most certainly imperil its consummation."
The substance of this message was communicated at once to the Colombian Government. On August 12, 1903, the Colombian Senate rejected the treaty in its entirety by unanimous vote. On the same date General Reyes called upon the American Minister and informed him that the treaty had been rejected by the Colombian Government and leading senators in the belief that there would be a reaction in public sentiment in its favor, when it would be possible to reconsider and ratify it without amendment. He requested the American Minister to ask the American Government to grant two more weeks for the consummation of this plan.
This message was communicated to President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, and on August 19, 1903, he wrote to Secretary Hay:
"On your way back cannot you stop here, and we will go over the canal situation? The one thing evident is to do nothing at present. If under the treaty of 1846 we have a color of right to start in and build a canal, my off-hand judgment would favor such proceeding. It seems that the great bulk of the best engineers are agreed that that route is the best; and I do not think that the Bogota lot of obstructionists should be allowed permanently to bar one of the future highways of civilization. Of course, under the terms of the Act we could now go ahead with Nicaragua, and perhaps would technically be required to do so. But what we do now will be of consequence, not merely decades, but centuries hence, and we must be sure that we are taking the right step before we act.''
After consultation with the President, Secretary Hay cabled to the American Minister at Bogota, on August 24, 1903: "The President will make no engagement on the canal matter, but I regard it as improbable that any definite action will be taken within two weeks."   Again, on August 29, 1903, he cabled more fully to the American Minister:
"The President is bound by the Isthmian Canal statute, commonly called the Spooner law. By its provisions he is given a reasonable time to arrange a satisfactory treaty with Colombia. "When, in his judgment, the reasonable time has expired, and he has not been able to make a satisfactory arrangement as to the Panama route, he will then proceed to carry into effect the alternative of the statute. Meantime the President will enter into no engagement restraining his freedom of action under the statute.''
The special committee of the Colombia Senate, on September 5, 1903, reported a bill approving the rejection of the treaty and authorizing the President of Colombia to conclude treaties for the construction of a Panama canal under certain conditions, and on terms most generous to Colombia, but the measure never came to a vote. It was referred to a committee that made a report on October 14, 1903, which was read in the Senate and which presented, without approval or dissent, a contention that the last extension of the Wyse concession for a canal at Panama, granted by Colombia in 1900, and purchased by the French Canal Company, fixing October 31, 1910, as the date for completion of the canal, was not valid, and that if this was the case, the previous extension would expire at the end of 1904 and all canal properties, rights and franchises would revert to Colombia. Colombia would then be in position to receive the $40,000,000 which the treaty proposed the United States should pay to the new Panama Canal Company, as well as the $10,000,000 bonus, and also be in more advantageous position for demanding terms from the United States. This plan found great favor, and it was even contended that the Colombia Congress had full power to annul the extension in case it saw fit to do so. No action was taken on the report, and on October 31, 1903, the Congress adjourned.
The President was keeping a close watch upon the proceedings at Bogota, studiously making up his mind as to the best course to pursue.    On September 15, 1903, he wrote to Secretary Hay:
"Let us do nothing in the Colombia matter at present. I shall be back in Washington by the 28th instant, and you a week or two afterward. Then we will go over the matter very carefully and decide what to do. At present I feel that there are two alternatives. First, to take up Nicaragua; second, in some shape or way to interfere when it becomes necessary so as to secure the Panama route without further dealing with the foolish and homicidal corruptionists in Bogota. I am not inclined to have any further dealings whatever with those Bogota people."
He was still considering the subject on October 5, 1903, when he wrote to Senator Hanna:
"You may have noticed that I have not said a word about the canal. I shall have to allude to it in my message, but I shall go over this part of my message with you before putting it in its final form. I am not as sure as you are that the only virtue we need exercise is patience. I think it is well worth considering whether we had not better warn these Bogota politicians that great though our patience has been, it can be exhausted. This does not mean that we must necessarily go to Nicaragua. I feel we are certainly justified in morals, and therefore justified in law, under the treaty of 1846, in interfering summarily and saying that the canal is to be built and that they must not stop it."
A letter which the President wrote at this time to Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of The Review of Reviews, is of first importance historically, showing as it does that Roosevelt refused to give encouragement, even by suggestion, to the secession of Panama, an event which his most venomous critics subsequently charged him with bringing about in guilty and secret connivance with Secretary Hay—an outrageous slander which persists in some quarters even to the present day:
Personal.
white house, washington,
October 10, 1903. My dear Dr. Shaw:
I enclose you, purely for your own information, a copy of a letter of September 5th from our Minister to Colombia. I think it might interest you to see that there was absolutely not the slightest chance of securing by treaty any more than we endeavored to secure. The alternatives were to go to Nicaragua, against the advice of the great majority of competent engineers—some of the most competent saying that we had better have no canal at this time than go there—or else to take the territory by force without any attempt at getting a treaty. I cast aside the proposition made at this time to foment the secession of Panama. Whatever other governments can do, the United States can not go into the securing by such underhand means, the cession. Privately, I freely say to you that I should be delighted if Panama were an independent State, or if it made itself so at this moment; but for me to say so publicly would amount to an instigation of a revolt, and therefore I can not say it.
With great regard,
Sincerely yours,
theodore Roosevelt.
President Roosevelt's poor opinion of the Colombian politicians was shared by Secretary Hay. I was talking with the Secretary one day during the period in which the rival negotiations were in progress, in regard to the conflicting claims of the Nicaraguan and Panama routes. He was describing with much humor the diplomatic antics of the representatives of the two governments, when he paused, and with that inviting twinkle in his eye which always proclaimed the coming of a happy idea, he said: "Talking with those fellows from down there, Bishop, is like holding a squirrel in your lap and trying to keep up the conversation."
The Colombian Congress rejected the treaty with full knowledge that a revolution was impending in the department or state of Panama. Like knowledge was possessed by the American Government. On June 9, 1903, Secretary Hay sent a cable message to the American Minister at Bogota, in which he said, in reference to Colombian proposals to amend the treaty, that the Colombian Government "apparently does not appreciate the gravity of the situation," that the treaty embodied the propositions presented by Colombia with slight modifications, and that if Colombia should now reject it the "friendly understanding between the two countries would be so seriously compromised that action might be taken by the Congress next winter which every friend of Colombia would regret." The substance of this message was communicated at once to the Colombian Government. On July 5, 1903, the American Minister sent the following cable message to Secretary Hay:
"Confidential. Have received information privately that a paraphrase of your cipher telegram of June 9 was read in the Senate secret session. Created sensation. Construed by many as threat of direct retaliation against Colombia in case the treaty is not ratified. This, and the statement of just arrived members of Congress from, Panama that this department would revolt if the treaty is not ratified, caused alarm, and the effect is favorable."
Three days after the treaty had been rejected by the Colombian Senate, the American Minister, writing to Secretary Hay under date of August 15, 1903, said: "The Panama representatives have lately become so thoroughly imbued with the idea of an independent republic that they have been more or less indifferent to the fate of the treaty." Cabling on August 31, to Secretary Hay, the American Minister said that Senator Jose Domingo de Obaldia, who had been appointed governor of Panama, had informed him that in accepting the position he had told the Colombian President that "in case the department found it necessary to revolt to secure canal he would stand by Panama." In another message, on September 10, 1903, the American minister said: "The appointment of Obaldia is regarded as the forerunner of separation," and in a letter on the following day he wrote: "Senator Obaldia's separatist tendencies are well known, and he is reported to have said that, should the canal treaty not pass, the department of Panama would declare its independence, and would be right in doing so. That these are his opinions there is, of course, no doubt."
Again, on October 21, 1903, the American Minister wrote to Secretary Hay: "I have the honor to inform you that there is no disguising the alarm existing as to the possible action of the government of the United States should the feeling of dissatisfaction undoubtedly existing in the department of Panama find expression in overt acts."
The Colombian Congress adjourned on October 31, 1903, and on the same day the American Minister cabled to Secretary Hay: "The people here in great anxiety over conflicting reports of secession movements in the Cauca and Panama.''
In the United States the possibility of a revolution in Panama, in case of the rejection of the treaty, was a matter of public knowledge in August, 1903. Toward the end of that month the newspapers began to publish information in various forms from the Isthmus and Bogota similar to that quoted above from the files of the State Department. Toward the end of October it was announced in the American press that the Colombian Government had already begun the movement of troops to the Isthmus. On October 15, 1903, the President was informed by Commander John Hubbard, of the navy, that a revolution had broken out in the department of Cauca, and on the following day, at the request of Lieutenant-General Young, of the United States army, the President received two officers of the army who had just returned by way of Panama from a four months' trip in Venezuela and Colombia. They informed him that a revolutionary party was organizing in Panama with the object of separation from Colombia, and was collecting arms and ammunition, and that it was the general belief on the Isthmus that the revolution might occur at any moment, and that their own opinion was that failure on the part of Colombia to ratify the treaty would lead to immediate revolution.
In view of this condition of affairs, President Roosevelt, acting in accordance with the unbroken policy of the government since the ratification of the treaty of 1846 with New Granada, directed the Navy Department to issue such instructions as would insure having American naval vessels within easy reach of the Isthmus in the event of disorder there. Orders were issued on October 19, 1903, for one ship, the Boston, to proceed to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua; to another, the Atlanta, to proceed to Guantanamo, Cuba; and to a third, the Dixie, to prepare to sail from League Island. On October 30, 1903, a fourth, the Nashville, Commander Hubbard, was ordered to proceed to Colon. On November 2, 1903, when it was evident that an outbreak was imminent, instructions were sent to the Nashville, Boston and Dixie as follows:
"Maintain free and uninterrupted transit. If interruption is threatened by armed force, occupy the line of railroad. Prevent landing of any armed force, either government or insurgent, at any point within 50 miles of Panama. Government force reported approaching Isthmus in vessels. Prevent their landing if, in your judgment, the landing, would precipitate a conflict."
Instructions similar to these had been issued repeatedly during previous disorders of various kinds on the Isthmus, the latest instance being in September, 1902, when, as in 1856, 1860, 1861, 1873, 1885, and in 1901, sailors and marines from United States war-ships were landed to patrol the Isthmus to protect life and property and keep transit free and open. In most of these instances the troops had been landed at the request of the Colombian Government.
The Nashville arrived at Colon at 5.30 p. m. on November 2, 1903. At daylight on the following morning Commander Hubbard learned that a Colombian gun-boat, Cartagena, had come in during the night with four hundred or five hundred troops on board. He had her boarded and learned that the troops were for the garrison at Panama. As he had not yet received instructions, he did not feel justified in preventing their landing, and they were disembarked at 8.30 a. m. Their commanding officers, Generals Amaya and Tovar, with four others, took the train to Panama, leaving Colonel Torres in command. At 10.30 Commander Hub-bard received the cable message with the instructions cited above, and at once went ashore. Late in the afternoon he learned that there had been a revolution in Panama; that Generals Amaya and Tovar and the other four Colombian officers had been seized and were held as prisoners; that a provisional government had been established and a military force of one thousand five hundred men had been organized; and that the provisional government wished the Colombian troops at Colon to be sent to Panama.
The general superintendent of the Panama Railroad had agreed to transport the Colombian troops, but Commander Hubbard, on the morning of November 4, 1903, prohibited the transportation of troops in either direction in order to preserve the neutrality of the Isthmus and free and uninterrupted transit. During the forenoon of November 4, 1903, Commander Hubbard was informed that Colonel Torres had sent word to the United States consul at Colon that if Generals Amaya and Tovar and the other Colombian officers who had been seized at Panama were not released by 2 p. m. he, Torres, would open fire on the town of Colon and kill every United States citizen in the place. Commander Hubbard had all the American citizens of Colon assembled in the stone building of the Panama Railroad Company, quickly fortified it as much as possible, and at 1.30 p. m. landed forty-two men from the Nashville to protect the building, with orders not to fire unless fired upon. The American women and children were placed aboard a Panama Railroad Company steamer and a German steamer which were lying at the wharf.
The Colombians surrounded the railroad building soon after the Americans had taken possession of it, and tried to provoke attack from the American troops, but the latter were cool and steady and the effort failed.
At about 3.15 p. m. Colonel Torres entered the building for an interview, declaring that the whole affair was a misapprehension, that he was most friendly to Americans, and saying that he should like to send the alcalde of Colon to Panama to see General Tovar and have him direct a discontinuance of a show of force. This request was granted and a special train over the Panama Railroad was supplied by the general superintendent for the alcalde's journey. At about 5.30 Colonel Torres stated to Commander Hub-bard that he would withdraw his Colombian troops to Monkey Hill, about two miles outside of Colon, on condition that the American troops should be withdrawn to the Nashville. This proposition was accepted and faithfully complied with by Commander Hubbard. On the morning of November 5, 1903, Commander Hubbard discovered that Colonel Torres had not withdrawn his troops to Monkey Hill, but only to some buildings near the outskirts of the town, giving a trivial excuse for failure to keep his word. Learning that it was the purpose of Colonel Torres, in case he did not receive orders from General Tovar to withdraw, to bring in his troops and occupy Colon, Commander Hubbard again landed an armed force, reoccupied the railroad building, brought ashore two one-pounder guns, and mounted them in position of defense near the building. In company with the United States consul he then sought and obtained an interview with Colonel Torres, in which he told him that he had re-landed his troops because of his, Torres, failure to keep his agreement; that his sole purpose in landing them was to preserve the lives and property of American citizens; that his attitude was one of strict neutrality; that the troops of neither side should be transported; and that free and uninterrupted transit should be maintained, if necessary by force.
   He tried to induce Colonel Torres to withdraw to Monkey Hill, but the latter replied that it was unhealthy out there. Later in the forenoon of November 5, 1903, the alcalde returned from Panama without orders, and Colonel Torres marched his Colombian troops again into Colon, but they made no threatening demonstrations. During the afternoon representatives of the new Panama Government succeeded in persuading Colonel Torres to embark with his troops on a Royal Mail steamer, Orinoco, and sail to Cartagena. The gun-boat Cartagena, on which he had come to Colon, had left port immediately after the threat against Americans had been made, on November 4, 1903.
In the meantime, while the American naval officer was preventing bloodshed at Colon, the new Panama Eepublic was becoming established on the other side of the Isthmus. As early as August, 1903, a junta of six men had been named by advocates of separation in Panama to take the leadership in plans for securing independence. It had been decided first to have the revolution on September 22, 1903, the date set for the adjournment of the Colombian Congress. When adjournment was delayed till October 31, 1903, preparations were made to have the revolution take place on November 4, 1903. The arrival of the Colombian troops at Colon on November 3 forced the event forward twenty-four hours.
The Colombian generals arrived in Panama about 11 o'clock on the morning of November 4, 1903, and were received with courtesy by the authorities and the populace. Later, when they had got wind of the impending revolution, they started for the government barracks on the sea-wall to call out the troops and signal to three Colombian gunboats that were lying in the bay, in the hope of frustrating the plans of the revolutionists. On their arrival they were met by General Esteban Huertas, in command of the garrison, who was in league with the revolutionists, who ordered out a company of soldiers and arrested them as prisoners of war. Governor Obaldia, the Colombian head of the department of Panama, was also arrested, as a mere formal act of deposition, but was released immediately. The three Colombian gun-boats were informed by signal that the revolution had been effected, it being supposed that they would acquiesce in it. Two of them did, but the commanding officer of the third sent official word to the chief of police that unless the imprisoned Colombian officers were set at liberty within two hours he would shell the city. At the expiration of that time he fired two shells, one of which killed a Chinaman on the street near the barracks, but when fire was opened upon the vessel from the fortifications she steamed away, never to return.
On the following morning the two remaining gun-boats ran up the flag of the new Panama Republic. With the exception of the Chinaman's death the revolution was bloodless.
The formal declaration of independence was made on November 4, 1903. The municipal council of the city of Panama met and after a free discussion voted unanimously in favor of separation from Colombia and the creation of the free and independent Republic of Panama. Pending the formation of the new republic, the direction of affairs was placed in the hands of three men, who later, with eleven others, constituted the Committee of Provisional Government. At 3 p. m. on the same day a formal declaration of independence was read at a mass-meeting in Cathedral Plaza.
Generals Amaya and Tovar, with their associates, were released on November 5,1903, on pledge of leaving the Isthmus as soon as possible. They were given a military escort to Colon, but arrived there too late to sail with Colonel Torres and the Colombian troops on board the Royal Mail steamer Orinoco, but they took passage for Cartagena on November 12, 1903.
The Dixie, with a force of about four hundred men, entered the harbor of Colon at 7 p. m. in the evening of November 5, just as the Orinoco was sailing away. On the following morning the Atlanta arrived, bringing the combined American force at Colon up to about one thousand men. The Maine arrived a few days later. The Boston arrived at Panama on November 7, and was joined there later by three other naval vessels.
On November 7, the American Minister at Bogota sent a cable message to Secretary Hay, saying that General Reyes was about to start for Panama with full powers, and wished to be informed by the Secretary before starting if the American commander at Panama would be ordered to cooperate with him with the new Panama Government to arrange peace and approval of the treaty, which would be accepted on condition that the integrity of Colombia be preserved. On the same day the Colombian Government asked to be informed through the American minister whether it would be allowed to land troops at Colon and Panama to fight there along the line of the railway.
These messages were received at Washington on November 10, 1903, and on the following day Secretary Hay replied that it "is not thought desirable to permit landing of Colombian troops on Isthmus, as such a course would precipitate civil war and disturb for an indefinite period the free transit we are pledged to protect."
The Republic of Panama was formally recognized by the United States on November 6, 1903, in the following message from Secretary Hay to the consulate-general at Panama:
"The people of Panama having by an apparently unanimous movement dissolved their political connection with the Republic of Colombia and resumed their independence, and having adopted a government of their own, republican in form, with which the Government of the United States of America has entered into relations, the President of the United States, in accordance with the ties of friendship which have so long and so happily existed between the respective nations, most earnestly commends to the governments of Colombia and of Panama the peaceful and equitable settlement of all questions at issue between them. He holds that he is bound, not merely by treaty obligations, but by the interests of civilization, to see that the peaceable traffic of the world across the Isthmus of Panama shall not longer be disturbed by a constant succession of unnecessary and wasteful wars."
The same message was sent to the American minister at Bogota on November 6, 1903. Within a few weeks all the so-called "great powers" of the earth, following the lead of the United States, formally recognized the independence of the Republic of Panama, and by the 1st of March following practically all the governments of the world except Colombia had recognized it.
The news of the revolution had scarcely reached Colombia before its government began to confess judgment on its conduct toward the Hay-Herran treaty. On November 6, 1903, the American Minister at Bogota sent a cable message to Secretary Hay containing an offer from General Reyes to reassemble the Colombian Congress and ratify the treaty as signed, or to approve it by government decree, provided the United States Government would uphold Colombia by declaring martial law and suppressing the revolution on the Isthmus.
The charge of "conspiracy" between the American Government and the revolutionists in Panama was made as soon as the news of the revolution was published. Writing to Dr. Albert Shaw on November 6, 1903, the President said in regard to it:
"I did not foment the revolution on the Isthmus, as you know from my previous correspondence with you. It is idle folly to speak of there having been a conspiracy with us. The people of the Isthmus are a unit for the canal, and in favor of separation from the Colombians. The latter signed their death warrant when they acted in such infamous manner about the signing of the treaty. Unless Congress overrides me, which I do not think probable, Colombia's grip on Panama is gone forever."
Writing to Lawrence Abbott on November 12, 1903, the President adduced positive proof that he was not even anticipating a revolt:
"I wish, by the way, I had shown you when you were here my Message on the Panama subject. I had written it out and had the rough draft with Hay's marginal corrections. It was written the very end of October—that is, less than a week before the outbreak occurred—and by it you would have seen that at that time neither Hay nor I was preparing for the outbreak, and that the message was drawn up on the supposition that there would be no outbreak, and that I should have to face the problem of digging the canal anyhow."
In the draft of the message, alluded to in the above letter, the President had recommended to Congress that the American Government take possession of the Isthmus, without regard to Colombia's wishes in the matter, and proceed to build the canal. He had written:
"The refusal of Colombia properly to respond to our sincere and earnest efforts to come to an agreement, or to pay heed to the many concessions we have made, renders it in my judgment necessary that the United States should take immediate action on one of two lines; either we should drop the Panama canal project and immediately begin work on the Nicaraguan canal, or else we should purchase all the rights of the French company, and, without any further parley with Colombia, enter upon the completion of the canal which the French company has begun. I feel that the latter course is the one demanded by the interests of this Nation, and I therefore bring the matter to your attention for such action in the premises as you may deem wise. If in your judgment it is better not to take such action, then I shall proceed at once with the Nicaraguan canal."
One of the first acts of the provisional government of the Republic of Panama was to appoint, on November 6, 1903, Philippe Bunau-Varilla envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United States, with full powers to conduct diplomatic and financial negotiations. Bunau Varilla was in Washington at the time, and on November 13 he was received formally by President Roosevelt at the White House. On the following day the Secretary of State sent a cable message to all the diplomatic representatives of the United States in foreign countries as follows:
"The President yesterday fully recognized the Republic of Panama and formally received its Minister Plenipotentiary. You will promptly communicate this to the government to which you are accredited."
Writing to his son, Theodore, on November 15, 1903, the President thus described the situation at the moment:
"I have had a most interesting time about Panama and Colombia. My experiences in all these matters give me an idea of the fearful times Lincoln must have had in dealing with the great crisis he had to face. When I see how panic-struck Senators, business men and everybody else become from my little flurry of trouble, and the wild clamor they all raise for foolish or cowardly action, I get an idea of what he had to stand after Bull Run and again after McClellan's failures in '62 and the party defeat in the elections of that year, and again after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Why, even in this Panama business the Evening Post and the entire fool Mugwump crowd have fairly suffered from hysterics; and a goodly number of the Senators even of my own party have shown about as much backbone as so many angle worms. However, I have kept things moving just right so far."

***,.

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CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE,. 
SECURING  THE  PANAMA  CANAL—CONCLUDED,.
the negotiation of a treaty between the United States and the Republic of Panama was begun at once by Secretary Hay and Bunau-Varilla, and was completed and signed by them at "Washington on November 18, 1903. It was ratified by Panama on December 2, 1903.
In his annual message to Congress, December 7, 1903, and in a special message, January 4, 1904, President Roosevelt gave a detailed account of the revolution at Panama and of his conduct in recognizing the Republic. In the two messages he set forth the facts which have been stated in the present narrative, showing that in 53 years there had been 53 revolutions on the Isthmus, and giving the full text of Commander Hubbard's official report. He accompanied his annual message with the treaty, which Secretary Hay and Bunau-Varilla had drawn. After describing the events, which led up to the recognition of the Republic, he said in the message of December 7:
"Under such circumstances, the Government of the United States would have been guilty of folly and weakness, amounting in their sum to a crime against the Nation, had it acted otherwise than it did when the revolution of November 3 last took place in Panama. This great enterprise of building the interoceanic canal can not be held up to gratify the whims, or out of respect to the governmental impotence, or to the even more sinister and evil political peculiarities, of people who, though they dwell afar off, yet, against the wish of the actual dwellers on the Isthmus, assert an unreal supremacy over the territory. The possession of a territory fraught with such peculiar capacities as the Isthmus in question carries with it obligations to mankind. The course of events has shown that this canal can not be built by private enterprise, or by any other nation than our own; therefore it must be built by the United States."
In the same message, he said of the treaty: "By it our interests are better safeguarded than in the treaty with Colombia which was ratified by the Senate at its last session. It is better in its terms than the treaties offered to us by the Republics of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. At last the right to begin this great undertaking is made available. Panama has done her part. All that remains is for the American Congress to do its part and forthwith this Republic will enter upon the execution of a project colossal in its size and of well-nigh incalculable possibilities for the good of this country and the nations of mankind.''
In the special message of January 4, 1904, he said of the offer of General Reyes, already quoted, to have the treaty ratified by the Colombian Congress provided the President would uphold Colombia in declaring martial law and suppressing the Panama revolution:
"I pass by the question as to what assurance we have that they would now keep their pledge and not again refuse to ratify the treaty if they had the power; for, of course, I will not for one moment discuss the possibility of the United States committing an act of such baseness as to abandon the new Republic of Panama,"
In the same message he thus referred to the "conspiracy" slanders:
"I hesitate to refer to the injurious insinuations which have been made of complicity by this government in the revolutionary movement in Panama. They are as destitute of foundation as of propriety. The only excuse for my mentioning them is the fear lest unthinking persons might mistake for acquiescence the silence of mere self-respect. I think proper to say, therefore, that no one connected with this Government had any part in preparing, inciting, or encouraging the late revolution on the Isthmus of Panama, and that save from the reports of our military and naval officers, given above, no one connected with this Government had any previous knowledge of the revolution except such as was accessible to any person of ordinary intelligence who read the newspapers and kept up a current acquaintance with public affairs."
Between the writing of the two messages to Congress the President, in several private letters, set forth his convictions in regard to the course he had pursued. Writing to Charles S. Osborn, of Michigan, on December 9, 1903, he said:
"Just at the moment I am more concerned about Panama than anything else. Of course, to me, the situation is simple. In its essence it is exactly as if a road agent had tried to hold up a man, and the man was quick enough to take his gun away. Under such circumstances I would regard it as the wildest sentimental folly for outsiders to claim that the road agent did not intend to shoot, and that it was his gun and ought to be given back to him. By every consideration of equity, and of legitimate national and international interest, what we have done was right. And it will be a lamentable thing if a twisted party feeling should join with mere hysteria to prevent at this time the fulfilling of what has been accomplished."
To the Rev. Dr. David D. Thompson, editor of The Northwestern Christian Advocate, he entered upon a more elaborate justification of his conduct, on December 22, 1903:
"You of course remember that during the Civil "War the leaders of the Confederates in the South, and their allies both in England and in the North, insisted that the movement for the independence of the slave States against the Union was identical with the movement for the independence of the original thirteen States as against Great Britain, and that Jefferson Davis stood exactly as George Washington did. It is difficult to believe now that such arrant nonsense was ever seriously advanced. But it is not one whit more absurd than to say that the secession of Panama from Colombia has anything in common with the secession of the eleven slave-holding States from the Union in 1861.
"A revolutionary movement can only be justified by showing that it has ample cause, and that good will follow from its success. In other words, each revolutionary movement must be judged on its own merits. Under Washington, the American Colonies revolted because the Crown and Parliament of England strove to keep them in subjection. Their revolutionary movement was right, and it was a good thing for the whole world that it succeeded. Under Jefferson Davis, the Southern States revolted in order to establish a slave-holding republic, and to break up the greatest experiment at successful democratic republican government which the world had ever seen. There was no adequate cause—indeed no cause whatever,—for the attempted secession; and if successful, the movement would have been fraught with incalculable damage to all mankind. Therefore the two movements, though superficially alike, are in points of morality at opposite poles from each other, judged at the bar of history.
"The revolution in Panama, or secession of Panama, is just like the secession of Greece from Turkey at the beginning of the last century, and of the other Christian States from Turkey later on in the century. Panama has suffered oppression for years. Not only was its secession justifiable but if it had had the power it would not have been warranted in standing such oppression for twenty-four hours. No body of men of courage and power, trained as you and I and our fellow-citizens have been trained in self-government, in liberty, and in law-abiding habits, would submit for one day to the oppression habitual under Colombian rule in Panama.
"Finally, when Colombia, which had plundered Panama, and misgoverned and misruled her, declined to ratify the treaty for the canal—which meant giving up Panama's last hope—the people of Panama rose literally as one man. When once this rising had occurred our Government was bound by every consideration of honor and humanity, and of national and international interest, to take exactly the steps that it took."
Several other letters, written at this time, testify to the sincerity of the President in the matter:
To Samuel W. Small, Georgia:
December 29,1903.—'' To my mind this building of the canal through Panama will rank in kind, though not of course in degree, with the Louisiana Purchase and the acquisition of Texas. I can say with entire conscientiousness that if in order to get the treaty through and start building the canal it were necessary for me forthwith to retire definitely from politics, I should be only too glad to make the arrangement accordingly; for it is the amount done in office, and not length of time in office, that makes office worth having."
To Charles F. Lummis, Los Angeles, Calif,:
January 4, 1904.—"No more cruel despotism outside of Turkey exists than that of the so-called Colombia Republic, under present political and ecclesiastical management. Turkey is worse, but I know of no other power that is as bad. To the worst characteristics of seventeenth century Spain, and of Spain at its worst under Philip II, Colombia has added a squalid savagery of its own, and has combined with exquisite nicety the worst forms of despotism and of anarchy, of violence and of fatuous weakness, of dismal ignorance, cruelty, treachery, greed, and utter vanity. I cannot feel much respect for such a country.
"If I can do anything to make it better I shall try to, and try to in good faith. If there is any way I can help them build railways, even by an act of Congress granting money, I shall be glad to do it."
To John Bigelow, New York:
January 6, 1904.—'' Of course I have no idea what Bunau-Varilla advised the revolutionists, or what he said in any telegrams to them as to either Hay or myself; but I do know, of course, that he had no assurances in any way, either from Hay or myself, or from any one authorized to speak for us. He is a very able fellow, and it was his business to find out what he thought our Government would do. I have no doubt that he was able to make a very accurate guess, and to advise his people accordingly. In fact, he would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess."
To Senator Lodge:
January 6, 1904.—"I was interested in one point Senator Morgan made. That is where he quoted Bunau-Varilla's article in Le Matin, September 2, and stated that it so foreshadowed the course I actually took that undoubtedly either Hay or I must have inspired it—this was the substance of what he said. Now I am much pleased that he should have done this. MacVeagh and others have been threatening for some time to produce telegrams from Bunau-Varilla which would show such an exact knowledge of our movements, and even our intentions as regards sending ships to the Isthmus, keeping order upon it, and recognizing any revolutionary government, as to make it evident that he had received some assurances from us. Indeed, they have been saying that he had asserted in some telegram that he had received such assurances. Of course as I have said once for all, neither John Hay nor I, nor any one speaking for us, either directly or indirectly, gave such assurances or such information in any shape or way. But it is impossible for me to be sure what Bunau-Varilla has said or not said, and therefore I am particularly pleased that Morgan should have brought out this article in Le Matin. It really is a remarkable forecast of what we actually did, and yet on its face it shows that this forecast was prepared six weeks before Bunau-Varilla saw either Hay or me; and, as a matter of fact, it appeared about a week before I called John Bassett Moore out to Oyster Bay and for the first time began definitely to formulate my policy even in my own mind. You see they have proved too much. They have proved that Bunau Varilla knew what we were going to do six weeks before he ever saw any of us and some little time before I had even begun myself to make up my mind what I should do."
To   Cecil   Arthur   Spring-Rice,   British   Foreign   Office,
London:
January 18, 1904.—"I have been having most interesting times. I have succeeded in accomplishing a certain amount, which I think will stand. I believe I shall put through the Panama treaty (my worst foes being those in the Senate and not those outside of the borders of the United States) and begin to dig the canal. It is always difficult for me to reason with those solemn creatures of imperfect aspirations after righteousness, who never take the trouble to go below names. These people scream about the injustice done Colombia when Panama was released from its domination, which is precisely like bemoaning the wrong done to Turkey when Herzegovina was handed over to Austria, It was a good thing for Egypt and the Soudan, and for the world, when England took Egypt and the Soudan. It is a good thing for India that England should control it. And so it is a good thing, a very good thing, for Cuba and for Panama and for the world that the United States has acted as it has actually done during the last six years. The people of the United States and the people of the Isthmus and the rest of mankind will all be the better because we dig the Panama Canal and keep order in its neighborhood. And the politicians and revolutionists at Bogota are entitled to precisely the amount of sympathy we extend to other inefficient bandits."
Speaking at Dallas, Texas, on April 5, 1905, President Roosevelt said of his action:
"Especially as regards what was done in Panama, I want to say that while I was most anxious to deserve the approval of my countrymen, and while I was very glad to be elected President, I would without one moment's hesitation have given up the second term in the Presidency rather than not to have begun the Panama Canal."
Secretary Hay was in hearty accord with every step of the President's course and joined with him in resenting and refuting the charge of "conspiracy." Writing to James Ford Rhodes, the historian, on December 8, 1903, the Secretary said:
"It is hard for me to understand how any one can criticize our action in Panama on the grounds upon which it is ordinarily attacked. The matter came to us with amazing celerity. We had to decide on the instant whether we would take possession of the ends of -the railroad and keep the traffic clear, or whether we would stand back and let those gentlemen cut each other's throats for an indefinite time, and destroy whatever remnant of our property and interests we had there. I had no hesitation as to the proper course to take, and have had no doubt of the propriety of it since."
To General Reyes, the accredited representative of the Colombian Government, who, in a statement of grievances that he had sent to Secretary Hay, had spoken of "gross imputations upon the conduct and motives of the American Government" as having "appeared in reputable American newspapers," the Secretary replied:
"The press in this country is entirely free, and as a necessary consequence represents substantially every phase of human activity, interest and disposition. Not only is the course of the Government in all matters subject to daily comment, but the motives of public men are as freely discussed as their acts; and if, as sometimes happens, criticism proceeds to the point of calumny, the evil is left to work its own cure. Diplomatic representatives, however, are not supposed to seek in such sources material for arguments, much less for grave accusations. Any charge that this Government, or any responsible member of it, held intercourse, whether official or unofficial, with agents of revolution in Colombia, is utterly without justification.
"Equally so is the insinuation that any action of this Government, prior to the revolution in Panama, was the Result of complicity with the plans of the revolutionists. The Department sees fit to make these denials and makes them finally.''
In the same reply, the Secretary also wrote: '' The Isthmus was threatened with desolation by another civil war, nor were the rights and interests of the United States alone at stake, the interests of the whole civilized world were involved. The Republic of Panama stood for those interests; the Government of Colombia opposed them. Compelled to choose between these two alternatives, the Government of the United States, in no wise responsible for the situation that had arisen, did not hesitate. It recognized the independence of the Republic of Panama, and upon its judgment and action in the emergency the Powers of the world have set the seal of their approval."
One especially insidious bit of '' evidence'' which was circulated industriously for the purpose of showing that Secretary Hay had been a conspirator, was thus disposed of in a letter from the Secretary to Senator George F. Hoar on January 11, 1904:
'' The President tells me that in a letter to him you refer to a newspaper publication to the effect that in discussing the subject of the coming revolution in Panama with a Mr. Duque, on his informing me that the revolution was to take place on the 23rd of September, I had said to him that that was too early, and it ought to be deferred. I now find the same statement copied from the Evening Post in a speech by Senator Morgan in the Senate.
"It seems rather humiliating to be obliged to refer to such a story, but since you mentioned it to the President and since it seems to have made some impression upon your mind, I venture to say to you, confidentially, that I never saw Mr. Duque but once, that I never saw him alone, and that nothing in the remotest degree resembling this printed conversation was ever said by either of us."
"Writing to Professor George W. Fisher, of Yale University, on January 30, Secretary Hay said:
"I am sure that if the President had acted differently when, the 3rd of November, he was confronted by a critical situation which might easily have turned to disaster, the attacks which are now made on him would have been ten times more virulent and more effective. He must have done exactly as he did, or the only alternative would have been an indefinite duration of bloodshed and devastation through the whole extent of the Isthmus. It was a time to act and not to theorize, and my judgment at least is clear that he acted rightly."
Finally, in an address, on July 6, 1904, which he made at Jackson, Michigan, at a celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Republican Party, Secretary Hay summed up the case as follows:
"There has been more noise made over his (President Roosevelt's) suddenness on the Isthmus of Panama than elsewhere. It is difficult to treat this charge with seriousness. The President has made a treaty with Colombia at her own solicitation, which was infinitely to her advantage, to inaugurate an enterprise, which was to be for the benefit of the world. He waited with endless patience while Bogota delayed and trifled with the matter, and finally rejected it, and suggested new negotiations for a larger sum. Panama, outraged by this climax of the wrongs she had already suffered, declared and established her independence. The President, following an unbroken line of precedents, entered into relations with the new Republic, and, obeying his duty to protect the transit of the Isthmus as all other Presidents had done before him, gave orders that there should be no bloodshed on the line of the railway. He said, like Grant, 'Let us have peace!' and we had it. It will seem incredible to posterity that any American could have objected to this. He acted wisely and beneficently, and all some people can find to criticize in his action is that he was too brisk about it. If a thing is right and proper to do, it does not make it criminal to do it promptly. No, gentlemen! That was a time when the hour and the man arrived together. He struck while the iron was white hot on the anvil of opportunity, and forged as perfect a bit of honest statecraft as this generation has seen."
A complete justification of the course pursued by the President was afforded by Elihu Root in an address which he delivered before the Union League Club of Chicago on February 22, 1904. In this address Mr. Root showed that under the Constitution of the United States of Colombia, adopted in 1863, the State of Panama had been vested with "absolute and unqualified sovereignty"; that she had never legally lost this sovereignty but had been deprived of it by force in 1886 by Rafael Nunez, President of Colombia, who had declared that the "Constitution of 1863 no longer exists." What Nunez did was thus described by Mr. Root:
'' He put Panama under martial law, not during the civil war, but after its close, and appointed a governor of the state. He also appointed governors for the other states in the Confederation. He then directed these governors to appoint delegates to a constitutional convention; and the delegates thus appointed framed what is known as the Constitution of 1886. The two delegates appointed to represent Panama in this convention were residents of Bogota. Neither of them ever resided in Panama, and one of them never had set foot in Panama. The pretended constitution thus framed by the appointees of Nunez was declared to be adopted without compliance with a single one of the requisites prescribed by the Constitution of 1863 for its amendment. It robbed the people of Panama of every vestige of self-government. It gave them a governor to be appointed by the president at Bogota, and he, in turn, appointed all the administrative officers of the department. It left to the other states their legislatures, but it took away from Panama its legislature and subjected the Isthmus directly in all things to the legislative authority of the Congress at Bogota. It provided that the president might at any time, in case of civil commotion, declare the public order to be disturbed, and that he should thereupon have authority to issue decrees having the force of legislative enactments. It gave him absolute power over the press and power to imprison or expatriate any citizen at will. It took away the property, the powers, the corporate existence, the civil organization of the state, and placed the property and the lives of its people absolutely under the authority and power of a single dictator in a distant capital with which there was no communication by land, and which it required longer to reach than it did to reach the city of Washington. This pretended constitution was never submitted to the people of Panama for their approval or rejection. It was never consented to by them."
Concerning the efforts of the people of Panama to regain their lost sovereignty, Mr. Root said:
"The people of Panama fought to exhaustion in 1885 to prevent the loss of their liberty and they were defeated through the action of the naval forces of the United States. Three times since then they have risen in rebellion against their oppressors.
"In 1895 they arose and were suppressed by force; in 1899 they arose again and for three years maintained a war for liberation, which ended in 1902 through the interposition of the United States by armed force. The rising of November, 1902, was the fourth attempt of this people to regain the rights of which they had been deprived by the usurpation of Nunez. The rejection of the canal treaty by the Bogota Congress was the final and overwhelming injury to the interests of Panama; the conclusive evidence of indifference to her welfare and disregard of her wishes; and it also created the opportunity for success in her persistent purpose to regain civil liberty; for it was plain that under the strained relations created by that rejection, the United States naturally would not exercise her authority again upon the Isthmus, as she had exercised it before, to aid the troops of Colombia. She was under no obligation to do so, and she could not do so without aiding in the denial of her own rights and the destruction of her own interests. Upon that the people of Panama relied in their last attempt, and they relied upon it with reason."
A most interesting and valuable part of Mr. Root's exposition is the following concerning the fraudulent character of the dictator who was ruling Colombia when the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty was rejected:
"In the meantime there had been a curious grafting of usurpation upon usurpation at Bogota. In 1898 M. A. San-clamente was elected president, and J. M. Maroquin, vice-president, of the republic of Colombia. It is true that there was no freedom of election. Our minister had reported of a preceding election: 'None but the soldiers, police, and, employees of the Government voted, thus making the victory of the Government complete'; but there was a form of election, and Sanclamente became the only president there was, and Maroquin the vice-president. Article twenty-four of the Constitution of 1886 provided:
" 'The vice-president of the republic shall perform the duties of the executive office during the temporary absence of the president. In case of the permanent absence of the president, the vice-president shall occupy the office of the president during the balance of the time for which he was elected.'
"On July 31,1900, the vice-president, Maroquin, executed a coup d'etat, by seizing the person of the president, Sanclamente, and imprisoning him at a place a few miles outside of Bogota. Maroquin thereupon declared himself possessed of the executive power because of the absence of the president. He then issued a decree that public order was disturbed, and, upon that ground, assumed to himself legislative power under another provision of the constitution, which I have already cited. Thenceforth, Maroquin, without the aid of any legislative body, ruled as the supreme executive, legislative, .civil, and military authority in the so-called republic of Colombia. The absence of Sanclamente from the capital became permanent by his death in prison in the year 1902. When the people of Panama declared their independence in November last, no Congress had sat in Colombia since the year 1898, except the special Congress called by Maroquin to reject the canal treaty, and which did reject it by a unanimous vote, and adjourned without legislating on any other subject. The constitution of 1886 had taken away from Panama the power of self-government and vested it in Colombia. The coup d'etat of Maroquin took away from Colombia herself the power of government and vested it in an irresponsible dictator."
Summing up the whole matter, Mr. Root said: "The people of Panama were the real owners of the canal route; it was because their fathers dwelt in the land, because they won their independence from Spain, because they organized a civil society there, that it was not to be treated as one of the waste places of the earth. They owned that part of the earth's surface just as much as the State of New York owns the Erie Canal. When the sovereign state of Panama confederated itself with the other states of Colombia under the constitution of 1863, it did not part with its title or its substantial rights, but constituted the Federal Government its trustee for the representation of its rights in all foreign relations, and imposed upon that Government the duty of protecting them. The trustee was faithless to its trust; it repudiated its obligations without the consent of the true owner; it seized by the strong hand of military power the rights which it was bound to protect; Colombia herself broke the bonds of union and destroyed the compact upon which alone depended her right to represent the owner of the soil. The question for the United States was: Shall we take this treaty from the true owner or shall we take it from the faithless trustee, and for that purpose a third time put back the yoke of foreign domination upon the neck of Panama, by the request of that Government which has tried to play toward us the part of the highwayman? There was no provision of our treaty with Colombia, which required us to answer to her call, for our guaranty of her sovereignty in that treaty relates solely to foreign aggression. There was no rule of international law, which required us to recognize the wrongs of Panama or the justice of her cause, for international law does not concern itself with the internal affairs of states. But I put it to the conscience of the American people who are passing judgment upon the action of their Government, whether the decision of our President and Secretary of State and the Senate was not a righteous decision.
"By all the principles of justice among men and among nations that we have learned from our fathers, and that all peoples and all governments should maintain, the revolutionists in Panama were right, the people of Panama were entitled to be free again, the Isthmus was theirs and they were entitled to govern it; and it would have been a shameful thing for the Government of the United States to return them again to servitude."
It should be borne in mind that Mr. Root was not in the Cabinet at the time of the Panama incident and that his treatment of it was that of an impartial outside observer.
After the Bunau-Varilla treaty had been sent to the Senate, the President invited the leading Republican Senators to come to the White House for a consultation with himself and Secretary Hay concerning it. When the Senators came they were found, almost to a man, to be in a hostile frame of mind, but after several hours of earnest discussion, they one by one came to the view of the President and Secretary and promised to support the treaty. As they were leaving, an eminent Senator from a Western State, noted for ability as an expert political balancer, said in a low tone to Hay: "Do it, but be as gentle as you can with Colombia." "Which," said Hay, in reporting the incident to me, "reminded me of the instruction of the Western outlaw chief: 'Kill him, but kill him easy!' "
   The treaty was ratified by Panama on December 2, 1903. It was sent to the United States Senate on December 7, and ratified by that body on February 23, 1904. It was approved by President Roosevelt on February 25, and proclaimed on the following day.
Closely following the ratification of the treaty by the Senate, the President appointed a Commission to take charge of the construction of the canal. The full history of his action in connection with the work is recorded in subsequent chapters.
One of the President's final official utterances before leaving office was a special message to Congress on December 16, 1908, in reference to certain newspaper assertions to the effect that there had been some corrupt action by or on behalf of the United States Government in connection with the acquisition of the title and property of the French Canal Company at Panama. It was charged that an American syndicate had acquired the French Canal Company's property and had sold it to the United States Government at a "huge profit" to the members of the syndicate, who included the President's brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, and the President-elect's brother, Charles P. Taft. All the charges were shown subsequently to be absolutely without foundation. The President used vigorous language in his message, while setting forth in full all the established facts in the case, with citations from official records to support them. The charges had been published originally in the New York World, and in denouncing them the President said:
"These stories as a matter of fact need no investigation whatever. No shadow of proof has been, or can be, produced in behalf of any of them. They consist simply of a string of infamous libels. In form, they are in part libels upon individuals, upon Mr. Taft and Mr. Robinson, for instance. But they are, in fact, wholly, and in form partly, a libel upon the United States Government. I do not believe we should concern ourselves with the particular individuals who wrote the lying and libelous editorials, articles from correspondents, or articles in the news columns.
"The real offender is Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, editor and proprietor of the World. While the criminal offense of which Mr. Pulitzer has been guilty is in form a libel upon individuals, the great injury done is in blackening the good name of the American people.
"It should not be left to a private citizen to sue Mr. Pulitzer for libel. He should be prosecuted for libel by the governmental authorities. In point of encouragement of iniquity, in point of infamy, or wrongdoing, there is nothing to choose between a public servant who betrays his trust, a public servant who is guilty of blackmail, or theft, or financial dishonesty of any kind, and a man guilty as Mr. Joseph Pulitzer has been guilty in this instance.
"It is therefore a high national duty to bring to justice this vilifier of the American people, this man who wantonly and wickedly and without one shadow of justification seeks to blacken the character of reputable private citizens and to convict the government of his own country in the eyes of the civilized world of wrongdoing of the basest and foulest kind, when he has not one shadow of justification of any sort or description for the charge he has made."
Under the President's direction, Henry L. Stimson, United States District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, on March 4, 1909, filed an indictment in the Federal Court against the New York World for publishing the charges. The case was carried on by Henry A. Wise, Mr. Stimson's successor, and a great deal of testimony was taken. The indictment was quashed, on February 25,1910, on the ground that the Federal Court did not have jurisdiction. In the course of the preparation for the trial the World sent a commission to Panama, accompanied by its lawyers, to try to discover evidence there that President Roosevelt and the Government were guilty of complicity in setting up the revolution. They failed utterly. No such evidence could be found. A memorandum of the testimony adduced, mainly by the defendants, which was prepared by the Assistant District Attorney who had conducted the deposition and filed in the official records, concluded as follows:
"Not a word of testimony was introduced to show that any act by the United States Navy or Army which could be deemed interference or anything more than the carrying out of the policy which the Government has always pursued of keeping transit across the Isthmus free from disorder."
In later years, after he had retired from the Presidency, Roosevelt made several references to his course in securing the canal at Panama which showed complete confidence in the justice of his acts. Speaking at Berkeley, California, on March 23, 1911, he said: "I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed traditional, conservative methods I should have submitted a dignified state paper of probably two hundred pages to Congress, and the debate on it would be going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate and while the debate goes on the canal does too." The expression "I took the Canal Zone" aroused much comment and was construed by his critics as an admission that he had used arbitrary and unjustifiable methods. That this criticism did not trouble him at all was shown in the following passage from an address that he delivered before the National Press Club in Washington on January 24, 1918:
"Panama declared itself independent and wanted to complete the Panama Canal, and opened negotiations with us. I had two courses open. I might have taken the matter under advisement and put it before the Senate, in which case we should have had a number of most able speeches on the subject. We would have had a number of very profound arguments, and they would have been going on now, and the Panama Canal would be in the dim future yet. We would have had a half century of discussion, and perhaps the Panama Canal. I preferred we should have the Panama Canal first and the half century of discussion afterward. And now instead of discussing the canal before it was built, which would have been harmful, they merely discuss me—a discussion which I regard with benign interest."
While the criticism was irritating because of the natural unwillingness on the part of reputable men to give the dignity of denial to such base accusations, it was at no time seriously annoying to the President. Usually it was the subject of mirth with him and his official advisers for the Cabinet was a unit in support of his policy. A glimpse of the prevailing good-fellowship between the President and his associates is revealed in the following note to the President from Secretary Hay on December 4, 1906:
"Can you receive Reyes to-morrow, Saturday? If so, at what hour? Permit me to observe, the sooner you see him, the sooner you can bid him good-by.
"I have a complaint to make of Root. I told him I was going to see Reyes. He replied, 'Better look out! Ex-Reyes are dangerous.'
"Do you think that, on my salary, I can afford to bear such things?"
A partial reopening of the controversy was caused by General Reyes in 1905, when he had become President of Colombia. He wrote a letter to President Roosevelt containing an assertion to which the latter replied as follows on February 20, 1905:
"I thank you for your confidential letter. Your quotation of me is substantially correct when you say that I addressed you as follows on the occasion of your visit to me as Colombia's agent in the Panama matter:
" 'If you had been President of Colombia you would have saved Panama, because you would have known how to safeguard its rights and the interests of all and would have avoided the revolution which caused its secession from Colombia. In that case my Government could have helped Colombia to be one of the richest and most prosperous countries in South America.'
   "Like you, I desire to draw a veil over the past, but my dear Mr. President, as you speak of your country as being deeply injured by my country do let me point out to you that in the words of my own quoted above I was endeavoring to show why I thought you would have saved Colombia from the trouble that befell her had you been President. This country, so far from wronging Colombia, made every possible effort to persuade Colombia to allow herself to be benefited. I cannot seem by remaining quiet to countenance for one moment the idea that this country did anything but show a spirit not merely of justice but of generosity in its dealings with Colombia. Had you been President, I firmly believe that this spirit would have been met with a like spirit from Colombia, and that therefore Colombia, by the mere fact of ratifying the treaty agreed upon with the United States, would have prevented the revolution in Panama and would have itself become rich and prosperous.
"You say you are lacking at present the means of arranging in a decorous manner the pending questions between Colombia, the United States, and Panama, and you ask me to do justice and thereby help you. Of course if I can help you in any way I will; but, my dear Mr. President, I do not quite understand what it is expected we shall do. If the people of Panama desire to take a plebiscite as to whether or not they shall resume connection with Colombia, most emphatically I have no objections and will be delighted so to inform them; but I cannot press them unless they desire to do it. So about their assumption of a portion of Colombia's debt. We have stated that in our judgment this should be done by Panama and we are informed by their Minister here, Mr. Bunau-Varilla, that they intended to do so; but we cannot force them to do it. As for the purchase of the Islands, which I understand Colombia would like to sell to us, our Navy Department does not deem it to our interest to procure them, and I am very much afraid that a treaty for their purchase would not be approved by the Senate of the United States.
"I have shown your letter to Mr. Hay. I wish I could write you in a manner that would be more agreeable.''
When, during the administration of President Wilson, a treaty was drawn up under which a payment of $25,000,000 was to be made to Colombia, Mr. Roosevelt published an article denouncing it as a "Blackmail Treaty" and traversing in detail the history of his proceedings in getting possession of the Isthmus of Panama. He made the same revelations in regard to the character and conduct of the fraudulent government of Columbia as are quoted in preceding pages from the address of Mr. Root. In closing he said: "The proposed treaty is a crime against the United States. It is an attack upon the honor of the United States which, if justified, would convict the United States of infamy.''
This article is published in full in the volume of Roosevelt's writings entitled "Fear God and Take Your Own Part." (George H. Doran Company, 1915.) .

