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CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

FROM KHARTOUM TO LONDON: 

soon after retiring from the Presidency in March, 1909, Colonel Roosevelt went to Africa on a hunting-trip. He had arranged before his departure for several formal addresses which he was to make in Germany, England, France, and Norway on his return. When he reached Khartoum in March, 1910, on his way home, he yielded to urgent appeals and made two addresses on Egyptian affairs, one at Khartoum and the other at Cairo, which aroused much controversy and led later to a speech on the same subject, also by urgent request, at the Guildhall in London. From Khartoum he went to Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Brussels, The Hague, Copenhagen, Christiania, Stockholm, Berlin, and thence to London. At the close of his tour he paid a cheerful and joyous visit to his long-time correspondent and friend, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, at the latter's Warwickshire home at Welcombe, Stratford-on-Avon. During that visit his narrative of his experiences in Egypt and Europe so strongly impressed and fascinated Sir George that he urged him most earnestly to put it in writing. This Roosevelt did in the following year, in the form of a letter to Trevelyan, under date of October 1, 1911, of which Roosevelt himself preserved a copy. This letter, about 25,000 words in length, is an intimate account of his experiences in Egypt and in the chief capitals of Europe, with frank and searching comments upon the characteristics and personalities of the kings, emperors, and other eminent personages with whom he came in contact. It is a "human document" of quite exceptional character. What Trevelyan thought of it was expressed in a letter that he wrote to Roosevelt, under date of October 21, 1911: 
"I have now read aloud, in the course of several evenings, your account of your European and Egyptian travels to my wife. I shall give it to George and Charles to read, without letting it go from beneath my roof; and I have arranged with Charles that (to employ the usual euphemism), 'if anything happens to me' he is to write to you, and ask whether you would wish to have it back. It is a piece absolutely unique in literature. Kings and emperors are a class apart; and no one, so capable of describing his observations, ever had such an opportunity of observing them, since the Prince de Ligne lived with Frederick, Catherine of Russia, and Maria Theresa, and their humble, royal contemporaries. But the Prince de Ligne, though a very great subject, was after all a subject. Your position was independent, and you were as strange to them as they to you, and you approached them with ideas and beliefs engendered in a very different atmosphere. I never read anything more novel and interesting.
"I own to be rather alarmed by what you saw and heard in Germany. The whole account of the relation of the Emperor to his people is most exceedingly important, and quite bears out my own outside conclusions. He acceded to the throne at the age of 28—the age of Frederick the Great; and, before three months were over, Frederick had all Europe in a blaze, and William has kept the peace already for above a quarter of a century. There is a very serious tendency in the German mind; and I await with real anxiety the forthcoming election for the Reichstag. A very great weakening of the Junker predominance might have a good effect; but the powers that are may stick at nothing to avert that result.
"We were extraordinarily interested by your policy about the sailing of the United States Fleet. It was a glimpse of 'la plus haute politique,' which told much of your methods as a ruler.''
In view of Roosevelt's remark in the opening paragraph of his letter, that it should not be made public "until long after all of us who are now alive are dead," the question of publication was referred to Sir George, who replied on May 29, 1919: "I do not hesitate to say that it should be published and the sooner the better. The world would be much the richer for it. The times are such that the human interest and solid value of this wonderful paper would be very great indeed now."
THE LETTER
sagamore HiLL., oyster bay. new york,
Oct. 1, 1911.
To the Right Hon. Sir George Trevelyan, Bart. Dear Sir George:
Sixteen months have passed since that very enjoyable Sunday I passed at your house. In the evening I finally told you that I would try to write an account of the intimate side of my trip from Khartoum to London, and send it to you for the eyes only of you yourself and your family. I am not quite sure I ought to write it even to you ! However, I shall, just for the satisfaction of telling you things most of which it would be obviously entirely out of the question to make public, at any rate until long after all of us who are now alive are dead. By that time in all probability this letter will have been destroyed ; and in any event interest in what it relates will have ceased. Meanwhile, if you enjoy reading what I have set down, I shall be repaid; and moreover, I am really glad for my own sake to jot down some of the things that occurred, before they grow so dim in my mind that I can no longer enjoy the memories, and look back at some with laughter and at others with sober interest.
