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THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

AND HIS TIME
SHOWN IN HIS OWN LETTERS

BY
JOSEPH BUCKLIN BISHOP
VOLUMNE TWO.

NEW YORK SCRIBNER'S SON'S CHARLES
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published September 1920 THE SCRIBNER PRESS

CHAPTER ONE
RAILWAY   RATE   LAW—MAN   WITH   A   MUCKRAKE— VIEWS ON MANY SUBJECTS
the year 1906, like its immediate predecessor, was a very busy and, at times, an exciting one for the President, though there was no one matter of such dominating proportions as the Portsmouth Peace Conference.

The year opened with the contest in the Senate on the railway rate bill at its highest point of bitterness. The most powerful men in that body led the opposition to the measure which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission power to fix rates. Among them were men like Lodge and Knox, who were the President's warm personal friends. The Republican leader of the Senate, and the strongest man in it, Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island, was bitterly opposed to the measure. Virtually all the most influential newspapers of the country were also opposed to it. The prevailing opinion in press and public was that the measure would never pass the Senate. The Committee to which the bill was referred and whose chairman was Senator Aldrich, acted adversely upon it, and then, as a "good joke on the President," turned it over to Senator Tillman, Democratic Senator from South Carolina, thereby making him its sponsor. The joke lay in the fact that the President and Tillman were not on friendly terms, the President having not long before canceled an invitation to him to dine at the White House because he had made a personal assault in the Senate Chamber on his colleague from South Carlina. To the surprise of the authors of the joke, the President did not hesitate a moment about opening communication with Tillman. He did not '' care a rap,'' he said, who had charge of the bill; what he was after was its passage and he would work with Tillman or anybody else who was in favor of it. His alliance with Tillman aroused great interest and excited hostile comment from the newspapers that took the side of the railway and financial interests which were opposed to the bill, but the President paid no heed to criticism from any quarter, but steadily pursued his course, never for a moment relaxing his pressure on the Senate. Writing to Whitelaw Reid, in London, on March 1, 1906, he said: "I have had some mild troubles in connection with the rate bill. Aldrich did what I have rarely seen him do: he completely lost both his head and his temper. But it won't have any effect in the long run and I shall get just about the bill I have been fighting for."

His faith was justified, for after debating the bill for 70 days, the Senate passed it by a vote of 71 to 3, after it had been amended in a way that did not materially affect its character. Loud assertions were made in the so-called capitalistic press that the President had backed down in order to save himself from defeat, but the truth was that the amendments which were cited as proof of this claim were drawn by the Attorney General and were in accordance with the President's views. The proof of the pudding was in the eating. In his annual message to Congress, December 3, 1906, the President gave this account of the immediate effects of the law:

"The Interstate Commerce law has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown increased earnings and some of them unusual dividends; while during the same period the mere taking effect of the law has produced an unprecedented, a hitherto unheard-of, number of voluntary reductions in freights and fares by the railroads. Since the founding of the Commission there has never been a time of equal length in which anything like so many reduced tariffs have been put into effect. On August 27, for instance, two days before the new law went into effect, the Commission received notices of over five thousand separate tariffs which represented reductions from previous rates."
Roosevelt's correspondence during the year shows the usual wide range of his interests both inside and outside the public service. On February 1, 1906, he wrote a long letter, which he addressed to each of the chairmen of the naval committees of the Senate and the House, urging a modification of the law against hazing in the Naval Academy. As it stood, the law required that a cadet convicted by court martial on a charge of hazing should be dismissed and be ineligible for appointment as a commissioned officer in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps during a specified time. "These provisions," wrote the President, "seem to me neither just nor judicious, and I am seriously concerned at the injury which I fear may be done to the discipline of the Academy and even to the future efficiency of the Navy if they are permitted to remain in force without amendment. I heartily disapprove of the practice of hazing, and, in common with all those interested in the welfare of the Academy, wish to see this practise thoroughly eradicated there. But the punishment of dismissal is altogether disproportionate to the culpability involved in some forms of hazing. In many cases, these amount to nothing more than exhibitions of boyish mischief attended with no consequence of any moment to those hazed, and indicating on the part of the hazers only some exuberance of animal spirits. Unquestionably they ought to be punished, for under any circumstances hazing constitutes a breach of the rules, and the future officers of our Navy must be taught, first of all and as a foundation for all other merits, strict and unquestioning obedience. But to punish those faults of youth by depriving the young man concerned of his career in life is to commit a glaring injustice.''
In a letter to the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, on February 3, 1906, he made this earnest demand for respect for the uniform of enlisted men:
"The more civilized a nation is, the more honestly desirous it is of securing peace, the greater should be the care with which it fosters and encourages the preservation of the military virtues among its citizens, and in no way can this be better achieved than by resolute effort to secure proper recognition for the enlisted men of the Army and Navy. The uniform of the enlisted man is a badge of honor. It entitles him to peculiar consideration. It shows that in the great majority of cases he has learned those habits of self-command, of self-restraint, of obedience, and of fearlessness in the face of danger which put him above most of his fellows who have not possessed similar privileges. To strive to discriminate against him in any way is literally an infamy; for it is in reality one of the most serious offenses which can be committed against the stability and greatness of our nation. If a hotel-keeper or the owner of a theater or any other public resort attempts such discrimination, everything possible should be done by all good citizens to make the man attempting it feel the full weight of a just popular resentment, and if possible, legal proceedings should be taken against him. As for the commissioned officers, it both is and must be their pride alike to train the enlisted man how to do his duty and to see that the enlisted man who does his duty is held in honor and respect."