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CHAPTER TWENTY SIX,.
NATIONAL CONVENTION AND CAMPAIGN OF 1904,.
although opposition to the President's nomination ceased with the elimination of Senator Hanna as a candidate at the time of the Ohio State Convention in June, 1903, a series of efforts was begun early in 1904 and continued for several months to induce him to give pledges or assurances of various kinds in regard to the course he should pursue after election. Representatives of various interests that had been opposing his nomination visited him, assuring him that these interests had not objected to him as a man but had been uneasy lest he pursue to extremes certain policies which they regarded as disturbing and harmful. What these representatives desired was the authority to say to the interests that, when reelected, he would consult them about all important matters and be guided by their counsel. They were afraid that if they could not give this assurance it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a campaign fund. 
The President listened to all of them and to all made the same reply. He could only promise to proceed in the future as he had acted in the past; that he should always consult the leaders of his party and others whose opinion it was desirable to have, but when the time for action came, he must follow his own judgment and conscience; that so far as a campaign fund was concerned, if one could not be raised, the campaign must be conducted without it.
Later, when the campaign opened a curious mental condition was revealed. The managers of the campaign made no request for contributions from people who had been most bitter in their denunciation of the President's policies. These at once complained because they had not been called upon, asking if failure to do so meant that they were to be proceeded against after election. One quite prominent financial magnate, who had been especially vehement in denunciation, called upon the managers, and asked: "What does this mean? Why have I not been asked to contribute? Have I not just as much right to contribute as anybody else? Am I to be discriminated against after election?"
These inquiries revealed in a striking manner the conception as to the real nature of campaign contributions, which had prevailed previous to the advent of Theodore Roosevelt in public office. Such contributions were regarded as purchasing favors of various kinds after election. Roosevelt had encountered and combated this view when he was Governor of New York, and he was about to encounter and combat it in his approaching Presidential campaign. Before that campaign ended, it was made clear to all men that the old view of contributions had passed away and, so far as Roosevelt was concerned, a new one had taken its place.
While the efforts to extort concessions of one kind or another were in progress in the winter of 1904, the President, on January 27, wrote to a friend who had knowledge of what was going on:
"To use the vernacular of our adopted West, you can bet your bedrock dollar that if I go down it will be with colors flying and drums beating, and that I would neither truckle nor trade with any of the opposition if to do so guaranteed me the nomination and election. In the first place, I believe I shall win. In the next place, and what is infinitely more, important,—I am going to fight it out on the line I have chosen without deviating a hair's breadth from it, win or lose; for I am sure that the policies for which I stand are those in accordance with which this country must be governed, and up to which we must all of us live in public or private life, under penalty of grave disaster to the Nation.''
That he felt reasonably assured of the nomination at this time is shown in a letter to Dr. Albert Shaw, on January 30, 1904:
"In confidence, I can tell you that outside all the Southern States I am now as certain as I well can be that if Hanna made the fight (for the nomination), and with all the money of Wall Street behind him, he would get the majority of the delegation from no State excepting Ohio; and from the South I should have from a third to a half of the delegates, and most of the remainder would have been pledged to me and would have to be purchased outright against me. I believe that the best advisers among my opponents themselves see this and have very nearly made up their minds to give up the contest. In a few weeks I think that most of the Wall Street Republicans will have concluded that they have to, however grudgingly, support me. So much do I believe this that I am a little uneasy lest our opponents may raise the cry that I have made terms with them. Fortunately, my nomination has become assured, in my judgment, before they give up the contest. Besides, I do not think even such rather thick-headed people as my opponents would venture to try to make terms with me now, although there was a tentative effort in that direction in October and November last. I shall treat them with scrupulous fairness, anyhow, and in no event would I have done either more or less."
There was much speculation at this period about probable Democratic candidates in opposition to Roosevelt, and considerable sentiment in favor of Judge Gray, of Delaware, whom Roosevelt had placed at the head of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission. Writing to me on the subject on February 8, 1904, the President made what proved later to be genuine prophecy: " I do not think the Democrats will nominate Gray. In the first place he is too good a fellow, and in the next place it would be an absurdity to run him against the Republican party when he owes his position to one Republican President and his prominence to another one."
In February, 1904, Senator Hanna, who had been in failing health for some time, died quite suddenly. Writing to Elihu Root, on February 16, 1904, the President gave this sympathetic estimate of his character:
" Hanna's death has been very sad. Did I tell you the last letter he wrote was one to me? As soon as he was seriously sick I called at the hotel, as a matter of course. For some inexplicable reason this affected him very much, and appealed to the generous and large-hearted side of his nature, and he at once sent me a pencil note, running as follows:
My dear Mr. President:
You touched a tender spot, old man, when you called personally to inquire after me this a. m. I may be worse before I can be better, but all the same such "drops" of kindness are good for a fellow.
Sincerely yours,
M. A. hanna. Friday, p. m.
"No man had larger traits than Hanna. He was a big man in every way and as forceful a personality as we have seen in public life in our generation. I think that not merely for myself, but the whole party and the whole country have reason to be very grateful to him for the way in which, after I came into office, under circumstances which were very hard for him, he resolutely declined to be drawn into the position which a smaller man of meaner cast would inevitably have taken; that is, the position of antagonizing public policies if I was identified with them. He could have caused the widest disaster to the country and the public if he had attacked and opposed the policies referring to Panama, the Philippines, Cuban reciprocity, Army reform, the Navy, and the legislation for regulating corporations. But he stood by them just as loyally as if I had been McKinley."
In accordance with his invariable habit when a candidate for office, the President studiously avoided taking a too sanguine view of his prospects. Writing on April 4, 1904, to Henry White in London, he said:
"Nobody can tell how this fight will come out. I have been astonishingly successful in getting through the policies in which I believe, and in achieving results; but often the mere fact of having a good deal of record is more against a man than for him, when the question is as to how people will vote; for my experience is’ that usually people are more apt to let their dislikes than their likings cause them to break away from their party ties in matters of voting. In other words, the people of the opposite party who like what I have done are less apt for that reason to leave their candidate than the people of my own party who dislike what I have done are apt to leave me. Politicians proverbially like a colorless candidate, and the very success of what I have done, the number of things I have accomplished, and the extent of my record, may prove to be against me. However, be that as it may, we now have a big sum of achievement to our credit."
Senator Hanna's death had left the National Republican Committee without a chairman, and an animated contest was begun almost immediately over the choice of a successor. The extreme partisan elements of the party were eager to have one of their own number selected for the position and urged their wishes upon the President with great persistency. He, on his part, was determined that no man should be selected who would be likely to give pledges during the campaign which he would be called upon to carry out after election. According to his custom he sought advice and suggestion from men of all shades of opinion. I was on one occasion in Washington when a number of persons of diverse political views were present. Don Cameron, the veteran Republican politician and leader of Pennsylvania, was one of the number and was earnestly advocating the selection of an astute and experienced politician from his own State. He took me aside, and standing very close to me said with really solemn intensity: "I like and admire the President. He is a very remarkable man, but he does some extraordinary things. Now, Mr. Bishop, I am 71 years old; I have been in politics 70 years; and the President asks me to confer, on the question of a chairman of the Republican National Committee, with Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University! Now what do you think of that?" Mr. Cameron's feeling toward amateur politicians was shared by all other professionals of his kind, but the President was merely doing what he had done many times before, conferring with persons of all varieties of opinion, and the professionals should have been used to it, though as a matter of fact they were never able to comprehend it, or to contemplate it with equanimity. In the end, the President made his own choice and selected a man in whom he was sure he could place absolute confidence—George B. Cortelyou, his former secretary and, at the time, Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The selection was opposed vehemently by Senator Platt of New York and others of the most powerful bosses of the party, but in vain. They could not budge the President from his choice, or even disturb him a particle. Writing to Senator Lodge, on May 28, 1904, he said:
"I am not in the least worried about the discontent on the part of some of the political leaders with Cortelyou. As Murray Crane and Root could not take it, Cortelyou was the man of all others to .have it, and these people will in the end find out that this is so. He will manage the canvass on a capable and also on an absolutely clean basis, and my canvass cannot be managed on any other lines either with propriety or with advantage. If I win at all this year it will be because the bulk of the people believe I am a straightforward, decent and efficient man, upon whose courage and common sense no less than upon whose honesty and energy they can depend.''
The appointment of Mr. Cortelyou to the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee was followed by his resignation as head of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the resignation of Attorney General Knox, who had been elected United States Senator by Pennsylvania, led to several changes in the Cabinet in June. Mr. Cortelyou was succeeded by Victor L. Metcalf; William H. Moody, who was Secretary of the Navy, succeeded Mr. Knox as Attorney General, and Paul Morton succeeded Mr. Moody as Secretary of the Navy.
In accepting Mr. Knox's resignation, the President wrote on June 23, 1904:
"I accept your resignation not only with keen personal regret, but with a very real feeling of the loss the country thereby sustains. . . . There is nothing that I can say which will in any way add to the reputation which you have won, and no tribute I can pay you will approach in value that already paid you by the hearty admiration and respect of your fellow citizens. . . . Many great and able men have preceded you in the office you hold; but there is none among them whose administration has left so deep a mark for good upon the country's development. Under you it has been literally true that the mightiest and the humblest in the land have alike had it brought home to them, that each was sure of the law's protection while he did right, and that neither could hope to defy the law if he did wrong.''
In March, 1904, the President aroused a great storm of criticism and denunciation from the chronic opponents of his policies by establishing, through executive order, a service pension of six dollars a month for all veterans of the Civil War between the ages of 62 and 70 years. It was claimed by his critics that in doing this by executive order he was guilty of a "flagrant usurpation" of the legislative powers of Congress. In explanation and justification of Ms act, the President, on May 28, 1904, wrote a long letter to his friend, Frederick W. Whitridge, of New York, in which he said:
"I shall write you so that you may know exactly the facts about the pension order. There were two sides to the matter. The first was the situation I had to face as regards the party in Congress. The second was the moral justification of what was actually done. When Congress met I found that the feeling was overwhelmingly for a full service pension—that is, $12 a month, beginning at the age of 62. This was the pension granted by President Cleveland and a Democratic House to the Mexican War veterans thirty-nine years after the close of the Mexican War, and the argument by analogy seemed very strong, namely, that if men, many of whom afterwards served against the Union, were entitled to $12 a month at the age of sixty-two, thirty-nine years after the close of the Mexican War, then thirty-nine years after the close of an infinitely greater and more righteous war the Union veterans were entitled to the same privilege. Moreover, I soon found that Congress was nearly a unit for the Service Pension bill. If allowed to get under way unchecked the bill would undoubtedly have passed both houses with substantial unanimity, and if I had vetoed it I could not have rallied more than a tenth of the House nor more than a fifth of the members of the Senate to my support; and I should have hated to veto it. I should have preferred to let them pass a bill authorizing me to do exactly what I did by executive order. But without exception the responsible leaders of both houses assured me that it was out of the question to prevent any such bill from being so amended as to carry some fifty millions a year instead of the five million which will actually be carried by what was done.
"I found that President Cleveland had established the rule that a man who was seventy-five years old should be treated as by that fact having reached the stage of complete disability, and being therefore entitled to $12 a month pension. I found that Pension Commissioner H. Clay Evans, under President McKinley, had established the age of sixty-five as similarly entitling a veteran to six dollars a month, on the ground that he was similarly disabled to the extent of one-half from earning his living. What I did was to take these two rates and make the limit sixty-two and seventy years respectively, instead of sixty-five and seventy-five, which they actually were—treating the age as an evidential fact—as a rebuttable presumption of half and complete physical disability. Inasmuch as nearly eighty per cent of the veterans are already pensioned, and as I was establishing not $12 but $6, this meant an increase of but one-tenth of what the proposed Service Pension bill would have cost. "So much for the technical argument. I do not, however, rest the case on this. I hold that the ruling was absolutely right and proper. Most of our friends who live softly do not understand that the great majority of people who live by hard manual labor have begun to find their wage-earning capacity seriously impaired by the time they are sixty. The man of sixty-two has on the average great difficulty in getting a new job anywhere if he is dependent upon the labor of his hands. . . . Now the average wage worker does not lay by enough money to keep him in his. old age, and when he has fought in the Civil War I am entirely willing that he shall be cared for to the extent indicated in my order."
The Republican National Convention assembled in Chicago on June 21, 1904, and on the following day the country was given an inspiring illustration of the Roosevelt method of diplomacy in the protection of American citizens in foreign lands. An American citizen, Ion H. Perdicaris, had been seized by a Moroccan bandit named Raizuli, and held for ransom. To all demands from the American consul for the release of the prisoner Raizuli replied that unless the money demanded was speedily paid he would kill him. On June 22, Secretary Hay, after consultation with the President, cabled to the American consul, Mr. Gummere: "We want Perdicaris alive or Raizuli dead," adding that Gum-mere was not to commit the American Government about landing marines or seizing the custom house at Tangier. This cable message was published during the session of the convention on June 22, and the effect produced was thus described by the correspondent of the New York Tribune:
"Perdicaris alive or Raizuli dead" went through the Convention like an electric thrill, and it was more talked about at night than any feature of the day's work. The prevailing impression was that if Secretary Hay had sent the telegram it was after consultation with the President, and that there must have been ample justification.
"It is pithy, pungent and peremptory. I like it, and so do the people," said Senator McComas, of Maryland.
"It is the kind of a telegram," said Senator Spooner, of Wisconsin, "that touches a popular chord. This Government is bound to protect its citizens abroad as well as at home."
"The American people will not back down on a message of that kind," said Representative Grosvenor, of Ohio. "It may not be exactly in diplomatic words, but its meaning is unmistakable. The people are quick to respond when their patriotism is appealed to. The Morocco bandit will find that there is a united sentiment supporting the President and Secretary in the stand they have taken."
"It was good, hot stuff, and echoed my sentiments/' said Congressman Dwight, of New York. "The people want an administration that will stand by its citizens, even if it takes a fleet to do it."
"It was magnificent—magnificent!" said Senator Depew. "Every right-minded American will heartily indorse Mr. Hay's strong stand."
"Do I like it?" exclaimed W. A. Elstun, of Kansas, one of the delegates. "Bet your bottom dollar I like it. Roosevelt is behind that cable message to that fine old body-snatcher Raizuli. Out in Kansas we believe in keeping the peace but in fighting against wrong. Roosevelt and Hay know what they are doing.   Our people like courage.   We'll stand for anything those two men do."
Three entries in the diary of Secretary Hay, made at the time, reveal the result of the peremptory cable message:
June 23. My telegram to Gummere had an uncalled-for success. It is curious how a concise impropriety hits the public.
June 24. Gummere telegraphs that he expects Perdicaris to-night.
June 27.    Perdicaris wires his thanks.
On the following day Roosevelt, who was the only candidate before the Convention, was nominated by acclamation, being the only man in our history, who had acceded to the Presidency through the death of the incumbent, to be so honored.
"Writing to Roosevelt from Clinton, N. Y., under date of July 12,1904, Elihu Root, who as Secretary of War during the three years that Roosevelt had been President had intimate personal knowledge of his conduct of the office, said:
"I haven't congratulated you on your nomination. I felt as if it would be a foolish formality. There are, however, some features of it that are very gratifying.
"1. This is the first time that any party has nominated to succeed himself a Vice President who had become President.
"2. This is the first time that the Republican party ever nominated for President a citizen of the State of New York.
"3. It was a People's nomination and not a managers'. Every attempt at bargain or deal or combination was the other way and failed.
"4. The opposition has passed over every man who has made a record against your policy or action and has nominated a man who never opened his mouth on any national question.
"No one who has antagonized or criticized your administration has made sufficient effect on the public mind to establish any claim to the Democratic nomination.
'' I have no • doubt about the election, but however that results you have made a success and it cannot be wiped off the book. And you have done it yourself. Others have helped you, but your personality has been the Administration. ''
From the moment of his nomination till election day in November the Republican canvass was conducted on Roosevelt's acts in office and on the principles upon which those acts were based. He was formally notified of his nomination on July 27, 1904, and in a brief speech of acceptance he reviewed the most conspicuous acts of his administration, giving this emphatic and uncompromising statement of his position on the questions of corporations and labor:
"We recognize the organization of capital and the organization of labor as natural outcomes of our industrial system. Each kind of organization is to be favored so long as it acts in a spirit of justice and of regard for the rights of others. Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense."
His formal letter of acceptance was published on September 12, 1904, and became at once the text book and chief source of inspiration of his party in the canvass. In it he passed in review all the acts of his administration which had been most severely criticized, including the Northern Securities suit, the Anthracite Coal Strike settlement, and the possession of the Isthmus for the Panama Canal, and challenged the Democrats to join issue on them before the people. The challenge was never met. Although it had been the expectation of the Republican managers that these three acts would be the chief issues of the campaign, the Democratic managers sedulously avoided them, thereby making confession that popular support had been won for them by the President.
Early in the campaign, a few weeks after Judge Alton B. Parker had been nominated as the Democratic candidate and had set forth his views and principles, a temporary alarm was caused in the Republican camp by the sudden and entirely unexpected declaration of the New York Sun on August 11, 1904, that it was in favor of Roosevelt in preference to Parker. As that journal had been the most venomous of all the President's critics in condemning his course toward corporations and trusts, the Republican managers were alarmed lest its sudden "flop" might give the impression that a compromise of some sort had been arranged through which the support of the "Wall-Street crowd" had been secured for Roosevelt. The manner of the Sun's declaration gave a semblance of color to this possible view, for it read:
"As the case is now made up, we prefer the impulsive candidate of the party of conservatism to the mildly conservative, temporizing opportunist representative of the Hun vote in the background. We have more faith in the distinct promises of the Chicago platform, not ignoring the many serious defects of that document, than we have in the miserable hell broth of disaster and dynamite concocted at St. Louis a month ago by a party afraid to renounce its criminal follies, and tasted yesterday at Esopus by a respectable candidate, who declares with gusto that its flavor is admirable."
On the date on which the Sun article appeared the President wrote to Mr. Cortelyou, chairman of the Republican National Committee:
  "I know the stress you are under, but as regards this  Northern Securities business no stress must make us go one hand's breadth out of our path. I should hate to be beaten in this contest; but I should not merely hate, I should not be able to bear being beaten under circumstances, which implied ignominy. To give any color for misrepresentation to the effect that we were now weakening in the Northern Securities matter would be ruinous. The Northern Securities suit is one of the great achievements of my administration. I look back upon it with great pride, for through it we emphasize in signal fashion, as in no other way could be emphasized, the fact that the most powerful men in this country were held to accountability before the law. Now we must not spoil the effect of this lesson."
To this letter Mr. Cortelyou replied at once in a letter in which he said:
"I have your letter of August 11 about the Northern Securities matter. If I did not know you as well as I do I should resent your sending me such a communication. Whatever may be my shortcomings—and they are many—• I think I have a fair degree of moral fiber, certainly enough to measure up to the requirements of this Northern Securities case. I am conducting this campaign for your reelection on as high a plane as you have conducted the affairs of your great office. It is not likely that one who has been so intimately associated with you, or who has so much at heart your welfare and success, would permit any consideration whatever to weaken the force and effect of the splendid achievements of your administration."
As I have mentioned, Roosevelt's formal letter of acceptance was published on September 12, 1904, and on the same date the election in Maine resulted in favor of the Republicans. Secretary Hay expressed his keen pleasure in regard to the two events in a joyful letter from his summer residence in Newbury, N. H., on September 13, 1904:
'' Well, my dear Theodore, you had two glorious victories yesterday. Your letter had been getting better and better since I saw it, and it is now what they call a whirlwind campaign in itself. It is magnificent—not only in substance but in tone and temper. It has the unmistakable air of a winner,—the force as well as the reserve authority. "And Maine—we brave heard how she went.
She went, by gob, For Governor Cobb, And Roosevelt and Fairbanks too.
"I judge from the tone of our friends the enemy that they are losing all heart and hope. I am getting sorry for Parker; they will turn and rend him before long. I do not doubt he already wishes that comfortable judgeship back again.
"Everything they do is ridiculous. But their rally in defense of the Constitution is most absurd of all. One of these days they will be saying it is unconstitutional to read the Constitution."
Roosevelt's views on the art of painting were set forth in a letter to P. Marcius Simons, an American artist whose works he greatly admired, three specimens of which hang in prominent positions in his Trophy Boom at Oyster Bay. Writing to Mr. Simons, on March 19, 1904, he said:
"Your letter pleased and interested me much. The first work I saw of yours was the ' Seats of the Mighty,' and it impressed me so powerfully that I have ever since eagerly sought out any of your pictures of which I heard. When I became President, Mrs. Roosevelt and I made up our minds that while I was President we would indulge ourselves in the purchase of one really first-class piece of American art—for we are people whom the respective sizes of our family and our income have never warranted in making such a purchase while I was in private life! As soon as we saw 'When Light and Shadow Meet' we made up our minds at once and without speaking to one another that at last we had seen the very thing we wanted.
"Mrs. Roosevelt and I feel that in your letter you have expressed much which we have felt but not formulated. I agree absolutely with you that art, or at least the art for which I care, must present the ideal through the temperament and the interpretation of the painter. I do not greatly care for the reproduction of landscapes which, in effect, I see whenever I ride or walk. I wish 'the light that never was on land or sea' in the pictures that I am to live with— and this light your paintings have. When I look at them I feel a lift in my soul; I feel my imagination stirred. And so, dear Mr. Simons, I believe in you as an artist and I am proud of you as an American."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN,
ATTITUDE  TOWARD  CAMPAIGN  CONTRIBUTIONS,.
JUDGE PARKER'S CHARGES,.
A letteR which throws interesting light upon the attitude of the President and Mr. Cortelyou toward campaign contributions was the following from the President to Dr. Lyman Abbott on October 7, 1904:
"A week ago this Monday Cortelyou was on here, and he then said to me that if I was elected I would be elected without a promise or pledge of any kind, express or implied, to any corporation or individual. He told me of two or three amusing instances of efforts to get some kind of assurance from him, to which his invariable answer was that they could count upon just treatment—upon my doing nothing that I did not regard as fair and right; but that there must be no misapprehension as to my purpose to go steadily forward along the lines which had marked our course for the last three years. Then a concrete instance came up of the way in which he was handling things. You may have noticed that I had to decide the Customs Stamp Cigar question. After careful consideration I found that my decision had to be against the so-called Tobacco Trust, and in favor of the Independent Tobacco Manufacturers.
'' Cortelyou had hoped that I would not have to make the decision, as from the political standpoint at this stage of the campaign, it was sure to cause irritation whichever way it went. I told him, however, that I had looked into the matter very carefully, and had gone over it with Taft and Moody, and we had come to the conclusion that there was but one way we could decide and that was in favor of the Independent Tobacco men. He said very well; that he wished to know at once, because under such circumstances he could not accept any contribution from the Independent Tobacco men, for we must not be put in a position where it could be falsely alleged that we got any quid pro quo for such a decision.
"It seemed to me that this action of his emphasized the distinction between the campaign he was running and the campaign most others had run in like circumstances."
Most illuminating of all are these two letters from the President to Mr. Cortelyou, written near the close of the campaign:
"I have just been informed that the Standard Oil people have contributed $100,000 to our campaign fund. This may be entirely untrue. But if true I must ask you to direct that the money be returned to them forthwith. I appreciate to the full the need of funds to pay the legitimate and necessarily great expenses of the campaign. I appreciate to the full the fact that under no circumstances will we receive half as much as was received by the National Committee in 1900 and 1896. Moreover, it is entirely legitimate to accept contributions, no matter how large they are, from individuals and corporations on the terms on which I happen to know that you have accepted them, that is, with the explicit understanding that they were given and received with no thought of any more obligation on the part of the National Committee or of the national administration than is implied in the statement that every man shall receive a square deal, no more and no less, and that this I shall guarantee him in any event to the best of my ability.
"The big business corporations have a tremendous stake in the welfare of this country. They know that this welfare can only be secured through the continuance in power of the Republican party; and if they subscribe for the purpose of securing such national welfare, and with no thought of personal favors to them, why they are acting as is entirely proper; but we cannot under any circumstances afford to take a contribution which can be even improperly construed as putting us under an improper obligation, and in view of my past relations with the Standard Oil Company I fear that such a construction will be put upon receiving any aid from them. In returning the money to them I wish it made clear to them that there is not the slightest personal feeling against them, and that they can count upon being treated exactly as well by the administration, exactly as fairly, as if we had accepted the contribution. They shall not suffer in any way because we refused it, just as they would not have gained in any way if we had accepted it. But I am not willing that it should be accepted, and must ask that you tell Mr. Bliss to return it."
October 27, 1904.
"As supplemental to my letter of yesterday, containing my request that any contribution which the Standard Oil people may have made to the campaign be immediately returned, I wish to add that my judgment as to the propriety of this action is confirmed because of the fact brought into especial prominence by the Standard Oil Company's publication in the newspapers (which I saw after my letter was written and sent) that much importance seems to be attached to the political attitude of this company. Furthermore, in view of the open and pronounced opposition of the Standard Oil Company to the establishment of the Bureau of Corporations, one of the most important accomplishments of my administration, I do not feel willing to accept its aid. I request, therefore, that the contribution be returned without further delay.
"Of course I do not wish any public statement made about this matter, nor to take any step that will seem as if I were casting any reflection upon the Standard Oil people or their motives in making the contribution.''
Roosevelt supposed that his wishes in regard to any contribution which the Standard Oil Company might have made had been complied with by the National Committee, and it was not until four years later (September, 1908) that he learned the truth about the matter. It was then made known to him that no contribution had been made by the company or in its behalf but that H. H. Rogers had contributed $100,000, and had made it as his personal contribution ; that the treasurer of the Committee, not wishing to offend him by refusing it, had not sent it back, and had not informed Mr. Roosevelt of his action in regard to it. (See Chapter Nine, Volume. Two.)
A glimpse at the humorous aspects of the campaign is given in this letter from the President to Secretary Hay on August 12, 1904:
"Some of the developments of this campaign are too deliciously funny for anything. A couple of deliciously unconscious portrayals of this state of things were recently furnished me, one by B., an ex-Congressman, a Gold Democrat of Indiana, and the other by D., the Republican sub-boss from Brooklyn. B. came to me out of the kindness of his heart, to reassure me, and said in entire good faith: 'Mr. President, Taggart is not nearly so formidable as these men think; for aside from the money he has obtained from his gambling houses, most of his fortune has come from moneys he has received for running campaigns, which he has kept for his own purposes. He is a very expensive campaign manager, and always keeps for himself a large proportion of the funds placed in his hands. I think this will offset the fact that he will probably get much more money this year than the Democrats have obtained for a long time.'
"D. called me aside, and in great secrecy told me as follows: 'On Monday night Tim Sullivan (Dry Dollar Sullivan, a Tammany leader who has always been fond of me, partly because of kindred tastes in the matter of prize fights) came to my house and said that I was to tell you, when I came to Washington, from him, that you need not be at all alarmed about New York because he was going to do his best to see to it that Tammany men were instructed none of them to commit any offense which would expose them to being put in the penitentiary in the interest of Parker's success.' Not only Sullivan but D. regarded this as being symptomatic of a great breakdown in the Tarn many vote, and as being equivalent on the part of Sullivan to practically bolting Tammany in my interest."
Throughout the campaign the President had studiously refrained from making up his mind as to what the outcome was to be. In July he wrote to Henry White in London: "As to what the result will be, I have not the slightest idea. I have long given up prophesying about the outcome of a political contest, especially one in which one sees almost exclusively the people who are friendly and zealous partisans; and accordingly all that is heard is favorable."
To Rudyard Kipling he wrote on November 1, 1904: "We are now closing the campaign, and the Lord only knows how it will go. I have done a good many things in the past three years, and the fact that I did them is doubtless due partly to accident and partly to temperament. Naturally, I think I was right in doing them, for otherwise I would not have done them. It is equally natural that some people should have been alienated by each thing I did, and the aggregate of all that have been alienated may be more than sufficient to overthrow me. Thus, in dealing with the Philippines, I have first the jack fools who seriously think that any group of pirates and head-hunters needs nothing but independence in order that it may be turned forthwith into a dark-hued New England town meeting; and then the entirely practical creatures who join with these extremists because I do not intend that the Islands shall be exploited for corrupt purposes.
"So in Panama, I have to encounter the opposition of the vague individuals of serious minds and limited imaginations who think that a corrupt pithecoid community in which the President has obtained his position by the simple process of clapping the former President into a wooden cage and sending him on an ox-cart over the mountains (this is literally what was done at Bogota.)—is entitled to just the treatment that I would give, say, to Denmark or Switzerland. Then, in addition, I have the representatives of the transcontinental railways, who are under no delusion, but who do not want a competing canal. In the same way I have alienated some of the big representatives of what we call the trusts, and have had a muss with the trades unions on the other side.
'' So only a merciful Providence can tell what the outcome will be. If elected I shall be very glad. If beaten I shall be sorry; but in any event I have had a first class run for my money, and I have accomplished certain definite things. I would consider myself a hundred times over repaid if I had nothing more to my credit than Panama and the coaling stations in Cuba. So you see that my frame of mind is a good deal like that of your old Viceroy when he addressed the new Viceroy."
In the closing days of the campaign Alton B. Parker, the Democratic candidate for President, made several speeches in which he charged that Mr. Cortelyou had been using the knowledge that he had gained as Secretary of Commerce and Labor to extort money from the corporations as contributions to the Republican campaign fund. The charges, uttered cautiously at first by Judge Parker, were gradually made more direct by him until they amounted to assertions that a conspiracy had been formed by the President and Mr. Cortelyou, the President having made him chairman for the purpose, to levy this blackmail, promising in return certain immunities or favors to the contributors after election. The President waited till the charges assumed the form of direct assertions, when, "lest the silence of self-respect be misunderstood," he spoke and in no uncertain tones, his declaration appearing in the press of the country on the morning of November 5, 1904, three days before election. In it, characterizing the charges as "slanderous accusations," he said:
"Mr. Parker's accusations against Mr. Cortelyou and me are monstrous. If true they would brand both of us forever with infamy; and inasmuch as they are false, heavy must be the condemnation of the man making them.
  "The assertion that Mr. Cortelyou had any knowledge, gained while in an official position, whereby he was enabled to secure and did secure any contributions from any corporation, is a falsehood. The assertion that there has been any blackmail, direct or indirect, by Mr. Cortelyou or by me, is a falsehood. The assertion that there has been made in my behalf and by my authority, by Mr. Cortelyou or by any one else, any pledge or promise, or that there has been any understanding as to future immunities or benefits, in recognition of any contributions from any source, is a wicked falsehood.
"The statements made by Mr. Parker are unqualifiedly and atrociously false. As Mr. Cortelyou has said to me more than once during the campaign, if elected I shall go into the Presidency unhampered by any pledge, promise or understanding of any kind, sort or description, save my promise, made openly to the American people, that so far as in my power lies I shall see to it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more."
The President's vigorous utterance met with general and hearty approval, for Judge Parker's astounding conduct in virtually calling the President of the United States a conspirator and blackmailer had aroused the indignation of decent men of all parties. It was an act of incredible political folly, reflecting not only upon its author's ideas of propriety, but upon his intelligence. No man who rightly understood the character of the American people would be capable of such a blunder. The election returns showed unmistakably the faith that the people had in Theodore Roosevelt, for they gave him the largest vote in the electoral college and the largest popular majority that any candidate had received.
On the night of election, as soon as the result was known, he wrote and gave out for publication the following:
"A wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.'' 
Writing, on November 10, 1904, to his son, Kermit, who was in school at Groton, Mass., he gave this interesting account of the scene in the White House on election night:
"I am stunned by the overwhelming victory we have won. I had no conception that such a thing was possible. I thought it probable we should win, but was quite prepared to be defeated, and of course had not the slightest idea that there was such a tidal wave. We carried not only all the States I put down in my letter to you as probably Republican, but all those that I put down as doubtful, and all but one of those that I put down as probably Democratic. The only States that went against me were those in which no free discussion is allowed and in which fraud and violence have rendered the voting a farce. I have the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given to a candidate for President.
"On the evening of the election I got back from Oyster Bay, where I had voted, soon after half-past six. At that time I knew nothing of the returns and did not expect to find out anything definite for two or three hours, and had been endeavoring not to think of the result, but to school myself to accept it as a man ought to, whichever way it went. But as soon as I got in the White House Ted met me with the news that Buffalo and Rochester had sent in their returns already and that they showed enormous gains for me. Within the next twenty minutes enough returns were received from precincts and districts in Chicago, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts to make it evident that there was a tremendous drift my way, and by the time we sat down to dinner at half-past seven my election was assured. Mrs. Cortelyou was with us for dinner, just as interested and excited as we were.
'' Eight after dinner members of the Cabinet and friends began to come in, and we had a celebration that would have been perfect if only you had been present. Archie, fairly plastered with badges, was acting as messenger between the telegraph operators and me, and bringing me continually telegram after telegram, which I read aloud. I longed for you very much, as all of us did, for of course this was the day of greatest triumph I ever had had or ever could have, and I was very proud and happy. But I tell you, Kermit, it was a great comfort to feel, all during the last days when affairs looked doubtful, that no matter how things came out the really important thing was the lovely life I have with Mother and with you children, and that compared to this home life everything else was of very small importance from the standpoint of happiness."