I journeyed down the Nile, passing through stratum after stratum of savagery and semi-civilization. At first I was among men who, in culture, were more like our own palaeolithic forefathers than the latter were to us; and then up through level after level as we went steadily northward with the current of the great stream, each stage representing some thousands of years of advance upon the preceding, until we came to fairly organized warlike heathens not essentially different from the African foes of the Egypt of the first twenty dynasties, and then to Moslems fundamentally kin to the savage Moslem conquerors of the seventh century of our own era. Then we steamed into Khartoum, and found the twentieth century superimposed upon the seventh, and on the whole with intelligence, ability and a very lofty sense of duty, endeavoring to raise the seventh century so as to bring it somewhere within touching distance of the twentieth. It is a colossal task. We are none of us gifted with the power to see with certainty into the future; we cannot say what the outcome will be. Perhaps what the French are now doing in Algiers, what the English are now doing in Egypt and the Sudan, will in the end result in failure, and the culture they have planted wither away, just as the Grseco-Roman culture which flourished in the same lands a couple of thousand years ago afterwards vanished. On the other hand, it may persist, or at least, even if it does vanish in the end, leave mighty forces carrying on the work in a changed form. In any event the task is a mighty task, which only a great and powerful nation could attempt, and which it is a high and honorable thing to have attempted.
At Khartoum we stayed at the Palace—and there was not an hour of our stay that was not full of associations with Gordon's memory. The Sirdar, Sir Reginald Wingate, was a sick man. He had gone to Cairo, whence he had to go to London; but he had left a letter for me, and Slatin Pasha, his right-hand man, received us with more than mere friendly enthusiasm. In journeying through British East Africa, Uganda and the Sudan, I had been both surprised and touched to find how the settlers in the first province, and the military and civil officials in all three provinces, greeted me. Indeed I was both a little puzzled and a little amused to find that they simply ignored the fact that I was a citizen of another nation. They felt that I was an out-of-door man, who had dealt with questions of empire in strange lands; and they accepted as a matter of course the view that I would understand and sympathize with their purposes and needs;-and moreover, which was a little embarrassing, they also took it for granted that I would make the people "at home" listen to me when I spoke about them. I told them again and again that I did not see how I could speak about them in any public way in England ; but nothing that i said had any effect in shaking their faith that, somehow or other, I would manage to bring vividly before the minds of the English people just what they are doing. They evidently felt that the people at home tended to forget them and to misunderstand their work, and they were eager that some man who could attract attention would state their case.
Slatin Pasha and all the officials and army officers at Khartoum showed these feelings even more markedly than they had been shown to me elsewhere during the preceding eleven months. They were all uneasy over the anti-English movement in Egypt, which, for some years, had been growing more and more violent, which had just culminated in the murder of Boutros Pasha, and which, as it was really dependent for its entire strength upon being the expression of a fanatical Moslem uprising against Christianity, threatened to cause trouble likewise in the Sudan. Their especial concern was of course with the attitude of the exclusively—or well-nigh exclusively—Moslem native army. Slatin told me that the native officers' club—the club including both the Egyptian and Sudanese officers—wished to give an entertainment in my honor if I were willing to attend. He explained that there was good cause for uneasiness as to the attitude of at least a portion of these native officers; and he was especially concerned because they had hung in the club a picture of the leader of the anti-English party in Egypt. He told me he thought I would do a very real good if I would go to their club, show my genuine appreciation of the courtesy extended to me, and at the same time make an address in which I should pay to their past loyalty and efficiency the kind of just tribute which would raise their respect, and at the same time speak with perfect frankness and in the plainest fashion in pointing out that everything they had done in the past and everything they might do in the future depended upon their absolute and unflinching loyalty to English rule. I told him that I would very gladly do what he suggested, for I was quite as strongly convinced of the truth of what he said as he was himself. I added that the fact that he, the representative of British rule in the Sudan, was an Austrian, only emphasized in my mind the fundamental truth that English rule in the Sudan was really the rule of civilization, and that every believer in justice and in progress all over the world should uphold it.