"Writing to Mr. Strachey, editor of the London Spectator, on February 12, 1906, he says of his own career: "Although I have been pretty steadily in politics since I left college, I have always steadfastly refused to regard politics as a career, for save under exceptional circumstances I do not believe that any American can afford to try to make this his definite career in life. With us politics are of a distinctly kaleidoscopic nature. Nobody can tell when he will be upset; and if a man is to be of real use he ought to be able at times philosophically to accept defeat and to go on about some other kind of useful work, either permanently or at least temporarily until the chances again permit him to turn to political affairs. Every office I have held I have quite sincerely believed would be the last I should hold, the only exception being that during my first term as President I gradually grew to think it probable that I should be reelected."

    In the same letter, he writes of the Senate: 

"It is a very powerful body with an illustrious history, and life is easy in it, the Senators not being harassed as are members of the lower House, who go through one campaign for their seats only to begin another. The esprit de corps in the Senate is strong, and the traditions they inherit come from the day when, in the first place, men dueled and were more considerate of one another's feeling, even in doing business; and when, in the second place, the theories of all doctrinaire statesmen were that the one thing that was needed in government was a system of checks, and that the whole danger to government came not from inefficiency but from tyranny. In consequence, the Senate has an immense capacity for resistance. There is no closure, and if a small body of men are sufficiently resolute they can prevent the passage of any measure until they are physically wearied out by debate. The Senators get to know one another intimately and tend all to stand together if they think any one of them is treated with discourtesy by the Executive.
"I do not see that the Senate is any stronger relatively to the rest of the government than it was sixty or seventy years ago. Nor do I think that the Senate and the lower House taken together are any stronger with reference to the President than they were a century ago. Some of the things the Senate does really work to increase the power of the Executive. They are able so effectually to hold up action when they are consulted, and are so slow about it, that they force a President who has any strength to such individual action as I took in both Panama and Santo Domingo. In neither case would a President a hundred years ago have ventured to act without previous assent by the Senate. ... In this nation, as in any nation which amounts to anything, those in the end must govern who are willing actually to do the work of governing; and in so far as the Senate becomes a merely obstructionist body it will run the risk of seeing its power pass into other hands."
To an editor who had commented unfavorably on Senator Lodge, he wrote on February 23, 1906:
"Lodge has violent enemies. But he is a boss or the head of a machine only in the sense that Henry Clay and Webster were bosses and heads of political machines; that is, it is a very great injustice to couple his name with the names of those commonly called bosses. I know Massachusetts politics well. I know Lodge's share in them, and I know what he has done in the Senate. He and I differ radically on certain propositions, as for instance, on the pending rate bill and on the arbitration treaties of a couple of years ago; but I say deliberately that during the twenty years he has been in Washington he has been on the whole the best and most useful servant of the public to be found in either house of Congress.
"I say also that he has during that period led politics in Massachusetts in the very way which, if it could only be adopted in all our States, would mean the elimination of graft, of bossism, and of every other of the evils which are most serious in our politics. Lodge is a man of very strong convictions, and this means that when his convictions differ from mine I am apt to substitute the words 'narrow' and 'obstinate' for 'strong'; and he has a certain aloofness and coldness of manner that irritate people who don't live in New England. But he is an eminently fit successor of Webster and Sumner in the Senatorship of Massachusetts. He is a bigger man than Sumner, but of course he has not dealt with any such crisis as Sumner dealt with. He is not as big a man intellectually as Webster, but he is a far better man morally; and the type of citizenship which he represents is from the standpoint of the United States better than either of theirs."
On the question of his own popularity, Roosevelt wrote as follows, on March 1, to Sereno S. Pratt in New York:

"I have felt a slightly contemptuous amusement over the discussion that has been going on for several months about my popularity or waning popularity or absence of popularity. I am not a college freshman nor that would-be popular fox-hunting hero in 'Soapy Sponge,' and therefore I am not concerned about my popularity save in exactly so far as it is an instrument which will help me to achieve my purposes. That is, in so far as my good repute among the people helps me to secure the passage of the rate bill, I value it. In so far as it fails to help me secure the adoption of the Santo Domingo treaty, I do not value it. A couple of years ago or thereabouts, a good many timid souls told me that by my action in Panama I had ruined my popularity and was no longer available as a candidate; to which I answered that while I much wished to be a candidate and hoped that I had not ruined my popularity, yet if it was necessary to ruin it in order to secure to the United States the chance to build the Panama Canal, I should not hesitate a half second, and did not understand how any man could hesitate.
"It is surprising to me that Blank should not see the real meaning of what he says about Washington when he speaks of his having become an object of dislike to the bulk of his fellow citizens at the end of his second term by refusing to side with France. Washington sacrificed a temporary popularity for the purpose of securing the permanent welfare of his country. I do not believe he was capable of being swayed in the matter by the consideration of his own permanent repute as compared with the nation's permanent good. But in any event his permanent repute stood higher and not lower because of his willingness to sacrifice a temporary popularity.

"So, my dear sir, I should be quite unable to tell you whether I was or was not now 'popular.' If I am, I am also entirely prepared to believe that I shall be extremely unpopular before I go out. But this is not what I am concerning myself about. I am not paying heed to public opinion; I am paying heed to the public interest; and if I can accomplish, not all that I desire, but a reasonable proportion of what I desire, by the end of my term (and in the four and a half years that have gone by I have succeeded in accomplishing such reasonable proportion) why, I am more than satisfied."
At intervals during his seven years in the Presidency there was one United States Senator who appealed to the President either to promote some officer in the army over the heads of other officers, or to intercede in behalf of an officer in disgrace for some cause or other, always basing the appeal on personal grounds. Some of the President's replies to these appeals have been published in previous chapters. The following, written on March 2, 1906, is of especial interest as showing the President's devotion to absolute and impartial justice:
"I am very sorry to say that I cannot see Mrs. 	
concerning the court-martial case of her brother. I have been obliged in cases of this kind to make a definite rule that I will not see the delinquent's mother, sister, daughter, or other kinsfolk. They are the very people who under no circumstances should ever be seen. They are of course entirely unable to express any opinion of the slightest value as to the guilt, innocence, or general worthiness of the accused; and an appeal for the accused on the ground of sympathy for his kinsfolk is one which it is simply impossible to entertain if justice is to be done or the service not to be ruined. So that to see them means nothing-whatever but an entirely useless harrowing of feelings.
    I have been carefully over this case, going through the brief of the counsel for the accused, going through the extracts of the testimony and the brief of the Judge Advocate General. The utmost leniency that I could show would be to allow him to resign. He is obviously entirely incompetent to remain any longer in the service. I need not say, my dear Senator, how I regret my inability to do what you request; but it would not be fair to do for one man who had influential friends anything I would not do for the man who had not a friend in the world. I try to handle the Army and the Navy on the basis of doing absolute justice and showing no favoritism for any reason, a course which I know has your hearty approval."
In the spring of 1906, there was much talk about what Roosevelt would do when he retired from the Presidency, and among various suggestions there was one that he might be chosen President of Harvard University. To a Massachusetts friend, who had written to him about it asking him if he would accept, he replied on March 7, 1906:
"It is simply impossible for me to give you a definite answer three years in advance. People have spoken to me about it, of course. I had never thought of myself as president of a college. I have not the slightest idea how I would do as such, and I haven't an idea whether when I get out of here I will feel that I could immediately go into such work; nor do I know whether any work will be offered to me of any kind, or rather, whether the chance of any work will come up, and if so, what kind of work. I would hate to commit myself definitely so far in advance. Any President on retiring ought to be proud and grateful to serve as President of Harvard. But to say that I would serve is impossible for me now, simply because I do not know what the circumstances will be. It is very unlikely that other work in which I should feel that with my peculiar abilities and non-abilities I could do better, would ar.ise, but it is always possible." 
A phrase which the President used in an informal speech at a dinner given by Speaker Cannon to the Gridiron Club in Washington, on March 17, attracted wide attention at the time and led to its elaboration into a formal address later. He spoke in terms of strong denunciation of "the man with the muckrake" who in newspapers and magazines made slanderous and mendacious attacks upon men in public life and upon men engaged in public work and at the same time defended labor leaders who were guilty, directly or indirectly, of murderous assaults upon officials who opposed their schemes. To an eminent jurist who wrote to him expressing warm approval of what he had said, the President replied on March 20, 1906:
"I am glad you liked what I said. I had not prepared the speech at all, but I had been reading with great indignation a certain magazine and the news of the way certain labor unions were subscribing for the defense of those Western Federation of Miners people whose organization certainly, if not they themselves personally, were accessories to murder before the fact in the case of Governor Steunenberg. As you know, my dear Judge, I will go to the limit in enforcing the law against the wealthiest man or the wealthiest corporation if I think he or it has done wrong; but my whole soul revolts at a campaign of foul slander waged against men, down at bottom and primarily, because they have succeeded in business; and above all, at the sinister tendency to condone crimes of brutality, including murder, if those committing them can obtain the support of some powerful labor organization. I shall 'try and see if I can not write out that speech, recasting and elaborating it so as to make it more definite, as soon as I get the chance.''
He decided to make the subject a part of his address on the laying of the corner-stone of the office building of the House of Representatives, on April 14. Writing to Bay Stannard Baker, on April 9, 1906, he said:

 "One reason I want to make that address is because people so persistently misunderstand what I said that I want to have it reported in full. For instance, you understand it. I want to let in light and air, but I do not want to let in sewer gas. If a room is fetid and the windows are bolted I am perfectly contented to knock out the windows, but I would not knock a hole into the drain pipe. In other words, I feel that the man who in a yellow newspaper or in a yellow magazine makes a ferocious attack on good men or even attacks bad men with exaggeration or for things they have not done, is a potent enemy of those of us who are really striving in good faith to expose bad men and drive them from power. I disapprove of the whitewash brush quite as much as of mud slinging, and it seems to me that the disapproval of one in no shape or way implies approval of the other. This I shall try to make clear."
The address, when delivered on April 14, was published in full in the newspapers and excited wide attention and a great variety of comment, the larger part being favorable. In the same address he spoke with characteristic plainness and force of his efforts to secure the passage of the railway rate bill, saying he was sure it would be so framed as to secure tangible results and would be a first step "in the direction of a policy of superintendence and control over corporate wealth engaged in interstate commerce, this superintendence and control not to be exercised in a spirit of malevolence toward the men who have created the wealth, but with the firm purpose both to do justice to them and to see that they in their turn do justice to the public at large.''
He foreshadowed, also in the same address, a recommendation which he was to make in his next annual message to Congress for a graduated inheritance tax on large fortunes. "We shall discriminate," he said, "in the sharpest way between fortunes well-won and fortunes ill-won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere law honesty. Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them."
Maxim Gorky, Russian author, poet and revolutionist, paid a visit to the United States in the spring of 1906. Soon after his arrival it was discovered that the woman with whom he was living at the time and who accompanied him was not his wife and that he had a wife and children in Russia. There was a widespread outcry against him after this revelation was made. In the midst of it Gorky appeared in Washington and a proposal was made to the President that he consent to receive a call from him. The refusal was prompt and sharp. In a letter to the hearer of the proposal, April 23, 1906, the President gave his reasons as follows:
"The Gorky class of realistic writer of poems and short stories is a class of beings for whom I have no very great regard per se; but I would not have the slightest objection to receiving him, and indeed would be rather glad to receive him, if he was merely a member of it. But in addition he represents the very type of fool academic revolutionist which tends to bring to confusion and failure the great needed measures of social, political and industrial reform. I have scant sympathy for that maudlin sentimentality which encourages these creatures abroad, when at home, as Gorky instantly showed by his action when he came here, they would be the special sympathizers with, for instance, the peculiarly foul assassins who are now rallying to the support of the men indicted for the murder of the ex-Governor of Idaho. In addition to this, Gorky in his domestic relations seems to represent with nice exactness the general continental European revolutionary attitude, which in governmental matters is a revolt against order as well as against tyranny, and in domestic matters is a revolt against the ordinary decencies and moralities even more than against conventional hypocrisies and cruelties." 
A letter to George H. Lorimer, editor of the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, May 12, 1906, contains, in addition to interesting autobiographical information, some no less interesting views upon the power of political bosses to control the action of parties:
"I have been in active politics almost from the moment I left Harvard twenty-five years ago. I possessed a very moderate income. I could not have gone into politics at all if the expenses of election had at any time come anywhere near the salaries I have received in the different positions I have held; and except from these salaries, I of course never made a cent out of politics—I could no more do it than I could cheat at cards. I have always occupied working positions. I have seen New York State politics from the inside as a member of the legislature, and New York City politics from the inside as Police Commissioner. I have carried my ward and lost it; have been delegate to county and state and national conventions; have stumped year in and year out, and served on committees, before and after elections, which determined much of what the inside policy was to be. I have had on occasions to fight bosses and rings and machines; and have had to get along as best I could with bosses and rings and machines when the conditions were different. I have seen reform movements that failed and reform movements that succeeded and have taken part in both, and have also taken part in opposing fool reform movements which it would be a misfortune to have succeed. In particular, I have been so placed as to see very much of the inside of the administration of three Presidents in addition to my own—that is, of Harrison, Cleveland and McKinley. ...
"I do not for a moment believe that there is or has been any powerful senatorial boss who in our time has been influential in handling at the same moment the nominations of the two parties. In fact, I do not for a moment believe that in our time any boss in one party has had any effect upon the Presidential nomination of the other. I know that there are many wealthy men who have changed parties at different elections, and supported, for instance, Cleveland first and then McKinley. To my somewhat grim amusement, the chief representatives of this class, or at least a majority, went into a futile conspiracy against me of which they sought to make Mr. Hanna the head; and at that time they expected that if they could not nominate Mr. Hanna or some one who would be agreeable to Mr. Hanna, they would nominate Mr. Parker on the Democratic ticket and turn in and elect him. But their plan miscarried at every point, and it was merely a purely rich man's conspiracy, not a politician's conspiracy at all."
Periodically the President was called upon to reason like a veritable "Dutch Uncle" with Senator T. C. Platt of New York on the subject of the proper use of public office. An excellent example of his method in these emergencies is furnished in this letter to the Senator on June 17, 1906:
"I am not yet prepared to announce my decision about Mr. H., but I must emphatically dissent from your statement that 'it ought to suffice for me to simply say that I prefer Y. to H.'; and furthermore, that the appointment would 'be recognized as an affront to the Senior Senator from the State of New York'; and furthermore from your statement running as follows: 'You and I disagreed some years ago upon a previous judicial appointment in this district. Any fair-minded lawyer, or observer, if he were honest, would tell you to-day that the appointment which was made was a mistake from the standpoint of superior administration.' As to this last statement I take issue absolutely with you. I have taken particular pains to inquire from all the members of the bar whose opinion I regard as most worthy of attention, and it is practically unanimous that he is an exceptionally fine judge and head and shoulders above every other man who at that time it was possible to obtain for the position.