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CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT,.
VISIT OF JOHN MORLEY AT THE WHITE HOUSE,.
Two days after the election in 1904, John Morley, now Lord Morley, the distinguished English essayist and author, paid a visit of several days to President Roosevelt in the White House. When Mr. Morley's 'Life of Gladstone' appeared about a year earlier, the President had written to him the letter of warm appreciation quoted in Chapter twenty three, and a cordial correspondence had ensued. When the date of the visit had been fixed, the President did me the very great and agreeable honor of inviting me as a fellow guest. Subsequently I put in writing an account of some of the incidents of this most interesting and memorable visit, which I submitted to the President and obtained from him permission to include in my record of his life. I may, therefore, without impropriety, reproduce portions of it here, especially since they are of value in throwing light upon his personality in much the same way that his letters do.
Mr. Morley and I arrived together on the afternoon of Thursday, November 10, and found the President in the highest health and spirits, fairly overflowing with joy because of his great triumph.
From the first the President greatly interested Mr. Morley. The two men had much in common intellectually. Both had been wide readers and writers of history, and close students of men and affairs. Each had written a life of Cromwell. The President's talk, frank, vigorous, and marvelous in its range over human history, ancient, modern, and contemporaneous, as it always was when he had a sympathetic and understanding listener, was a revelation to Mr. Morley, who said to me later that he had never heard anything like it. He spoke of it frequently when we were alone together, saying repeatedly: '' He is a most extraordinary man!''
On the morning of the second day of our visit, when the President left us to go to his office, Mr. Morley asked me to show him the rooms on the first floor of the White House. I took him through the Bed Room, the Green Room, and the Blue Room into the large East Room. As we stood in the center of it and I had given a brief history of it, he turned to me and, putting his hand on my shoulder, said: "My dear fellow, do you know the two most extraordinary things I have seen in your country! Niagara Falls and the President of the United States—both great wonders of nature!" Later in the day I repeated this remark to the President, and also to Secretary Hay and Secretary Taft, all of whom, the President no less than his two associates, enjoyed it greatly. Secretary Hay recorded it in his diary in incomplete form, and it is so published in Mr. W. E. Thayer's life of him.
Each day, after the President had left us to attend to his duties, Mr. Morley and I went to the library in the White House, where, in frank and intimate conversation, Mr. Morley asked me to explain such of the allusions to American political methods made by the President as he had not fully understood. There were many such allusions. I recall one in particular. In describing the elements in politics that had from time to time antagonized him, the President said: "By all odds the most contemptible creature we have encountered in our politics is the Goo Goo." Mr. Morley, in obvious perplexity, exclaimed: '' The Goo Goo? Eeally, Mr. President, I don't understand you." He was much amused on learning that the species referred to was human and living and not extinct like the Dodo.
I turned the conversation on one occasion to French history and politics, on which I knew Mr. Morley to be a high authority, and we spoke at some length of Napoleon. In the course of our talk Mr. Morley said: '' This man whose guests we are has many of Napoleon's qualities—indomitable courage, tireless perseverance, great capacity for leadership—and one thing that Napoleon never had—high moral purpose! And think what it would have meant for the world if he had had that!" I quote from memory and am not sure of the exact phraseology, but the sense is as I have expressed it. Taken with the first remark about Roosevelt, this second one is essential to give accurately the estimate which Mr. Morley made of Roosevelt's character.
The physical vigor of the President impressed Mr. Morley no less than his intellectual activity, being himself a frail man in rather delicate health. At dinner one evening the President had a number of prominent labor leaders to meet Mr. Morley, who was desirous of obtaining information as to labor problems and conditions in the United States. There was much animated conversation both during the dinner and afterwards. When the guests were departing the President followed them into the hall, talking and gesticulating in his usual emphatic manner. Mr. Morley touched me on the arm, pointed to him and said: "Look at him! And he has been doing that all day long!" As he said this he sank into a chair as if completely exhausted by the mere sight of such tireless energy.
One subject upon which Mr. Morley talked much with the President was the announcement, which the latter had made on the night of election declaring his intention not to take a nomination for another term. He expressed himself as quite unable to comprehend it, saying that the act seemed to him as inexplicable as it would have been if Mr. Gladstone, at the height of his career, had declared after a triumph at the polls, that he would never consent to go before the people of Great Britain again as candidate for Prime Minister.
In explanation of his action the President said that since the time of Washington the American people had, wisely as he thought, established a custom against allowing any one to hold the office of President for more than two consecutive terms. Their reason had been that the Presidency being a great office, the power of the President, especially if he had the support of great political and financial interests, could be used effectively to secure his re-nomination. There had been much said by his opponents in the campaign about his supposed personal ambition and intention to use the office to perpetuate himself in power. He had not said anything on the subject prior to election because he did not wish to say anything that could be construed into a promise made as a consideration for securing votes. In making the announcement after election he had chosen the exact phraseology he used for two reasons: First, many of his supporters were insisting that as his first term had consisted of only three years and a half, becoming President through the death of the incumbent, he would, at the end of seven years and a half, have really served for only one elective term so that the third-term custom would not apply to him. He wished to repudiate this suggestion. Believing the third-term custom to be wholesome, he was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble about the form of words usually employed to express it. Second, he did not wish simply and specifically to say that he would not be a candidate for the nomination in 1908, for to specify any year in which he would not be a candidate would have been widely accepted as meaning that he would be a candidate in some other year, and he had no such intention and no idea that he would ever be a candidate again. He had been asked by newspaper men if his renunciation applied to 1912, and he had replied that he was not thinking of 1912, or 1920, or 1940, and declined to add anything whatever to what appeared in his statement. So far as the third-term custom was concerned, he added that it had no application whatever to anything except two consecutive terms, since every shred of power which a President exercises while in office vanishes absolutely when he ceases to hold it, and an ex-President stands precisely in the position of any other private citizen, and has no more power to secure a nomination or election than he would have if he had never held the office, indeed, he probably would have less from the very fact that he had held it.
The subject was in Mr. Morley's mind when, soon after his White House visit, he said in a speech which he made at the annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce in New York, on November 15, 1904:
"It would be most unbecoming of me to say a word as to the personality of your new President. I will say this in passing, that it is very gratifying to me to find that a man may write a book about Oliver Cromwell and yet be thought a very good man to whom to trust the destinies of a nation, because, for no better reason, that I have written about Oliver Cromwell also. One of his memorable performances was, as you all know, his self-denying ordinance—a thing for which Oliver Cromwell himself was solely responsible— to withdraw himself from active military and public life at a certain moment. There appears to be something like a self-denying ordinance announced for the public the day after election. Whether that was an imitation of Cromwell or not I do not inquire, but this I do say, without, I hope, being impertinent, that in your new President you have got a man. All sorts of events within the four years may break out upon the world—events in the oldest parts of Europe— there are lives in the old parts of Europe, upon which results may hang; you have in the Pacific enormous risks, possibilities, open questions, and all I can say is that it will be a great thing for diplomatists to know that in dealing with the government that will come into power and office here on the fourth of March next year, they are dealing with a man who has behind him, unless I am mistaken, the American people."
After he returned to England Lord Morley summed up his estimate of the President in a neat epigram. Writing to Roosevelt on September 15, 1905, Senator Lodge said:
"Lady Harcourt (widow of Sir Vernon Harcourt) told me that Morley came to see her when he returned from the United States. She asked him to tell her about you. He said: ' He is not an American, you know. He is America.' "
    To this Roosevelt replied on the same date: "That was a very nice thing of Morley to say, so long as it is confined to one or two of my intimate friends who won't misunderstand it! Just at the moment people are speaking altogether too well of me, which is enough to make any man feel uncomfortable; for if he has any sense he knows that the reaction is perfectly certain to come under such circumstances, and that then people will revenge themselves for feeling humiliated for having said too much on one side by saying too much on the other."

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CHAPTER TWENTY NINE,.
ILLUMINATING  LETTERS  ON VARIOUS  SUBJECTS,  INCLUDING QUESTIONS OF POLICY,.
A gReat flood of congratulatory letters poured in upon the President after his election. His replies to those that came from personal friends, written as they were in the full flush of his great triumph, are among the most completely self-revealing that he ever penned. They disclose the fundamental principles upon which he based his policies, and the profound and matured convictions which animated his public conduct. They show also that his head was not in the least turned by the victory, that he regarded it as a vote of confidence by the nation, and that the supreme joy which he derived from it was the assurance it gave of overwhelming popular support of the issues for which he stood and which were dearest to his heart.
Writing to George Haven Putnam, of New York, on November 15, 1904, he made a vigorous defense of a much criticized method of procedure that he had followed in advancing his policies:
"I shall do all I can to deserve the confidence the Nation has reposed in me. But there is one point [in your letter], which I should like to correct and which I fear is a misapprehension of yours. You speak of 'men like Quay and Addicks having no claim under existing conditions to having any essential part in making me President for the four years beginning with March 4,' and this seems to imply that you think that in the past three and a half years I have dealt with them because they had such claim. I have never dealt with Addicks at all. With Quay and all the other Senators I have dealt continually, and during the next four years I shall deal with all the men of this kind just exactly as I have dealt with them for the last three. "I have dealt with Quay and with all similar men, not because I regarded them as making me President, not because I had anything selfish to expect from them, but because, not being a fool, and having certain policies for the welfare of the Republic at heart, I realized that I could succeed in these policies only by working with the men of prominence in the Republican party. That ridiculous Parker Constitution Club, for instance, numbers among its members and backers people who at the same time falsely attack me for imaginary violations of the Constitution and then argue that I should try to violate the Constitution by disregarding Quay and the other Senators who, under the first article of that Constitution, are the official advisers whom I must consult, and without whose acquiescence I can not make a single appointment. I did not make these men Senators. They are in the Senate; and I should be derelict in my duty if I did not try to get along with them. I should be heartily ashamed of myself if this election made any real change in my attitude towards them. This attitude has not been due in the past to any desire for self-advancement on my part, and therefore there is no need to change it simply because it is no longer possible for these men to do anything for my advancement."
In somewhat similar vein he wrote to Owen Wister on November 19, 1904:
"I have been most abundantly rewarded, far beyond my deserts, by the American people; and I say this with all sincerity and not in any spirit of mock humility. The stars in their courses fought for me. I was forced to try a dozen pieces of doubtful and difficult work in which it was possible to deserve success, but in which it would not have been possible even for Lincoln or Washington to be sure of commanding success. I mean the Panama business, the anthracite coal strike, the Northern Securities suit, the Philippine Church question, the whole Cuban business, the Alaska boundary, the Government open shop matter, irrigation and forestry work, etc., etc. In each case, partly by hard and intelligent work and partly by good fortune, we won out. . . .
"It is a peculiar gratification to me to have owed my election not to the politicians primarily, although of course I have done my best to get on with them; not to the financiers, although I have staunchly upheld the rights of property; but above all to Abraham Lincoln's ' plain people'; to the folk who worked hard on farm, in shop, or on the railroads, or who owned little stores, little businesses which they managed themselves. I would literally, not figuratively, rather cut off my right hand than forfeit by any improper act of mine the trust and regard of these people. I may have to do something of which they will disapprove, because I deem it absolutely right and necessary; but most assuredly I shall endeavor not to merit their disapproval by any act inconsistent with the ideal they have formed with me.
"But the gentle folk, the people whom you and I meet at the houses of our friends and at our clubs; the people who went to Harvard as we did, or to other colleges more or less like Harvard, these people have contained many of those who have been most bitter in their opposition to me, and their support on the whole has been much more lukewarm than the support of those whom I have called the plain people. . . .
"But the New York Evening Post crowd are hypocritical and insincere when they oppose me. They have loudly professed to demand just exactly the kind of government I have given, and yet they have done their futile best to defeat me. They have not been able to do me personally any harm; but they continually do the cause of good government a certain amount of harm by diverting into foolish channels of snarling and critical impotence the energies of fine young fellows who ought to be a power for good. Take Carl Schurz's attack upon me for acting as any gentleman would act with Hanna and Quay when they were on their death-beds; or take his statement that because I had seen Addicks and Lou Payn I was to be repudiated, as 'the friendship of the wicked has its price.' In the first place, I have seen Lou Payn just once, at his request. I have seen Addicks perhaps three times, at his request, of course. I have never since I have been President done for either Addicks or Payn one single act; never made an appointment for either of them or done anything else for either of them; in the next place, I shall continue to see both of them whenever they choose to call, and to see everybody else who chooses to call—unless it be some creature who renders it impossible for me to see him. For instance, if Hearst, while Congressman, calls upon me I shall see him as a matter of course. I continually see 'Dry Dollar' Sullivan. If my virtue ever becomes so frail that it will not stand meeting men of whom I thoroughly disapprove, but who are in active official life and whom I must encounter, why I shall go out of politics and become an anchorite. Whether I see these men or do not see them, if I do for them anything improper then I am legitimately subject to criticism; but only a fool will criticize me because I see them." 
Between the President and Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") a cordial and thoroughly congenial friendship existed, undisturbed by the latter's many humorous accounts of notable events in Roosevelt's career. Mr. Dooley published an article describing the election as an "Anglo-Saxon triumph," which aroused the President to a lively protest in which he said:
"Now, oh laughing philosopher (because you are not only one who laughs, but also a genuine philosopher and because your philosophy has a real effect upon this country), I want to enter a strong protest against your very amusing and very wrong-headed article on the 'Anglo-Saxon Triumph. ' In this article, as in everything else you have written about me, you are as nice as possible as to me personally, and the fun about the feeling abroad, including England, is perfectly legitimate. If you have ever happened to see what I have written on the matter of the Anglo-Saxon business you may have noticed that I have always insisted that we are not Anglo-Saxon at all—even admitting for the sake of argument, which I do not, that there are any Anglo-Saxons—but a new and mixed race— a race drawing its blood from many different sources. . . .
"My own view is, that if a man is good enough for me to profit by his services before election, he is good enough for me to do what I can for him after election; and I do not give a damn whether his name happens to be Casey, or Schwartzmeister, or Van Rensselaer, or Peabody. I think my whole public life has been an emphatic protest against the Peabodys and Van Rensselaers arrogating to themselves any superiorities over the Caseys and Schwartzmeisters. But in return I will not, where I have anything to say about it, tolerate for one moment any assumption of superiority by the Caseys and Schwartzmeisters over the Peabodys and Van Rensselaers. I did not notice any difference between them as they fought in my regiment; and I had lots of representatives of all of them in it. If you will look at the nomenclature of the Yale, Harvard and Princeton teams this year, or any other year, and then at the feats performed by the men bearing the names, you will come to the conclusion, Friend Dooley, that Peabody and Van and Saltonstall and Witherspoon are pretty tough citizens to handle in a mixup and that they will be found quite as often at the top of the heap as at the bottom.
"There is nothing against which I protest more strongly, socially and politically, than any proscription of or looking down upon decent Americans because they are of Irish or German ancestry; but I protest just exactly as strongly against any similar discrimination against or sneering at men because they happen to be descended from people who came over here some three centuries ago, whether they landed at Plymouth, or at the mouth of the Hudson. I have fought beside and against Americans of Irish, of German, and of old Colonial stock in every political contest in which I have engaged; I have been a fairly good rough and-tumble man myself; I have never asked any odds; and I have generally held my own.
"I am sure you will agree with me that in our political life, very unlike what is the case in our social life, the temptation is toward Anglophobia, not toward Anglomania. The cheapest thing for any politician to do, the easiest, and too often politically one of the most remunerative, is to make some yell about England. One of the things I am most pleased with in the recent election is that while I got, I think, a greater proportion of the Americans of Irish birth or parentage and of the Catholic religion than any previous Republican candidate, I got this proportion purely because they knew I felt in sympathy with them and in touch with them, and that they and I had the same ideals and principles, and not by any demagogic appeals about creed or race, or by any demagogic attack upon England. I feel a sincere friendliness for England; but you may notice that I do not slop over about it, and that I do not in the least misunderstand England's attitude, or, for the matter of that, the attitude of any European nation as regards us. We shall keep the respect of each of them just as long as we are thoroughly able to hold our own, and no longer. If we got into trouble, there is not one of them upon whose friendship we could count to get us out; what we shall need to count upon is the efficiency of our fighting men and particularly of our neighbor.
"There is one thing to which I should like to call your attention. If an Anglomaniac in social life goes into political life he usually becomes politically an Anglophobiac, and the occasional political Anglophobiac whose curious ambition it is to associate socially with 'vacuity trimmed with lace' is equally sure to become an Anglomaniac in his new surroundings."
Several letters which the President wrote at this period are of interest and value both as displaying his indefatigable reading habit and disclosing his views upon national questions connected with and growing out of the Civil War. To James Ford Rhodes he wrote on November 29, 1904:
"I have just finished your fifth volume and am delighted with it. I do not know whether I told you that during the campaign I reread your first four. At the same time I read Macaulay's 'History' and many of Lincoln's letters and speeches, and I got real help from all of them. It seems to me, that allowing for difference of epoch and nationality, you and Macaulay approach the great subject of self-government by a free people in much the same spirit and from the same philosophical standpoint.
"In the last volume I was immensely pleased with everything. Perhaps I should bar one sentence—that in which you say that in no quarrel is the right all on one side, and the wrong all on the other. As regards the actual act of secession, the actual opening of the Civil War, I think the right was exclusively with the Union people and the wrong exclusively with the Secessionists; and indeed I do not know of another struggle in history in which this sharp division between right and wrong can be made in quite so clear-cut a manner. I am half Southern. My mother's kinsfolk fought on the Confederate side, and I am proud of them. I fully believe in and appreciate not only the valor of the South, but its lofty devotion to the right as it saw the right; and yet I think that on every ground—that is, on the question of the Union, on the question of slavery, on the question of State rights—it was wrong with a folly that amounted to madness, and with a perversity that amounted to wickedness.
"I am much interested in what you say as to Grant's superiority over Lee in the fortnight's operations ending at Appomattox, which brought the Civil War to a close. For the previous year, it seems to me, that Lee had shown himself the superior, but during this fortnight Grant rose to his Vicksburg level. A mighty pair of Generals they were!
"Beading your history brings out the essential greatness of Lincoln ever more and more. Perhaps, as you say, he and Washington do not come in the very limited class of men which include Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon, hut they are far better men for a nation to develop than any of these three giants; and, excepting only these three, I hardly see any greater figures loom up in the history of civilized nations. There have been other men as good-men like Timoleon and John Hampden; but no other good men have been as great.
"The trouble I am having with the Southern question— which, my dear sir, I beg you to believe I am painfully striving to meet, so far as in me lies, in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln—emphasizes the infinite damage done in reconstruction days by the unregenerate arrogance and short-sightedness of the Southerners and the doctrinaire folly of radicals like Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens. The more I study the Civil War and the time following it, the more I feel (as of course every one feels) the towering greatness of Lincoln which puts him before all other men of our time."
More specifically about the Southern question, he wrote to Henry S. Pritchett, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on December 14,1904:
"I have always felt that the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment at the time it was passed was a mistake; but to admit this is very different from admitting that it is wise, even if it were practicable, now to repeal that amendment. . . . But it is out of the question that there can be permanent acquiescence on the part of the North in an arrangement under which Mr. John Sharp Williams, the leader of the minority in the House, as compared with Mr. Cannon, the Speaker, elected by the majority, has just four times the political weight to which he is entitled. Mr. Williams represents a district in which there are three blacks to one white. It is an outrage that this one white man should first be allowed to suppress the votes of the three black men, and then to cast them by himself in order to make his own vote equal to that of four men in Mr. Cannon's district. If this result came about as a natural effect of a genuine and honest effort to enforce an illiteracy test, or something of the sort, I believe there would be little or no objection to it in the North, in spite of the damage done the North thereby; for I believe that the North has hearty sympathy with the trials of the South and is generously glad to assist the South whenever the South does not render it impossible by 'superfluity of naughtiness.'
"The trouble is that there is no such genuine law, and that there is no white man from a Southern district in which blacks are numerous who does not tell you, either defiantly or as a joke, that any white man is allowed to vote, no matter how ignorant and degraded, and that the negro vote is practically suppressed because it is the negro vote. To acquiesce in this state of things because it is not possible at the time to attempt to change it without doing damage is one thing. It's quite another thing to do anything which will seem formally to approve it. . . .
"My own view of this Southern question is, as I have said, fundamentally yours and Rhodes'. What I am now puzzling over is whether it is best simply to go on as I have gone, saying nothing, or to try to say something. I have been interested at the great number of requests I am now receiving from Southern cities to visit them and address their citizens. I do not know whether it means that they begin to understand that I am not their enemy, or whether it is simply the same kind of a feeling that would make them interested in a circus coming to town. I do not want to crowd things, or in any way to seem to truckle to the South, and my present thought is that I shall simply go through San Antonio, where there is reason for my going, and defer most of my other visits to the South until a little later. If I can hammer out just the kind of speech I want to make, I may make it on Lincoln's birthday; but if I am not fairly sure that I am saying the right thing I shall not say anything on the subject."
In this letter to Mr. Pritchett, the President gives utterance to a sentiment about Lincoln and the White House which all his intimates knew rested upon him like a spell:
"It is curious that you should give utterance to exactly my thought when you say:
" 'I never go into the White House and through the corridors and up the stairs where you pass every day without thinking of old Lincoln, with his shambling figure, coming down the steps in the early morning, in his cloth slippers, on his way to the War Department to read the night's dispatches.'
"I think of Lincoln, shambling, homely, with his strong, sad, deeply-furrowed face, all the time. I see him in the different rooms and in the halls. For some reason or other he is to me infinitely the most real of the dead Presidents. So far as one who is not a great man can model himself upon one who was, I try to follow out the general lines of policy which Lincoln laid down. I do not like to say this in public, for I suppose it would seem as if I were presuming, but I know you will understand the spirit in which I am saying it. I wish to Heaven I had his invariable equanimity. I try my best not to give expression to irritation, but sometimes I do get deeply irritated.''
Shortly after election in 1904, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the Supreme Court, sent to Roosevelt a little book by President Eliot, of Harvard, entitled 'The Durable Satisfactions of Life.' Two sentences in it,—"Not one human being in ten million is really long remembered. For the mass of mankind oblivion, like death, is sure"— especially attracted the President's attention, and on December 5, he wrote to the Justice this quite remarkable letter:
"I was rather struck at what President Eliot said about oblivion so speedily overtaking almost every one. But after all, what does the fact amount to that here and there a man escapes oblivion longer than his fellows? Ozymandias in the desert—when a like interval has gone by, who will know more of any man of the present day than Shelley knew of him? I suppose it's only about ten thousand years since the last glacial epoch (at least, that is, I understand, the newest uncertain guess of the geologists); and this covers more than the period in which there is anything that we can even regard as civilization. Of course when we go back even half that time we get past the period when any man's memory, no matter how great the man, is more than a nickering shadow to us; yet this distance is too small to be measured when we look at the ages, even at rather short range—not astronomically but geometrically. That queer creature Ware, my pension commissioner, who always uses the terminology of his Kansas environment, but who has much philosophy of his own, once wrote the following verses on this very question:
History.
Over the infinite prairie of level eternity, Flying as flies the deer,
Time is pursued by a pitiless, cruel oblivion, Following fast and near.
Ever and ever the famished coyote is following Patiently in the rear;
Trifling the interval, yet we are calling it "History	"
Distance from wolf to deer.
"Whether the distance between the wolf and the deer is a couple of inches or a quarter of a mile is not really of much consequence in the end. It is passed over mighty quickly in either event, and it makes small odds to any of us after we are dead whether the next generation forgets us, or whether a number of generations pass before our memory, steadily growing more and more dim, at last fades into nothing. On this point it seems to me that the only important thing is to be able to feel, when our time comes to go out into the blackness, that those survivors who care for us and to whom it will be a pleasure to think well of us when we are gone shall have that pleasure. Save in a few wholly exceptional cases, cases of men such as are not alive at this particular time, it is only possible in any event that a comparatively few people can have this feeling for any length of time. But it is a good thing if as many as possible feel it even for a short time, and it is surely a good thing that those whom we love should feel it as long as they too live.
"I should be quite unable to tell you why I think it would be pleasant to feel that one has lived manfully and honorably when the time comes after which all things are the same to every man; yet I am very sure that it is well so to feel, that it is well to have lived so that at the end it may be possible to know that on the whole one's duties had not been shirked, that there has been no flinching from foes, no lack of gentleness and loyalty to friends, and a reasonable measure of success in the effort to do the task allotted. This is just the kind of feeling that President Eliot's hero had the right to have; and a Justice of the Supreme Court or a President or a General or an Admiral, may be mighty thankful if at the end he has earned a similar right!"
No President, and no other public man anywhere, was ever more photographed than Roosevelt, and it is interesting to see from a letter, written on November 18, 1904, to E. W. Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, what his feelings on the subject really were:
"I do not want to begin to have new photographs taken. If I do it in one case, I must do it in others. In the first place, it is an intolerable nuisance; and in the next place it creates a false impression. People do not realize that I do not like to sit for photographs and that it is only a good-natured acquiescence on my part when I do. now there is not the slightest need of a new photograph. Dozens of excellent ones have been taken. Take any one of these. It will do just exactly as well."
When Joseph H. Choate resigned the ambassadorship to England, the President, on December 24, 1904, wrote to him this cordially appreciative letter:
"I have just received your letter of resignation coupled with your private letter in which you ask that it be accepted and give reasons there for which would seem to be controlling. It is with genuine reluctance that I accept it. You have rendered not merely loyal but distinguished service. Not since Mr. Adams has any of our ambassadors to England served as long as you have served; and not since Mr. Adams has any Ambassador in your position rendered more devoted and more efficient service to the country. I thank you with all my heart, not only as President, but as an American citizen, for what you have done; and your countrymen, you may rest assured, appreciate it to the full, and when you return will show you by their affectionate welcome that the great place you already had in their regard and esteem has grown even greater. Distinguished though your career has been, no part of it has been more distinguished than that which has fallen within the last six years.
"You ask as to the time when you can take your departure ; but you mention that you had hoped to complete and dedicate while yet in England your memorial window to John Harvard in St. Saviour's Church. You say that you still hope to accomplish this before your recall reaches you. If the delay will not inconvenience you I should like to have you arrange to stay until you can dedicate this window personally. Accordingly, subject as I say to your convenience, I shall ask you to let me know the date when you expect to dedicate it, and I shall then notify you, accepting the resignation at a time shortly subsequent thereto."
Two letters which the President wrote at this period set forth in engaging language his views about the duties of ambassadors and ministers at foreign courts. The first was addressed, on December 26, 1904, to George von L. Meyer, who at the time was serving as Ambassador at Rome:
"I desire to send you as Ambassador to St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg is at this moment and bids fair to continue
to be for at least a year, the most important post in the diplomatic service, from the standpoint of work to be done, and you come in the category of public servants who desire to do public work, as distinguished from those whose desire is merely to occupy public place—a class for whom I have no particular respect. I wish in St. Petersburg a man who, while able to do all the social work, able to entertain and meet the Russians and his fellow diplomats on equal terms, able to do all the necessary plush business—business which is indispensable—can do in addition, the really vital and important thing. . . . The trouble with our ambassadors in stations of real importance is that they totally fail to give us real help and real information, and seem to think that the life work of an ambassador is a kind of glorified pink tea party."
The second was to Richard Harding Davis, under date of January 3, 1905, in response to a letter from him giving his views and estimates of various American diplomats whom he had encountered in foreign lands:
"There are a large number .of well-meaning ambassadors and ministers, and even consuls and secretaries, who belong to what I call the pink tea type, who merely reside in the service instead of working in the service, and these I intend
to change whenever the need arises. The Minister to	
is a nice man with an even nicer wife. He has been eight years in the service. He is polite to people, gives nice little dinners, etc., etc. During all that time it has never made one atom of real difference to the country whether he was in or out. He is in the service for his own advantage, not for the good of the service, although he does all the secondarily important work well; and in all probability I shall change him and promote some man who during all that time has done really hard work in a place where there is no pink tea possibility. . . .
'' I shall not make a fetish of keeping a man in, but if a man is a really good man he will be kept in. A pink tea man shall stay in or go out, just as I find convenient. Of course, most places at embassies and legations are pink tea places. A few are not, and in these we need real men, and these real men shall be rewarded."
In November, 1904, Frederick MacMonnies, the sculptor, wrote from France to the President expressing a wish to make a statuette of him. Keplying, on November 19, the President wrote:
"I have just received your very kind note, and of course I shall be delighted to have you make the little statue or statuette that you desire, for, my dear sir, I think that any American President would be glad to have an American sculptor like you or St. Gaudens do such a piece of work. But before sending you over the things you would like I want to point out something. You say that you like that photograph of me jumping a fence, and apparently intend to use that as a model; but you ask me for my soldier suit. Now, of course, I do not jump fences in my khaki and with sword and revolv.er in my belt—as a matter of fact I rarely wore my sword at all in the war—and if you want to make me jumping a fence I must send you my ordinary riding things. It seems to me it would be better to put me in khaki and not to have me jumping the fence. Horses I jump fences with have short tails. The horses I rode in the war had long tails; and, by the way, as soon as I got down to active work they looked much more like Remington's cavalry horses than like the traditional war steed of the story books. Now, which way do you want to make that statuette f It seems to me it would be better in uniform.''
The statuette was made and reached the White House in June following. In acknowledging it, the President wrote on June 5:
"Mrs. Roosevelt and I are delighted with the statuette; and, my dear fellow, to have a bronze of me by MacMonnies really makes me feel as if I were a pretty considerable personage! I have always been grateful to you and St. Graudens for just existing, for it is a big asset on the Nation's credit side that it should have produced you both."
When the statuette was presented to the President, he said:
"I now feel myself a really great man. The distinction of 'being done' by either St. Gaudens or MacMonnies might flatter anybody. I had always hoped to have something in my possession by MacMonnies, but it never occurred to me that I should have something by MacMonnies of me. The statuette is exactly as I should like to have it—a cavalry horse, the Rough Rider clothes and the emblematic support to the whole."
For several years President Roosevelt, with the cordial and enthusiastic cooperation of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, made persistent efforts to have the artistic quality of our coinage improved. While he was unable to accomplish all that he wished, some notable results were achieved. He greatly admired the sculptor's work, especially the equestrian statue of General Sherman which stands at the Fifth Avenue entrance to Central Park in New York City. Writing of this to Saint-Gaudens, under date of August 3, 1903, he said:
"To my mind your Sherman is the greatest statue of a commander in existence. But I can say with all sincerity that I know of no man—of course of no one living—who could have done it. To take grim, homely, old Sherman, the type and ideal of a democratic general, and put with him an allegorical figure such as you did, could result in but one of two ways—a ludicrous failure or striking the very highest note of the sculptor's art. Thrice over for the good fortune of your countrymen, it was given you to strike this highest note."
For making the usual Inauguration Medal which is struck for every new President, Saint-Gaudens was selected, and when the medal was received the President, on July 8, 1905, wrote to him:
"Really I do not know whether to thank most Frank Millet, who first put it into my rather dense head that we ought to have a great artist to design these medals, or to thank you for consenting to undertake the work. My dear fellow, I am very grateful to you, and I am very proud to have been able to associate you in some way with my administration. I like the medals immensely; but that goes without saying, for the work is eminently characteristic of you. I thank heaven, we have at last some artistic work of permanent worth, done for the Government.
"I don't want to slop over; but I feel just as if we had suddenly imported a little of Greece of the fifth or fourth centuries B. C. into America; and am very proud and very grateful that I personally happened to be the beneficiary. I like the special bronze medal particularly."
The success of Saint-Gaudens with the Inauguration Medal led to a conversation between the sculptor and the President in regard to the improvement of the coinage in which the sculptor expressed the belief that the Greek coins offered the best models. The President took up the subject with the Secretary of the Treasury and obtained from him an agreement to employ Saint-Gaudens to submit designs for the gold coins, which was done. Writing to Saint-Gaudens on November 6, 1905, the President said in regard to these designs:
"I want to make a suggestion. It seems to me worth while to try for a really good coinage; though I suppose there will be a revolt about it! I was looking at some gold coins of Alexander the Great today, and I was struck by their high relief. Would it not be well to have our coins in high relief, and also to have the rims raised ? The point of having the rims raised would be, of course, to protect the figure on the coin; and if we have the figures in high relief, like the figures on the old Greek coins, they will surely last longer. What do you think of this ?''
Writing again to Saint-Gaudens on November 14, 1905, the President said:
"I have summoned all the Mint people, and I am going to see if I cannot persuade them that coins of the Grecian type but with the raised rim will meet the commercial needs of the day. Of course I want to avoid too heavy an outbreak of the mercantile classes, because after all it is they who do use the gold. If we can have an eagle like that on the Inauguration Medal, only raised, I should feel that we would be awfully fortunate. Don't you think that we might accomplish something by raising the figures more than at present but not as much as in the Greek coins ? Probably the Greek coins would be so thick that modern banking houses, where they have to pile up gold, would simply be unable to do so. How would it do to have a design struck off in a tentative fashion—that is, to have a model made? I think your Liberty idea is all right. Is it possible to make a Liberty with that Indian feather head-dress? Would people refuse to regard it as a Liberty? The figure of Liberty as you suggest would be beautiful. If we get down to bed-rock facts, would the feather head-dress be any more out of keeping with the rest of Liberty than the canonical Phrygian cap which never is worn and never has been worn by any free people in the world?"
To this Saint-Gaudens replied on November 22,1905, saying: "I can perfectly well use the Indian head-dress on the figure of Liberty. It should be very handsome.''
From the outset of the President's efforts the authorities of the United States Mint displayed strenuous opposition, raising objection after objection to the designs submitted by Saint-Gaudens. In a letter to him, on January 6, 1906, the President referred to this obstructive attitude:
"I have seen Shaw about that coinage and told him that it was my pet baby. We will try it anyway, so you go ahead. Shaw was really very nice about it. Of course he thinks I am a mere crack-brained lunatic on the subject, but he said with great kindness that there was always a certain number of gold coins that had to be stored up in vaults, and that there was no earthly objection to having those coins as artistic as the Greeks could desire. (I am paraphrasing his words, of course.) I think it will seriously increase the mortality among the employes of the mint at seeing such a desecration, but they will perish in a good cause!"
When Saint-Gaudens sent his models for the twenty-dollar gold coin the President, wrote to him on December 20, 1906:
"Those models are simply immense—if such a slang way of talking is permissible in reference to giving a modern nation one coinage at least which shall be as good as that of the ancient Greeks. I have instructed the Director of the Mint that these dies are to be reproduced just as quickly as possible and just as they are. It is simply splendid. I suppose I shall be impeached for it in Congress, but I shall regard that as a very cheap payment!"
The President succeeded in getting the Indian feather head-dress adopted and expressed his joy thereat in a letter to Saint-Gaudens on March 14, 1907:
"Many thanks for your letter of the 12th instant. Good! I have directed that be done at once. I am so glad you like the head of Liberty with the feather head-dress. Really, the feather head-dress can be treated as being the conventional cap of Liberty quite as much as if it was the Phrygian cap; and, after all, it is our Liberty—not what the ancient Greeks and Romans miscalled by that title—and we are entitled to a typically American head-dress for the lady."
Saint-Gaudens died in August, 1907, and the last stages of the work were supervised by his assistant, Henry Hering. The coins as finally struck were far inferior to those designed by Saint-Gaudens, because of their lowered relief, changes in the lettering and numerals, and careless reproduction, but none the less they marked a distinct artistic progress in the national coinage.