Accordingly I went to the reception given me by the officers at their club, and made the speech which you doubtless remember; trying my best to use such language and arguments as would add to the self-respect of my hearers, by making them understand how heartily I respected them; while at the same time I spoke with unmistakable plainness as to their duty of absolute loyalty, and as to the ruin which would come to both Egypt and the Sudan unless the power and prestige of the English rule were kept undiminished. I believe the speech accomplished its purpose; at least that is what Slatin Pasha told me and what the Sirdar wrote me at the time, and what Sir Ian Hamilton on his return from the Sudan also wrote me, and has recently told me.
The speech, however, when reported in Egypt, caused an outburst of anger and criticism among the Egyptian Nationalists, the anti-English and fanatically Moslem party. When I got into Egypt, and especially when I reached Cairo, I found a curious state of things. The country had obviously prospered astoundingly, both from the material and the moral standpoints, as compared with conditions as I had seen them over thirty years before; but the very prosperity had made Jeshuren wax fat and kick. In Cairo and Alexandria many of the noisy leaders of the Nationalist movement were merely Levantine Moslems in European clothes, with red fezes; they were of the ordinary Levantine type, noisy, emotional, rather decadent, quite hopeless as material on which to build, but also not really dangerous as foes, although given to loud talk in the cafes and to emotional street parades. These Levantines were profoundly affected by the success of the Young Turk Movement in Turkey, and were prattling about a constitution and responsible government in language not materially different from that used by Mediterranean Christians when they are engaged either in a just and proper movement for reform or in a foolish revolutionary agitation.
The real strength of the Nationalist movement in Egypt, however, lay not with these Levantines of the cafes, but with the mass of practically unchanged bigoted Moslems to whom the movement meant driving out the foreigner, plundering and slaying the local Christian, and a return to all the violence and corruption which festered under the old-style Moslem rule, whether Asiatic or African. The American missionaries whom I met, and who I found had accomplished a really extraordinary quantity of work, were a unit in feeling that the overthrow of the English rule would be an inconceivable disaster; and this although they were quite frank in criticising some features of English rule, and notably some actions of individual Englishmen in high places. The native Christians, the Copts, and also the Syrians and Greeks (although often themselves difficult to satisfy and fond of making absurd claims), took exactly the same view of the essentials, and dreaded keenly the murderous outbreak of Moslem brutality which was certain to follow the restoration of native rule in Egypt; but they were cowed by the seeming lack of decision of the English authorities, and the increasing insolence and turbulence of the Moslems. Moreover I found traces, although not strong traces, of a feeling on their part that some of the English officials occasionally treated them with a galling contempt which made it hard for them always to appreciate as fully as it deserved the justice which they also received.
The British officials themselves were drifting, and were uneasy and uncertain of their ground. Some of them, of course, were showing the same fine qualities that I had seen their colleagues show elsewhere; but others, including some of the highest, obviously were quite as much afraid of Parliament and of what I may call "Exeter Hall" in London as they were of the native anarchists. They spoke with great bitterness as to the mischief wrought by certain ignorant Members of Parliament—I believe chiefly Labor Members—who had come to Egypt, and, under the belief that they were championing the cause of human righteousness, had inspired in the Egyptian mind toward them and by extension toward the English generally, a touch of that most dangerous of all feelings, contempt. The root trouble, I believe, was that the officials high up did not know how far they would be backed by the people at home, and were afraid of taking any steps for fear of being condemned in Parliament.