"In the next place, as to the 'affront* to you; I do not understand how you can make such a statement. It is my business to nominate or refuse to nominate, and yours, together with your colleagues, to confirm or refuse to confirm. Of course the common sense way is to confer together and try to come to an agreement. It is just exactly what I have been doing in this matter. If we both do our duty then each will endeavor to obtain a man for the position who is the best man under the circumstances that can be obtained, and neither of us will insist upon any man for merely personal reasons if there is good ground against him—upon any man who is not the best man for the position. I never saw H. until the other day. I have not the slightest interest in his appointment, save from the standpoint of the bench and of the public. As you do not indicate any possible objection to him, save that you insist upon having some one else, I must decline to consider that there will be any affront to you involved in appointing him.

"Finally, I am sorry to say I must emphatically disagree with you and disagree with your statement that it ought to suffice me to have you simply say that you prefer Y. to H. You add that 'both men are admittedly qualified for the position.' Here you say that H. is qualified for the position, but insist that your preference for Y. should be enough to settle the matter. I cannot consider such a proposition. I have not considered my own individual preference and I cannot consider yours. Neither of us is entitled to have his personal preference considered, and it is the duty of both of us to disregard our individual preferences and take the man who will be most acceptable to the public and the bar, who will be most likely to do his work well and faithfully, showing exact justice to corporation and labor union, rich man and poor man, and the man who is neither a member of the corporation nor the labor union, and is neither rich nor poor."
A strong movement had been started by the labor unions in 1905 for the passage of a law by Congress depriving the courts of their power to issue injunctions in labor disputes. In his annual message of that year the President had expressed his opposition to such action and had suggested that the procedure in injunction cases might be regulated by requiring the judge to give due notice to the adverse parties before granting the writ, such due notice to depend upon the facts in the case. A bill somewhat along those lines was introduced but failed of enactment. It was reintroduced in 1906, and the labor unions opposed it, demanding the complete removal of the power to grant injunctions. The members of the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor sought an interview with the President on March 21, 1906, and stated their views on the subject. In his reply the President told them that if they thought that the pending bill did not go far enough they would have no earthly difficulty in killing it for the capitalists were against it. '' Personally,'' he said,'' I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely wish it could be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is absolutely necessary to have this power lodged in the courts; though of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener. But understand me, gentlemen, if ever I thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.''
In the spring of 1906 the President's attention was called to conditions in the stock yards and meat packing-houses of Chicago, which were reported to be very bad. He appointed a special commission to investigate the matter and on June 4 he sent its report to Congress with a message in which he said the conditions disclosed were "revolting" and "in the interest of health and decency should be radically changed." The report fairly startled the whole country, for the revelations made were fitly characterized by the President. Following his recommendations, a law was passed giving the Government power to enforce inspection of prepared meat products, and, what was of far-reaching importance, a Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was the first thoroughgoing law of the kind and which has proved in practise an incalculable boon to the country. The great beef dealers fought these measures bitterly and sought in many ways to deprive them of their effectiveness by ingenious amendments of one kind or another, but in vain. The whole country was aroused by the revelations and Congress acted in obedience to an overwhelming popular demand.