 CHAPTER THIRTY
INAUGURATED PRESIDENT—DEATH OF JOHN HAY
the attendance at the Inauguration exercises in March, 1905, exceeded all previous records. It was estimated that fully 500,000 people were in the city. The weather was exceptionally fine for the season, and thus favorable for the parade which numbered 35,000 men and was three and a half hours passing the reviewing stand upon which the President stood. Roosevelt's correspondence contains much interesting matter relating to the exercises. On the night before the exercises he received this memorable letter:
department of state,
washington, March 3, 1905. Dear Theodore:
The hair in this ring is from the head of Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Taft cut it off the night of the assassination, and I got it from his son—a brief pedigree.
Please wear it to-morrow; you are one of the men who most thoroughly understand and appreciate Lincoln.
I have had your monogram and Lincoln's engraved on the ring.
Longas, 0 utinam, bone dux, ferias, Praestes Hesperiae.*
Yours affectionately,
john hay.
To a telegram of congratulation from Elihu Root, he replied on March 6, 1905:
Dear Elihu:
I appreciate the telegram.    No one did more than you * Horace, Odes, IV: “Mavest thou, Good Captain, *, Odes, V: “Mavest thou, Good Captain, give long holiday Hesperia!” have done to make my first term a success and I thank you now from the bottom of my heart, my dear fellow. With love to you and yours;

Your friend,
(Signed)     THEODORE roosevelt.
P. S. The night before the inauguration John Hay did such a characteristically nice thing. He sent me a ring containing some of Abraham Lincoln's hair, cut from his head after he was assassinated, and with my initials and his engraved on the ring; saying he wished me to wear it when I took the oath. Naturally no present could have pleased me more.
On the same date he wrote to E. B. Roosevelt, in New York:
Dear Uncle Rob:
It was peculiarly pleasant having you here. How I wish Father could have lived to see it too! You stood to me for him and for all that generation, and so you may imagine how proud I was to have you here.
Ever yours, (Signed)     theodore roosevelt.
In his Inaugural Address, which was one of the briefest he ever delivered, President Roosevelt laid most stress upon the two subjects which occupied first place in his mind—national preparedness and social and industrial justice. "We wish peace," he said, ''but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly shall ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression." The growth in wealth and population of the country during a century and a half, had produced perils the very existence of which it was impossible that our forefathers should foresee. '' The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. . . . There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach those problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright."
A long letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, in England, March 9, 1905, with whom he maintained an intimate correspondence for many years, contains an account of the Inauguration which is interesting as revealing the President's personal impressions of the event:
"Well, I have just been inaugurated and begun my second term. Of course, I greatly enjoyed inauguration day, and indeed I have thoroughly enjoyed being President. But I believe I can also say that I am thoroughly alive to the tremendous responsibilities of my position. Life is a long campaign where every victory merely leaves the ground free for another battle, and sooner or later defeat comes to every man, unless death forestalls it. But the final defeat does not and should not cancel the triumphs, if the latter have been substantial and for a cause worth championing.
"It has been peculiarly pleasant to me to find that my supporters are to be found in the overwhelming majority among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people. As I suppose you know, Lincoln is my hero. He was a man of the people who always felt with and for the people, but who had not the slightest touch of the demagogue in him. It is probably difficult for his countrymen to get him exactly in the right perspective as compared with the great men of other lands. But to me he does seem to be one of the great figures, who will loom ever larger as the centuries go by. His unfaltering resolution, his quiet, unyielding courage, his infinite patience and gentleness, and the heights of disinterestedness which he attained whenever the crisis called for putting aside self, together with his far-sighted, hard-headed common sense, point him out as just the kind of chief who can do most good in a democratic republic like ours.
"Having such an admiration for the great rail-splitter, it has been a matter of keen pride to me that I have appealed peculiarly to the very men to whom he most appealed and who gave him their heartiest support. I am a college bred man, belonging to a well-to-do family, so that, as I was more than contented to live simply, and was fortunate to marry a wife with the same tastes, I have not had to make my own livelihood; though I have always had to add to my private income by work of some kind. But the farmers, lumbermen, mechanics, ranchmen, miners, of the North, East, and West have felt that I was just as much in sympathy with them, just as devoted to their interests, and as proud of them and as representative of them, as if I had sprung from among their own ranks; and I certainly feel that I do understand them and believe in them and feel for them and try to represent them just as much as if I had from earliest childhood made each day's toil pay for that day's existence or achievement. How long this feeling toward me will last I cannot say. It was overwhelming at the time of the election last November, and I judge by the extraordinary turnout for the Inauguration it is overwhelming now. Inasmuch as the crest of the wave is invariably succeeded by the hollow, this means that there will be a reaction. But meanwhile I shall have accomplished something worth accomplishing, I hope.
"I wish you could have been here on Inauguration Day, for I should think the ceremonies, if such they can be called, would have interested you. The Secretary of State, John Hay, was Lincoln's private secretary, and the night before the Inauguration he gave me a ring containing some of Lincoln's hair, cut from his head just after he was assassinated nearly forty years ago; and I wore the ring when I took my oath of office next day. I had thirty members of my old regiment as my special guard of honor, riding to and from the Capitol. And in the parade itself, besides the regular Army and Navy and the National Guard, there was every variety of civic organization, including a delegation of coal miners with a banner recalling that I had settled the anthracite coal strike; Porto Eicans and Philippine scouts; old style Indians, in their war paint and with horses painted green and blue and red and yellow, with their war bonnets of eagles' feathers and their spears and tomahawks, followed by the new Indians, the students of Hampton and Carlisle; sixty or seventy cowboys, farmers' clubs; mechanics' clubs—everybody and everything. Many of my old friends with whom I had lived on the ranches and worked in the round-ups in the early days came to see me inaugurated.''
Writing on March 9, 1905, to Gen. Leonard Wood, who was at Manila, he said:
"Well, the inauguration went off splendidly and I am getting along with no more than the usual and normal amount of worry which every President must have. Congress does from a third to a half of what I think is the minimum that it ought to do, and I am profoundly grateful that I get as much. Next year I believe we shall get improved tariff arrangements for the Philippines. Thank Heaven, we can now make a start in the railroad matters! But of course, it is one long fight and worry. However, I am not complaining. Taking it on the whole I have gotten an astonishing proportion of what I set out to get. When I became President three years ago I made up my mind that I should try for a fleet with a minimum strength of forty armor-clads; and though the difficulty of getting what I wished has increased from year to year I have now reached my mark and we have built or provided for twenty-eight battle-ships and twelve armored cruisers. This navy puts us a good second to France and about on a par with Germany; and ahead of any other power in point of material, except, of course, England. For some years now we can afford to rest and merely replace the ships that are worn out or become obsolete, while we bring up the personnel."
An example of Roosevelt's sympathetic aid to authors appears in the following correspondence with Booth Tarkington. Writing to him on March 9, 1905, the President said:
"I like 'In the Arena' so much that I must write to tell you so. I particularly like the philosophy of the Preface and the first story. But I like all the stories. Mrs. Prothero does not come within the ken of my own experiences, but the other comedies and pitiful tragedies are just such as I myself have seen.
"Do let me know when you get to Washington again."
In replying Mr. Tarkington wrote:
"It is a tremendous pleasure to know that you read and liked my political stories. The Preface was almost directly your suggestion. When, in last December, I had the honor of lunching with you, you spoke of the danger that my purpose in these stories might be misunderstood, and that exhibiting too much of the uglier side might have no good effect. So I prefixed the Preface, hoping that if you happened to see it you would believe that the Professor was at least trying to do his best."
The death of John Hay, on July 1, 1905, was a cause of keen grief to Roosevelt which found expression in many of his letters. They had been personal friends for many years before he became President, and their intimate official association developed their friendship into a deep and tender affection. Differing widely in many of their characteristics, each had a full appreciation of the other's qualities, and each supplemented the other, the two working always harmoniously, even joyously, together. Socially, they met constantly. Every Sunday morning, on his return from church, the President dropped in at Secretary Hay's house for an hour's chat. Sometimes it was with Hay alone; at other times Secretary Taft, or Secretary Root, or both would be present. He was a fortunate man who was honored with an invitation to be present at these gatherings, for he was then permitted to behold the workings of the National Government from its innermost side. Usually it was the comic aspect which predominated in the revelation, for the President's prevailing sense of humor was shared by his colleagues. I was thus honored on several occasions, and invariably Hay contributed something that was especially apt and worth repeating. I may, I think, without indiscretion, introduce here an instance. Secretary Taft was present on this occasion, and the subject under consideration was the Philippine Islands. "I see," said Taft, "that the anti-imperialists are changing their ground about the Islands. They have been saying heretofore that we should not have stayed there after the battle of Manila; that we should get out of them and leave them to their fate •, and that they are doing infinite harm to us and to our institutions, because in ruling them against their will we are violating the Declaration of Independence and destroying our own love of liberty. Now they say that we ought to give them away, or sell them to Germany or Japan or any nation that will take them off our hands." "That," said Hay, "reminds me of the young woman who had got religion and was telling her experience in conference meeting. Wishing to give proof of the thoroughness of her conversion, she said: 'When I found that my jewelry was dragging me down to hell, I gave it all to my sister.' "
With Hay's sickness and absence from the country these gatherings were interrupted and they ceased, of course, with his death. It was natural that his colleagues in the Cabinet, as well as the President, should feel his loss keenly. On the day following his death the President gave out for publication this statement: "My sense of deep personal loss, great though it is, is lost in my sense of the bereavement to the whole country in Mr. Hay's death. I was inexpressibly shocked, as every one was, for all of us, including Mr. Hay's immediate family, had supposed that all immediate danger was over, and I had been hoping that the rest during the summer would put him again in good health by the fall. The American people have never had a greater Secretary of State than John Hay, and his loss is a national calamity.''
Writing to the President, from New York, Mr. Root said: "I am completely broken up by Hay's death.   Dear old boy, he was right about himself after all.
"I must send you a word of sympathy and condolence. I know how true your affection for him was and how deeply you will feel his loss, and how true was his affection for you—how loyal and sweet the relation. Ah me! The old times are passing."
From many letters which the President wrote at the time the following extracts are taken:
July 15, 1905. To the Rt. Hon. James Bryce, London, England:
"John Hay's loss was to me a personal one in the sense which could have been true of hardly any other man, for he was not only a dear friend of mine but a dear friend of my father. The nation is richer because he has lived; and he fell in the harness, as I should suppose every man would wish to fall."
July 11, 1905. To Senator Lodge:
"John Hay's death was very sudden and removes from American life a man whose position was literally unique. The country was the better because he lived, for it was a fine thing to have set before our young men the example of success contained in the career of a man who had held so many and such important public positions, while there was not in his nature the slightest touch of the demagogue, and who in addition to his great career in political life had also left a deep mark in literature. His 'Life of Lincoln' is a monument, and of its kind his 'Castilian Days' is perfect. This is all very sad for Mrs. Hay. Personally his loss is very great to me because I was very fond of him, and as you know always stopped at his house after church on Sunday to have an hour's talk with him."
July 18, 1905. To Senator 'Lodge:
"I particularly like what you said about John Hay, and every word of it was well deserved. He is one of the men whom we shall miss greatly all the time, and our memories of him will he green as long as you and I live. But I have not quite your feeling about his death, so far as making us melancholy is concerned. You have often said that the epitaph on Wolfe was the finest thing ever written, and I cordially agree with you. But Wolfe was still young and one could mourn his loss. John Hay, however, died within a very few years of the period when death comes to all of us as a certainty, and I should esteem any man happy who lived till 65 as John Hay has lived, who saw his children marry, his grandchildren born, who was happy in his home life, who wrote his name clearly in the record of our times, who rendered great and durable services to the Nation both as statesman and writer, who held high public positions, and died in the harness in the zenith of his fame. When it comes our turn to go out into the blackness, I only hope the circumstances will be as favorable."
July 11, 1905. To Ex-Senator Beveridge:
"Hay was a really great man, and the more credit is given him the more I am delighted, while the result at the last election showed how futile it was for my enemies to try and draw the distinction between what Hay did and what I did. Whether I originated the work, or whether he did and merely received my backing and approval, is of no consequence to the party, and what is said about it is of no earthly consequence to me. The same people who, not because they cared for Hay, but because they hated me, insisted that everything of which they approved in the management of the State Department was due to him will now make exactly the same claim in reference to Root and will hope thereby to damage or irritate me, whereas in reality they will not be making the slightest impression upon either my fortunes or my temper. A year and a half ago these people said that with Root out of the Cabinet I would be wholly unable to run the country. Root has been out a year and a half and now when he comes back they will at once forget the intervening eighteen months and make the same assertion. They have already forgotten that Hay was on the other side of the water during these last peace negotiations; and, my dear fellow, why in the name of Heaven should I care?
"I wished Root as Secretary of State partly because I am extremely fond of him and prize his companionship as well as his advice, but primarily because I think that in all the country he is the best man for the position and that no minister of foreign affairs in any other country at this moment in any way compares with him. Nobody can praise him too highly to suit me; and right away he will begin to help me in connection with the Venezuelan and Santo Domingan affairs. As for which of us gets the credit for settling them, I honestly think you will find Root quite as indifferent as I am. What we want is to get them settled, and settled right."
July 18, 1905. To G. v. L. Meyer, Ambassador to Russia::
"Hay's death was a severe personal loss, to me and to every one who knew him, for no more loyal, lovable and upright man ever existed, and as a public man he stood literally alone. America was the richer because he had lived. As for his death, I am mourning; but surely there is not one of us who would not be glad to die as he did, still in the harness, with his children and his grandchildren around him, and with so great a record of public service. I have never been able to feel that the man who died well on in years with a great and well earned record of victory behind him, and still in the flush of his triumph, was unfortunate. But it is very hard for those he leaves, and above all for his wife."
The President, very soon after Hay's death, offered the position of Secretary of State to Elihu Root, who accepted it. Writing to Senator Lodge on July 11, 1905, the President said:
"I hesitated a little between Root and Taft, for Taft as you know is very close to me. But as soon as I began seriously to think it over I saw there was really no room for doubt whatever, because it was not a choice as far as the Cabinet was concerned between Root and Taft, but a choice of having both instead of one. I was not at all sure that Root would take it, although from various hints I had received I thought the chances at least even. To my great pleasure he accepted at once and was evidently glad to accept and to be back in public life and in the Cabinet in such a position. He will be a tower of strength to us all. I not only hope but believe that he will get on well with the Senate, and he will at once take a great burden off my mind in connection with various subjects, such as Santo Domingo and Venezuela. For a number of months now I have had to be my own Secretary of State, and while I am very glad to be it so far as the broad outlines of the work are concerned, I of course ought not to have to attend to the details.''
Writing on July 29, 1905, to Secretary Taft, who was then at Manila on a visit, the President gave this as the view taken by the more hysterical portion of our people of Root's appointment:
"Up to the first of July you were the one person in the popular eye. Then you had started for the Philippines and Root suddenly appeared on the stage, and the great American public, to use a simile from the nursery, dropped its woolly horse and turned with frantic delight to the new cloth doll. The more lunatic portion of the press insisted that I had made a bargain by which Root was to have the next Presidency. The fact that to make such a bargain would show both of us to be not only scoundrels but idiots was treated as an unimportant detail. By the time you come back they will probably drop Root like dross and take you up as a new returned hero from the Orient and they will then vividly portray Root's bitter—and entirely imaginary—chagrin at my having abandoned him for you." 

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CHAPTER THIRTY ONE,.
RUSSO-JAPANESE PEACE CONFERENCE,.
the "crowded" year supreme of Roosevelt's official life was unquestionably that of 1905. In no other does the record of his activity and achievement stand so high; in no other did he exemplify more completely the dictum of Henry Adams that he was "pure act." He arranged, directed and brought to a successful conclusion the Portsmouth Peace Conference, which put an end to the war between Japan and Russia. He arranged also the Algeciras Convention, which resulted, in 1906, in preventing war between France and Germany over possessions in Morocco. He took charge of affairs in Santo Domingo and, in the failure of the Senate to act, brought about a peaceful solution of the troubles between that island and its foreign creditors. He personally directed the vast amount of official business connected with the task of getting the machinery of organization in motion for building the Panama Canal. These were the dominating items in the record of his year's activity. There were many of less magnitude, which will be mentioned in the course of this narrative.
The crowning achievement of the year was, of course, the ending of the war between Russia and Japan. The broad outlines of the methods, which Roosevelt pursued in accomplishing this memorable result are matters of common knowledge, but the inner history of the incident has never been revealed. For the first time it is now accessible to his biographer in Roosevelt's official and private correspondence, and can, not improperly, be laid before the world. As it is told in that correspondence, it is virtually his own story of what he did, illuminated with expositions of his own views and motives at the time, and with his own estimates and graphic pen portraits of the chief personages with whom he was engaged in what to most men would have been a hopeless struggle almost from the outset. He himself had serious doubt at many stages as to his ability to succeed, but he never permitted himself to be discouraged, and his resourcefulness proved more than equal to all emergencies.
He was at the time his own Secretary of State, for Secretary Hay was absent from his post in the last stages of the illness, which ended in his death before the peace was secured. Every step in the negotiations, extending over a period of three months, was taken by the President in person without the aid of any of his most trusted counselors, for Secretary Root had resigned from the Cabinet many months earlier and Secretary Taft was absent on a visit to the Philippines.
In no other task of his life was the abnormal energy, mental and physical, of Theodore Roosevelt put to a severer test, and from none did he emerge more triumphantly. His activity was as tireless as his resourcefulness was inexhaustible. One reads the thick volumes of his correspondence with amazement bordering on incredulity. It is incredible that one man could do so much and do it so easily and so well. He was not only steadily and irresistibly forcing the two warring nations into a conference, but he was at the same time untiringly bringing, or endeavoring to bring, other nations like England, France, and Germany to the support of his efforts. If Russia balked and showed signs of refusal, he persuaded the Kaiser to bring pressure upon the Czar in the interest of peace. If Japan showed similar signs, England was appealed to, to bring pressure upon her. In the end Germany alone really helped, and Roosevelt gave unstinted praise to the Kaiser ever afterwards for what he did then.
Early in the year 1905 President Roosevelt became seriously impressed with the strain which the war was bringing upon the civilized world and that some means should be found for arresting it. "From all sources of information at hand," he says in his 'Autobiography,' "I grew most strongly to believe that a further continuation of the struggle would be a very bad thing for Japan, and an even worse thing for Russia. Japan was already suffering terribly from the drain upon her men, and especially upon her resources, and had nothing further to gain from continuation of the struggle; its continuance meant to her more loss than gain, even if she were victorious. Russia, in spite of her gigantic strength, was, in my judgment, apt to lose even more than she had already lost if the struggle continued.''
Writing to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, on March 9, 1905, he gave the date of his first move for peace:
"Six weeks ago I privately and unofficially advised the Russian Government, and afterwards repeated the advice indirectly through the French Government, to make peace, telling them that of course if they were sure their fleet could now beat the Japanese, and if they were sure they could put and keep six hundred thousand men in Manchuria, I had nothing to say; but that in my own belief the measure of their mistaken judgment for the last year would be the measure of their mistaken judgment for the next if they continued the war, and that they could not count upon as favorable terms of peace as the Japanese were still willing to offer if they refused to come to terms until the Japanese armies were north of Harbin."
On the same date, he wrote to King Edward of England: "It seems to me that if Russia had been wise she would have made peace before the Japanese took Mukden. If she waits until they are north of Harbin the terms will certainly be worse for her. I had this view unofficially conveyed to the Russian Government some weeks ago; and I think it would have been to their interest if they had then acted upon it."
In a confidential letter to Secretary Hay, who was abroad for his health, the President wrote on March 30,1905:
"Cassini (Russian Ambassador) and Takahira (Japanese Minister) have been to see me about peace negotiations, but we do not make much progress as yet because neither side is willing to make the first advance. The Japanese say, quite rightly, that they will refuse to deal unless on the word of the Czar, because it is evident that no one minister has power to bind the government. Cassini announces to me that officially the government is bent upon war, but that privately he would welcome peace. The Kaiser has had another fit and is now convinced that France is trying to engineer a congress of the nations, in which Germany will be left out. What a jumpy creature he is, anyhow! Besides sending to me he is evidently engaged in sending to all kinds of other people. I am against having a Congress to settle the peace terms.
"The Chinese obviously desire the war to go on in the hope that both combatants will ultimately become completely exhausted. The European powers want peace. I have an idea that the English would be by no means overjoyed if the Japs took Vladivostok. It looks as if the foreign powers did not want me to act as peacemaker. I certainly do not want to myself. I wish the Japs and Russians could settle it between themselves, and I should be delighted to have any one except myself give them a jog to settle it between themselves. If France will do it, it will serve the purpose just as well."
A letter that he wrote to the German Ambassador, on March 31, shows an early purpose on the part of the President to cultivate the good graces of the Kaiser, even if he considered him a "jumpy creature," by making him the confidant of his endeavors:
"I am happy to tell you in response to your last note that I entirely agree with the Emperor that it is unwise for the peace negotiations, when the time comes to carry them on, to be considered in a congress of the nations. The Japanese Minister has informed me that Japan takes this view also. I informed the British Ambassador that this was my view, and he told me that he had no doubt that the British Government would also take it.
"I saw the Russian Ambassador, and for your private information will say that I told him that in my judgment it was eminently to Russia's interest to make peace, and that I thought, as regards the terms offered by the Japanese, it would be a case of the sibylline books; that each delay, if the delay meant another Japanese victory, would mean an increase in the onerous ness of the terms."
Another confidential letter to Secretary Hay, under date of April 2, 1905, gives us an extremely entertaining account of what was in progress behind the scenes:
"I have seen Cassini (Russian Ambassador) twice, Takahira (Japanese Minister), Durand (British Ambassador) and Jusserand (French Ambassador) each once, and Speck (von Sternburg, German Ambassador) three or four times during the past week. The Kaiser has become a monomaniac about getting into communication with me every time he drinks three pen'orth of conspiracy against his life and power; but as has been so often the case for the last year, he at the moment is playing our game—or, as I should more politely put it, his interests and ours, together with those of humanity in general, are identical. He does not wish a congress of the powers to settle the Japanese-Russian business. As things are at present I cordially agree with him, and I find that the British and Japanese governments take the same view. The Kaiser is relieved and surprised to find that this is true of the English government. He sincerely believes that the English are planning to attack him and smash his fleet, and perhaps join with France in a war to the death against him. As a matter of fact the English harbor no such intentions, but are themselves in a condition of panic terror lest the Kaiser secretly intend to form an alliance against them with 'France or Russia, or both, to destroy their fleet and blot out the British Empire from the map! It is as funny a case as I have ever seen of mutual distrust and fear bringing two peoples to the verge of war.
"Officially the Russian government announces that it wishes to go on with the war. Cassini tells me, doubtless under instruction, that he believes they would like peace if they can have it on honorable terms; but that they can not for a moment consider the question of an indemnity. I told him that to my mind the point was whether they would be willing to consider the question of indemnity now, before the Japanese had obtained any Russian territory, or would wait until the Japanese had Harbin and Vladivostok, and that it was for them to ponder whether or not, under such circumstances, the Japanese would make the terms more or less onerous. I told Cassini that I was speaking sincerely in the interest of Russia, not in the interest of Japan, for I believed that Japan, after the stunning overthrow of the Russian Army at Mukden, felt that danger was past and preferred to go on with the war unless all her terms were complied with.
"There has been a very perceptible alteration in the temper of the Japanese government and people, not unnaturally. They feel that victory is theirs and that they are safe from outside interference, and they take a distinctly higher tone. Takahira told me that the Japanese government, in addition to the points for which they made war, would insist upon an indemnity. I told him that I was in hearty accord with them as to the points on which they had said they felt they must insist prior to the battle of Mukden, but I would reserve judgment as to what I would say about the indemnity. It may be that they ought to have it and must have it, but I did not feel called upon to express an opinion about the matter at this time.
"Did you ever know anything more pitiable than the condition of the Russian despotism in this year of grace? The Czar is a preposterous little creature as the absolute autocrat of 150,000,000 people. He has been unable to make war, and he is now unable to make peace."
On the day following the letter to Hay, above quoted, the President started on what he called a "week's horrid anguish in touring through Kentucky, Indian Territory and Texas; then five weeks' genuine pleasure in Oklahoma and Colorado on a hunt; to be followed in its turn by three or four cindery, sweaty and drearily vociferous days on the way home." While on his hunt the President was in constant touch by telegraph with Secretary Taft who, under his direction, was continuing the negotiations with the Russian Ambassador and the Japanese Minister. Not entirely satisfied with the way in which the affair was advancing, he telegraphed to Taft on April 27, 1905, from Colorado: "I shall come in from my hunt and start home May 8 instead of May 15 as I had intended. This will be put upon ground of general condition of public service in Washington so as to avoid talk about Russian-Japan matter," adding:
"Meanwhile ask Takahira whether it would not be advisable for you to see Cassini from me and say that purely confidentially, with no one else to know at all, I have on my own motion directed you to go to him and see whether the two combatants cannot come together and negotiate direct. Say that in my judgment it is far better that there should be no reservations on either side, that I cannot help feeling that they can make an honorable peace and that it seems to me it would be better as a preliminary to have an absolutely free talk between the representatives of the two powers without any intermediary at all. If Takahira approves of this, act accordingly."
This was done by Secretary Taft, who telegraphed that the Japanese Minister had approved and had given a statement of peace terms. On April 30, 1905, the President replied:
"I emphatically agree with the Japanese view that there should be direct negotiations on all terms of peace between Russia and Japan. I heartily agree with the Japanese terms of peace, in so far as they include Japan having the control over Korea, retaining possession of Port Arthur and Dalny, and operating the Harbin, Mukden, Port Arthur Railway, while restoring Manchuria to China with the guarantee of the open door. As to the proposed indemnity and the cession of Russian territory I am not yet prepared to express myself definitely; and, indeed, do not as yet feel called upon to express myself definitely. Therefore, in approving Japan's position as to direct negotiations with Russia on all points concerning the peace, I do not wish to commit myself one way or the other on the indemnity and cession of territory matters."
The President did not find matters in a hopeful condition when he arrived in Washington, for on May 13, 1905, he wrote to Sir George Otto Trevelyan: "For the moment I have been unable to do anything in getting Russia and Japan together. I like the Russian people, but I abhor the Russian system of government and I cannot trust the word of those at the head. The Japanese I am inclined to welcome as a valuable factor in the civilization of the future. But it is not to be expected that they should be free from prejudice against and distrust of the white race."
Two days later, May 15,1905, he wrote to Senator Lodge in London:
"It is evident that Japan is now anxious to have me try to make peace. Just as Russia suffered from cockyness, and has good cause to rue her refusal to take my advice and make peace after Port Arthur fell, so Japan made an error in becoming over-elated in turn after Mukden and then rejecting my advice to make peace. Takahira, and I think the Japanese Foreign Office, agreed with my position, but the war party, including the army and navy, insisted upon an indemnity and cession of territory, and rather than accept such terms the Russians preferred to have another try with Rojestvensky's fleet. I told the Japanese that if there was any reasonable doubt, even if not a very great doubt, as to the final result, it was in my judgment wise to build a bridge of gold for the beaten enemy. They then refused to accept my view. Now they have come around to it, being evidently much disturbed by the presence of Rojestvensky's fleet, which in material is somewhat superior to theirs. For all their courage they are cautious, and I think they understand what I meant when I told them that though I believe the chances at least two to one in their favor, yet that inasmuch as this meant that there was one chance in three or four that they would be beaten, and therefore crushed to earth, it would pay them to secure the proofs of victory without pressing their opponents to despair."
No progress was made during the ensuing fortnight, and on May 27, 1905, came the news of the great Japanese naval victory in the battle of the Sea of Japan. To Baron Kentaro Kaneko, official representative of the Japanese Government in the United States, who, from New York, had expressed his joy in a jubilant message to the President, the latter replied: "No wonder you are happy! Neither Trafalgar nor the defeat of the Spanish Armada was as complete—as overwhelming. As Commander Takashita left my office this morning, the Secretary of the Navy, looking after him, said, 'Well, there goes a happy man. Every Japanese, but perhaps above all every Japanese naval man, must feel as if he was treading on air to-day.' ''
The first overtures for peace came from Japan. They reached the President four days after the news of the naval victory. This fact, hitherto unrevealed, is firmly established in Roosevelt's correspondence. Full and explicit details of all his proceedings in the matter were set forth in long letters that he wrote in June, 1905, to Senator Lodge in London, from which I shall quote freely in compiling the story. In one of these (June 16) he said: "I made my first move in the peace negotiations on the request of Japan on the following telegram handed to me by Takahira; it had been sent to him by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, on the 31st of May." (As this telegram is of real historical value, it is reproduced here in full):
"With reference to your telegram of the 28th of May, you are hereby instructed to say to the President that Japan's signal naval victory having completely destroyed the force upon which Russia confidently relied to turn the tide of the war, it may be reasonably expected that the Government of St. Petersburg will turn now its attention to the question of peace. The Japanese Government still adhere to the conviction that the peace negotiations, when they come, should be conducted directly and exclusively between the belligerents, but even in such case friendly assistance of a neutral will be essential in order to bring them together for the purpose of such negotiation and the Japanese Government would prefer to have that office undertaken by a neutral in whose good judgment and wise discretion they have entire confidence. You will express to the President the hope of the Japanese Government that in actual circumstance of the case and having in view the changed situation resulting from the recent naval battle, he will see his way directly and entirely of his own motion and initiative to invite the two belligerents to come together for the purpose of direct negotiation and you will add that if the President is disposed to undertake the service, the Japanese Government will leave it to him to determine the course of procedure and what other Power or Powers, if any, should be consulted in the matter of suggested invitation. You will ask the President whether in his opinion the Japanese Government can, with a view to facilitate the course (?) advantageously take any other or further action in the matter and you will make it entirely clear to the President that the Japanese Government have no intention by the present communication (?) to approach Russia either directly or indirectly on the subject of peace."
"I was amused," wrote the President, "by the way in which they asked me to invite the two belligerents together directly on my own motion and initiative. It reminded me of the request for contributions sent by campaign committees to office holders wherein they are asked to make a voluntary contribution of ten per cent' of their salary. It showed a certain naivete on the part of the Japanese."
After receiving this telegram the President saw Cassini, the Russian Ambassador. "I told him," he wrote to Lodge, "to say to the Czar that I believed the war absolutely hopeless for Russia; that I earnestly desired that she and Japan should come together and see if they could not agree upon terms of peace; and that I should like to propose this if I could get the assent of Russia and then of Japan, which latter I thought I would be able to get. I could not be sure that Cassini would tell this to the Czar, for he is afraid of saying what is disagreeable; but I hardly know what to do else."
Almost immediately following the naval battle, the Kaiser began to exert himself for peace. On June 3, 1905, the German Ambassador handed this note to the President:
"The Emperor has just informed me that in the interest of all concerned he thinks Russia ought to effect peace. He has requested me to tell you that he is ready to silently support any efforts which you may feel inclined to make in the interest of peace. For both belligerents he considers this way of mediation the chiefest and most unselfish."
On the same date, the American Ambassador at Berlin sent this message to the President:
'' The German Emperor has asked me to say to you that he considers the situation in Russia so serious that, when the truth is known at St. Petersburg in regard to the recent defeat, the life of the Czar will be in danger, and the gravest disorders likely to occur. The Emperor of Germany has written to the Czar, therefore, urging him to take immediate steps toward peace. The Emperor said to me: 'I called his attention to the fact that the Americans were the only nation regarded by the Japanese with the highest respect, and that the President of the United States is the right person to appeal to with the hope that he may be able to bring the Japanese to reasonable proposals. I suggested to the Czar to send for Meyer and charge him with a message to President Roosevelt. Please inform the President privately, from me personally, of the steps that I have taken which I hope will be for the benefit of the world.' "
Precisely what the Kaiser wrote to the Czar in regard to Roosevelt as a mediator was revealed in January, 1920, when a batch of his letters to the Czar was found in Petro-grad and published. In one of them, dated June 3, 1905, appears this passage:
"I may, perhaps, turn your attention to the fact that no doubt the Japanese have the highest regard for America before all other nations. Because this mighty, rising power, with its tremendous fleet, is next to them. If anybody in the world is able to influence the Japanese and to induce them to be reasonable in their proposals, it is President Roosevelt. Should it meet with your approval I could easily place myself—privately—en rapport with him, as we are very intimate; also my ambassador there is a friend of his. Besides, you have Mr. Meyer, whom I know since years, who has my fullest confidence; you may send for him, talk with him openly; he is most discreet and trustworthy, a charming causeur with agreeable manners.''
The Kaiser's proposal did not meet the President's views, for he "did not desire to be asked to squeeze out of Japan favorable terms for Russia." Furthermore, "I could not be sure that Cassini would really tell his home Government what I had been doing or Lamsdorff would tell the Czar what I wished." He decided to have Meyer, the American Ambassador at St. Petersburg, see the Czar in person, and accordingly sent him, on June 5, a cable message instructing him at once to call on His Majesty, saying he did so by personal direction of the President, and repeat to him what the President had said to Cassini. Meyer was also to say to His Majesty: "If Russia will consent to such a meeting the President will try to get Japan's consent, acting simply on his own initiative and not saying that Russia has consented, and the President believes he will succeed."
It will be noticed that in this message to the Czar the President was conforming strictly to Japan's wishes about the "initiative."
On receipt of the President's message, Ambassador Meyer sought and obtained an audience with the Czar, and in a letter to the President under date of June 9, he described the interview at length. The Czar admitted that he had received a letter from the German Emperor urging him to make peace, and said: "If it will be absolutely secret as to my decision should Japan decline, or until she gives her consent, I will now consent to your President's plan that we (Russia and Japan) have a meeting, without intermediaries, in order to see if we can make peace." After asking if the President knew or could find out what Japan's terms were, the Czar continued: "You have come at the psychological moment; as yet no foot has been placed on Russian soil, but I realize that at almost any moment they can make an attack on Saghalien. Therefore it is important that the meeting should take place before that occurs."
The Czar, apparently, communicated at once with the Kaiser, for on June 11, the German Ambassador at Washington, handed this message to the President, under directions from Berlin:
"The suspicious Czar has written to the Emperor stating that if Japan's demands are too exorbitant or too humiliating to Russia he would have to break off negotiations at once. The Emperor thinks that the best thing to start them well would be if you could ask Japan to submit her demands to you for consideration before they are forwarded to Petersburg. In case they really should be exorbitant and too humiliating you could have them held back. He reiterates that he will do all in his power to make the Czar accept any demands which you consider to be within the bounds of moderation. So far as Japan is concerned, the Emperor thinks that the negotiations better rest in your hands alone."
The President next had what he called "a perfectly characteristic experience, showing the utterly loose way in which the Russian Government works." On June 6, 1905, Cassini showed him a despatch from his government in which they made no answer to Roosevelt's proposition, said they would not ask either peace or mediation, but requested the President to exercise a moderating influence on the demands of Japan and find out what those demands were. On the following day, Meyer sent to the President a message which directly reversed the Cassini message by stating: "The Emperor authorized me to say that he accepts and consents to the President's proposition with the understanding that it is to be kept absolutely secret, and that the President is to act on his own initiative in endeavoring to obtain the consent of the Japanese Government."
No information of this message was given to Cassini by his government, and when it was shown to him he questioned its accuracy, saying: "Meyer may have misinterpreted or forgotten what the Emperor said." The President, therefore, had Cassini's assertion cabled to Meyer, and Meyer obtained the authority of Lamsdorff, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, for the statement that he had quoted the Czar correctly. Roosevelt at the time received various messages from Cassini, including a protest against his seeing so much of the Japanese Minister and representatives of the neutral forces. To this the President replied through the person who brought it that he considered it impertinent and requested that it be not repeated. "Cassini also protested," says the President, "that I was trying to make Russia move too quickly, and was very indignant over my order interning the Russian ships at Manila, saying 'this is not the time to establish new principles of international law.' I had declined to allow the Russian ships to make any repairs that were rendered necessary by the results of the battle, and then had them interned. I informed Cassini that it was precisely the right time to establish a new principle of international law, when the principle was a good one, and that the principle is now established."
Having obtained the consent of both belligerents, Roosevelt, on June 8, sent by telegraph an identical note to each of them stating that the "President feels that the time has come when in the interest of all mankind he must endeavor to see if it is not possible to bring to an end the terrible and lamentable conflict now being waged"; assuring them that with both the "United States has inherited ties of friendship and good will"; urging them "not only for their own sakes, but in the interest of the whole civilized world to open direct negotiations for peace with one another"; and offering to do what he properly could, if they felt that his services would be of aid, in arranging the preliminaries as to the time and place of meeting. As casting further light upon Russian methods of procedure, the President writes: "Then Cassini must have been told what had happened, for he called upon me and notified me that the Russian Government thanked me and had adopted my suggestion. I am inclined to think that up to that time he had not received the message which he then communicated to me, that his government had told him nothing whatever as to their attitude toward peace."
The text of the identical note was published by the President, and then what he calls "a rather exasperating incident" occurred. On June 10, 1905, Japan, through its Minister for Foreign Affairs, accepted the suggestion of the President and declared that it would appoint plenipotentiaries to meet those of Russia at such time and place as might be found mutually agreeable "for the purpose of negotiating and concluding terms of peace directly and exclusively between the two belligerent powers." Cassini, in his verbal statement to the President, "had accepted just as unreservedly," but, on June 12, there came from Lamsdorff a cable message in which he said he had laid the note before his August Majesty, that His Majesty was "much moved by the sentiments expressed by the President," and that with regard to the proposed meeting, in order to see if it is not possible for the two powers to agree to terms of peace, the "Imperial Government had.no objection in principle to that endeavor if the Japanese Government expressed a like desire."
The effect of this message is thus described by the President:
"This note is of course much less satisfactory than Japan's, for it shows a certain slyness and an endeavor to avoid anything like a definite committal, which most naturally irritated Japan, while at the same time, as it used the very words of my identical note, it did not offer grounds for backing out of the negotiations. But Japan now started to play the fool. It sent a request for me to get a categorical answer from Russia as to whether she would appoint plenipotentiaries who would have full power to make peace, and hinted that otherwise Japan did not care for the meeting. Meanwhile Russia had proposed Paris for the place of meeting, and Japan Chefoo. Each declined to accept the other's proposition. I then made a counter proposition of The Hague, which was transmitted to both Governments. It was crossed, however, by a proposition from Russia that the meeting should take place in Washington. Japan answered my proposition positively declining to go to Europe and expressing its preference for the United States, as being half way between Europe and Asia. Russia having first suggested Washington, I promptly closed and notified both Japan and Russia that I had thus accepted Washington.''
The succeeding few days were very busy ones for the President. He had to soothe the Japanese Ambassador on the question of a categorical answer from Russia as to the full powers of the Russian plenipotentiaries and convince the Czar that having once accepted Washington as the meeting place he could not change his mind and induce the President to reverse himself also. On June 15, he handed to Cassini a memorandum in which he said that he had received from Japan a statement of its intention to clothe its plenipotentiaries with full powers to negotiate and conclude a peace, and suggested that Russia do the same. This be showed to Takahira and explained to him that he had withdrawn it later from Cassini on receipt of a message from Russia saying that its plenipotentiaries would have full powers since that was the meaning of the title.
No sooner was this question settled than, on June 16, 1905, came a message from Ambassador Meyer to the effect that Lamsdorff had informed him that Russia preferred The Hague for the place of meeting. On the same date this bit of "inspired" news was sent by the Associated Press from St. Petersburg:
"The question of the place of meeting of the Russian and Japanese representatives has been re-opened and there is a possibility that The Hague instead of Washington may be selected. After the announcement that Washington had been selected Russia expressed a desire to have the selection reconsidered and exchanges to that end are now proceeding between Foreign Minister Lamsdorff and Ambassador Meyer and Washington. Russia's preference for The Hague is based on the obvious advantages that it is entirely neutralized, the capital of a small state and the site of the arbitration court and also by consideration of time."
The President's handling of this situation was thoroughly Rooseveltian, and resembles that which he used with the Kaiser in the Venezuela incident of 1902. In reply to Meyer's message he sent the following:
June 16, 1905.
"You will please immediately inform Count Lamsdorff that I was handed by Ambassador Cassini a cable from him dated June thirteenth, which ran as follows: 'As regards the place of the proposed meeting its choice is of only secondary importance since the plenipotentiaries of both Russia and Japan are to negotiate directly without any participation by third powers. If Paris, so desirable for many reasons, encounters opposition, then the Imperial Government gives the preference to Washington over all other cities, especially since the presence of the President, initiator of the meeting, can exercise a beneficent influence toward the end which we all have in view.' Accordingly, after having received word from Japan that she objected to The Hague, and before I received any notification whatever about The Hague from Russia, I notified Japan that Washington would be the appointed place and so informed Ambassador Cassini. I then gave the same announcement to the public. It is, of course, out of the question for me to consider any reversal of this action and I regard the incident as closed, so far as the place of meeting is concerned. If Count Lamsdorff does not acquiesce in this view, you will please see the Czar personally and read to him this cable, stating to Count Lamsdorff that you are obliged to make the request because of the extreme gravity of the situation. Explain to Count Lamsdorff and if necessary to the Czar that I am convinced that on consideration they will of their own accord perceive that it is entirely out of the question for me now to reverse the action I took in accordance with the request of the Russian Government, which action has been communicated to and acquiesced in by Japan, and has been published to the entire world."
Promptly on the following day came these two interesting responses:
petersburg, June 17, 1905. President Roosevelt,
Washington.
Have just received the following from Lamsdorff: Je m'empresse d'informer votre excellence que sa majeste 1'empereur ne voit aucun obstacle au choix de Washington pour la reunion et les pourparlers des plenipotentiaires Kusses et Japonais.
meyer.
washington, le 17 Juin, 1905. Monsieur le President:
Vu certains bruits re"pandus par la presse, j'ai 1'honneur de porter a Votre connaissance que, conforme"ment a un telegramme officiel que je viens de recevoir a 1'instant meme, Sa Majeste PEmpereur, mon Auguste Maitre, accepte definitivement "Washington comme lieu de reunion des plenipotentiaires Busses et Japonais qui seront appeles a negocier les preliminaires d'un traite de paix.
Agreez, Monsieur le President, 1'assurance de ma plus haute consideration.
cassini.
Roosevelt's comments upon the incident are both entertaining and valuable:
"I think it is beautiful the way in which Cassini virtually begins his note by speaking of the rumors given currency by the press, just as if his government had not explicitly informed me that it desired to change the place from Washington to The Hague. What I cannot understand about the Russian is the way he will lie when he knows perfectly well that you know he is lying.
"It is this kind of thing which makes me feel rather hopeless about our ultimately getting peace. I shall do my best, but neither the Czar nor the Russian Government nor the Russian people are willing to face the facts as they are. I am entirely sincere when I tell them that I act as I do because I think it in the interest of Russia, and in this crisis I think the interest of Russia is the interest of the entire world. I should be sorry to see Russia driven completely off the Pacific coast and driven practically east to Lake Baikal, and yet something -like this will surely happen if she refuses to make peace. Moreover, she will put it out of the power of any one to help her in the future if she now stands with Chinese folly upon her dignity and fancied strength. It is a case of the offer of the sibylline books. I told Cassini, and through Delcasse (French Foreign Affairs Minister) told the Russian home government, immediately after Port Arthur, that they ought to make peace at once. I reiterated this advice as strongly as possible after Mukden. In each case my advice was refused and the result is so much the worse for Russia.
"Japan is suspicious, too, and does not always act as I should like her to, but it behaves infinitely better than Russia. Of course, it will make heavy demands. No power could fail after such astounding victories.
"Remember that you are to let no one know that in this matter of the peace negotiations I have acted at the request of Japan and that each step has been taken with Japan's foreknowledge, and not merely with her approval but with her expressed desire. This gives rather a comic turn to some of the English criticisms to the effect that my move is really in the interest of Russia and not merely in the interest of Japan, and that Japan is behaving rather magnanimously in going into it. My move is really more in the interest of Russia than of Japan, but it is greatly to the interest of Japan also.
"Well, I do not have much hope of getting peace, but I have made an honest effort, the only effort which offered any chance of success at all."
While holding the Czar inflexibly to his promise as to the meeting place of the Conference, the President was working patiently and tirelessly with the Japanese authorities to keep them from laying too much stress on trifles. Not only did he reason daily with Takahira, the Japanese Minister, but he appealed directly to the Japanese Government. On June 16, 1905, he sent a long message to Mr. Griscom, the American Ambassador at Tokio, with directions to communicate it to the Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs. In this message he said:
"At present the feeling is that Japan has been frank and straightforward and wants peace if it can be obtained on proper terms, whereas Russia has shown a tendency to hang back. It will be a misfortune for Japan, in the judgment of the President, if any action of Japan now gives rise to the contrary feeling. Moreover, in the President's judgment, there is absolutely nothing to be gained by such action on the part of Japan. No instructions to the plenipotentiaries would be of any avail if they did not intend to make peace. But if, as the President believes, the force of events will tend to secure peace if once the representatives of the two parties can come together, then it is obviously most unwise to delay the meeting for reasons that are trivial or of no real weight."
He was far from being confident of success at this time. Writing to Lodge on June 16, 1905, he said: '' The more I see of the Czar, the Kaiser, and the Mikado, the better I am content with democracy, even if we have to include the American newspaper as one of its assets—liability would be a better term. Russia is so corrupt, so treacherous and shifty, and so incompetent, that I am utterly unable to say whether or not it will make peace, or break off the negotiations at any moment. Japan is, of course, entirely selfish, though with a veneer of courtesy, and with infinitely more knowledge of what it wants and capacity to get it. I should not be surprised if the peace negotiations broke off at any moment. Russia, of course, does not believe in the genuineness of my motives and words, and I sometimes doubt whether Japan does."
To Benjamin Ide Wheeler he wrote, on June 17, 1905: "I do not know whether I shall get peace out of this negotiation or not. I have awfully hard sledding in the effort to get the governments to come together, and am exasperated almost to the breaking point by such an antic as this of Russia in now wishing to retract its preference for Washington and wanting The Hague, which it knows Japan will not accept. However, I shall do my best."
The following passage from a letter to Lodge, written just after the negotiations had begun, is especially interesting, both psychologically and historically. Note the statement of a promised Rothschild loan to Russia:
"I wish I could tell you all the funny details of these negotiations of Takahira and Cassini with us. Of course, if the Russians go on as they have gone ever since I have been President—and so far as I can find out, ever since the Spanish War—they are hopeless creatures with whom to deal. They are utterly insincere and treacherous; they have no conception of truth, no willingness to look facts in the face, no regard for others of any sort or kind, no knowledge of their own strength or weakness; and they are helplessly unable to meet emergencies.
"About the Japanese I feel as I always did. I do not pretend to know the soul of the nation, or to prophesy as to what it will do in the future. I do not suppose I understand their motives, and I am not at all sure that they understand mine—although I should think they were plain to any people. Takahira, as instructed by his Government, has evidently wanted to feel his way with me. His Government does not quite like to tell me what its plans are, but wants to develop them a little at a time. Thus, they asked me to find out how England feels as to the terms they should ask.
"Naturally, England responded that it could not say until it knew what the proposed terms were; and it then transpired that Baron Rothschild had said he would raise a loan for Russia with which Russia should pay Japan the proposed indemnity if Russia could be persuaded to accept peace on such terms. Evidently the Japanese have been uncertain whether the British Government knew of this offer or not, and took the roundabout way through me to find out.
"Of course, not only Cassini but Jusserand are very gloomy over Japan's attitude toward outside nations in the future. That Japan will have her head turned to some extent I do not in the least doubt, and I see clear symptoms of it in many ways. We should certainly as a nation have ours turned if we had performed such feats as the Japanese have in the past sixteen months; and the same is true of any European nation."
On June 15,1905, the President sent a despatch to White-law Reid, who had recently arrived in London as the American Ambassador to Great Britain, asking him to sound Lord Lansdowne, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, as to the 'possibility of England's exerting pressure on Japan in the interest of peace. Two days later, June 17, Reid replied, saying that he had sought and obtained an interview with Lansdowne and that the latter had said that nothing could be more abhorrent to the British Government than the thought that any action of theirs could tend to prolong bloodshed, but he added immediately, it would be quite another thing at this stage to bring any pressure upon Japan—especially when they did not even know what Japan's terms were going to be.
On June 23, 1905, Reid sent to the President a confidential report of a conversation which he had had with King Edward on the preceding day at Ascot, requesting that it either be destroyed, or placed among confidential papers accessible only to the President himself. In this report the King was represented as saying he thought it was best to let the contestants arrange their own terms of peace. When Reid spoke of the possibility of the Russians being driven out of Vladivostok, the King said at once: '' They are likely to be beaten again; it may be going on now." Then, with great earnestness, taking Reid by the arm and whispering in his ear: "In the strictest confidence, between us personally, not to go to another human being—if they don't make peace, why should not Japan take Vladivostok, and be in a position at the end of the war to be magnanimous and give it back 1 Wouldn 't that ease the final settlement 1'' When Reid asked if he might not let the President have this conversation confidentially, the King hesitated a moment and said: "Well, perhaps, if you think so, not to become in any way official, or be seen by anybody else. I will leave it to you."
All this time the President was keeping a steady pressure on Russia to convince the Russian Government of the wisdom of making peace. On June 19, 1905, he wrote a lone confidential letter to Ambassador Meyer giving his reasons for thinking Russia should make peace at once. In it he said: "Peter the Great made peace with the Turks by surrendering the Crimea. In 1855 Russia made peace with the English, French and Turks by a surrender of territory. In either case, to have insisted upon going on with the war would have meant the conversion of a serious check into a possibly irretrievable disaster. The same is true now. In advising this I speak for Russia's interest because on the point Russia's interests are the interests of the world." In concluding, he wrote: "You know Lamsdorff and I do not. If you think it worth while, tell either him or the Czar the substance of what I have said, or show them all or parts of this letter. You are welcome to do it. But use your own discretion absolutely in this matter.
"Russia has not created a favorable impression here by the appearance of quibbling that there has been both over the selection of the place and over the power of the plenipotentiaries whom Russia will appoint. It would be far better if she would give an impression of frankness, openness and sincerity."
A cable message from the President to Meyer on June 23, 1905, showed that the "quibbling" was not confined to one side of the controversy. He asked Meyer to suggest to the Russian Government that it send to him the names of the Russian plenipotentiaries, promising that they would be kept secret till Japan had done the same, when the President would announce both. A further effort to bring the Russian Government to the point of using plain speech was then made by the President. "The President has received from the Japanese Government the assurance that they will name as plenipotentiaries men of the highest rank. He believes that they are hesitating because they want to be sure that the Russian plenipotentiaries will also be of the highest rank." He reminds the Russian Government that it failed to say, when it consented to appoint plenipotentiaries, that they were to negotiate and conclude a treaty of peace with Japan, and this failure had "evidently made Japan feel doubtful" whether those plenipotentiaries would really be appointed for the purpose. "Before any question of an armistice is raised the President feels strongly that this point should be settled by the naming of plenipotentiaries with public instructions that they are appointed to conclude a treaty of peace, this conclusion of course being subject to the ratification of the treaty by the respective home governments."
Writing to Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota, on the same date that he made this appeal to Russia, the President revealed his uncertain state of mind about the final outcome of his labors: "I have not an idea whether I can or can not get peace between Russia and Japan. I have done my best. I have led the horses to water, but Heaven only knows whether they will drink or start kicking one another beside the trough."
A day later, June 24, 1905, he sent a letter to Charlemagne Tower, American Ambassador at Berlin, which was clearly designed to encourage the Kaiser to continue his application of pressure to the Czar:
"I greatly appreciate the Kaiser's action. Whether we can get the Japanese and Russians to make peace I do not know; but I hope you will personally tell the Kaiser how much I value what he has done, and that in my judgment it may be imperative to get his aid in order to make the Czar conclude peace. I hope that the Japanese will be moderate in what they ask, and I shall endeavor to make them moderate; but it must be kept clearly in mind that they are the victors; that their triumph has been complete and overwhelming, and that they are entitled to demand very substantial concessions as the price of peace. The difficulty will come with Russia, for she will find it hard to make up her mind to give what it is entirely right and proper that the Japanese should ask.''
Matters began to move a little faster now, but the President did not relax his efforts to expedite them. On June 26, 1905, he sent a strong hint to the Russian Government that it should send its best men to the conference to meet the best men from Japan:
"The President, in accordance with the communication from Count Lamsdorff of the 25th, has informed the Japanese Government that Russia consents to the meeting taking place in the first ten days of August, but that the President hopes if possible the Japanese Government will arrange to have its envoys here on the first day of August as he earnestly desires there shall be no delay. Inform Count Lamsdorff confidentially that the President understands that the Japanese Government have under consideration as their envoys Baron Komura, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Takahira, Japanese Minister at Washington. The appointment of Baron Komura represents, of course, the very highest appointment that can be made by the Japanese Government, being equivalent, for instance, to my appointing Secretary Hay under similar circumstances. I am greatly gratified at it, for it shows that Japan is sending her best men with the earnest desire to arrange for peace. I have confidentially informed the Japanese Government that in all probability one of the Russian plenipotentiaries will be Nelidoff."
On June 30, 1905, Russia sent a request to the President to get the consent of Japan to an armistice. Why his effort to secure it failed Roosevelt explained to Meyer on July 7, 1905:
"I did my best to get the Japanese to consent to an armistice, but they have refused, as I feared they would. Lamsdorff's trickiness has recoiled upon the Russian Government. The Japanese are entirely confident that they can win whatever they wish by force of arms, whereas they are deeply distrustful of Russia's sincerity of purpose in these peace negotiations. Russia cannot expect peace unless she makes substantial concessions, for the Japanese triumph is absolute and Russia's position critical in the extreme. I earnestly hope the Czar will see that he must at all hazards and all cost make peace with Japan now and turn his attention to internal affairs. If he does not, I believe that the disaster to Russia will he so great that she will cease to count among the great powers for a generation to come—unless, indeed, as foreshadowed in your last letter, there is a revolution which makes her count as the French did after their revolution."
A letter to Senator Lodge, July 11, throws further light on the armistice request:
"At Russia's request I asked Japan for an armistice, but I did not expect that Japan would grant it, although I of course put the request as strongly as possible. Indeed, I cannot say that I really blame Japan for not granting it, for she is naturally afraid that magnanimity on her part would be misinterpreted and turned to bad account against her. The Japanese envoys have sailed and the Russians I am informed will be here by August first. I think then they can get an armistice."