Cairo was the only place where I was disappointed with some of the officers of the British Army whom I met, I could not speak too highly of those whom I have seen everywhere else in Africa; and the enlisted men whom I saw at Cairo, some of whom came to hear me speak at one of the missionary meetings, were as fine a set of stalwart, clean-cut, self-respecting, capable soldier's as I have ever come across. But there were a few of the officers who were unpleasantly like the type described by Kipling in his South African story, "The Outsider." These particular officers were absorbed, not in their duty, but in the polo and tennis matches, and treated the assassination of Boutros Pasha as a mere illegitimate interruption to sport; evidently they had no serious appreciation of the situation or of their own duties.
While at Gondokoro I had accepted an invitation to speak at the new Cairo University, a university founded by the most advanced and liberal Moslems, men of high standing, some of whom I met and who really were engaged in the effort to advance their countrymen, and to make the Moslem world assimilate all that for its purposes was best in Occidental civilization. After I had accepted, the murder of Boutros Pasha occurred, and then word was brought me from Sir Eldon Gorst that in view of the delicacy of the situation he trusted that I would say nothing about the assassination in my speech. Every human being was thinking chiefly of the assassination, and the failure to take prompt action in punishing the assassin had produced a dangerous condition in the native mind. For me to have spoken at all and yet to have avoided mentioning the assassination would have been attributed by every one simply to fear, and would have been thoroughly unfortunate. I accordingly answered that I should do nothing of which the authorities did not approve, and would make no speech without submitting it to them; but that I would not speak at all if I were not to speak of the one really vital question which was filling the minds of every one. This answer seemed to clear matters, and I at once received a request by all means to go on and speak as I had intended. I wrote out my speech very carefully in advance, brought it in person to both Sir Eldon Gorst and the Sirdar, Sir Reginald Win-gate, who as I have said were then in Cairo. Each of them made one or two suggestions, all of which I adopted, and they then approved every word of it. I accordingly delivered it.
After its delivery, Gorst wrote me as follows about it:
"Just a line to say how immensely I enjoyed your address, and how glad I am that you consented to speak to these people. If anything can bring them into a more reasonable frame of mind, your words should have that effect. In any case, if you have done nothing more, you have given me renewed courage to go on with what I often feel to be a very hopeless task."
The Sirdar wrote me two or three times, some of his letters being so personally congratulatory that I do not quite like to quote them. But they included such phrases as the following:
"Do let me again thank you most truly and most cordially for all you have done to help forward our task in the Sudan. Believe me, you have assisted us more than you can possibly imagine, and I am proportionately grateful. I will say no more because I know you will understand all I have left unsaid."
Later, in England, after my Guildhall speech, the Sirdar wrote to me again, from the hospital where he was just recovering from the operation:
May 31, 1910. My dear Colonel:
May I offer most sincere and hearty congratulations on your splendid speech to-day f I have only seen the evening paper account, but that is quite sufficient to show what a splendid pronouncement it must have been. How I should like to have heard you deliver it! Your summing up of the Egyptian situation should do a world of good; but what can I say of your tribute to our work in the Sudan? I can only say on behalf of myself and of all the good fellows who are my co-workers, '' Thank you from the bottom of our hearts." Your words, uttered at such a time and under such conditions, will do more to help us in our task than anything that has yet happened. Again I thank you_t Sir, most sincerely, and remain,
Your grateful and affectionate,
(Signed) B. wingate.
P. S. This is the first letter I have written since the operation just a month ago.
I was very much touched and pleased by this letter, written under such circumstances; for my prime desire was to help the men who were doing such good work; and so I prized having Wingate and Gorst, and later, Percy Girouard, from East Africa, and various district commissioners and generals, including Lord Roberts, and other military and civil officials, write me as they did; and I was pleased a few weeks ago to receive from Ian Hamilton a letter saying that he had been in the Sudan, where "my name was one to conjure with." Of course I shall never make public any of these letters, because I was concerned only as to the effect of my utterances on the cause I was championing; I was particularly pleased to know that the men doing the work felt that I had helped them; and as long as this was so I was merely amused at the statements made by some outsiders—especially certain unhealthy outsiders of my own land—to the effect that my "brutality" of utterance had pained and hampered these same men who were doing the work.
The really intelligent Moslems, the men who earnestly desired to have the Moslem world advance as far beyond what it had been and what it still was as the Christian world has advanced beyond the Dark Ages, thanked me even more warmly than the English rulers of Africa. But of course the Levantine agitators and the fanatics of the seventh century type were savage against me. The native Christians, both Copts and Syrians, on the other hand, felt that I had rendered to them an even greater service than I had to the Europeans, and showed their acknowledgments in many rather touching ways; and the American missionaries —who, as I have already said, were doing really extraordinarily good educational and social work—felt the same way.
From Alexandria we sailed across to Naples, where we stayed twenty-four hours, and where, both officially and popularly, I was received in a way that really embarrassed me. For in Naples, when I went to the opera in the evening, the performance was interrupted for some ten minutes while they cheered me, and then processions of people from the university and various other bodies persisted in coming up to be introduced, so that I saw very little of the opera itself. This was a foretaste of what I experienced all through Europe except in Germany. Elsewhere than in Germany I was treated precisely as I used to be treated when as President I made a tour in any part of the United States; there were the same crowds, the same official receptions, the same courtesies and kindnesses, and the same wearing fatigue and hurry, and the same almost complete inability on my part to get time to see the people for whom I cared in public and satisfactory fashion, or to be allowed to visit by myself what I desired to visit,
In Borne, my first experience was with the Vatican. I had anticipated trouble in Rome, and had been preparing for it. My relations with Pope Leo XIII while I was President had been more than cordial, as he was a broad-minded man, with a genuine knowledge of foreign affairs and of the needs of the time; as a token of his recognition of the way I had handled the Friars' Lands question in the Philippines he had sent me a beautifully done mosaic picture of himself in his garden. His successor was a worthy, narrowly limited parish priest; completely under the control of his Secretary of State, Merry del Val, who is a polished man of much ability in a very narrow line, but a furiously bigoted reactionary, and in fact a good type of a sixteenth century Spanish ecclesiastic. To you who know your Borne so well, and whose son has written so wonderfully of Garibaldi, and of the movement that turned Borne into what it now is, I need hardly say that the Eternal City offers the very sharpest contrasts between the extremes of radical modern progress, social, political and religious, and the extremes of opposition to all such progress. At the time of my visit the Vatican represented the last; the free-thinking Jew mayor, a good fellow, and his Socialist backers in the Town Council, represented the first; and between them came the king and statesmen like his Jewish Prime Minister, and writers like that high and fine character Foggazaro, and ecclesiastics like some of the cardinals, as for instance Janssens, the head of the Benedictines, and the Bishop of Cremona, a great friend of Foggazaro.
In this society American Methodism had suddenly appeared, several representatives having been sent thither on a mission. Some of these representatives were really excellent men, who were doing first-class work; they had a Sunday school, one of the teachers in which was a granddaughter of Garibaldi, while one of the graduates was her brother, a grandson of Garibaldi, a very fine fellow. This work was not only good in itself, but it was good from the standpoint of those who wish well to the Catholic Church, as I do, for it tended to introduce a spirit of rivalry in service, for rivalry in good conduct, which in the long run is as advantageous to the church as to the people, but which of course is peculiarly abhorrent to the narrow and intolerant priestly reactionaries, who, whenever and wherever they have the upper hand in the church, make it the baleful enemy of mankind. There was, however, one Methodist in town, taking charge of a congregation, who was of an utterly different type. I have no doubt that he had a certain amount of sincerity, and a great deal of energy, and there were places where I suppose he could have done good. But he was a crude, vulgar, tactless creature, cursed with the thirst of self-advertisement, and utterly unable to distinguish between notoriety and fame. He found that he could attract attention best by frantic denunciations of the Pope, and so he preached sermons in which he pleasantly alluded to the Pope as "the whore of Babylon," and even indulged in attacks on the other Protestant bodies in Rome, denouncing the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, and assailing the Young Men's Christian Association because it was under the Waldensian leadership— which particularly roused my ire, as I think every Protestant should have a peculiar feeling for this ancient Italian church, the church of whose wrongs Milton thundered like a Hebrew prophet.