***,.

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CHAPTER THIRTY TWO,. 
RUSSO-JAPANESE   PEACE  CONFERENCE—CONCLUDED,.
on the eve of the meeting of the conference, the President was not sanguine of success. He wrote to Mr. J. St. L. Strachey, editor of the London Spectator, on July 17, 1905: "The Peace Conference is about to meet, but from what I gather of Witte's (one of the Russian plenipotentiaries) attitude the chances are unfavorable for peace. The Russians, having been entirely unable to make war, seem now entirely unable to make peace, and stupidly unwilling to face the fact that when their opponents have them at their mercy the opponents have the same right to exact terms from them that they would have if they went on and treated them without mercy. It is just like two wrestlers, when one of them has the hammerlock on the other; the latter need not give way if he does not choose to, but if he does not his arm will be broken. That is the only alternative before him. Entirely for your information I wish to say that I undertook these negotiations only at the request of Japan."
Ten days later found him assuring the Kaiser that he was working cordially with him and was grateful for his cooperation. To Mr. Tower, the American Ambassador at Berlin, he wrote on July 27, 1905:
"You say that the Chancellor told you 'that M. Delcasse had formed a plan by which peace was to be made between Russia and Japan through the mediation of France and England, and that, under it, an arrangement was contemplated by which not only Russia and Japan were to obtain portions of China but that France and England were also to be indemnified by Chinese territory, as a price of their intervention; a course which he said would lead to the destruction of Chinese sovereignty and the disruption of the Chinese Empire.' Pray assure the Emperor, either directly or through the Chancellor, that I should absolutely refuse to submit to such action by any of the Powers, and that I will absolutely support the Emperor's policy for the preservation of the integrity of China, the open door, and equal rights in China for the commerce of the whole world. "Also express to the Emperor my great obligation to him for his courtesy, my great pleasure at the way in which Germany and the United States are working together, and my feeling that this means well for the good of the world, for its peace and its progress. Will you also explain to him that of course in any such matter as that of this peace negotiation between Russia and Japan, or in the Morocco business, I cannot do more than a certain amount, because I do not wish to make people think I am interfering too much; but say that I am sure he will understand that when at any time I hesitate to take some action suggested it is not from lack of desire to do whatever is in my power, but lest I put myself in a position which would lessen whatever usefulness I might have in the future."
No sooner had the President received the report about the attitude of Witte, one of the Russian envoys, which he mentioned in his letter to Mr. Strachey, quoted above, than he sought to turn it to advantage by communicating it to the Japanese. On July 29,1905, he wrote to Baron Kaneko, Japan's official representative in New York:
"Will you show this letter to Baron Komura? I told Baron Komura that I had word from France that Witte had said he would not pay an indemnity. I have received another cable stating that he said he would not pay an indemnity but would consider paying at least part of Japan's expenses in the war. I suggest, therefore, that great care be used about the word indemnity and that if possible it be avoided. Of course, my information may not be accurate, as Witte may only have been speaking for effect, but equally of course, if he does not object to reimbursing Japan for her expenses in the war it does not make the slightest difference to you whether it is called an indemnity or not.''
Writing to Whitelaw Reid London on July 29, 1905, he reverted to Lansdowne's statement cited in Reid's letter of June 17, 1905, already quoted, in a further effort to get aid from England:
'' I think that as regards what Lansdowne said to you the trouble comes in his own statement that the English are 'indisposed to exert any pressure on Japan about terms of peace.' If by pressure anything offensive and dictatorial is meant this is all right. But it is all wrong if it means that there is no effort to get Japan to do what is best both for herself and for England, and that is to make peace instead of insisting upon terms which may prolong the war for an indefinite period."
At the same time he was laboring with the British Ambassador at Washington, Sir Mortimer Durand, for he wrote again to Reid on August 3: "Yesterday Durand was here to say that the British wished peace between Russia and Japan, but did not feel they could bring pressure on Japan. I told him just what I wrote you in my last letter— that if they really wished peace they would advise the Japs in their own interest to make it."
In the latter part of July the envoys of the two nations arrived in the United States. Those of Russia were Serge J. Witte, President of the Czar's Council of Ministers and ex-Ministers of Finance, and Baron Rosen, who succeeded Cassini as Russian Ambassador at Washington; those of Japan were Baron Komura, and Takahira, Japanese Minister at Washington. Witte brought with him this autograph letter from the Czar:
peterhof,
July 18, 1905. Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I take the opportunity of Mr. Witte's departure for Washington to express to you my feelings of sincere friendship.
Thanks to your initiative, the Russian and Japanese delegates are going to meet in your country to discuss the possible terms of peace between both belligerents.
I have instructed Mr. Witte, Secretary of State, and my Ambassador in the United States, Baron Rosen—how far Russia's concessions can go towards meeting Japan's propositions.
I need not tell you that I have full confidence that you will do all that lies in your power to bring the peace negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion.
Believe me Yours truly,
nicolas.
Soon after their arrival the envoys, each set going separately, called upon Roosevelt at his residence in Oyster Bay, where he was spending the summer. On August 5, 1905, he received the four envoys formally on board the U. S. S. Mayflower in the harbor of the town. In behalf of the Government, he had placed a war vessel at the disposal of each of the two sets of envoys, and they went from New York on board these vessels to Oyster Bay. On arrival they were transferred to the Mayflower on which the President was waiting to receive them. He greeted them informally, introduced the envoys of the two nations to each other, and while chatting with them slowly moved into the saloon of the Mayflower, where a luncheon was spread, so conducting them that as they moved into the room no one could tell who went first. There were no chairs about the luncheon table and consequently all peril of giving offense by precedence in seating was avoided. Everything had been carefully arranged in advance by the President in order that no sign of favoritism on his part could be detected, and all passed off as planned. At the close of the luncheon the President said:
  "Gentlemen, I propose a toast to which there will be no answer and which I ask you to drink in silence, standing. I drink to the welfare and prosperity of the sovereigns and peoples of the two great nations whose representatives have met one another on this ship. It is my most earnest hope and prayer, in the interest of not only these two great powers, hut of all mankind that a just and lasting peace may speedily he concluded between them."
The gathering then separated and the envoys, each pair on a separate warship, with the Mayflower in attendance for such use as might be desired by them, departed for Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where quarters had been arranged for the sittings of the Conference on arrival there.
The meeting of the envoys on the Mayflower was attended by a great fleet of private yachts and other water craft, and attracted attention all over the world as a memorable historic event, unlike any that had hitherto occurred in any land. I spent the night following the meeting with the President at Oyster Bay and found him weary but much pleased with the result. He said he had looked forward to the meeting with anxiety, realizing that a single slip of any kind on his part that could be construed as favoring one set of envoys more than the other would be fatal. No such slip had occurred and he believed that the first and very important step toward a successful outcome had been taken. He was fully aware that the attention of the whole world was concentrated upon him and that if he failed to secure peace, universal condemnation would be his portion. But as he said in many of his letters, so he said to me: "I thought it my plain duty to make the effort. I have done my best to succeed and shall continue to do it to the end."
From the moment the Conference began its sessions the President kept a close watch upon its proceedings, was thoroughly informed of the situation at all times, and was ceaseless in his efforts to bring about a favorable result by exerting pressure where it would be effective. It may be said with truth that he was himself the Conference, for he was its guiding and controlling force, Its final agreement was the one which at the outset he had told both the envoys and their governments that they should make. Whenever the envoys hesitated and showed signs of indisposition or inability to agree, he sent remonstrance and appeal both to them and to their home governments, warning them of the serious consequences of failure. By persuading those governments to accept his views, he won success in the end, for it was under direct instructions from Tokio and St. Petersburg that the envoys came together. That this is an accurate statement of the case is clearly revealed by the President's messages and letters at the time.
When late in August the envoys were virtually at a deadlock, the President sent a long cable message to Ambassador Meyer at St. Petersburg instructing him to see the Czar immediately and personally deliver it to him. In this he earnestly asked the Czar to believe that in what he was about to say and to advise he spoke "as the earnest well-wisher of Russia'' and gave him the advice which he would give him were he a Russian patriot and statesman. He then told him that the Japanese had abandoned certain demands which he himself had felt it would be improper for Russia to yield to, and to his "surprise and pleasure" had offered terms upon which he thought a just and honorable peace could be obtained; that it seemed to him that it would be a "dreadful calamity" to have the war continued when such a peace was obtainable, adding: "Every consideration of national self-interest, of military expediency and of broad humanity makes it eminently wise for Russia to conclude peace substantially along these lines, and it is my hope and prayer that your Majesty may take this view."
On the following day, August 22,1905, he sent a confidential letter to Baron Kaneko at New York which he said he would be glad to have him cable to his home government. In this he said he thought he should tell Kaneko that on all sides he heard a good deal of complaint among friends of Japan as to the possibility of Japan's continuing the war for a large indemnity, and strongly urged Japan not to take that course since if taken it would cause the spilling of an immense amount of blood and Russia would be in no condition to give any money at all—certainly not enough to make up the extra amount spent. "Moreover," he concluded, "I feel, of course, that every interest of civilization and humanity forbids the continuance of this war merely for an indemnity."
One day later, August 23, 1905, he supplemented this appeal with another in which he gave specific reasons why Japan should not continue the war in order to get an indemnity, and added: "Ethically it seems to me that Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis. The civilized world looks to her to make peace; the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership in matters ethical no less than in matters military. The appeal is made to her in the name of all that is lofty and noble; and to this appeal I hope she will not be deaf."
August 23, 1905, was a very busy day even for the President. In addition to appeal direct to the Mikado, he sought to reach the Czar through Witte, one of the Russian envoys. A previous effort of this kind had resulted in his message reaching the Czar in a form which led to a misinterpretation of the President's meaning. On this occasion he requested that his Majesty should himself receive it so that there might be "no possible question of misinterpretation." After stating the terms of peace upon which the envoys were agreed, eliminating all others as unimportant, he said in this message: "To decline to make peace on those terms it seems to me is to invite terrible disaster to Russia, and I should hate to be responsible for the possibility of such disaster when the alternative is an absolutely just and honorable peace along the lines indicated."
Again on August 23, 1905, he made one more attempt to induce England to bring pressure on Japan. He sent a message to Sir Mortimer Durand, who was at Lenox, Mass., stating the points of agreement and disagreement between the Russian and Japanese envoys as they had developed in the Conference, and saying: "In my judgment every true friend of Japan should tell it as I have already told it, that the opinion of the civilized world will not support it in continuing the war merely for the purpose of extorting money from Russia. I wish your people could get my view." Writing to Henry "White, Ambassador to Italy, on the same date, he said:
"I am in the last throes of trying to get the Russians and Japanese to make peace. The Russians are the worst, because they stand up with Chinese or Byzantine folly and insist, as Witte has just written me, that Russia will not admit itself vanquished—making it all that I can do not to tell them some straightforward truths in uncomplimentary language. On the other hand, the Japanese have no business to continue the war merely for the sake of getting money and they will defeat their own ends if they do so. The English Government has been foolishly reluctant to advise Japan to be reasonable, and in this respect has not shown well compared to the attitude of the German and French Governments in being willing to advise Russia. I have not much hope of a favorable result, but I will do what I can."
Turning his attention once more to the Czar, also on August 23, 1905, he sent a message to him through Ambassador Meyer outlining the terms he had suggested to the envoys for final agreement and saying: "Please send this supplementary cable to His Majesty at once and further explain that I of course cannot be sure Japan will act on my suggestions, but that I know she ought to, and that if Russia accedes to them I shall try my best to get Japan to accede to them also."
The crisis arrived on August 27, 1905. On the previous day the Mikado sent this reply to the President's appeal, made through Baron Kaneko on August 22:
"The Imperial Government highly appreciates the singleness of purpose and lofty intention with which the President has always exerted his powerful influence in the interest of civilization and humanity. They beg to express their cordial thanks for the sincere and useful advice which the President, having regard to the sentiment in America and other countries, has been good enough, at this juncture, to tender them. The Imperial Government will have no hesitation in acting on the advice, and they will accordingly, in the matter of the amount of compensation, consent to make still further concessions."
The promised "concessions" did not apparently reach the Japanese envoys on August 27, 1905, or if received were not satisfactory to the Russians, for on that day the Japanese envoys abandoned all hope of peace. Baron Kaneko forwarded to the President from New York a telegram that he had received from Baron Komura, one of the envoys, which, wrote Kaneko, caused him to "fear from its tone that the last day has come." The telegram read:
"At the sitting this afternoon a confidential talk with the Russian plenipotentiaries has been held at which M. Witte expressed that there was absolutely no hope for him to obtain the consent of the Russian Government to concede to the last Japanese compromise. In reference to this he mentioned that even in regard to the matters concerning Manchuria which have already been agreed upon at negotiations, the military party in Russia considers that Russia has gone much beyond the limit, which fact leaves no room for them to seriously consider the questions of compensation and cession of Saghalien, and their feeling is bitter against any further concession. In the face of these facts M. Witte regarded that any further attempt, on his part, to a successful conclusion of the conference was absolutely beyond his power. Whereupon, after agreeing to have a final meeting on next Monday afternoon, the meeting was adjourned.
"Such being the case, I consider that the last hope for peace is gone. Therefore I request that you will kindly inform the President to that effect at once. Your telegram concerning your interview with the President and his advice has already been cabled to the Tokio Government." 
On August 28, 1905, Komura sent another telegram to Kaneko, who forwarded it to the President with the remark: "I fear that before this letter reaches you we may hear an awful result of the conference." This telegram read:
"Owing to the delay of the final instruction from the Government, Minister Takahira, calling on M. Witte last evening, suggested the postponement of today's sitting until to-morrow—Tuesday. M. Witte's reply was as follows:
'' ' Concerning the problems of indemnity and cession of Saghalien, on which we could not agree, the President has tendered, through the American Ambassador, an advice to the Czar, to which the latter has replied that under no circumstances could he consider any further concession whatever. [For the second time, however, the President instructed the Ambassador to present his counsel to the Czar, which the former put in a letter, and requested Count Lamsdorff to present to the Czar. But, on receipt of the letter, the Czar marked on it: 'No further consideration' and put it aside. Furthermore, I am under the strictest instruction, which absolutely forbids me to propose any new proposition, or enter upon discussion on a new compromise, which you may make concerning the two problems—• indemnity and the cession of Saghalien. There is of course no objection as to the postponement of to-morrow's sitting. But I do not hesitate to say there is no way now open for me to further discuss on the subject, and even if you propose a new solution of the problem, unless it comes within the scope of the Czar's reply to the President, I am unable even to transmit such proposition to the Government.'
"I am profoundly appreciating the earnest and sincere effort with which the President has been trying to assist us for the interests of peace and humanity. But the above being the Czar's position, as presented by M. Witte, I grieve extremely to put the President into so much trouble to make another attempt to persuade the Czar, through the Kaiser, which, I know, from the words of M. Witte, to be of no avail whatever."
When these cries of despair reached the President he made a final effort to force an agreement. Direct to the Kaiser he sent this message, at the same time sending a copy of it to the Mikado:
"Peace can be obtained on the following terms: Russia to pay no indemnity whatever and to receive back north half of Saghalien, for which it is to pay to Japan whatever amount a mixed commission may determine. This is my proposition, to which the Japanese have assented reluctantly and only under strong pressure from me. The plan is for each of the contending parties to name an equal number of members of the commission and for the commissioners to name the odd member. The Japanese assert that Witte has in principle agreed that Russia should pay something to get back the north half of Saghalien and indeed he intimated to me that they might buy it back at a reasonable figure, something on the scale of that for which Alaska was sold to the United States.
"These terms, which strike me as extremely moderate, I have not presented in this form to the Russian Emperor. I feel that you have more influence with him than either I or any one else can have. As this situation is exceedingly strained and the relations between the plenipotentiaries critical to a degree immediate action is necessary. Can you not take the initiative by presenting these terms at once to him? Your success in the matter will make the entire civilized world your debtor. This proposition virtually relegates all the unsettled issues of the war to the arbitration of a mixed commission as outlined above, and I am unable to see how Russia can refuse your request if in your wisdom you see fit to make it.''
Success crowned this last appeal, for on August 29, 1905, there came to the Japanese envoys a message from Tokio, which Baron Kaneko forwarded to the President:
"The Emperor, after presiding at a Cabinet Council, decided to withdraw the demand of money payment for the cost of war entirely, if Russia recognize the occupation of Saghalien Island by Japan, because the Emperor regards humanity and civilization far more than his nation's welfare."
"This is, of course," commented Kaneko, "exactly the line of policy you wrote to me in your two last letters, which were submitted to the Emperor."
Later on the same day Baron Kaneko again wrote to the President:
"The Peace is concluded at last! Our Emperor has decided on the line of policy you suggested in your letters to me, as you know these two letters were transmitted by cable to our Government.
"'Your advice to us was very powerful and convincing, by which the peace of Asia was secured. Both Russia and Japan owe to you this happy conclusion; and your name shall be remembered with the peace and prosperity of Asia."
An agreement was reached on August 29, 1905, on the terms laid down by the President, and on September 5, 1905, a treaty of peace embodying them was signed. When the agreement was announced the whole world broke into a joyous paean of praise for Roosevelt. Newspapers of all parties and all lands joined in it. Messages of congratulation poured in upon him from crowned heads and the leading men of his own and other countries. The most interesting, of course, were the following:
nEues palais, August 29, 1905. President Theodore Roosevelt:
Just read cable from America announcing agreement of peace conference on preliminaries of peace; am overjoyed; express most sincere congratulations at the great success due to your untiring efforts. The whole of mankind must unite and will do so in thanking you for the great boon you have given it.
william I. E.
pEteRhof, alexandria, August 31, 1905. President Roosevelt:
Accept my congratulations and warmest thanks for having brought the peace negotiations to a successful conclusion owing to your personal energetic efforts. My country will gratefully recognize the great part you have played in the Portsmouth Peace Conference.
nicolas.
tokio, September 3, 1905. The President:
I have received with gratification your message of congratulations conveyed through our plenipotentiaries, and thank you warmly for it. To your disinterested and unremitting efforts of peace and humanity I attach the high value which is their due, and assure you of my grateful appreciation of the distinguished part you have taken in the establishment of peace based upon principles essential to the permanent welfare and tranquillity of the Far East.
mtjtsushito. (Mikado)
Whitelaw Reid wrote from London on September 11, 1905, that at a luncheon where King Edward was present the latter had said to him that he "was simply lost in admiration for the President; that nobody else could have done it; and that it was not made any easier by the Czar, who was evidently afraid to have his army return."
Roosevelt was quite calm .under it all, as he invariably was when action of his won strong approval. Writing to his brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, on August 31, 1905, he said, with unjust criticism in the past clearly in mind:
"Don't be misled by the fact that just at the moment men are speaking well of me. They will speak ill soon enough. As Mr. Loeb remarked to me to-day, sometime soon I shall have to spank some little brigand of a South American Republic, and then all the well-meaning idiots will turn and, shriek that this is inconsistent with what I did with the Peace Conference, whereas it will be exactly in line with it in reality. Of course I am very much pleased at the outcome. I tried as far as it was humanly possible to get the chances my way, and looked the ground over very carefully before I took action. Nevertheless I was taking big chances and I knew it, and I am very glad things came out as they did. I can honestly say, however, that my personal feelings in the matter have seemed to be of very, very small account compared to the great need of trying to do something which it seemed to me the interests of the whole world demanded to be done."
September 2, 1905. To Senator Lodge:
"I am very much pleased to have put the thing through. I am almost ashamed to say that while physically in fine trim the last three months have left me feeling rather tired, because from a variety of causes I have not had at hand to advise with the Cabinet Ministers who were dealing with the subjects that were at the moment the most important, and so have had to run everything myself without any intermediaries."
To his daughter Alice (Mrs. Nicholas Longworth), on the
same date:
"I have had all kinds of experiences with the envoys and with the governments, and to the two latter I finally had to write time after time as a very polite but also very insistent Dutch Uncle. I am amused to see the way in which the Japanese kept silent. Whenever I wrote a letter to the Czar the Russians were sure to divulge it, almost always in twisted form, but the outside world never had so much as a hint of any letter I sent to the Japanese. The Russians became very angry with me during the course of the proceedings because they thought I was only writing to them. "It is enough to give any one a sense of sardonic amusement to see the way in which the people generally, not only in my own country but elsewhere, gage the work purely by the fact that it succeeded. If I had not brought about peace I should have been laughed at and condemned. Now I am over-praised. I am credited with being extremely longheaded, etc. As a matter of fact I took the position I finally did not of my own volition but because events so shaped themselves that I would have felt as if I was flinching from a plain duty if I had acted otherwise."
A note which the President wrote to the German Ambassador at Washington, Count Speck von Sternburg, on September 6, 1905, shows how cordially and promptly the Kaiser cooperated with Roosevelt in bringing pressure on the Czar: "If you see His Majesty tell him (but only for his own ear) that in Meyer's last audience with the Czar the latter commented upon the fact that whenever Meyer made a visit to him, simultaneously there came a cable from the German Emperor. I think this may amuse the Emperor."
To Whitelaw Reid, in London, he wrote on September 11, 1905: "The Kaiser stood by me like a trump. I did not get much direct assistance from the English Government, but I did get indirect assistance, for I learned that they forwarded to Japan my note 'to Durand, and I think that the signing of the Anglo-Japanese treaty made Japan feel comparatively safe as to the future."
On September 6, 1905, the President sent a long letter to the Mikado, written in his own hand, which is well worth reproducing here in full:
"To His Majesty, the Emperor of Japan:
"Through Baron Komura I send you this letter, to express, as strongly as I can, my sense of the magnanimity, and above all of the cool-headed, far-sighted wisdom, you have shown in making peace as you did. I am sure your people will soon appreciate to the full the inestimable benefit you have thereby conferred upon the empire over which you bear sway. During the last eighteen months your generals and admirals, your soldiers and sailors, have won imperishable renown for Nippon. Their glory—your glory, and your nation's glory—will last as long as history is written, as long as mighty deeds are remembered, as long as the race of man endures. You have crowned triumphant war by a peace in which every great object for which you fought is secured, and in so doing you have given to the world a signal and most striking example of how it is possible for a victorious nation to achieve victory over others without losing command over itself. In every nation there are hot-heads who demand the impossible, who are discontented if they do not get something which, if they were allowed to try to get it, they would have to pay for it at a cost altogether disproportionate to, and in excess of, its value. Had your nation listened at this time to the advice of such men, they would have led it into a continuance of the war which, no matter how damaging to Japan's opponent, would also have been necessarily of damage to Japan far beyond what could have been offset by any resulting benefit. The greatness of a people, like the greatness of a man, is often attended quite as clearly by moderation and wisdom in using a triumph as by the triumph itself. Many a great victory has been hopelessly marred, and its effects undone, by its arrogant and short-sighted misuse.
"In this crucial hour your Majesty has shown that the people of Nippon are true alike to their ancient spirit and to the needs of the modern world; for you have shown, and through you your people have shown, that you and they possess that rare combination, the combination of the high valor and foresight which win victories, and the lofty wisdom which turns them to the best account.''
An incident which amused the President occurred on September 14, 1905. Baron Rosen, who had succeeded Gassini as Russian Ambassador at Washington, went to Oyster Bay and presented to Roosevelt a letter from the Czar in which the latter, after speaking of himself as the "initiator of the International Peace Conference of 1899," expressed the belief that a favorable moment had come for systematizing the labors of that Conference, and continued: "With this end in view and being assured in advance of the sympathy of President Roosevelt, who has already last year pronounced himself in favor of such a project, His Majesty desires to approach him with a proposal to the effect that the Government of the United States take part in a new International Conference, which could be called together at The Hague as soon as favorable replies could be secured from all the other States to whom a similar proposal will be made."
Roosevelt, with that quick insight into human motives which was one of his characteristics, in a letter to Secretary Root, thus explains what followed:
"After he had read the letter Rosen began to hem and haw as to the steps already taken by me a year ago, and about the fact that The Hague Conference was the peculiar pet project of the Czar. I finally interrupted him and said that I thought I understood what he wished and that he could tell the Czar at once that I was delighted to have him and not me undertake the movement; that I should treat the movement as being made on his initiative, and should heartily support it. This evidently relieved Rosen immensely. I rather think that the Czar had felt from past experience with the Kaiser that there was a fair chance that I might endeavor to appear as the great originator myself. As a matter of fact I am glad to be relieved from making the move on my own initiative. I should have done it if no one else had done it because I think it ought to be done; but I particularly do not want to appear as a professional peace advocate, and it gives us a freer hand in every way to have the Czar make the movement."
In a letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, written on September 12, 1905, the President gave an entertaining account of the impressions which the envoys of the two nations made upon him. His report of the views which Witte expressed about Russia are especially interesting in view of the later developments in that unfortunate nation:
"I am bound to say that the Japs have impressed me most favorably, not only during these three months but during the four years I have been President. They have always told me the truth. They are a very secretive people, and I speedily learned that I must never read into anything they said one word more than was actually down in black and write; but so far, whenever they have actually committed themselves I have been able to count absolutely on their doing what they said they would. Moreover, they know their own minds and all act together; whereas the Russians all pulled against one another, rarely knew their own minds, lied so to others that they finally got into the dangerous position of lying to themselves, and showed a most unhealthy and widespread corruption and selfishness.
"I suppose Witte is the best man that Russia could have at the head of her affairs at present, and probably too good a man for the grand dukes to be willing to stand him. He interested me. I cannot say that I liked him, for I thought his bragging and bluster not only foolish but shockingly vulgar when compared with the gentlemanly self-respecting self-restraint of the Japanese. Moreover, he struck me as a very selfish man, totally without high ideals. He calmly mentioned to me, for instance, that it was Russia's interest to keep Turkey in power in the Balkan Peninsula; that he believed that Turkey would last a long time, because it would be a very bad thing for Russia to have the Bulgarians, for instance, substituted for the Turks, for the very reason that they might give a wholesome, reputable government and thereby build up a great Slav State to the South. He added cynically that such a consummation might be good for sentimental reasons, but that sentiment did not count in practical politics. Inasmuch as I personally think that practical politics are a most sordid business unless they rest on a basis of honest and disinterested sentiment (though of course I appreciate to the full that with this disinterested sentiment there must also go intelligent self-interest) I could not help feeling much contempt for the excellent Mr. Witte.
"Witte is curiously frank and very emphatic in his statement of the need of a thorough reform in Russia. He put it upon the perfectly simply ground that in the 20th century Russia could not hope to move forward to the tremendous position which he firmly believed she would ultimately reach unless she met 20th century conditions. He spoke with utter impatience of the reactionaries in Russia, and in speaking of Dostoyevsky, the author of 'Crime and Punishment,' he expressed the same horror of his having been sent to Siberia that one of us would feel. I also sympathize with him in his complaint about the hopeless nature of many of the Russian reformers, headed by Tolstoi. These reformers, and preeminently Tolstoi, lack sanity, and it is very difficult to do decent reform work, or any other kind of work, if for sanity we substitute a condition of mere morbid hysteria. Witte also expressed his views about religious freedom and freedom of conscience in a way that would command hearty support from you or me."
What Witte thought of Roosevelt was revealed at the time the above letter was written. A cable message from Berlin, under date of September 8, 1905, was published giving the following extract from a private letter that he had written to a friend:
"From a moral point of view the President of the United States is a statesman of large caliber. Born in a time when politicians are more children of their century than of their history, he owes his high position, which he fills more worthily every day, exclusively to his personal qualities, as revealed in actions requiring decision, tact and clear vision. The world recognizes this. When one speaks with President Roosevelt, he charms through the elevation of his thoughts and through that transparent philosophy which permeates his judgment. He has an ideal and strives for higher aims than a commonplace existence presents. In the stubborn struggles of our day men like Mr. Roosevelt have no leisure, for they are soldiers who cannot be relieved from the danger line."
Baron Rosen, the other Russian Envoy, in commenting upon the above in his 'Reminiscences,' says:
"If it had been Witte's good fortune, as it has been mine, to have read 'Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children,' he would have added that profoundly as one must admire the great statesman, it is impossible not. to love the man who wrote these letters."
Of Roosevelt's services, the Baron writes: "But both nations owed a debt of profound gratitude to the great statesman who had the wise insight to realize that the indefinite continuation of a war which could only end in the exhaustion of one of them, or of both, could not possibly serve the true and permanent interests of either side, nor of the rest of mankind, and who had the moral courage to undertake the delicate and risky task of mediation between them, undeterred by the apprehension of being considered a 'pacifist.' This debt of gratitude was frankly and unreservedly acknowledged by the rulers of both nations, however great may have been the disappointment of the militaristic elements on both sides, in whose eyes a war would naturally be considered rather in the light of a prize fight, that can only be terminated with honor by a knockout blow dealt to the vanquished by the victor. In the eyes of history, however, President Roosevelt's success in bringing about the Portsmouth Conference and the subsequent termination of the war by a peace of justice and conciliation, will ever be regarded as the crowning achievement of his brilliant career as a statesman and Chief Magistrate of this great Nation."
A striking tribute to Roosevelt's services in the Peace Conference was paid by Prof. Frederic Frommhold De Martens, a recognized world-wide authority on international law, who accompanied the Russian envoys and was their adviser during the negotiations. It was published in the Outlook in January, 1920. I quote a few of its passages:
"His conduct during the whole time that the peace negotiations lasted has been a marvel of tact. Without appearing to inject himself into the course of the conversations and discussions which took place between the delegates, he contrived to keep himself exactly informed as to all that was going on, and more than once intervened in the most discreet manner by conveying a hint or a message to the plenipotentiaries which cleared the skies and brought things back to their true level.
"I have often wondered where Roosevelt could have acquired the immense amount of information which he suddenly displayed, and I have come to the conclusion that a great deal of it was due to his extraordinary powers of intuition which made him draw deductions and conclusions where others saw only the bare facts. And, moreover, that Portsmouth Conference, which will surely mark in the history of the world the first effort made by the United States to stand as an equal at the side of the great nations of other continents, was essentially Roosevelt's work, and as such he showed us immediately that he intended, and that indeed he would, bring it to a good and safe conclusion.
"That he contrived to do so without showing openly his hand, and while abstaining from everything that could have been interpreted as an attempt to interfere in matters which were not supposed to concern him, was a work which perhaps no one in the whole world outside of himself would have been able to perform. The hints which he conveyed to the plenipotentiaries, and which invariably threw a new light upon the points that they had not been able to see or to bring to a solution, were something quite wonderful. All through our conferences the personality of Roosevelt made itself felt, but this was done so artistically, if such a word may be used, that nobody could have been offended at the advice which he tendered with such consummate discretion. We Russians had come to Portsmouth without taking anything that he had said seriously, and yet when we left the United States it was with the knowledge that all through our stay there we had been brought in close proximity with one of the most powerful personalities now alive in the whole of the world.
'' The treaty could never have been concluded had it been negotiated anywhere else than at Portsmouth, and if the influence of President Roosevelt had not been exercised all along in the cause of peace with a persistence which commanded the admiration of us all. The man who had been represented to us as impetuous to the point of rudeness displayed a gentleness, a kindness, and a tactfulness mixed with self-control that only a truly great man can command."
For his services in securing peace Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In acknowledgment he wrote, on January 8, 1907:
"I have received the medal and diploma of the Nobel Prize, and the check for $36,734.79, being the amount of the prize itself. Thru you I desire to extend to the distinguished body which has conferred upon me this great honor my heartiest thanks and the assurance of my deepest appreciation. The medal and diploma will be prized by me throughout my life, and by my children after my death. I have turned over the money to a committee, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce and Labor, in trust, to be used as a foundation for promoting the cause of industrial peace in this country. In our modern civilization it is as essential to secure a righteous peace based upon sympathy and fair dealing between the different classes of society as it is to secure such a peace among the nations of the earth; and therefore I have felt that the use I have made of the amount of the Nobel Prize was one peculiarly in, accordance with the spirit of the gift."
No use whatever was made of the money by the committee and it remained at interest till 1917. In July of that year the President requested Congress to give it back to him that he might distribute it among various charities in the United States and Europe, which were affording relief to sufferers from the European War. The request was granted and in August, the entire sum, which with accrued interest amounted to $45,482.83, was so distributed by him.
He also received a gift, which he valued very highly from a group of eminent Frenchmen. This was an original copy of Sully's "Memoires" of "Henri le Grand" which was sent to him with the following letter:
paris, January, 1906.
The undersigned members of the French Parliamentary Group of International Arbitration and Conciliation have decided to tender President Roosevelt a token of their high esteem and their sympathetic recognition of the persistent and decisive initiative, he has taken towards gradually substituting friendly and judicial for violent methods in case of conflict between Nations.
They believe that the action of President Roosevelt, which has realized the most generous hopes to be found in history, should be classed as a continuance of similar illustrious attempts of former times, notably the project for international concord known under the name of the "Great Design of Henry IV" in the memoirs of his Prime Minister, the Duke de Sully. In consequence they have sought out a copy of the first edition of these memoirs, and they take pleasure in offering it to him, with the request that he will keep it among his family papers.
The signatures include those of Emile Loubet, A. Carnot, d'Estournelles de Constant, Aristide Briand, Sully Prudhomme, Jean Jaures, A. Fallieres, E. Poincare, and two or three hundred others.   In acknowledgment the President wrote:
April 22, 1906. To Baron d'Estournelles de Constant,
Paris.
Permit me once more to express my thanks to you and the other donors of the "Memoirs of Sully." With such signatures the book becomes, not merely one of the two or three in my library, which I value most, but that one which I value most. I am very deeply touched, my dear sir, by this gift, and I really do not know how sufficiently to express my appreciation. It is an empty phrase to say that France is loved and honored in America with peculiar feeling. This feeling is general among my countrymen. I have always shared it; but I shall feel it more than ever now; and I shall earnestly strive so to carry myself as not to forfeit the goodwill of you and the other friends whose signatures I cherish. I wish I could see all of the signers on this side of the water, but as that is impossible, I hope at least to see you.

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CHAPTER THIRTY THREE,.
MESSAGES TO CONGRESS—,.PAUL MORTON CASE—,.SENATE ACTION ON SANTO DOMINGO AND ARBITRATION TREATIES,.
the annual message of the President to Congress, in December, 1904, had been looked forward to with unusual interest. It was to be the first deliverance of the kind since he became the elected President of the country. There was even more than the usual amount of newspaper guessing and prediction in advance as to what the message would contain. This centered chiefly about the question of further legislation in the direction of trusts and railways. Would the President ask for more stringent laws or would he remain content with what he had accomplished! When the message appeared all doubt about his attitude vanished. He had not in the slightest degree modified the position on these or any other subjects that he had maintained with such vigor and determination since his accession to the Presidency. The Government must act directly in dealing with great corporations, he said, because those corporations can only become great by engaging in interstate commerce, which is peculiarly the field of the general government; and it is an absurdity to expect to eliminate the abuses in great corporations by State action. "Great corporations are necessary, and only men of great and singular mental power can manage such corporations successfully, and such men must have great rewards. But these corporations should be managed with due regard to the interests of the public as a whole. Where this can be done under the present laws it must be done. Where these laws come short others should be enacted to supplement them." The highways of commerce must be kept open to all on equal terms, and to do this a complete stop must be put to all rebates. The most important legislative act needed in regard to the regulation of corporations was one "conferring upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to revise rates and regulations, the revised rate to go at once into effect and to stay in effect unless and until the court of review reverses it."
On the question of the rights and needs of labor, the message contained a deliverance, which the President had the opportunity to uphold a few months later during labor rioting in Chicago, as recorded in the next chapter. "Wage-workers have an entire right to organize and by all peaceful and honorable means to endeavor to persuade their fellows to join their organizations. They have under no circumstances the right to commit violence upon those, whether capitalists or wage-earners, who refuse to support their organizations, or who side with those with whom they are at odds; for mob rule is intolerable in any form."
The passages in the message demanding the abolition of rebates and giving to the Interstate Commerce Commission power to fix railway rates excited violent hostility among the interests which had steadily opposed all of the President's efforts to secure governmental regulation and control of corporations. There had been a law on the statute book for several years forbidding the granting of rebates but it had proved ineffective, and the President's recommendation to have it so amended as to put a stop to the practise was vigorously opposed by the railway interests and their champions in the press and in Congress. The recommendation that the power to fix rates be given to the Interstate Commerce Commission aroused a great clamor in the press and was denounced as an effort to deprive the railways of the right to manage their own business. All the great business interests combined against it and formed what seemed for a time to be an insurmountable obstacle to it. All the newspapers which habitually opposed the President in matters of the kind predicted that there would be no legislation and held that the issue had precipitated apermanent breach between the President and the Senate, in which the opposition was led by Senator Aldrich of Khode Island, the Republican leader and most powerful member of the body.
Early in January, 1905, the President called a conference of the leading members of both Houses in his office and sought to induce them to support his views. It became evident that a measure embodying his views would pass the House of Representatives, but would be strongly opposed in the Senate. On January 30, 1905, while the discussion of the matter was at its height, the President made an address at the Union League Club in Philadelphia which was regarded as a challenge to the opponents of his measures because of the bold, almost defiant tone in which he avowed his position:
"Neither this people nor any other free people will permanently tolerate the use of the vast power conferred by vast wealth, and especially by wealth in its corporate form, without lodging somewhere in the Government the still higher power of seeing that this power, in addition to being used in the interest of the individual or individuals possessing it, is also used for and not against the interests of the people as a whole.
"In some such body as the Interstate Commerce Commission there must be lodged in effective shape the power to see that every shipper who uses the railroads and every man who owns or manages a railroad shall on the one hand be given justice and on the other hand be required to do justice. Justice—so far as it is humanly possible to give and to get justice—is the foundation of our Government.
"We do not intend that this Republic shall ever fail as those republics of olden times failed, in which there finally came to be a government by classes, which resulted either in the poor plundering the rich or in the rich exploiting and in one form or another enslaving the poor; for either event means the destruction of free institutions and of individual liberty." 
On February 10, 1905, a bill which had been introduced there on January 20, embodying the President's views on the power to fix rates, was passed in the House by an overwhelming majority, 326 to 17. This was hailed by the press as "a great victory for Roosevelt," but the bill was hung up in Committee in the Senate and no report was made upon it during the session which ended on March 4, 1905. That the President had not given up the fight is shown by this passage in a letter to me on March 23, 1905:
'' That we shall have a muss on the interstate commerce business next year I have no doubt; but I feel that we can get the issue so clearly drawn that the Senate will have to give in. On that issue I shall have a number of my own party against me. My chief fear is lest the big financiers, who, outside of their own narrowly limited profession, are as foolish as they are selfish, will force the moderates to join with the radicals in radical action, under penalty of not obtaining any at all. I much prefer moderate action; but the ultra-conservatives may make it necessary to accept what is radical."
In similar tone was this passage in a letter to Senator Lodge on May 24, 1905: "The railroads have been making a most active campaign against my rate-making proposition. They think they have it beaten. Personally I do not believe they have, and I think they are very shortsighted not to understand that to beat it means to increase the danger of the movement for the government ownership of railroads."
The President's faith in success was shown to be well-founded, for in 1906 the Senate passed a bill which was approved by him and the Attorney General and which conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to fix rates, thus giving to that body its first real control over the railways.
The desired additional legislation to put an end to rebating was also secured, but in obtaining it the President incurred some of the severest criticism of bis career. Amember of his Cabinet, Paul Morton, Secretary of the Navy, who had formerly been a railway official, volunteered evidence showing the guilt of his own company in the matter, which was of first value in securing the abolition of the practise. There was a widespread demand in the press and elsewhere for the prosecution by the Government of Morton in the courts. This the President refused to have done. His reasons for refusing were set forth in a letter, on June 17, 1905, to the Attorney General, Mr. Moody, who had given an opinion which supported the President's position. In this letter the President said:
"I entirely agree with your conclusions. In my opinion you would be wholly without justification in proceeding individually against the officers of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway for contempt when neither the Interstate Commerce Commission nor the special counsel you have employed have developed a single fact of any kind tending to implicate any one of these officers. One of the officers, Mr. Morton, is a member of my Cabinet. This fact is not to be allowed to shield him, nor on the other hand is it to be allowed to cause him to be singled out, or the officers with whom he is associated to be singled out for attack."
After pointing out that several other Western railways had also been guilty of rebating, the President continued:
"There is of course no possible excuse for discriminating one case from the other. Moreover, in this instance Mr. Morton has of his own accord written me a letter, of which I enclose you a copy and a copy of my reply. In it you will see that Mr. Morton not only states in the most unequivocal manner that he had no knowledge whatever of the unlawful practise complained of, but also shows by the quotation of documents issued under his direction, that all such unlawful practises were specifically forbidden by him, and that the attention of his subordinates was repeatedly called to the necessity of complying with the law in this respect. When there is not one shadow of testimony against him, and when whatever evidence has been submitted shows explicitly that he is not guilty, it would in my judgment be both absurd and wicked to proceed against him."
Writing to Senator Lodge on May 24, 1905, the President said:
"I have of course been greatly worried about Morton. He is as straight as a string, but the Santa Fe management acted badly in a rebate case while he was vice-president of the road and nominally directed the department, which covered the action in question. I am convinced that he knew nothing of it, and therefore will not allow him to be prosecuted in accordance with the general demand."
In addition to the railway legislation there were two other matters of large moment which the President pressed upon Congress in the winter and spring of 1905, and in dealing with which Congress failed to meet his wishes. One was a treaty with Santo Domingo, and the other was a batch of seven arbitration treaties, uniform in terms, with England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy and Spain. For many years the Dominican Republic had been endeavoring to enter into treaty relations with the United States by which it would be placed under the protection of the American government, and had been steadily refused. In 1903 the representative of a foreign government proposed to the United States the joint fiscal control of the Dominican Republic by certain creditor nations which should take charge of the custom-houses and revenues and give a certain percentage to the Republic and pay the residue ratably to the claims of foreign countries. This proposal the United States Government declined. In January, 1904, the Dominican minister of foreign affairs visited Washington and besought the help of the United States Government to enable the republic to escape financial and social disorders. This request was also declined. A short time later, a report was started that the President was planning to annex the island to the United States. Writing to me on February 23, 1904, he said:
"I have been hoping and praying for three months that the Santo Domingans would behave so that I would not have to act in any way. I want to do nothing but what a policeman has to do in Santo Domingo. As for annexing the island, I have about the same desire to annex it as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to. Is that strong enough? I have asked some of our people to go there because, after having refused for three months to do anything, the attitude of the Santo Domingans has become one of half chaotic war towards us. If I possibly can I want to do nothing to them. If it is absolutely necessary to do something, then I want to do as little as possible. Their government has been bedeviling us to establish some kind of a protectorate over the islands, and take charge of their finances. We have been answering them that we could not possibly go into the subject now at all."
Nearly a year later the President, on Feb. 15, 1905, sent a special message to Congress submitting a treaty which he had concluded with Santo Domingo at the request of its government, under which the custom-houses of the republic were to be placed under American control, 45 per cent of the proceeds to be turned over to the Dominican government and the remainder to be used by the United States to pay on equitable basis such a proportion of the foreign debts as was possible. The President announced that no step had been taken by the Administration under the terms of the treaty, saying of it:
"We on our part are simply performing in peaceful manner, not only with the cordial acquiescence, but in accordance with the earnest request of the government concerned, part of that international duty which is necessarily involved in the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine.
"I call attention to the urgent need of prompt action on this matter. We now have a great opportunity to secure peace and stability in the island, without friction or bloodshed, by acting in accordance with the cordial invitation of the governmental authorities themselves. It will be unfortunate from every standpoint if we fail to grasp this opportunity; for such failure will probably mean increasing revolutionary violence in Santo Domingo, and very possibly embarrassing foreign complications in addition. This protocol affords a practical test of the efficiency of the United States Government in maintaining the Monroe Doctrine. ''
The Senate paid little or no attention to the treaty, and on March 6, 1905, the Senate being then in executive session, the President sent to it another special message urging action at as early a moment as possible and saying:
"Santo Domingo grievously needs the aid of a powerful and friendly nation. This aid we are able, and I trust that we are willing, to bestow. She has asked for this aid, and the expressions of friendship repeatedly sanctioned by the people and the Government of the United States warrant her in believing that it will not be withheld in the hour of her need."
Nothing resulted from this second appeal save long debates on the treaty and the adoption of trivial amendments, and the Senate adjourned leaving the treaty unaffirmed. Writing to me, on March 23, 1905, the President gave this interesting statement of his views on a third term and the effect of his attitude upon the Senate:
"I did not make my announcement that I would not accept another term, without thinking it carefully over and coming to a definite and final conclusion. If you will recall the words I used you will remember that I not merely stated that I would not be a candidate; I added that I would not under any circumstances accept the nomination. And I would not.
"Unquestionably this announcement caused me a little trouble in the Senate, the men coming to the conclusion that I need not be regarded as a factor hereafter. But I think the trouble between me and the Senate has been rather exaggerated, and I have endeavored to minimize, not emphasize, it. I do not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done. Two or three determined Senators seem able to hold up legislation, or at least good legislation, in an astonishing way; but the worst thing the Senate did this year— the failure to confirm the Santo Domingo treaty—was due to the fact that the Democratic party as such went solidly against us, and this fact, coupled with the absence of certain Republican Senators, rendered us helpless to put through the treaty. The result has been that I am in a very awkward and unpleasant situation in endeavoring to keep foreign powers off Santo Domingo and also in trying to settle Venezuelan affairs."
After the adjournment of Congress the President, acting in accordance with his established principle that while the Constitution did not explicitly give him power to act in such cases, it did not forbid him to do so, put the agreement into effect.
Writing confidentially on March 30, 1905, to Secretary Hay, who was in Germany, the President gave this humorous account of the situation:
"There has been a rather comic development in the Santo Domingo case. Morales asked us to take over the custom-houses pending action by the Senate. I decided to do so, but first of all consulted Spooner, Foraker, Lodge and Knox. All heartily agreed that it was necessary for me to take this action. Bather to my horror Taft genially chaffed them about going back on their principles as to the 'usurpation of the executive.' But they evidently took the view that it was not a time to be over-particular about trifles. I also consulted Gorman, who told me that he had taken it for granted that I would have to take some such action as that proposed, and believed it necessary. I understand, however, that this was merely his unofficial opinion, and that officially he is going to condemn our action as realizing his worst forebodings."

Having put the agreement into effect, the President did not hesitate to use force in upholding it, in case force should be needed to maintain order. When signs of internal trouble appeared in the island in the fall of 1905, he sent this order to the Secretary of the Navy, referring to the commander of a naval vessel near the island, under date of Septembers, 1905:
"As to the Santo Domingo matter, tell Admiral Bradford to stop any revolution. I intend to keep the island in statu quo until the Senate has had time to act on the treaty, and I shall treat any revolutionary movement as an effort to upset the modus vivendi. That this is ethically right, I am dead sure, even though there may be some technical or red tape difficulty."
When Congress came together in December, 1905, the President included in his annual message a quiet statement of what he had done, making neither defense nor apology. He merely said that the Executive Department of the Government had negotiated a treaty under which "we are to try to help the Dominican people to straighten out their finances," that the "treaty is pending before the Senate," and that "in the meantime a temporary arrangement has been made which will last until the Senate has time to take action on the treaty. . . . Every consideration of wise policy, and, above all, every consideration of large generosity, bids us meet the request of Santo Domingo as we are now trying to meet it." The Senate discussed the treaty for two years, and during that period the President continued its execution; finally, in the spring of 1907, the Senate ratified it with unimportant amendments which the President easily induced Santo Domingo to accept. The results of his action were described by the President in a speech before the Harvard Union on February 13, 1907:
"I was immensely amused when at a professional peace meeting the other day, they incidentally alluded to me as having made 'war' on Santo Domingo. The war I have made literally consists in having loaned them a collector of customs, at their request. We now give them forty-five per cent, of the customs to run the Government, and the other fifty-five per cent, is put up to pay those of their debts, which are found to be righteous. This arrangement has gone on for two years now, while the coordinate branch of the Government discussed whether or not I had usurped power in the matter, and finally concluded I had not, and ratified the treaty. Of the fifty-five per cent, we have been able to put two and a half millions toward paying their debts; and with the forty-five per cent, that we collected for them they have received more money than they ever got when they collected one hundred per cent, themselves; and the island has prospered as never before. I feel like paraphrasing Patrick Henry: 'If this is "war," make the most of it.' "
The Senate's course in relation to the seven general arbitration treaties was in line with the President's description of its methods in his letter of March 23 to me, quoted above. These treaties provided for reference to The Hague Tribunal, by mutual agreement, of all minor disputes not involving national honor. They were submitted to the Senate on January 6, 1905, and it was at once made known that many Senators were in favor of amending them in a way which the President considered to be fatal to their usefulness. On February 10, 1905, the President wrote a letter of protest to Senator Cullom, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, in which he said:
"I learn that the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has reported the arbitration treaties to the Senate, amending them by substituting for the word 'agreement' in the second article the word 'treaty.'
"The effect of the amendment is to make it no longer possible, as between its contracting parties, to submit any matter whatever to arbitration without first obtaining a special treaty to cover the case. This will represent not a step forward but a step backward. If the word 'treaty' be substituted, the result is that every such agreement must be submitted to the Senate; and these general arbitration treaties would then cease to be such, and indeed in their amended form they amount to a specific pronouncement against the whole principle of a general arbitration treaty.
"The Senate has, of course, the absolute right to reject' or to amend in any way it sees fit any treaty laid before it, and it is clearly the duty of the Senate to take any step which, in the exercise of its best judgment, it deems to be for the interest of the nation. If, however, in the judgment of the President, a given amendment nullifies a proposed treaty, it seems to me that it is no less clearly his duty to refrain from endeavoring to secure a ratification, by the other contracting power or powers, of the amended treaty; and after much thought I have come to the conclusion that I ought to write and tell you that such is my judgment in this case."
The clear notification in the closing passage of this letter, that if the amendment was adopted the President would abandon the treaties, was not heeded, for in executive session, on February 11, 1905, the treaties as amended by the Committee were ratified. When they reached the President, Secretary Hay, on February 13, 1905, made the following statement, which he had drawn up in accordance with the President's instructions:
"The President regards the matter of the general arbitration treaties as concluded by the action of the Senate on Saturday. He recognizes the right of the Senate to reject a treaty either by a direct vote in that sense, or indirectly by changes, which are incompatible with its spirit and purpose. He considers that with the Senate amendment the treaties not only cease to be a step forward in the cause of general arbitration but are really a step backward, and therefore he is unable to present them in this altered form to the countries with which we have been in negotiation."
In conversation with me at the time, Secretary Hay expressed himself as disheartened and completely discouraged by the result, saying that the treaties represented many months of painstaking labor and were regarded as a valuable advance in the cause of general arbitration. He added that, in his judgment, it was quite useless to make further effort since the ratification of any really desirable or useful arbitration treaty could not be hoped for in the present temper of the Senate. Among those supporting the amendment were Senators Lodge and Spooner, both of whom expressed great regret because they found themselves unable to agree with the President.
After Hay's death, Secretary Root, who succeeded him in the State Department, took up the treaties, accepted the Senate amendment, and ratifications were exchanged with the seven foreign governments concerned. They proved to be absolutely useless, and so far as they had any effect, it was to lower the standard which the American Government had previously maintained upon the question of international arbitration.
Dr. John Bassett Moore, the recognized authority on international law, said of their effect, in an address that he delivered at the Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration, on May 27, 1914:
"The result of the Senate's action is, that so far as the United States is concerned, it is in practice more difficult to secure international arbitration than it was in the early days of our independence."

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CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR,.
REBUKES   TO   RIOTOUS   STRIKERS   AND   LYNCHERS,.—
DEALINGS WITH SENATORS—,.LETTERS
ON VARIOUS TOPICS,.
eaRly in April, 1905, the President left Washington to attend a reunion of his Rough Rider regiment at San Antonio, Texas, on the 7th of that month, and later went on a short hunting trip in Colorado. On the eve of his departure he made a remark which had wide circulation: "Oh, things will be all right; I have left Taft sitting on the lid." He delivered addresses at various points in Texas, including one before the Legislature of the State, in each of which he expounded his views in regard to Government regulation and control of corporations and railways. He was greeted with great enthusiasm everywhere. On his return trip he reached Chicago on May 10, at the moment when a general strike of labor unions was in progress. A committee of the strikers called upon him to present their cause and secure his sympathy. What happened was described by the President later in two letters that he wrote after reaching Washington. The first was to Mr. Root, on May 13, 1905: "Perhaps the thing that pleased me most was in Chicago when the labor men called upon me. A good many people had been anxious that I should dodge Chicago, which of course I would not have been willing to do under any circumstances. As it turned out, the labor people called on me themselves and made a statement most foolish and offensive, so that they justified me completely in saying good-temperedly, but with unmistakable emphasis, just what my attitude was and would be in regard to mobs and disorder generally." 
The second was to Senator Lodge, who was at the time in London, on May 15, 1905:
"When I came to Chicago I found a very ugly strike, on account of which some of my nervous friends wished me to try to avoid the city. Of course I hadn't the slightest intention of doing so. I get very much puzzled at times on questions of finance and the tariff, but when it comes to such a perfectly simple matter as keeping order, then you strike my long suit. The strikers were foolish enough to come to me on their own initiative and make me an address in which they quoted that fine flower of Massachusetts statesmanship, the lamented Benjamin F. Butler, who had told rioters at one time, as it appeared, that they need have no fear of the United States army, as they had torches and arms. This gave me a good opening, and while perfectly polite, I used language so simple that they could not misunderstand it; and repeated the same with amplifications at the dinner that night. So if the rioting in Chicago gets beyond the control of the State and the City, they now know well that the Regulars will come.''
What the President said to the spokesman of the strikers, Mr. Shea, who had presented a letter stating their case, was this:
"I regret that you should in the letter have spoken at all of the use of the Federal army, as you have there spoken. No request has been made to me for action by the Federal Government, but at the same time, Mr. Shea, as you have in this communication brought up the matter, I want to say one thing with all the emphasis in my power. In upholding the law and order, in doing what he is able to do to suppress mob violence in any shape or way, the Mayor of Chicago, Mayor Dunne, has my hearty support. I am glad to be able to say this to you, gentlemen, before I say it to another body.
"Now, let me repeat that I know nothing of the facts of the situation. I know nothing of the right or wrong of the points at issue. What I have to say is based partly upon what I regard as the unfortunate phrasing of a letter presented to the President of the United States.
"I have not been called upon to interfere in any way, but you must not misunderstand my attitude. In every effort of Mayor Dunne to prevent violence by mobs or individuals, to see that the laws are obeyed, and that order is preserved, he has the hearty support of the President of the United States, and, in my judgment, he should have that of every good citizen of the United States.
"I am a believer in unions. I am an honorary member of one union. But the union must obey the law just as the corporation must obey the law. Just as every man, rich or poor, must obey the law. As yet, no action has been called for by me and most certainly if action is called for I shall try to do justice under the law to every man, so far as I have power. But the first essential is the preservation of law and order, the suppression of violence by mobs or individuals."
At a dinner, which the Iroquois Club, a Democratic organization, gave him on the evening of the same day, the President repeated substantially what he had said to the strikers' committee, and turning directly to Mayor Dunne, who was seated near him, said:
"Mr. Mayor, as President of the United States, and therefore as representative of the people of this country, I give you, as a matter of course, my hearty support in upholding the law, in keeping order, in putting down violence, whether by a mob or by an individual. There need not be the slightest apprehension in the heart of the most timid that ever the mob spirit will triumph in this country. Those immediately responsible for dealing with the trouble must, as I know you feel, exhaust every effort in so dealing with it before a call is made upon any outside body. But if ever the need arises, back of the city stands the State, and back of the State stands the Nation."
In acknowledging the President's letter Mr. Root wrote on May 16, 1905:
"I was particularly pleased by the way in which you treated the labor situation in Chicago. I doubt if most people realize what a very important and critical situation was created by the presentation of the labor address. Most men in your position would have taken the paper for further examination and have dismissed the committee with the promise to give it consideration; and there would have been the devil to pay afterwards. Your character was, however, exactly adapted for the best possible treatment of the emergency, and I think that your instant reading of the paper and instant response was one of the very best things you have ever done."
Secretary Hay, who was at Bad Nauheim, Germany, for his health, wrote under date of May 21, 1905:
"I need not tell you with what pride and pleasure we all read your speech at Chicago. It has the true ring of conscience and authority combined,—the voice of a man ' who would not natter Neptune for Ms trident.' It is a comfort to see the most popular man in America telling the truth to our masters, the people. It requires no courage to attack wealth and power, but to remind the masses that they, too, are subject to the law, is something few public men dare to do."
The President gave another illustration of his courage in October, 1905, when he made a tour of the South, speaking at various points in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, including a visit to the home of his mother at Roswell, Georgia. At Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 25, he was introduced by the Governor of the State to a large concourse of citizens in the City Park. In his introductory remarks the Governor made a quasi defense of the lynching of colored men for supposed outrages upon white women. In opening his speech the President declared that he had been fortunate enough to have spoken all over the Union and had never said in any State or any section what he would not have said in any other State or in any other section. Turning a few minutes later directly to the Governor, he said:

"Governor, you spoke of a hideous crime that is often hideously avenged. The worst enemy of the negro race is the negro criminal, and, above all, the negro criminal of that type; for he has committed not only an unspeakably dreadful and infamous crime against the victim, but he has committed a hideous crime against the people of his own color; and every reputable colored man, every colored man who wishes to see the uplifting of his race, owes it as his first duty to himself and to that race to hunt down that criminal with all his soul and strength. Now for the side of the white man. To avenge one hideous crime by another hideous crime is to reduce the man doing it to the bestial level of the wretch who committed the bestial crime. The horrible effects of the lynchings are not for that crime at all, but for other crimes. And above all other men, Governor, you and I and all who are exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law."
This courageous deliverance in the very heart of the country in, which lynching was a not infrequent practise, commanded widespread approval.
In the summer of 1905 several instances arose in which the President felt moved to very plain speech with Senators who sought to have him make unfit appointments in the civil service, or improper promotions in the army, or to shield some person in the service who had been found guilty of misconduct. The same Oregon Senator whom he had rebuked in 1904 and whom he afterwards forced into the penitentiary, wrote him an impudent letter in May, 1905. In replying, on the 15th of that month, the President wrote a long letter, saying at the close:
"My dear Senator, you have written me very frankly. I shall copy your frankness in this closing paragraph. It has been most unfortunate that so many of the friends upon whose behalf you have been active should be among those whose guilt is clearest and deepest. I entirely appreciate loyalty to one's friends, but loyalty to the cause of justice and honor stands above it. I think you are doing yourself an injury by permitting yourself to be made at least to seem to stand as the champion of the men who have been engaged in this widespread conspiracy to defraud the United States Government and therefore the public of your own State. . . . You criticize very captiously what has been done and said by all those whose efforts have resulted in the uncovering of this great wrong, and of the partial punishment of some of the wrongdoers. It is easy to ascribe such motives and to make such criticisms; but what is needed now is not the picking of holes in those who are engaged in the great work of righteousness, but the sturdy upholding of their hands just so long as they are doing this work.
"I am from my position the leader of the entire Republican party throughout the Union, in Oregon just as much as in New York; and in Oregon and New York alike I shall count it not an attack upon, but a service to, the Republican party if through my agents I can be instrumental in punishing in the severest possible manner any private citizen, and especially any public servant, who while claiming to be a member of that party has deeply wronged it by wronging the Nation which the party was created to serve. When the party ceases to serve the Nation it will lose its reason for existence; and most emphatically I shall never, under any pressure or for any reason whatever, permit any alleged considerations of partisan expediency to prevent my punishing any wrongdoer, whether he belongs to my party or any other."
To a plea from Senator Platt of New York for clemency toward a man who had been dismissed from the service, the President sent this terse communication on May 22, 1905: "He was heard in full and given ample opportunity to defend himself. He was thoroughly investigated, and not only was it necessary to dismiss him, but it may be necessary to indict him."

A Vermont Senator was persistent in seeking to have an officer in the army promoted as a personal favor. To him the President wrote on June 3, 1905:
"In your previous letters you will remember that you stated that you were anxious to secure 'Vermont promotions.' In other words, you have desired that the promotions in the Army should be given primarily, not because the man promoted is the best 'man for the position, but to gratify a certain outside individual or to 'recognize' a certain State. Now I cannot possibly permit such practises in the Army. It is this kind of practise, carried to an extreme, which brings utter demoralization to the service, and in the end, rottenness. Surely it ought to be axiomatic that the quality and record of the individual officer and the needs of the service should alone be considered. . . .
"When I uphold the hands of the General Staff by taking their recommendations for promotion as against those of any outsider, no matter how influential, no matter how powerful, I am doing my best to prevent our little army from being reduced to a condition which would be only one degree above that to which it would be reduced if I tolerated actual corruption. In so acting, it seems to me that I am entitled to the support of every good American who feels that the Army is the property of the Nation, and not of one party, still less of any individual in that party. I can no more allow it to be run in the interest of politicians than I could allow it to be run in the interest of contractors or patentees. It is to be run in the interest of the entire American people, and with an eye single to making it the best that it can possibly be made."
To a Senator from an eastern State whose views on the proper use of public office were permanently antagonistic to those of the President, the latter wrote on July 7, 1905:

  "Of course I should always like to do anything you ask, and it is a matter of regret to me that I am unable to appoint your grandson District Attorney of the District of Columbia as you request. If I felt that I conscientiously could do so with due regard to the interest of the Government and of the people of the District I should be really pleased. We have had difficulty in the office and I have directed the choice to be made with peculiar care to obtain the best man possible. "With all these quasi judicial or legal positions I am obliged to exercise peculiar care."
Amid all the duties that crowded upon Roosevelt in 1905 he found time to indulge his love of reading and to conduct a voluminous correspondence with all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects. While he was busy arranging the Russo-Japanese Conference he was reading and absorbing a book which carried him back into the 13th Century, afterwards writing, on July 11, to the French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, this learned criticism of its contents:
"I read Cahun's 'Turks and Mongols' with such thoroughness and assiduity that at the end it was dangling out of the covers, and I have sent it to Washington to have it bound, with directions to deliver it to you.
"I am very much obliged to you for loaning it to me, and I have been immensely interested in it. It is extraordinary how little the average European historian has understood the real significance of the immense Mongol movement of the 13th Century and its connection with the previous history of the Turks, Mongols, and similar peoples. Until I read Cahun I never understood the sequence of cause and effect and never appreciated the historic importance of the existence of the vast, loosely-bound Turkish power of the 5th and 6th centuries and of its proposition to unite with the Byzantines for the overthrow of the Persians. Moreover, it is astounding that military critics have given so little space to, or rather have totally disregarded, the extraordinary Mongol campaigns of the 13th Century.