The Pope would have been entirely right to refuse to see me if I identified myself with this man; but he had no right whatever to expect that I would be willing to see him if he made it a condition that I should not see the other entirely reputable Methodists, who were conducting their work in an entirely reputable way. He had, however, followed this line of action in dealing with ex-Vice-President Fairbanks, when the latter was in Rome, with the result of immensely exciting the entire Methodist body in the United States, and of benefiting the Roman Methodists. They were now wishful to see whether or not I would myself be afraid to visit them when I came to Rome; the Catholics in the United States were taking the opposite view; and both sides were watching to see what I would do. If each side had behaved with an appearance of moderation, sufficient to deceive each its own adherents, they might very possibly have made it awkward for me, because it was a case where damage was certain to follow if the issue were not clear-cut, and where it was easy to befog the matters. Fortunately each side committed blunders so gross as to enable me to make my position clear.
While I was in Cairo, I was forwarded a letter from Merry del Val, sent in response to a request Ambassador Leishman had made that I might have an audience with the Pope, in which Merry del Val stated that the audience could only take place on the understanding that I was not intending to see the Methodists—as he phrased it; that no such incident should occur as that which had rendered it impossible for the Pope to see Fairbanks. I responded that I hoped to see the Pope, but that it must be distinctly understood that I would not make any stipulation in any way impairing my liberty of conduct to see any one else that I chose. Merry del Val then responded that the Holy Father would be unable to see me. The correspondence was as follows:
Ambassador Leishman to me, March 23:
The Rector of the American Catholic College, Monsignor Kennedy, in reply to inquiry which I caused to be made, requests that the following communication be transmitted to you: "The Holy Father will be delighted to grant audience to Mr. Roosevelt on April 5, and hopes nothing will arise to prevent it, such as the much-regretted incident which made the reception of Mr. Fairbanks impossible."
Ambassador Leishmtm's accompanying comment:
I merely transmit this communication without having committed you in any way to accept the conditions imposed, as the form appears objectionable, clearly indicating that an audience would be canceled in case you should take any action while here that might be construed as countenancing the Methodist mission work here, as in the case of Mr. Fairbanks. Although fully aware of your intentions to confine your visit to the King and Pope, the covert threat in the Vatican's communication to you is none the less objectionable, and one side or the other is sure to make capital out of the action you might take. The press is already preparing for the struggle.

My answer to Ambassador Leishman, March 25:

Please present the following through Monsignor Kennedy:
It would be a real pleasure to me to be presented to the Holy Father, for whom I entertain a high respect both personally and as the head of a great Church. I fully recognize his entire right to receive or not to receive whomsoever he chooses for any reason that seems good to him, and if he does not receive me 

I shall not for a moment question the propriety of his action. On the other hand, I in my turn must decline to make any stipulations, or submit to any conditions which in any way limit my freedom of conduct. I trust on April 5 he will find it convenient to receive me.
Ambassador Leishman to me, March 28, transmitting following message from Monsignor Kennedy: 
His Holiness will be much pleased to grant an audience to Mr. Roosevelt, for whom he entertains great esteem, both personally and as President of the United States. His Holiness quite recognizes Mr. Roosevelt's entire right to freedom of conduct. On the other hand, in view of the circumstances, for which neither His Holiness nor Mr. Roosevelt is responsible, an audience could not occur except on the understanding expressed in the former message.
My answer to Ambassador Leishman, March 29: Proposed presentation is of course now impossible.