"I doubt if the average military critic so much as knows of the existence of Sabutai, who won sixty victories on pitched fields and went from the Yellow Sea to the Adriatic, trampling Russia into the dust, overrunning Hungary and Poland, and defeating with inferior numbers the picked chivalry of Germany as he had already defeated the Manchu, the Corean, and the Chinese. Moreover the victories were not won by brute superiority of numbers. The armies of the Mongols were not at all what we understand when we speak of hordes. They were marvelously trained bodies wherein the prowess of the individual soldier was only less remarkable than the perfect obedience, precision and effectiveness with which he did his part in carrying out the tactical and strategic schemes of the generals.
"For a Frenchman, Cahun is dry; but the dryness of writers of your race, if they are good at all, is miles asunder from the hopeless aridity of similar writers among our people. Cahun has a really fine phrase, for instance—a phrase that tells an important truth, when he contrasts the purely personal and therefore in the end not very important wars of Timur, with what he calls the great' anonymous' campaigns and victories of the Mongols proper under Genghis Khan and in the years immediately succeeding his death.
"Naturally, this difference in dryness makes an immense difference in interest. Thus I took up De la Gorce's history of the Second Empire because of the allusions to it in Walpole 's history, which covers much the same period; but Walpole's history was only readable in the sense that a guide book or a cookery book is readable; whereas I found De la Gorce exceedingly interesting and filled with much that was philosophical and much that was picturesque."
On July 19, 1905, in a letter to Henry Beach Needham, he dropped into this discussion of what constitutes greatness and how it is won:
"It has always seemed to me that in life there are two ways of achieving success, or, for the matter of that, of achieving what is commonly called greatness. One is to do that which can only be done by the man of exceptional and extraordinary abilities. Of course this means that only one man can do it, and it is a very rare kind of success or of greatness. The other is to do that which many men could do, but which as a matter of fact none of them actually does. This is the ordinary kind of success or kind of greatness. Nobody but one of the world's rare geniuses could have written the Gettysburg speech, or the Second Inaugural, or met as Lincoln met the awful crises of the Civil War. But most of us can do the ordinary things, which, however, most of us do not do. It is of course unnecessary to say that I have never won a success of any kind that did not come within this second category. Any one that chose could lead the kind of life I have led, and any one who has led that life could if he chose—and by 'choosing,' I of course mean choosing to exercise the requisite industry, judgment and foresight, none of a very marked type—have raised my regiment or served in positions analogous to those of Police Commissioner, Civil Service Commissioner, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy."
A few days before the Portsmouth Peace Conference reached its agreement, in August, 1905, after sending off a sheaf of cable and other messages to Tokio, St. Petersburg, and Berlin, which forced the envoys to get together, Roosevelt, on August 25, took a trip in a submarine, a species of voyage which was regarded at the time as especially perilous. Indeed, when it was announced in advance that he was going, there were protests in the newspapers against it on the ground that as the head of the nation his life was not his own and he had no right to risk it. Among the protests was one from "Mr. Dooley" which closed with the memorable sentence: "If you must go, Mr. President, take Fairbanks with you!" He was not deterred but took the trip, was under water seventy minutes, and while there made a thorough examination of the vessel and mastered its method of operation. Writing to his friend, Count von Sternburg, he expressed views about the future of the submarine which, addressed to a German, afford curious reading after the uses to which the submarine was put by Germans in the European war:
"I myself am both amused and interested as to what you say about the interest excited about my trip in the Plunger. I went down in it chiefly because I did not like to have the officers and enlisted men think I wanted them to try things I was reluctant to try myself. I believe a good deal can be done with these submarines, although there is always the danger of people getting carried away with the idea and thinking that they can be of more use than they possibly could be."
The President made two efforts in 1905 to induce Joseph H. Choate to reenter the diplomatic service. He asked him to go as the American representative to the Algeciras Convention. Mr. Choate at first accepted and subsequently withdrew his acceptance. He next offered him the position of American Minister to Japan, and this also Mr. Choate declined. Writing about the latter position after the close of the Portsmouth Conference, the President gave this interesting statement of his personal views as to services which an ex-President may perform:
"I found that the Japanese were very anxious we should send the very highest man possible to Tokio as Minister, and they say that if that is done they will shortly make their representative here an Ambassador. They evidently feel that if Choate were sent there it would be appreciated as an international compliment. I do not know whether Choate would go or not. If I were in his place I should be delighted to go. I have always felt that John Quincy Adams rendered a real service when he went to Congress after being President; that is, he showed more regard for the work to be done than for the titular position. In the same way Choate could well afford to spend what would be a delightful couple of years in Tokio for the sake of the good that his going would do." 

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CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE,.
BUILDER OP THE PANAMA CANAL,.
that the United States and the world owe the existence of the Panama Canal entirely to President Roosevelt, is a fact which cannot be disputed. Every step in the progress of that enterprise, from the time of taking possession of the Isthmus without an instant's delay when the Panama revolution offered the opportunity, till the water-way between the two oceans was thrown open to the shipping of the world, was due to his personal action in the early stages of the work. It was carried to completion under Presidents Taft and Wilson on the lines that he had established so firmly that they could not be changed. As he said later, with a frank boldness that astounded his critics: "Yes, I took the Isthmus, and I am in a wholly unrepentant frame of mind in reference thereto. The ethical conception upon which I acted was that I did not intend that Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a great work for himself and all mankind." Having made up his mind on the subject, he did not stop to ask if the course would win popular approval, or even if Congress would approve. If he had waited for Congress to act, the opportunity would have passed.
When it came to the question of how to build the canal, he acted with equal promptness and courage. Here again he kept himself steadily ahead of Congress, as the record will show. In fact, Congress, building better than it knew or suspected, left the direction of the work virtually in his hands. In the law which it passed, authorizing him to build the canal through a commission of seven members, Congress decreed that the commission should "in all matters be subject to the direction and control of the President." 
Its failure to pass laws giving more specific definition to the powers which he should exercise, gave the President the very opportunity that he desired, and which he was prompt to seize when the necessity for doing so arose. He invariably gave Congress the opportunity to act before acting on his own account. Thus, when the first commission of seven members, appointed on February 29, 1904, though composed of excellent, even superior material, proved ineffective because of failure to act as an executive unit, he asked Congress to reduce the number of members from seven to three. When Congress declined to do this, he secured the desired result in another way. He requested and obtained the resignations of the members of the commission, appointed a new commission in its stead, and placed the direction of its affairs in an Executive Committee of three members, making the other four members merely an advisory engineering body. This arrangement, while producing excellent results for a time, in turn broke down on the question of divided responsibility, leading to a temporary resumption of seven-headed administration. The President then reached the final solution of the problem by conferring upon a single person absolute powers of direction and control. The manner in which this was done will be described presently.
When Congress placed the work of construction in the President's hands, it left open the question of the type of canal to be built, whether it should be a lock canal above sea-level, or one at sea-level. To obtain light on this question the President invited eminent engineers of the United States and Europe to form an international board of inquiry and advise him of their conclusions. Such a body, composed of eight Americans and five Europeans, assembled in September, 1905, and in January following made two reports, one signed by eight members, five Europeans and three Americans, in favor of a canal at sea-level, and one signed by five Americans in favor of a canal with locks at an elevation of 85 feet above sea-level. The President referred the reports to the Canal Commission and its Chief Engineer in charge of the work on the Isthmus, for consideration, and the Commission and its Chief Engineer agreed in favoring the lock canal plan. The Secretary of War also favored it, and the President transmitted the several reports and findings to Congress with, a recommendation that the lock canal plan be adopted.
Of this decision the President said in a speech at Chicago, on May 10, 1905: "I came to the conclusion that the lock canal at the proposed level would cost only about half as much to build and would be built in half the time, with much less risk; that for large ships the transit would be quicker, and that, taking into account the interest saved, the cost of maintenance would be less."
The merits of the two plans were discussed with much animation in the press of the country, and a debate, marked at times by animosity, occupied the Senate for several weeks. Under firm pressure from the President, that body finally adopted the lock plan by a vote of 36 to 31. The House, which had been known to be strongly in its favor from the outset, concurred with the Senate without a division.
My official connection with canal work began in September, 1905, when at the President's request I was appointed Secretary of the Commission, a position which I held for nine years, extending not only through President Roosevelt's term of office but through the entire period of canal construction. The first two years of my service were spent in Washington and the remaining seven on the Isthmus. What I write on the subject is based, therefore, on the intimate personal knowledge, which I acquired through my official duties and relations.
In order to acquaint himself thoroughly with the work in all its phases, President Roosevelt, accompanied by his wife, paid a visit to the Isthmus in November, 1906. The visit, which was notable as being the first instance in which a President of the United States had passed outside its territory while holding office, attracted wide attention and comment. He went on a war vessel of the Navy, and spent three days on the Isthmus devoting nearly every daylight hour to the inspection of canal work from one ocean to the other. The work at the time was in charge of the second Commission, and had been under full headway from the moment that Congress had adopted the lock plan. In his inspection the President was accompanied by the Chief Engineer, the Chairman and Secretary of the Commission, the Chief Sanitary Officer and other canal officials. Every portion of the work, including engineering plans, sanitary arrangements and regulations for the civil government of the Canal Zone, was subjected to minute scrutiny. The zeal and tireless energy of the President put to a severe strain the physical strength of more than one of his companions.
During his visit a formal reception was extended to him by the President of the Panama Republic, Dr. Manuel Amador, the exercises being held on the platform of the cathedral, fronting the central plaza of the city. In response to an address of welcome by President Amador, the President assured him that the republics of the United States and Panama were "joint trustees for all the world" in doing the work of building the canal, and pledged, on behalf of the United States, the heartiest support and treatment "on a basis of a full and complete and generous equality between the two republics." A notable passage of his speech, considering the revolutionary record of Panama— of more than fifty revolutions in fifty years—was the following :
"The sole desire of the United States as regards the Republic of Panama is to see it increase in wealth, in numbers, in importance, until it becomes, as I so earnestly hope it will become, one of the republics whose history reflects honor upon the entire western world. Such progress and prosperity, Mr. President, can come only through the preservation of both order and liberty; through the observance of those in power of all their rights, obligations, and duties to their fellow-citizens, and through the realization of those out of power that the insurrectionary habit, the habit of civil war, ultimately means destruction to the republic."
The closing sentence of this passage was delivered with great force, the President striding to the front of the platform and fairly hurling it into the faces of the assembled crowd of Panamanians. Although it was a condemnation of what might be called their chief political industry for half a century, the Panamanians greeted it with shouts of approval. That the warning was taken to heart, the subsequent history of the new republic conclusively proves, for no revolution or insurrection has disturbed its development in peace and prosperity since that day.
On the eve of his departure from the Isthmus, the entire canal force was assembled in a great building covering the largest wharf of the Canal Commission at Cristobal, at the Atlantic entrance to the canal, in a mass reception to him. In a speech which he made to the assemblage, the President said that to each of the canal workers had come an opportunity such as was vouchsafed to but few in each generation, adding:
"I shall see if it is not possible to provide for some little memorial, some mark, some badge, which will always distinguish the man who for a certain space of time has done his work well on this Isthmus, just as the button of the Grand Army distinguishes the man who did his work well in the Civil War."
On his return to Washington the President requested Francis D. Millet, the accomplished artist and charming gentleman who lost his life in the Steamship Titanic disaster in April, 1912, to make suggestions in regard to the proposed memorial, and he recommended a medal of the size of a silver dollar. The Isthmian Canal Commission was asked for suggestions as to design and inscriptions, and it recommended that on one side there should be a medallion portrait of President Roosevelt and on the other the seal of the Canal Zone. The first part of the recommendation was adopted by Mr. Millet, but the second was rejected, and instead of the seal there was adopted a bird's-eye view of Culebra Cut, in the completed canal, with a ship passing through, and the motto of the seal, "The Land Divided, the World United,'' inscribed above it. The work was placed in charge of Victor D. Brenner, an eminent sculptor, who modeled a medallion of President Roosevelt at personal sittings at Oyster Bay in July, 1908.
Over one hundred pounds of copper, bronze and other material from abandoned French locomotives and machinery on the Isthmus were shipped to the United States Mint in Philadelphia, and from- these the medals were cast. They were awarded to all Americans in the Canal and Panama Railway employ who had served two years or more on canal work. Each additional two years of service was indicated by the attachment of a bar so inscribed. Distribution of the medals, inscribed with the name of the recipient and the date of his original employment, was begun in September, 1909, and over six thousand were delivered. They were very highly prized by their owners, and the bestowal of them contributed materially to the patriotic pride in their work which was so universal in the canal force, and which was the chief cause of its remarkable efficiency.
As recorded in a previous chapter, Roosevelt was the first President to send a message to Congress in print, rather than in script as had been the invariable custom. He established another precedent in a special message which he sent to Congress on December 17, 1906, setting forth in detail the results of his visit to the Isthmus. He accompanied the text in this instance with reproductions of photographs showing the condition of the work at various points. This was the first illustrated message ever transmitted to Congress and its appearance in the Senate caused a feeling approaching consternation in that august body, whose members looked upon it as that abhorrent thing called "an innovation," a breach of tradition amounting almost to treason. The House, on the contrary, hailed it with joy as a public document of high interest and value for circulation among the people, and several editions, aggregating many thousand copies, were ordered for the use of members. Its interest and attractiveness were so compelling that after a short period of tremors, the Senators overcame their objections sufficiently to order for themselves an edition of ten thousand copies. Another peculiarity of the message was that simplified spelling was used in it for the first and only time in such a document in our history.
The message had a wide circulation both in the United States and Europe and was of inestimable service in giving a clear, specific and unassailable presentation of conditions on the Isthmus at a time when opinion on the subject had been confused and misled by a great flood of newspaper and magazine literature grossly, and often slanderously, misrepresenting them. In fact, no great national enterprise was ever subjected to a more persistent assault than was directed upon the canal work during the first few years of its progress. The assault was apparently so systematic as to suggest that powerful influences of some sort were instigating it. In his special message the President spoke of two kinds of criticism, honest and malicious, and said of the latter:
"Where the slanderers are of foreign origin, I have no concern with them. Where they are Americans, I feel for them the heartiest contempt and indignation; because, in a spirit of wanton dishonesty and malice, they are trying to interfere with, and hamper the execution of, the greatest work of the kind ever attempted, and are seeking to bring to naught the efforts of their countrymen to put to the credit of America one of the giant feats of the ages. The outrageous accusations of these slanderers constitute a gross libel upon a body of public servants who, for trained intelligence, expert ability, high character and devotion to duty, have never been excelled anywhere. There is not a man among them directing the work on the Isthmus who has obtained his position on any other basis than merit alone, and not one who has used his position in any way for his own personal or pecuniary advantage."
In this message the President renewed his request for a smaller commission, saying that a seven-headed body was, of course, a clumsy executive instrument, and asking for a single commissioner with undivided powers and responsibilities. This request, like the former one, was not granted. The President then decided upon a further exercise of his power under the law, and consolidated the positions of Chief Engineer and Chairman of the Commission in a single person.    Scarcely had this been done, when both the Chairman and the Chief Engineer resigned, and the President was fairly compelled to make a radical reorganization of the Commission.   As he said at the time, he had no alternative except to turn it over to the army.   He had made two efforts to have the canal constructed by civilians, but in both instances the civilian who was chief engineer had resigned when he had become tired of the job.   It was useless to try to build the canal with a new chief engineer every twelve months, since a permanent, stable force was unattainable under such conditions, and without a permanent force satisfactory results could not be achieved.   "I propose now," he said, "to put the work in charge of men who will stay on the job till I get tired of having them there, or till I say they may abandon it."   A new commission, composed mainly of army engineers and an engineer of the navy, was appointed and assumed duty on April 1, 1907.
When I became Secretary of the Commission in 1905 it was giving serious consideration to the question of providing means of recreation for the Americans who comprised the clerical, subordinate engineering, and skilled mechanical elements of the working force of the canal. Life on the Isthmus was without relief or diversion of any kind. There were no reputable places of amusement, no clubs, libraries or reading rooms. There was a constant dread of sickness, for the health of the Canal Zone had notyet been fully established, and with this dread the loneliness attending existence in a land not merely foreign but lacking in most of the familiar comforts of modern civilization. The consequence was that after a sojourn of a few months, the American employees became homesick, discontented, and depressed, lost interest in their work, and returned to the United States at the earliest opportunity. During the first two years the annual changes in this part of the force amounted to 90 per cent. It was clearly impossible to hope for anything approximating a permanent force and without a permanent force efficiency could not be secured.
The Commission, working on President Roosevelt's suggestion with the National Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association, drew up a plan for the erection, furnishing and operating, at the Commission's expense, of recreation buildings or club-houses in the largest settlements of canal workers. It was estimated that each of these buildings would cost about $35,000, fully furnished, and that it would cost several thousand dollars a year to run them under Y. M. C. A. management. The legal adviser of the Commission expressed the opinion that such use of the Commission's appropriations was of doubtful legality, and that when the bills came before the Comptroller of the Treasury for approval he might reject them.
I took the matter to President Roosevelt and explained to him the imperative need, physical and moral, of the buildings to the welfare of the employees and the progress of the work. He took the view that they were as necessary as were suitable living quarters, good food, sanitation, and other objects of expenditure for the health and welfare of the force, since with a discontented and constantly changing force the best results could not be secured.
He asked me why the Commission did not go ahead at once and erect the buildings. When I informed him of the legal adviser's opinion, he exclaimed: "You go back and tell that man to keep his mouth shut. He is not there to find objections; let the other fellow do that. I want to build the canal; I do not want to be told how not to do it, but how to do it. You tell the Commission to go ahead and build the club-houses. I'll take the responsibility. If the Comptroller of the Treasury throws out the bills, I'll send a special message to Congress, asking for a special appropriation for the purpose. I will see to it that our boys down there are properly taken care of."
The club-houses were built, the Comptroller passed the bills without question, and no objection to the use of the money was ever raised in any quarter. Before the canal was completed there were five of these larger buildings, costing about $35,000 each and about $7,000 a year each for their operation, together with several smaller ones. They were the centers of social and athletic activities and contributed immeasurably to the well-being and contentment of the force, and, consequently, to the progress of the work.
If President Roosevelt, hesitating about his authority in the matter, had referred it to Congress for action, it is safe to assume what the result would have been. As usual in such cases, there would have been a discussion lasting anywhere from six months to a year, and, at the end of it, an appropriation of a few thousand dollars for a single inadequate building, possibly two. In the meantime the force would have continued to change at the rate of 90 per cent, a year, the progress of the work would have been retarded, not merely for a few years, but for an indefinite period, with possible failure as the ultimate outcome. Roosevelt's prompt action made it possible to have several of the buildings completed within a year, so that their beneficial influence, so vitally needed, began almost immediately.
After the club-houses were put in operation, their managers reported a growing demand for books among the members, and suggested the purchase of small libraries for each building, there being no libraries or collections of books for public use anywhere on the Isthmus. When this suggestion was taken up for consideration by the Commission, the legal adviser again raised the question of legality in connection with such use of the Government money. Again I went to President Roosevelt, stating the case to him, and saying that through inquiries to publishers and booksellers I had ascertained that I could purchase libraries of selected books, containing each 600 volumes, for $500 each. "Why don't you buy them?" he asked. I stated the legal adviser's opinion, whereupon he reiterated with additional vigor, what he had said on the previous occasion about the functions of the legal adviser, and added: "You spend the money; buy the books, and tell the Commission I authorize the expenditure."
Again no objection was made by any one to this expenditure. The need was a real one. Later, when I was stationed on the Isthmus, I was informed by many members of the force that they had read every one of the books in the libraries, and the demand for more was so insistent that a small sum was set apart each year by the Commission for the purchase of additional volumes. The beneficial effects of the presence of the books for use in idle hours can scarcely be overestimated. Again, it may be asked, what would have been the answer if Congress had been requested to appropriate this money?
On the eve of sailing for permanent residence at Panama in July, 1907, President Roosevelt summoned me to Oyster Bay for final suggestions and instructions. He asked me, as soon as I became familiar with the way matters were going there, to write to him freely about them, telling him what obstacles, if any, were hampering Colonel Goethals and interfering with the progress of the work. He bade me assure the Colonel that he should back him up in everything. After I. had been at Panama about a month I wrote to the President a confidential letter—one of a series, in fact—in which I told him that there was one very serious obstacle to the highest attainable degree of progress and that was the seven-headed Commission—that the first essential to the construction of the canal in the best manner and in the shortest period of time was the placing of autocratic power in the hands of one man—Colonel Goethals.
Under date of August 29, 1907, I received a reply from the President in which he said:
"I am not surprised that the Colonel finds the Commission a cumbersome body. As you know, my own belief has always been that there should be one commissioner, and with things as they are at present I would have him the Chief Engineer of the Commission and let him appoint his assistants—or have me appoint them if necessary, though my preference would be to have him do so."
Writing again on September 6, 1907, in reply to another letter of mine in which I had urged him to repeat the effort, already made in vain on former occasions, to get Congress to amend the law and reduce the size of the Commission, the President wrote:
"Evidently Goethals is exactly the man for the work. How fortunate we have been to get him! . . . Whether we get the change of law or not, he shall really have all the powers that he would have if he were the Chief Engineer in sole charge of the work with the executive under him and the other engineers as an advisory board. Of course, the wise thing for him to do is, so far as possible, to act first and then have his acts confirmed by the Commission."
On receipt of this letter I showed it to Colonel Goethals. As he finished reading it, he arose from his chair, and with his always erect figure if possible more erect than ever, he exclaimed: '' Now I have both feet on the ground—and I'11 build the canal!"
How completely the President kept his word will be shown as this narrative proceeds. I will make one other extract from his letters of that period in order to show how unvaryingly the President stood behind Colonel Goethals. His only question to me, whenever I went to him or wrote to him asking for some action on his part, was invariably: "Is this what Goethals wants?" If I answered that it was, nothing more was said and the action was taken. In a letter under date of September 11, 1907, the President wrote in regard to an official on the Isthmus who had been the leader in working up opposition to Colonel Goethals: "He (naming him) has done good work, and I am sure the Colonel will give him an absolutely fair chance. If he does well and acts in entire harmony with the Colonel, he will stay; otherwise he will not. I shall back up the Colonel on all points.''
The official in question was given "an absolutely fair chance" by Colonel Goethals, but he failed to improve it, and he was asked for his resignation. In announcing his forthcoming departure, under date of May 23, 1908, the President wrote me a letter which is worth quoting for its revelation of his attitude toward newspaper assaults:
"Blank is going, so that you need not have any anxiety on that score. As for scandalous articles of the kind you enclose, why of course they will appear about you, and Colonel Goethals and me, and everybody else, and I don't care a snap of my fingers about them."
When in December, 1907, Colonel Goethals arrived in Washington, the President at once fulfilled his promise to put full power into his hands. He told the Colonel to have an Executive Order drawn up to accomplish that purpose. This was done, but when it was submitted to Secretary Taft, then at the head of the War Department, he said that he did not think it was entirely in accordance with law, but as it had been prepared at the President's direction he advised Colonel Goethals to take it to the White House and see what the President thought of it. Colonel Goethals, in his own account of the incident, published in Scribner's Magazine, in May, 1913, describes what took place as follows :

"After reading it, the President reached for a pen, asking if it was satisfactory to me. I replied affirmatively, but explained that Mr. Taft thought that it was not exactly in accord with the law. To this the President replied that he would take his chances with the law, adding that he wanted the canal built."
The Order was signed January 6, 1908, and under its provisions Colonel Goethals assumed the autocratic powers, which he exercised without opposition till the completion of the work. In the narrative in Scribner's Magazine, from which I have quoted above, Colonel Goethals spoke of the effect of the Order:
"Now that the Canal is in operation, I doubt if this result could have been accomplished in any other way than by a single responsible head. This President Roosevelt realized the first time I met him, and I have consequently felt that to this Order and to the support given to me in carrying it out are due the results that have been attained."
In that view I concur absolutely, for I was present on the Isthmus when this and other similar acts, "backing up the Colonel at all points," were performed by President Roosevelt and I know from personal observation that without them the canal would not have been built in anything like the time in which it was.
An incident which occurred immediately following the election of Mr. Wilson to the Presidency illustrated the supreme value of Roosevelt's support to Colonel Goethals. The old opposition forces in the Commission got together immediately with a new member who had been sent down by Secretary Bryan, and questioned the absolute authority which Colonel Goethals had been and was still exercising. They asked him where he got it, and when he replied that it came from the Executive Order of January 6, 1908, they declared that he exceeded the powers conferred in that. He admitted it, but added that President Roosevelt had said to him that he gave him all the powers that he could in that Order but that if he wanted more power, to exercise it and he (Roosevelt) would approve his acts. When they charged that such action was illegal, the Colonel called their attention to the fact that all of President Roosevelt's acts in reference to the canal had been approved by Congress and President Wilson in the new Canal Act for the operation of the canal, and hence had been made lawful.
This was the incontestable fact in the case. If Roosevelt "took his chances" with the law, whenever the law seemed to stand in the way of progress, he won out completely in the end, vindicating his position that while he could not do what the law explicitly forbade him to do, he could do whatever was essential to progress even if the law did not explicitly empower him to do it.
Time was to justify fully the wisdom and foresight of the President's decision in favor of a lock canal, for long before the canal was completed the serious difficulties caused by the "slides" in the walls of the canal through the mountain range, known as the "Culebra Cut," demonstrated conclusively the impossibility of construction at sea level. As Colonel Goethals, under whose able and inspiring leadership the work was carried to completion, said at a critical moment in the task: '' There is not money enough in the world to construct a canal at sea-level, and, if constructed, it could not be kept open."
That the President was willing to change the type of canal, if convinced that he had made a mistake, he showed in a letter that he wrote to Colonel Goethals on December 13, 1908, when the advocates of a sea-level canal were making a concerted and vigorous assault upon the lock type by declaring that the Gatun Dam, which was to hold back the great lake which was to supply water for the locks, was so defective that it would never hold water. "Fake" stories of many kinds were widely circulated in the United States in support of the assertion. It was in the midst of this campaign of misrepresentation that the President wrote:
"I intend to send Mr. Taft down to the Isthmus in January, together with four or five of the best engineers in the country, for a last and complete overhauling of the question in connection with the Gatun Dam. General Davis and several others are convinced that the Gatun Dam will be a failure, and all kinds of rumors come up here about it, while there is an evident movement in favor of a sea-level canal.
"Now, my belief is, simply as a layman and judging from what I have heard, that the present plan is the right plan; that the Gattm Dam can be built with entire safety, and that the sea-level^ canal is not advisable. But I don't care a rap about consistency in the matter, and you mustn't either. Nobody must care anything excepting to get the canal built according to the best and safest plans. The issue is altogether too big to be complicated in any way by any point of pride as to past recommendations by me or by any one else. I want you therefore to approach the subject with an absolutely open mind, and to consult with Mr. Taft and the engineers he will bring with him, purely on the basis of finding out what the facts are and what is best to be done. Will you write me freely as to your judgment now and as to the reasons for your judgment?"
In reply Colonel Goethals expressed implicit faith in the plan of canal and in the Gatun Dam, an opinion which time and experience have amply confirmed. He said to me later in regard to the President's letter that he had the greatest admiration for it—considered it a supreme revelation of Roosevelt's character.
The commission, which accompanied Mr. Taft oh his visit made an exhaustive examination of the dam and of the canal plan and coincided entirely in the opinion of Colonel Goethals.
In fact, it may be said of his securing the building of the canal, as of getting control of the Isthmus, that President Roosevelt "won off his own bat." When Congress failed to give him the powers necessary for the effective construction of the canal, he assumed those powers and conducted the work through Executive Orders. When Congress declined his request to reduce the size of the Canal Commission and concentrate its authority in a single head, he accomplished his object by issuing an Executive Order, which placed supreme power in the hands of Colonel Goethals. From time to time his course was denounced in Congress as illegal and even unconstitutional, but he went calmly and steadily ahead, and when he had accomplished the building of the canal, Congress passed an act for its operation and maintenance in which all his acts were approved. In this proceeding Congress followed the course of the Senate in giving approval to his "taking" of the Isthmus by ratifying the treaty with the Republic of Panama.
Theodore Roosevelt "took" the Isthmus, and he built the canal because he placed action and progress above technical construction of law and was not afraid to take chances with it when the end to be attained could be reached in no other way. His attitude toward the law and the use of the Executive power is clearly defined by himself in this passage from his 'Autobiography':
"The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my Administration, next to the insistence upon courage, honesty, and a genuine democracy of desire to serve the plain people, was my insistence upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed by the Congress under its Constitutional powers. My view was that every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. I decline to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it. My belief was that it was not only his right but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition. I did not care a rap for the mere form and show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the substance."
His line of action was, therefore, in regard to the canal, the one which he followed uniformly in the conduct of public affairs—not to find reasons for not doing it, but ways in which to do it—to seek for results and get them. Also, not to pick out weak men for great tasks, but to select the best and strongest men he could obtain and, when selected, to back them to the limit so long as they showed themselves equal to the task. He found in Colonel Goethals a man of his own sort, who was not afraid to take power and who knew how to exercise it. The two made a noble team, and they scored a "victory of peace" that has brought honor to the American name throughout the world.

***,.

**,.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX,.
 SECRET HISTORY OF THE ALGECIEAS CONFERENCE,.
it is a diplomatic secret that President Roosevelt is entitled to the credit of arranging the important Algeciras Conference of 1906 and dictating the terms on which war between France and Germany, with the possible involvement of England as the ally of France, was averted.   His service as peacemaker in this controversy, rendered in response to the earnest and repeated appeals of the Kaiser, was equaled only by that which at the same time he was rendering to the world in bringing to an end the war between Russia and Japan.   Secretary Root said of it to me, many years later, that he considered it of far greater importance to the world than  the Portsmouth  settlement. Happily a full history of what Roosevelt did is extant, narrated by himself.   It is in the form of a letter, addressed on April 28, 1906, to Whitelaw Reid, then American Ambassador in London.   This letter, which bears the impress of Roosevelt in every line, contains all the confidential correspondence which passed between him and the German and French Ambassadors, with the communications of their governments, including messages of the Kaiser.   In the end the President fairly compelled the Kaiser to accept the terms upon which the final agreement was reached by the Convention.   These documents have never been published, not even in the Blue Book, as the President says in his letter.   Their full text is given here as historical material of the first interest and value.
THE LETTER Absolutely private and confidential.

My dear Reid:	April 28, 1906 
Now you are about to receive a quarto-volume from me and I hope it will not daunt you. But there has been so much that is amusing and interesting, and indeed so much that has been of importance, in the queer negotiations wherein I have been the medium between France and Germany during the past year that it is possibly worth your while to know of them a little in detail.
On March 6, 1905, Sternburg came to me with a message from the Kaiser to ask me to join with the Kaiser in informing the Sultan of Morocco that he ought to reform his government, and that if he would do so we would stand behind him for the open door and would support him in any opposition he might make to any particular nation (that is to France) which sought to obtain exclusive control of Morocco. On the following day he submitted to me a memorandum to the same effect, stating that the Emperor regarded France and Spain as "a political unity," who wished to divide up Morocco between themselves and debar her markets to the rest of the world, and that if Spain should occupy Tangiers and France to the Hinterland they would be able to dominate the roads to the Near and Far East. I answered this by stating that I did not see my way clear to interfere in the matter, for I did not think that our interests were sufficiently great, but expressed my friendliness to Germany generally and my expectation and belief that her policy was one for peace. I had some further interviews with Speck, and on April 5th he wrote me again. This time he maintained that England and France were allies; that he must insist upon a conference of the powers to settle the fate of Morocco-. In this memorandum he (the Emperor) stated that Germany asked for no gains in Morocco; she simply defended her interests and stood for equal rights to all nations there. He then added, in Speck's words:
"Besides this she is bound to think of her national dignity. This makes it necessary for her to point out to France that her national interests cannot be disposed of without asking her for her consent and cooperation. Since 35 years Germany has been obliged to keep an armed defensive towards France. As soon as France discovers that Germany meekly submits to her bullying, we feel sure that she will become more aggressive in other quarters and we do not consider a demand for a revision of the Treaty of Frankfort to be far off."
The Emperor evidently felt safe in the position of defiance to France, which he had already adopted, because as he (Speck) said: "According to the information which the Emperor has received he feels sure that England's aid to France in the matter will not go beyond a 'diplomatic support.' This, he hopes, will keep France isolated, and, with or without a conference, he expects that the status quo in Morocco can be peacefully improved and, above all, the rights of all foreigners safeguarded there.'' On April 13th Speck wrote me again, saying that the Italian Government had informed the Emperor of their sympathy with his position, and of their conviction that France would "only continue her aggressive policy in Morocco, aimed at all non-French interests, if she feels sure that England will stand by her and eventually show herself ready to back her up by force of arms." To this the Emperor added that he believed that the attitude of England would depend upon the attitude of the United States, and asked us to tell England that we thought there should be a conference.
On April 25th he wrote me again, saying that the Emperor would be most grateful to me if I would intimate to England that I would like to see her and Germany in harmony in their dealings with Morocco. On May 13th he sent me another memorandum, insisting that there must be a general conference and complaining of England for opposing this conference, and stating that the latter would only drop her opposition if I would give her a hint to do so. The Emperor also in this memorandum stated, with a distinct note of self-righteousness, that he had refused invitations from France to come to an agreement with her alone, because he was disinterestedly championing the cause of the world at large. He then used these words: 
"The Emperor states that his policy is absolutely clear and simple. In spite of special advantages offered to him he stands by the treaty rights granted to all. Only if he should discover that he should receive no support from the interested treaty powers in connection with the open door and the conference, he would be forced to think of Germany alone. Only then—and not before—he would have to choose between the possibility of a war with France and the examining of those conditions which France may have to propose, so as to avoid a war."
During the rest of this letter Speck describes the Emperor's indignation with the King of England and with the British Government, and expresses the Emperor's belief that France, England and Russia possibly with the cooperation of Japan were aiming at the partition of China. This last supposition seemed to me mere lunacy, if it was put forward with sincerity. The comic feature of the memorandum, considering the closeness of Germany's relations with Russia at the outset of the Russo-Japanese war, was that the Emperor complained that France, ignoring all the laws of nations, had offered the Russian fleet a safe retreat in the harbors of Indo-China, and had provided that fleet with means to prepare its attack, which action might result in a turn of the war in favor of Russia. The Emperor added:
'' On the other hand the Emperor feels that England will drop this or any other plan, if she finds out in time that it would be opposed by America. The violent renewal of the anti-German movement in England seems to be caused by Germany's attempt to balk any coalition of Powers directed against China after the conclusion of peace."
On May 29th the Emperor stated that both England and France had offered to give Germany a sphere of interest in Morocco if she would accept it and let the question remain quiet, but that the Emperor had refused, stating that he was for the maintenance "of the status quo and for the open door and for equal treatment of all nations whose rights were established by treaties." (It will be seen later on how comically the Emperor tried to go back on this proposition.) Two days later Speck sent me another memorandum from the Emperor, stating that he regarded the Morocco question not as an isolated question, but as one which might develop into a starting point for a new grouping of the Powers. He again, in this memorandum, threatened a war with France, using the following language: "If England is successful in causing the refusal of France to join in a conference to settle the Morocco question, Germany will have to choose between war with France or between an understanding with France with regard to Morocco, which repeatedly has been sought for by France. Such an understanding, the Emperor believes, is to form the basis of a new grouping of European powers to which he is strongly opposed, being most anxious to maintain in the future his attitude, especially with regard to the Far East, as clearly explained to you. Everything he thinks depends on the attitude you may consider fit to take towards a conference of the treaty powers to settle the Morocco question. England is the only power which opposes such a conference, though it seems sure she will drop her objections in case you should participate in the conference." The day after I received yet another letter from Speck, showing that the United States had signed the convention of Madrid with reference to Morocco, in 1880.
Meanwhile my own attitude can be best gathered by the following two letters, which I sent while on my bear hunt, one to Taft, who was then acting as Secretary of State in Hay's absence, and the other to Speck:
Confidential.
Dictated by the President in camp, East Divide Creek, Colorado.
glenwood springs, colo.,
April 20, 1905. Dear Will: I think you are keeping the lid on in great shape! Apparently the Santo Domingo pot is not bubbling much at present, but we have troubles enough elsewhere.
The Kaiser's pipe-dream this week takes the form of Morocco. Speck has written me an urgent appeal to sound the British Government and find out whether they intend to back up France in gobbling Morocco. I have told him to see you and lay the matter definitely before you. There was one part of the Kaiser's letter which he asked me to treat as strictly confidential, and I do not know whether Speck will tell you about it or not. ... I do not feel that as a Government we should interfere in the Morocco matter. We have other fish to fry and we have no real interest in Morocco. I do not care to take sides between France and Germany in the matter.
At the same time if I can find out what Germany wants I shall be glad to oblige her if possible, and I am sincerely anxious to bring about a better state of feeling between England and Germany. Each nation is working itself up to a condition of desperate hatred of the other; each from sheer fear of the other. The Kaiser is dead sure that England intends to attack him. The English Government and a large share of the English people are equally sure that Germany intends to attack England. Now, in my view this action of Germany in embroiling herself with France over Morocco is proof positive that she has not the slightest intention of attacking England. I am very clear in my belief that England utterly over-estimates, as well as misestimates, Germany's singleness of purpose, by attributing to the German Foreign Office the kind of power of continuity of aim which it had from '64 to '71. I do not wish to suggest anything whatever as to England's attitude in Morocco, but if we can find out that attitude with propriety and inform the Kaiser of it, I shall be glad to do so. But I have to leave a large discretion in your hands in this matter, for if we find that it will make the English suspicious—that is, will make them think we are acting as decoy ducks for Germany—why, we shall have to drop the business. Fortunately, you and I play the diplomatic game exactly alike, and I should advise your being absolutely frank with both Speck and the British people along the lines I have indicated, unless you have counter suggestions to make. Remember, however, that both parties are very suspicious. You remember the King's message to me through Harry White and his earnest warning to me that I should remember that England was our real friend and that Germany was only a make-believe friend. In just the same way the Germans are always insisting that England is really on the point of entering into a general coalition which would practically be inimical to us—an act which apart from moral considerations I regard the British Government as altogether too flabby to venture upon. ******
Ever yours,
theodoRe Roosevelt,
L.
P. S. If you deem it wise to see the British Ambassador at all, do be careful to explain to him that we are taking sides neither with France nor Germany, but that we would like to convey Germany's request for information to England, and that we are acting in thus conveying it simply from a desire to make things as comfortable between England and Germany as possible. . . .
Dictated by the President in camp, East Divide Creek, Colorado. Personal.
glenwood springs, colorado,
April 20, 1905. Dear Speck:
Your letter containing the Emperor's communication about Morocco is the first thing that has made me wish I was not off on a hunt, for I hardly know how to arrange out here what the Emperor requests. As I told you before, I dislike taking a position in any matter like this unless I fully intend to back it up, and our interests in Morocco are not sufficiently great to make me feel justified in entangling our Government in the matter. You do not have to be told by me that I am already working in the most cordial agreement with the Emperor about China and the Japanese-Russian war, while I have matters of my own in Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Panama to which I must give attention and from which I do not feel it right to be diverted; but I have told Taft substantially what you have said in your letter excepting the portion about the communication from the Italian Government which the Emperor requested me to treat as purely confidential. Will you take this letter at once to Secretary Taft, show it to him, and tell him exactly how far you want us to go in sounding the British Government. Meanwhile I shall write him, quoting the proposal of the Emperor as to our sounding the British Government and shall suggest his finding out from Sir Mortimer what the British Government's views in the matter are. I do not think I should go any further than this at present. I am sorry I am not in Washington, for I should at once see the British Ambassador myself and let you know just how things stood.
Thank Admiral von Tirpitz for the very interesting memorandum of the Navy.
******
Sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt,
Per W. L. Jr. baRon H. sternburg, German Ambassador,
Washington, D. C.
At the end of May I came back to Washington, and found Jusserand and Speck both greatly concerned lest there should be a war between France and Germany. Both of them were sincerely anxious to avert such a possibility, and each thought that his own Government ought to make concessions to avoid the war. Speck, I firmly believe, did not approve of the action his Government was taking, but of course was obliged loyally to back up its position. Jusserand, on the other hand, sympathized absolutely with the general French indignation with Germany, but felt that it was better to yield so far as the conference was concerned, if it could be done honorably, rather than have a war.
I saw Sir Mortimer on the matter, but could get very little out of him. He was bitter about Germany, and so far as he represented the British Government it would appear that they were anxious to see Germany humiliated by France's refusal to enter a conference, and that they were quite willing to face the possibility of war under such circumstances. I did not think this showed much valor on their part, although from their point of view it was sagacious, as of course in such a war, where the British and French fleets would be united, the German fleet could have done absolutely nothing; while on land, where Germany was so powerful, it would be France alone that would stand, and would have to stand, the brunt of the battle. I desired to do anything I legitimately could for France; because I like France, and I thought her in this instance to be in the right; but I did not intend to take any position which I would not be willing at all costs to maintain.
On June 5th you telegraphed from London that Lansdowne had asked for an indication of my views on the Morocco situation, and stated that he regarded the proposal of joint action of the powers represented in Morocco as unfortunate, and as possibly planned to embarrass France. About the same time White cabled from Rome that the Italian Government evidently feared the conference was inevitable unless France was able otherwise to pacify Germany's susceptibilities, but that the British Ambassador felt sure that there would be no conference.
I suppose I need hardly say that the English, French and Italian representatives all strenuously denied the statements as to the propositions which Germany said their nations had made to her as regards her sphere of interest in Morocco, etc. I did not regard the various matters in which there was this contradiction as important; partly because I had not at any time credited the three powers named with having made the several propositions they were alleged by the German Government to have made.
On June llth, the Kaiser, through Speck, sent me another memorandum, running as follows:
"June 11, 1905. '' memorandum—(Morocco)
"Mr. Rouvier (who has shown himself distinctly friendly to Germany and has been opposing Mr. Delcasse) has indirectly informed the German Charge d'Affaires in Paris that England has made a formal offer to France to enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with England which would be directed against Germany. At present the leading statesmen of France are opposed to such an alliance, because the majority of the members of the French Government still hope to come to a satisfactory agreement with Germany. But it was emphasized, the time had arrived for Germany to make up her mind with regard to Morocco, otherwise France would be forced to place herself in closer touch with England.
"Indirectly Germany has been given to understand that the French Government is desirous of giving her a portion of Morocco under the name of a 'sphere of interest,' France apportioning the greater part of Morocco to herself. Such an offer Germany now can not accept, as it was through the council of Germany that the Sultan of Morocco placed himself on the ground of the conference of Madrid. Hence Germany is pledged by honor to stand by the Sultan. 'Here,' says the Emperor, 'is a curious case:—we may be forced into war not because we have not been grabbing after people's land, but because we refuse to take it.'
"My people are sure that England would now back France by force of arms in a war against Germany, not on account of Morocco, but on account of Germany's policy in the Far East. The combined naval forces of England and France would undoubtedly smash the German navy and give England, France, Japan and Russia a more free hand in the Far East, and Russia might try to cede a portion of China to Japan as a war indemnity, instead of parting with the island of Saghalien. The previous destruction of the German navy undoubtedly would be welcomed by these powers.
"As regards a conference to be held in Morocco, the British Government has asked for time to consider the question. The Emperor feels sure that if you could give a hint now in London and in Paris that, all things put together, you would consider a conference as the most satisfactory means to bring the Morocco question to a peaceful solution, you would render the peace of the world another great service, without encountering any risk. In ease you should not feel inclined to take this step the Emperor believes that your influence could prevent England from joining a Franco-German war, started by the aggressive policy of France in Morocco.
"As to the present attitude in France towards the Morocco question a marked change is noticeable since the retirement of Mr. Delcasse. Voices are now heard which consider a conference not only as the most legal, but also as the safest way to clear a situation which has been created by the reckless statesmanship of Mr. Delcasse."
It really did look as if there might be a war, and I felt in honor bound to try to prevent the war if I could, in the first place, because I should have felt such a war to be a real calamity to civilization; and in the next place, as I was already trying to bring about peace between Russia and Japan, I felt that a new conflict might result in what would literally be a world-conflagration; and finally, for the sake of France. Accordingly, I took active hold of the matter with both Speck and Jusserand, and after a series of communications with the French Government, through Jusserand, got things temporarily straightened up. Jusserand repeated to his government substantially just what I said. I told him that as chief of state I could not let America do anything quixotic, but that I had a real sentiment for France; that I would not advise her to do anything humiliating or disgraceful; but that it was eminently wise to avoid a war if it could be done by adopting a course which would save the Emperor's self-esteem; that for such purpose it was wise to help him save his face. I urged upon the French Government, in the first place, the great danger of war to them, and the fact that British assistance could avail them very, very little in the event of such a war, because France would be in danger of invasion by land; and in the next place, I pointed out that if there were a conference of the Powers France would have every reason to believe that the conference would not sanction any unjust attack by Germany upon French interests, and that if all the Powers, or practically all the Powers, in the conference took an attitude favorable to France on such a point it would make it well-nigh impossible for Germany to assail her. I explained that I would not accept the invitation of the conference unless France was willing, and that if I went in I would treat both sides with absolute justice, and would, if necessary, take very strong grounds against any attitude of Germany which seemed to me unjust and unfair.
At last, the French Government informed me through Jusserand that it would agree to the conference. At this time I was having numerous interviews with both Jusserand and Speck. With Speck I was on close terms; with Jusserand, who is one of the best men I have ever met, and whose country was in the right on this issue, I was on even closer terms. On the 23d of June he received from the French Minister of Foreign Affairs a despatch running in part as follows:
[Original in French]
"During his recent conversations with you, President Roosevelt came to the conclusion that however unjust it might be on the part of Germany to declare war under the present circumstances, it was nevertheless possible, and that it should be avoided by the use of conciliation, and that among the concessions which we might make a conference would without doubt be the least undesirable.
"When communicating to the President our reply to the German note, be good enough to tell him that his ideas and advice inspired it. At first we thought that it would suffice to contradict the false statements which had been published regarding our action in Morocco and to show that such action menaced no interests. We have gone farther and shown ourselves ready to accept, owing to necessity, the idea of a conference, in spite of serious reasons we had to entertain objections to such a project.
"But nothing has so far occurred to prove that even by a conference an agreement can be reached. Up to the present moment it is impossible to determine with certainty the immediate aim of Germany. The German Ambassador assures us that so far as Germany is concerned there is in all this affair only a question of form and of etiquette, that it is only to test the right of the signatory powers to the Convention of Madrid, that a temporary regime of very short duration would suffice to establish such right, and that then France could take up again the realization of her program. But in thus circumscribing the range of German action, Prince Radolin fails to make in the name of his Government any proposition save that of a conference. The rest, he says, is merely a deduction, which he himself makes from the nature of things, and he avoids making known the attitude, which the German Government will take at the conference. At the same time the Emperor takes steps to inform us in Paris that all the forces of Germany are behind the Sultan of Morocco, and he uses the most menacing language towards us at Washington, at Borne and at Madrid.
"Mr. Roosevelt can avert the danger. Tell him that the exceptional authority which attaches to his counsel, not only because of his office, but also because of his character, his sense of right and justice, and his clear perception of what are the highest interests, qualify him in supreme degree to intervene in favor of the maintenance of peace. The insistence with which the Emperor has appealed to him, has left the way open for the President to take the initiative that we expect from his friendship."
On the 25th of June Jusserand sent a despatch to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, running in full as follows:
[Original in French]
"I talked with President Roosevelt to-night regarding the reasons for urgent intervention on his part in order to avoid the break with which Germany would seem to desire to menace us. In order to bring him into touch with the situation, I used the data contained in your two telegrams.
"My appeals were most favorably received. The President declared to me that he would have this evening a very earnest conversation with Baron Sternburg, during which he would insist, in the first place, upon what the Emperor owes to himself, and also upon his solicitude for his fame in history, for no one would understand, or pardon wars entered into for frivolous reasons. He will emphasize the very real successes achieved by German diplomacy, and also the fact of our adhering to his idea of a conference, under conditions regarding the details of which it is impossible not to come to an understanding. He will, on the other hand, allude to the risks to be run, citing the opinion of French experts on the condition of the French army, and saying that it is not used by me simply to make an impression, but it is really what they think of the army and that a German victory is by no means assured. He will mention finally the support which without doubt would not fail us and which would be very formidable for Germany. 'I would like to be sure that my words will bear fruit,' Mr. Roosevelt added, 'but unfortunately I am not; however, in any event you can be sure that I will be as energetic as possible in favor of an amicable understanding and that I shall neglect nothing which appears to me as being conducive to such an end.'
"I informed the President of the sentiments which Your Excellency instructed me to express to him. He did not desire to let me finish, saying that what he was doing was only too natural to warrant any thanks. I added that the telegram which I had received from the President of the Council expressed much gratitude, but not the least surprise. 'There,' said the President, 'is the real compliment which gratifies me.' "
On June 18th, Speck wrote to me, saying that the Emperor greatly appreciated the change which was noticed in the policy of France since the action I had taken as regards the Morocco question, adding, "Your diplomatic activity with regard to France, the Emperor says, has been the greatest blessing to the peace of the world." I wrote to Speck the following three letters, all of which I showed to Jusserand before I sent them, as I did not wish there to be any suspicion of double dealing on my part; and Jusserand is a man of such excellent judgment, so sound and cool-headed, and of so high a standard of personal and professional honor that I could trust him completely. Indeed, it was only because both Jusserand and Sternburg were such excellent men, that I was enabled to do anything at all in so difficult and delicate a matter. I could only have acted with men I was sure of. With such a tricky creature as the Russian Cassini, for instance, I could have done absolutely nothing; and little or nothing with amiable Sir Mortimer.
My three letters were as follows:
Personal.
white house, washington, 
June 20, 1905. Dear Speck:

Pray thank His Majesty and say that if I have been of any use in keeping the peace I am of course more than glad. I shall be in Massachusetts for the next two days, but will see you Friday or Saturday.
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE Roosevelt. baron H. STERNBURG,
The German Ambassador,
Deer Park, Maryland.
white house,
washington, June 23, 1905.
My dear Mr. Ambassador:
I hope to see you at nine Sunday evening. Meanwhile, pray communicate to His Majesty that in accordance with the suggestion I made to Ambassador Jusserand in pursuance of the letter you sent me, the French Government informs me unofficially through the Ambassador that it has ceased its opposition to a conference of the powers on Morocco. It seems as a matter of course that a program of the conference would be needed in advance in accordance with the usual custom in such cases. I suggest that that be arranged between Germany and France.
Let me congratulate the Emperor most warmly on his diplomatic success in securing the assent of the French Government to the holding of this conference. I had not believed that the Emperor would be able to secure this assent and to bring about this conference, from which undoubtedly a peaceful solution of all the troubles will come. I need not say to you that I consider such, peaceful solution as vitally necessary to the welfare of the world at this time, and in view of its having been secured by the Emperor's success in obtaining this conference, I wish again to express my hearty congratulation. It is a diplomatic triumph of the first magnitude.
Faithfully yours,
THEODORE Roosevelt.
babon H. STERNBURG,
The German Ambassador.
white house,
washington, June 25, 1905. My dear Mr. Ambassador:
I have received from M. Jusserand the following extract from a telegram sent to him by M. Rouvier:
"You reported to me your conversation with President Roosevelt, who asked you to inform us that, according to his views, much prudence should be used in present circumstances, and that we ought to consider the idea of a conference as a concession we might make. ... Be so good as to tell the President that his reflections and advice have received from us due consideration and have caused us to take the resolution we have just adopted. We had first thought that, in order to remove the erroneous impressions held about our action in Morocco, it would be enough to show that it threatens no interests whatsoever. But now we have gone further, and have declared that we are ready to accept a conference, in spite of the serious reasons we had to entertain objections against such a project."
I shall ask, Mr. Ambassador, that in forwarding this information to His Majesty you explain that it is of course confidential.
I need hardly tell you how glad I was to secure this information from the French Ambassador. As you know, I was at first extremely reluctant to do anything in the matter which might savor of officious interference on my part; and I finally determined to present the case to the French Government only because I wished to do anything I properly could do which the Emperor asked, and of course also because I felt the extreme importance of doing anything possible to maintain the peace of the world. As you know, I made up my mind to speak to France rather than to England, because it seemed to me that it would be useless to speak to England; for I felt that if a war were to break out, whatever might happen to France, England would profit immensely, while Germany would lose her colonies and perhaps her fleet. Such being the case, I did not feel that anything I might say would carry any weight with England, and instead I made a very earnest request of France that she should do as the Emperor desired and agree to hold the conference. The French Government have now done just what at His Majesty's request I urged should be done.
Now in turn I most earnestly and with all respect urge that His Majesty show himself satisfied and accept this yielding to his wishes by France. I trust that the Emperor understands that I would not for any consideration advise him to do anything that would be against the interest or the honor either of himself or of his people, any more than I would counsel such an action as regards my own country; and I say conscientiously that I am advising just the conduct that I would myself take under like circumstances; and I venture to give the advice at all only because, as I took the action I did on the Emperor's request, it seems but right that in reporting the effect of this action I should* give my own views thereon. I say with all possible emphasis that I regard this yielding by France, this concession by her which she had said she could not make and which she now has made, as representing a genuine triumph for the Emperor's diplomacy; so that if the result is now accepted it will be not merely honorable for Germany but a triumph. You know that I am not merely a sincere admirer and well-wisher of Germany, but also of His Majesty. I feel that he stands as the leader among the sovereigns of to-day who have their faces set toward the future, and that it is not only of the utmost importance for his own people but of the utmost importance for all mankind that his power and leadership for good should be unimpaired. I feel that now, having obtained what he asks, it would be most unfortunate even to seem to raise questions about minor details, for if under such circumstances the dreadful calamity of war should happen, I fear that his high and honorable fame might be clouded. He has won a great triumph; he has obtained what his opponents in England and France said he never would obtain, and what I myself did not believe he could obtain. The result is a striking tribute to him personally no less than to his nation, and I earnestly hope that he can see his way clear to accept it as the triumph it is. With high regard,
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE roosevelt. baron H. STERNBURG, German Ambassador.
There was, however, much haggling as to exactly what should be discussed at the conference; and both Jusserand and Speck came to me to say they were still on the verge of seeing the negotiations broken off. Finally I made a pencil memorandum as follows: '' The two Governments consent to go to the conference with no program, and to discuss there all questions in regard to Morocco, save of course where either is in honor bound by a previous agreement with another power." I gave a copy of this memorandum to Jusserand and the memorandum itself to Speck, and after they had transmitted it to their respective governments, I received the assent of both governments to the proposition. I explained to both that I did not care to appear in the matter, and that no publicity whatever would be given by me or by any of our representatives to what I had done, and I thought it far better that it should take the shape of an agreement freely entered into by themselves. You may remember that not a hint of any kind got out throughout the whole of last summer as to my taking any part in this Morocco business.
Jusserand forwarded my memorandum in a despatch to his home government, on June 28th, which ran in part as follows:
[Original in French]
"I called to mind the grave reasons which we have for discarding all idea of a conference without previously having drawn up a program, or at least without an understanding, indicating that which we might have reason to expect and guaranteeing in particular that solemn international undertakings, which have for a long time been public property, should not be brought into question. "We could not be asked to deny our signature.
"With a sovereign of the temperament of William II, who has just given, by the very documents which he has furnished to the President, such disquieting proofs of his lack of moderation and even of exactness, we are more particularly inclined to a course of prudence than with another.
"Following these remarks the President took a piece of paper and endeavored to find some formula, which would be acceptable to the two countries, and which would at the same time respect the pride of William II and our rights. The text of this formula is given below, which formula, however, could be slightly modified before being sent, but in which the general sense will certainly remain the same.
"The President in no wise contends that this is a perfect and unalterable formula, but he hopes that it perhaps may offer the basis of an understanding and therefore he had it submitted to the Kaiser by Baron Sternburg on the afternoon of Sunday. He is certain that the scope of such an understanding would be to eliminate from discussion the advantages of which we have assured ourselves with various foreign nations, for we have not obtained them except in consideration of making corresponding concessions to their profit, which must remain irrevocable and which we are in honor bound to live up to. The acceptance therefore of a formula of this nature would be, in short, the realization of the program desired by us."
On June 28th I received the following letter from Speck:
deer park, md.,
June 28, 1905. Dear Mr. President:
I have just received a telegram from Berlin, which expresses highest satisfaction and gratitude with regard to the latest step you undertook in the interest of the Morocco conference.
The telegram repeats a wire from the German Ambassador at Paris, who says that Rouvier is having a most difficult time. Delcasse's followers are trying hard to force him to accept Delcasse's colonial program, and England is making a frantic effort to prevent the acceptance of the invitation to the conference by the council of ministers, which meets to-day. The Ambassador expresses the belief that Rouvier's backing will be strong enough to pull him through. The Emperor has requested me to tell you that in case during the coming conference differences of opinion should arise between France and Germany, he, in every case, will be ready to back up the decision which you should consider to be the most fair and the most practical.
In doing this he wants to prove that the assistance which you have rendered to Germany has been rendered in the interest of peace alone, and without any selfish motives.
Believe me, Mr. President,
Yours most sincerely,
STERNBURG.
To the president op the united states or america,
Sagamore Hill.

***,.

**,.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN,.

SECRET HISTORY OF THE ALGECIRAS CONFERENCE-CONCLUDED,.
it was a couple of days after this that I received from both governments the information that they had agreed on substantially the plan outlined in my memorandum.
On July llth I received a letter from Jusserand, running in part as follows:
"I leave greatly comforted by the news concerning Morocco. The agreement arrived at is in substance the one we had considered and the acceptation of which you did so very much to secure. Letters just received by me from Paris show that your beneficent influence at this grave juncture is deeply and gratefully felt. They confirm also what I guessed was the case, that is, that there was a point where more yielding would have been impossible; everybody in France felt it, and people braced up silently in view of possible great events."
A fortnight afterwards the Kaiser got uneasy again, and for some time insisted upon the conference being held in Morocco, and upon Revoil not being sent by France as a delegate. Again I had to do some cabling to both the French and German Governments, but finally the Kaiser's objections were removed. I had urged Jusserand not to let his people boast or be disagreeable and try to humiliate the Kaiser in connection with the conference, because the important point was for them to get the kernel of the nut, and they did not have to consider the shell. On August 9th Jusserand wrote me, expressing the thanks of his Government for what I had done; the German Foreign Office thanked me by cable.
After this, trouble ceased as far as I was concerned, until the Conference met at Algeciras. Soon after the Conference opened I began to have a succession of visits from Speck and from Jusserand. Jusserand generally gave me his messages verbally. Speck submitted them in writing. Loyal though Speck was to his Government, both Root and I became convinced that down in his heart the honest, brave little gentleman did not really believe Germany was acting as she should act. The attitude of France, as represented by the French representatives at Algeciras, seemed to be more reasonable; but I was entirely sure of France only when I could act directly through Jusserand, who rang true under any and all circumstances. . . .
Germany sought to impress us with the fact that all the other Powers but England were in her favor. We heard, however, both from Russia and Italy that they thought the German position was wrong, and were anxious that we should do something to prevent Germany from obtaining a sphere of influence in Morocco. We became convinced that Austria was a mere cat's-paw for Germany, and that Germany was aiming in effect at the partition of Morocco, which was the very reverse of what she was claiming to desire. She first endeavored to secure a port for herself, and then a separate port, nominally for Holland or Switzerland, which we were convinced would, with the adjacent Hinterland, become in effect German. The French said they would not yield on these points, and, as you know, it looked as if the Conference would come to nothing, and that there would then be the possibility of trouble between France and Germany. Our view was that the interests of France and Spain in Morocco were far greater than those of other powers. Finally we took the matter up by correspondence with Germany, as follows, Jusserand being kept informed of what we were doing:
No. 333.
department of state,
washington,  February 19, 1906. Excellency:
The President has been keeping in mind the suggestion of your memorandum of January 29th that the United States should propose "to entrust the Sultan of Morocco with the organization of the police forces within his domains and to allow him certain funds, and to establish an international control with regard to the management of these funds, and the carrying out of the whole plan."
Our advices from Algeciras indicate that the time has been reached when such a proposal should be made, if at all, and also that to be effective it should now be somewhat more specific in regard to the nature of the international control.
If it is acceptable to Germany, the President will make the proposal suggested with the following details, which should, perhaps, be called modifications, but which he does not consider to interfere with the accomplishment of the end Germany had in view in securing the conference. He will propose:
1.	That the organization and maintenance of police
forces in all the ports be entrusted to the Sultan, the men
and officers to be Moors.
2.	That the money to maintain the force be furnished
by the proposed international bank, the stock of which shall
be allotted to all the powers in equal shares (except for
some small preference claimed by France, which he considers immaterial).
3.	That duties of instruction, discipline, pay and assisting in management and control be entrusted to French and Spanish officers and non-commissioned officers, to be appointed by the Sultan on presentation of names by their Legations.
That the senior French and Spanish instructing officers report annually to the government of Morocco, and to the government of Italy, the Mediterranean Power, which shall have the right of inspection and verification, and to demand further reports in behalf of and for the information of the Powers. The expense of such inspection, etc., etc., to be deemed a part of the cost of police maintenance.
   4. That full assurances be given by France and Spain, and made obligatory upon all their officers who shall be appointed by the Sultan, for the open door, both as to trade, equal treatment and opportunity in competition for public works and concessions.
The foregoing draft has been carefully framed with reference to the existing situation at Algeciras, so as to give it a form which would make concessions from- the French position as easy as possible, and the President thinks that it conserves the principle of the open door without unduly recognizing the claims which rest upon proximity and preponderance of trade interests. He thinks it is fair, and earnestly hopes that it may receive the Emperor's approval.
Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration.
elihu Root.
His excellency,
baron speck von sternbtibg,  Etc., etc., etc.
imperial german embassy,
washington,  February 22, 1906. Dear Mr. President:
The Emperor has requested me to express to you his hearty thanks for your offer to mediate in the Morocco question. He especially appreciates that you will only act as mediator in agreement with him.
He fully agrees with your views on points 1, 2 and 4 and considers it a sound idea that the funds for the maintenance of the police forces should be paid out of the State Bank of Morocco, to be founded, and that all Powers can equally participate in this bank. The question of granting to France a slight preference he thinks might be discussed. According to point 3, only French and Spanish officers and non-commissioned officers are to be selected. This proposal covers in the main the last French proposal.
Though the Emperor felt unable to accept this proposal it has been subjected to another close examination as soon as your offer of mediation had been received. But this has not been able to convince him that a settlement on such lines could be considered in harmony with the principle accepted by the conference that all Powers are to receive equal treatment.
According to the proposal the French and Spanish officers shall not be freely chosen by the Sultan, but be named by their respective legations. They are to be placed in charge of the drill, the discipline and the pay of the police forces of Morocco, and they are also to participate in their administration and control. This would place the police forces entirely into their hands, and the police organization would be tantamount to a Franco-Spanish double mandate and mean a monopoly of these two countries, which would heavily curtail the political and the economic positions of the other nations.
The Emperor is of the opinion that the Sultan should be permitted a free choice among the other nations. This would certainly not exclude such modifications, which should be considered as practical. For instance, it might be possible to allow the Sultan to choose the officers among those nations which are participating in the new State bank, hence have greater interests in Morocco. It could be further stipulated, in case France should fear that under the present conditions the Sultan might favor German officers, that at least four different nationalities should be taken into consideration in an equal manner. Ultimately, so as to acknowledge the special rights of France in Morocco, the Sultan might place the police control in Tangiers, and perhaps in some other port, entirely in the hands of French officers. In all the other ports officers of various nations would cooperate.
As to the uniformity of the whole of the police force it would not seem difficult to establish a uniformity in organization and armament by issuing regulations.
In case it should be possible to widen your proposal for mediation according to the above suggestions, Germany would gladly negotiate on this new basis and the Emperor would be highly gratified if you should be pleased to further offer your mediation. Believe me, Mr. President,
Yours most sincerely,
steenbubg.
To the pResident of the united states oF america,
Washington, D. C.
No. 342.	(L)
March 7, 1906. Excellency:
May I ask you to transmit to the German Emperor a message from the President which is as follows:
"I have given most earnest thought to Your Majesty's comments on the suggestion contained in Mr. Root's letter of February 19th, but I cannot bring myself to feel that I ought to ask France to make further concessions than the arrangement suggested in that letter would require. This being so, I would gladly drop the subject, in which our traditional policy of abstention from the political affairs of Europe forbids the United States to take sides. I feel, however, that the events, which led to the Conference at Algeciras forbid me to omit any effort within my power to promote a settlement of differences.
"By the request of Germany I urged France to consent to the Conference, giving her very strong assurances of my belief that a decision would be reached, consonant with an impartial view of what is most fair and most practical. The nature, the strength and the justification of these assurances may be realized by referring to the terms of Baron Sternburg's letter to me of June 28, 1905, which said:
" 'The Emperor has requested me to tell you that in case, during the coming Conference, differences of opinion should arise between France and Germany, he, in every case, will be ready to back up the decision which you should consider to be the most fair and the most practical.
" 'In doing this, he wants to prove that the assistance which you have rendered to Germany has been rendered in the interest of peace alone, and without any selfish motives.'
"Under these circumstances, I feel bound to state to Your Majesty that I think the arrangement indicated in the above mentioned letter of February 19th is a reasonable one, and most earnestly to urge Your Majesty to accept it. I do not know whether France would accept it or not. I think she ought to do so. I do not think that she ought to be expected to go further. If that arrangement is made, the Conference will have resulted in an abandonment by France of her claim to the right of control in Morocco answerable only to the two Powers with whom she had made treaties and without responsibility to the rest of the world, and she will have accepted jointly with Spain a mandate from all the Powers, under responsibility to all of them for the maintenance of equal rights and opportunities. And the due observance of these obligations will be safeguarded by having vested in another representative of all the Powers a right to have in their behalf full and complete reports of the performance of the trust, with the further right of verification and inspection.
"I feel that if this arrangement be made, Germany will have accomplished the declared object for her intervention in the affairs of Morocco and for the Conference. I feel such arrangement would be in very fact the evidence of the triumph of German diplomacy in this matter. Looking at the subject as I do, from this standpoint of an observer friendly to both parties and having no possible interest in the result, except the interest of peace, I see grave reasons to apprehend that if the Conference should fail because of Germany's insisting upon pressing France beyond the measure of concession described in this proposed arrangement, the general opinion of Europe and America would be unfavorable, and Germany would lose that increase of credit and moral power that the making of this arrangement would secure to her, and might be held responsible, probably far beyond the limits of reason, for all the evils that may come in the train of a disturbed condition of affairs in Europe.
"As a rule, parties to a past controversy, looking back, can see that they have ascribed undue importance to matters of difference which were really unimportant. A disinterested spectator is often able to take such a view at the time. I believe that I am taking such a view; that if the suggested arrangement can be made none of the matters which Germany will not have secured by that are of any real importance to her, and I most sincerely hope that Your Majesty may take this view and throw upon France the responsibility for rejecting, if it is to be rejected, the suggested arrangement."
Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration.
elihtU Root
HlS EXCEILENCY,
baRon speck von stebnbueg, Etc., etc., etc.
imperial german embassy,
washington, D. C.,
March 13, 1906. Mr. President:
The Emperor's answer to your letter transmitted by me on the 7th instant is as follows: "Mr. President:
"I thank you for your repeated kind endeavors to bring about a solution, satisfactory to all concerned, of the Morocco question. I highly appreciate it that notwithstanding all difficulties you have cooperated in solving the differences. As to the information of my ambassador, mentioned by you, I can only assure you, Mr. President, that I am gladly willing to take your advice as a basis of an understanding. In this sense your proposition contained in Mr. Root's letter of the 19th ultimo, has been earnestly considered at once. In principle I consented to it, provided that it be given a form to meet the international side of the question.
"I have also given to your recent statements in all points my fullest attention and entirely agree with you that a mandate given by the Conference to France and Spain differs in a judicial sense essentially from any action on the part of France based solely on special agreements with England and Spain. Such a mandate would give to France a certain monopoly in Morocco which would prejudice the economical equality of the other nations, if no sufficient international counterpoise were created. This idea has been recognized in your proposal of mediation, and doubt could only prevail as to the question whether the regulations of control, proposed by you, would give an entirely sufficient guarantee from an international point. In this respect I think the idea has been developed in a proposal of mediation brought forward by Austria-Hungary. This proposal almost covers yours. I have therefore caused my representatives at Algeciras to be instructed to consent in principle to the proposition of Austria-Hungary, and I am inclined to believe that a satisfactory end of the Conference would be secured, if you, Mr. President, would likewise give your consent to that proposition, which seems to me to be an acceptable development of your proposal."
(Signed)    
william.
The Austrian proposal has been accepted by the representatives of all other powers, including Sir E. Nicholson, the British representative, on account of its distinct international character, as a basis for a definite understanding at the Conference. As this basis has now been reached it would seem a pity to cause further postponement by a new proposal. The support of Austria's mediation in Algeciras and Paris would in the eyes of the Emperor appear as the most speedy way to effect a solution of the Morocco question.
I may add that on March llth the German representative at Algeciras was informed by all his colleagues, including the British and American, that after the far going concessions made by Germany during the sessions of last Saturday the French opposition could not be justified.   In this sense they have spoken to Mr. Revoil. I have the honor to be, Mr. President,
Yours most sincerely,
sternbukg.
(Received from German Ambassador March 14, 1906.)
"Giving way beyond the Austrian proposals would gravely endanger the open door. The opposition lies with the mighty French banking interests which are aiming at a monopolization of the resources of Morocco."
No. 347.
department op state,
washington  March 17, 1906. Excellency:
It may be useful for me to re-state in writing the answer of the United States, already given to you orally, to the questions which you have asked regarding our course upon the proposal made by Austria on the 8th instant in the Algeciras Conference.
We do not approve that proposal. We regard it as an essential departure from the principle declared by Germany and adhered to by the United States, that all commercial nations are entitled to have the door of equal commercial opportunity in Morocco kept open, and the corollary to that principle that no one power ought to acquire such a control over the territory of Morocco as to justify the belief that she might ultimately come to regard and treat that territory as her own, to the exclusion of others.
This view of international right was interposed against the claim of France to organize the police in Moroccan ports through the agency of her officers alone. France has yielded to this view of international right to the extent of offering to become, jointly with Spain, the mandatory of all the powers for the purpose of at once maintaining order and preserving equal commercial opportunities for all of them. It was further proposed that an officer of a third power, acting in behalf of all the powers, should have the right of general inspection for the purpose of keeping the powers advised whether their agents, France and Spain, were observing the limits and performing the duties of their agency. This arrangement seemed to us to accomplish the desired purpose. It seemed with two mandatories jointly charged, no individual claim of possession or control was likely to grow up; that, with the constant reminder of the general right involved in the inspectorship, the duties of the agency were not likely to be forgotten and it seemed that the proximity of France and Spain to Morocco, and their special interest in having order maintained in that territory, made it reasonable that they should be selected as the mandatories rather than any other powers.
The Austrian proposal offers an alternative to the arrangement which I have described. It is that the eight Moroccan ports shall be distributed; that in four the police shall be organized by the French; in three the police shall be organized by the Spanish; and that in the eighth port the police shall be organized by the Swiss or Dutch. This seems to us to provide for a potential partition of the territory in violation of the principle upon which we have agreed with Germany. From our point of view all the reasons which existed against leaving to France the control of all the ports exists against leaving to France the control of some, to Spain the control of some, and to Switzerland, either in its own interest or in the interests of any other powers, the control of one. The very fact of division of the ports implies the existence of a special right on the part of the three countries in the ports assigned to them respectively. The immediate effect can only be the creation of three separate spheres of influence, with inferior right and opportunity on the part of all other powers. And the nations to whom these spheres are assigned may be expected in the ordinary course of events to enter into complete control. We do not care whether the Inspector, if there shall be one, is Italian or Swiss. We do not care whether he reports to his own Government, or to the Corps Diplomatique in Tangier, or communicates the information he obtains to the powers in any other way. We do consider that the distribution of ports to separate single powers is wrong in principle and destructive of the declared purpose of both Germany and the United States. If we had sufficient interest in Morocco to make it worth our while, we should seriously object, on our own account, to the adoption of any such arrangement.
We have not, however, any such substantial interest in Morocco as to lead us to take that course. Our chief wish is to be of service in promoting a peaceable settlement of the controversy which brought the Conference together. Under the guidance of that wish we shall accept whatever arrangement the European powers, represented at Algeciras, agree upon. If the agreement is upon the Austrian proposal, or upon any modification of it which includes the principle of distribution of ports, we shall regret what we deem to be the failure of the true principle to which we have given our adherence. We still hope that there may be no such result.
Accept, Excellency, the renewed assurances of my highest consideration.
elihU Root.
His excellency,
baron speck von steenbueg, Etc., etc., etc.
hotel cambridge,
new york, March 19, 1906. Dear Mr. President:
I have the honor to inform you of the contents of a telegram, just received, which is the answer to my telegram, forwarded after the conversation I had with you on the situation at Algeciras:
Sincere regret is expressed that the attitude of Germany should have led to certain misunderstandings. The Kaiser had suggested the Conference so as to find a peaceful way to solve the question of Morocco.
He appreciates the fundamental idea of your proposal: cooperation of French and Spanish officers to be about equally divided in each of the ports.
He would readily join in any proposal at the Conference, which would contain this mixed system and an inspector general, to which France already has agreed in principle.
Germany abstains from entering into details, so as to prevent that these should obscure the main points. The telegram concludes in saying that the immediate removal of all misunderstandings is far more important to Germany than the whole Morocco affair.
Believe me, Mr. President, most
Sincerely yours,
steenbURg.
I call your attention to the last paragraph in this telegram of March 19th. I had previously informed Speck, in a verbal conversation, that if the Emperor persevered in rejecting our proposals and a break-up ensued, I should feel obliged to publish the entire correspondence, and that I believed that our people would feel a grave suspicion of Germany's justice and good faith; but that if the Emperor would yield to what seemed to me our very fair proposals, I should not publish any of the correspondence, and would endeavor in every way to give Germany full credit for what was done; and with that in view would take an early opportunity to have him (Speck) bring a delegation of German war veterans to see me, so that I might make a public statement in praise of the Emperor's position and expressive of my appreciation thereof, and of my hope that the relations between France and Germany would become steadily more friendly. Two or three days after the Emperor sent his cable saying he had yielded to our request, Speck called upon me to say that the Emperor very earnestly desired that I would make such public utterance. Accordingly I arranged for him to bring the German veterans around, and I made them (April 12, 1906) the following speech, which I had previously gone over not only with Speck but with Jusserand:
"I welcome you here, my fellow-Americans; for among the many strains that go to make up our composite race stock in this country, no strain has given us better Americans than those who are of German birth or blood. It is our peculiar pride as a nation that in this republic we have measurably realized the ideal under which good citizens know no discrimination as between creed and creed, birthplace and birthplace, provided only that whatever the man's parentage may have been, whatever the way in which he worships his Creator, he strives in good faith to do his duty by himself and by his fellow-men, and to show his unflinching loyalty to our common country. In addition to thus greeting you, my fellow-Americans of German birth, I wish also to greet the German citizens present, the members of the German army, belonging to the reserve of that army, and to welcome them here, especially, Mr. Ambassador, as they are brought here, by you, yourself an old soldier, who have endeared yourself to the American people by your hearty friendship for this country.
"The reverence a man preserves for his native land, so far from standing in the way of his loving and doing his full duty by the land of his adoption, should help him toward this love and the performance of this duty. If a man is a good son he is apt to make a good husband; and the quality that makes a man reverence the country of his birth is apt to be the quality that makes him a good citizen in the country of his adoption.
"The ties that unite Germany and the United States are many and close, and it must be a prime object of our statesmanship to knit the two nations ever closer together. In no country is there a warmer admiration for Germany and for Germany's exalted ruler, Emperor William, than here in America.
"It is not out of place in closing for me to say a word of congratulation both to the German people and the German Emperor upon the work that has Been accomplished in the Algeciras Conference which has just closed, a Conference held chiefly because of the initiative of Germany. It was not a Conference in which we Americans as a nation had much concern, save that it is always our concern to see justice obtain everywhere, and, so far as we properly can, to work for the cause of international peace and good will. In its outcome this Conference has added to the likelihood of the betterment of conditions in Morocco itself, has secured equitable dealing as among the foreign powers who have commercial relations with Morocco, and has diminished the chance of friction between these powers. In particular it may not be out of place for me to say that I hope and believe that the Conference has resulted and will result in rendering continually more friendly the relations between the mighty empire of Germany and the mighty republic of France; for it is my hope and wish, as it must be the hope and wish of every sincere well wisher of humankind, that these friendly relations may not only continue unbroken but may ever grow in strength."
I have since received from Jusserand and Speck, both, the very cordial thanks of the French and German Governments. McCormick (American Ambassador to France) has just sent a note running as follows:
"I have the honor to inform you that the Minister for Foreign Affairs referred immediately on my entering his room, at his diplomatic reception on Wednesday, to the cablegram which he had sent to M. Jusserand instructing the latter to express the high appreciation of the French Government of the signal aid rendered by President Roosevelt in arriving at a just solution of the differences between France and Germany with reference to Morocco—'Ni vain-queur ni vaincu.''
There, this is a hideously long communication! I shall send a copy of it both to Meyer and to White, and shall show it to Root, but to no one else.
None of the documents are to be published in the Blue Book; and I need hardly say that it is to be considered as of the most strictly confidential character.
(Signed)      theodore roosevelt.
The Convention assembled at Algeciras, Spain, on January 16, 1906, and a treaty was signed on April 6th, following. The American delegates were Henry White, then Ambassador to Italy, and Mr. S. E. Grummere, Consul-General at Morocco. The President had requested Joseph H. Choate to be a delegate and he had accepted, but he later recalled his acceptance. The treaty was ratified by the U. S. Senate on December 12, 1906, with an additional protocol declining to assume any responsibility for the enforcement of the provisions of the act. In his message to Congress, on December 3, 1906, the President gave this statement of the treaty's effect:
"The Algeciras Convention, which was signed by the United States, as well as by most of the powers of Europe, supersedes the previous convention of 1880, which was also signed both by the United States and a majority of the European powers. This treaty confers upon us equal commercial rights with all European countries and does not entail a single obligation of any kind upon us, and I earnestly hope it may be speedily ratified. To refuse to ratify it would merely mean that we forfeited our commercial rights in Morocco and would not achieve another object of any kind. In the event of such refusal we would be left for the first time in a hundred and twenty years without any commercial treaty with Morocco; and this at a time when we are everywhere seeking new markets and outlets for trade."
In recognition of Ambassador Jusserand's services in the affair President Roosevelt wrote to him on April 25, 1906:
My dear Mr. Ambassador:
During the past year our relations have been those of peculiar intimacy in dealing with more than one problem, and particularly in connection with the Morocco conference, and there are certain things which I think I ought to say to you.
It is the simple and literal truth to say that in my judgment we owe it to you more than to any other one man that the year which has closed has not seen a war between France and Germany, which, had it begun, would probably have extended to take in a considerable portion of the world. In last May and June the relations between the two countries were go strained that such a war was imminent. Probably the only way it could have been avoided was by an international conference, and such a conference could only have been held on terms compatible with France's honor and dignity. You were the man most instrumental in having just this kind of conference arranged for. I came into the matter at all most unwillingly, and I could not have come into it at all if I had not possessed entire confidence alike in your unfailing soundness of judgment and in your high integrity of personal conduct. Thanks to the fact that these are the two dominant notes in your personality, my relationship with you has been such as I think has very, very rarely obtained between an ambassador at any time and the head of the government to which that ambassador was accredited; and certainly no ambassador and head of a government could ever stand to one another on a footing at once more pleasant and more advantageous to their respective countries than has been the case with you and me. If, in these delicate Morocco negotiations I had not been able to treat you with the absolute frankness and confidence that I did, no good result could possibly have been obtained, and this frankness and confidence were rendered possible only because of the certainty that you would do and advise what was wisest to be done and advised, and that you would treat all that was said and done between us two as a gentleman of the highest honor treats what is said and done in the intimate personal relations of life. If you had been capable of adopting one line of conduct as a private individual and another as a public man, I should have been wholly unable to assume any such relations with you; nor, on the other hand, however high your standard of honor, could I have assumed them had I not felt complete confidence in the soundness and quickness of your judgment. The service you rendered was primarily one to France, but it was also a service to the world at large; and in rendering it you bore yourself as the ideal public servant should bear himself; for such a public servant should with trained intelligence know how to render the most effective service to his own country while yet never deviating by so much as a hand's breadth from the code of mutual good faith and scrupulous regard for the rights of others, which should obtain between nations no less than between gentlemen. I do not suppose that you will ever gain any personal advantage, and perhaps not even any personal recognition, because of what you have done in the past year, but I desire that you should at least know my appreciation of it.

The End of Volume One.

A concluding word from Robert J. Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoyed our books. Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people. He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said. We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”. A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor. Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive. It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions. This was the type of government Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won. He was a visionary. He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us. It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages. His message is an example, clearly defined. It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country. Join the good fight today. You only need to read and interest others to do the same. 

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read.” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt. It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”, is one of his famous quotes. Your own part is as simple as helping to introduce others to an example of a life well lived by recommending our web site.