0	At the time two men were acting as my volunteer secretaries ; Lawrence Abbott, one of the editors of The Outlook, and J. C. 0'Laughlin, a young newspaper man, the son of Irish parents, and a Catholic, but a straight out American. 'Laughlin was anxious to prevent the Vatican from committing what he felt would be a great blunder; and when stopped at Naples, he went on to Borne to see Merry del Val.   I told him that I should be glad to have him arrange matters, but that it must be distinctly understood that I would not withdraw from my position, or make, or acquiesce in, any stipulations as to my conduct.   He had a long and fruitless talk with Merry del Val.   The chief point of interest in this talk was that Merry del Val told him that if I would secretly agree not to visit the Methodists he was quite willing then it should be publicly announced that I had made no agreement!   It never occurred to him, Cardinal and Prince of the Church as he was, that this was an invitation to me to take part in a piece of discreditable double-dealing and deception; and it shows the curious moral callousness of his type that later, to justify himself and to show how conciliatory he had been, he actually himself made public the fact that he had made this proposition, evidently having no idea that any one would find it reprehensible.   Why, a Tammany Boodle alderman would have been ashamed to make such a proposal.

Accordingly I was not presented at the Vatican; I made public the correspondence which showed why I had not been, and at the same time, through The Outlook, published the following statement to the American people:
naples, April 3, 1910. Dear Dr. Abbott:
Through The Outlook I wish to make a statement to my. fellow-Americans regarding what has occurred in connection with the Vatican. I am sure that the great majority of my fellow-citizens, Catholics quite as much as Protestants, will feel that I acted in the only way possible for an American to act, and because of this very fact I most earnestly hope that the incident will be treated in a matter of-course way, as merely personal, and, above all, as not warranting the slightest exhibition of rancor or bitterness. Among my best and closest friends are many Catholics. The respect and regard of those of my fellow-Americans who are Catholics are as dear to me as the respect and regard of those who are Protestants. On my journey through Africa I visited many Catholic as well as many Protestant missions, and I look forward to telling the people at home all that has been done by Protestants and Catholics alike, as I saw it, in the field of missionary endeavor. It would cause me a real pang to have anything said or done that would hurt or give pain to my friends, whatever their religious belief, but any merely personal considerations are of no consequence in this matter. The important consideration is the avoidance of harsh and bitter comment such as may excite mistrust and anger between and among good men. The more an American sees of other countries the more profound must be his feelings of gratitude that in his own land there is not merely complete toleration but the heartiest good will and sympathy between sincere and honest men of different faith—good will and sympathy so complete that in the inevitable daily relations of our American life Catholics and Protestants meet together and work together without the thought of difference of creed being even present in their minds. This is a condition so vital to our National well-being that nothing should be permitted to jeopard it. Bitter comment and criticism, acrimonious attack and defense, are not only profitless, but harmful, and to seize upon such an incident as this as an occasion for controversy would be wholly indefensible and should be frowned upon by Catholics and Protestants alike. I very earnestly hope that what I say will appeal to all good Americans.	Faithfully yours,
theodore roosevelt. 

Lyman Abbott, Editor of The Outlook.
Meanwhile I had seen the three leading representatives of the Methodists, and had appealed to them not to embarrass me, and had arranged that I should see them and various other members of the American colony at a reception at the Ambassador's. They explicitly agreed, in response to my request, to say nothing that would aggravate the situation or cause any unnecessary heart burnings. Two of them loyally kept to the agreement; but the third, with a sense of morality and fitness not much better than that of Merry del Val himself, violated the agreement, and, merely in order to advertise himself by raising a rumpus, issued a screed violently attacking the Vatican. His two colleagues disapproved of what he had done, but followed the course so common among well-meaning and not very strong men, and for twenty-four hours refused to disavow his action or to say that it did not represent them. I had to act promptly in order to prevent becoming involved in an uncomfortable situation; for if after this screed I had then seen him, I would have convinced many men that the Pope was quite right in having refused to receive me. Accordingly I canceled the reception at the Ambassador's, and did not attend any meeting at which the Methodists were represented. However, certain of the Methodists, and certain Catholic ecclesiastics, including Abbot Janssens of the Benedictines, called to see me to explain their entire sympathy with the position I had taken. Next to having both sides behave well, it was to my interest that both sides should behave ill, so that I could avoid having anything to do with either; and this was precisely what occurred.