Another beneficient law passed at this session of Congress was an Employers' Liability Act which first established on the statute books recognition of the principle involved. A consular reform measure was also passed, classifying the service, and, most important of all, the act decreeing the construction of a lock canal at Panama.
The President was justly proud of the work of the session, and issued a frankly jubilant statement to that effect. High praise came to him from many quarters, and, most surprising of all, from a persistent and often virulent critic, the New York World. The editorial article which that journal published on July 2, 1906, after the adjournment of Congress, is worth reproducing to show what even his political opponents felt moved to say of him at this time:
mR. Roosevelt's best woRk
"Mr. Roosevelt would be more than human if he could conceal his elation over the achievements of a Congress that has evidenced almost phonographic fidelity to the wishes of the President. The sentiment of the country is undoubtedly in accord with him in praising Congress for what it has done—concerning which Mr. Roosevelt might say, 'All of which I saw and a great part of which I was.'
"But the President in his exultant proclamation was restrained by modesty perhaps from calling attention to what historians are likely to regard as the best work of his Administration—not legislation, but the progress made in enforcing laws already on the statute-books.
"Congress has for twenty years been making laws to restrain organized wealth and will be passing new laws along the same lines for decades to come, but Mr. Roosevelt is the first President to make a considerable progress in the matter of enforcing this legislation.
"In replying to a Senate resolution Attorney General Moody has issued a statement showing that under the Elkins Anti-Rebate law the Department of Justice has already obtained thirty-six indictments and nine convictions, with only two acquittals and three cases nolle-prossed. In view of the fact that it has been hardly more than a year since the Administration began to make serious efforts to enforce this law, a really great work has been accomplished. If the President continues this vigor it will be a matter of only a few months before he will have destroyed the iniquitous rebate system, root and branch.
"The rebate cases represented but one set of activities Only a few days ago Mr. Moody began more than thirty suits against railroad companies for violating the Safety Appliance law, an act which has been virtually a dead letter. The cases are not perhaps of the first importance, but they reveal a healthy determination to execute laws regardless of the wealth of the defendants. The same thing must be said of the Administration's campaign against the Paper Trust, the Drug Trust and the Fertilizer Trust.
"By relentless prosecution of rich offenders Secretary Hitchcock has all but destroyed the business of stealing Government land. The Post-Office Department has pursued Burton until he has been at last driven out of the United States Senate and is in a fair way to go to prison. In the railroad-rate matter, in the investigation of the coal roads by the Interstate Commerce Commission, in the investigation of the packing-houses, in the preparations for prosecuting the Standard Oil Company, the Administration has shown a spirit that is not dismayed by the power of organized capital.   The President is actualizing the ' square deal' which makes every man equal before the law.
"Even Mr. Roosevelt's bitterest opponents could not minimize the healthful influence upon public sentiment of these activities. At a time when a horde of demagogues are trying to convince the American people that there is one law for the rich and another law for the poor, the President is proving that there is only one law for everybody and that the National Government knows not distinction in offenders. Such an object-lesson could not be more opportune. It is doubly so at a time when District-Attorneys like William Travers Jerome are making class distinctions in crime and shirking the prosecution of rich offenders. Whatever his faults, Mr. Roosevelt has proved that he is not dazzled by dollars."
A few days earlier the President had written, June 26, 1906, a letter to his devoted and much-loved friend, Jacob Riis, in reply to one asking for hints as to how best to answer the President's critics:
"I would not have the least idea how to give you light upon the criticisms made, chiefly because I really do not know about the latter in detail. For instance, I am criticized for interference with Congress. There really is not any answer I can make to this except to say that if I had not interfered we would not have had any rate bill, or any beef-packers' bill, or any pure food bill, or any consular reform bill, or the Panama Canal, or the Employers' Liability Bill, or in short, any of the legislation which we have obtained during the last year. . . .
"I have enumerated the measures we have succeeded in passing. If I stand for anything it is for this kind of substantive achievement, and above all, for treating public affairs with courage, honesty and sanity; for keeping our Army and Navy up; for making it evident that as a nation we do not intend to inflict wrong or submit to wrong, and that we do intend to try to do justice within our own borders, and so far as it can be done by legislation, to favor the growth of intelligence and the diffusion of wealth in such a manner as will measurably avoid the extremes of swollen fortunes and grinding poverty. This represents the ideal toward which I am striving. I hope we can fairly realize it."

CHAPTER TWO
HAGUE   CONFERENCE—ESTIMATE   OF   JEFFERSON-INTERVENTION IN CUBA—BROWNSVILLE INCIDENT
immediately after the adjournment of Congress in June, 1906, the President went with his family to Oyster Bay where he enjoyed a quiet and restful summer, in strong contrast to that of 1905 when he was directing the work of the Portsmouth Peace Conference. A letter which he wrote to Andrew Carnegie, August 5, 1906, is interesting as showing his views of the Hague tribunal:
"In such matter as the Hague Conference business the violent extremists who favor the matter are to be dreaded almost or quite as much as the Bourbon reactionaries who are against us. This is as true of the cause of International peace as it is of the cause of economic equity between labor and capital at home. I do not know whether in the French Revolution I have most contempt and abhorrence for the Marat, Hebert, Robespierre, and Danton type of revolutionists, or for the aristocratic, bureaucratic, and despotic rulers of the old regime; for the former did no good in the Revolution, but at the best simply nullified the good that others did and produced a reaction which re-enthroned despotism; while they made the name of liberty a word of shuddering horror for the time being.
"I hope to see real progress made at the next Hague Conference. If it is possible in some way to bring about a stop, complete or partial, to the race in adding to armaments, I shall be glad; but I do not yet see my way clear as regards the details of such a plan. We must always remember that it would be a fatal thing for the great free peoples to reduce themselves to impotence and leave the despotisms and barbarians armed. It would be safe to do so if there were some system of international police; but there is now no such system."
A glimpse of some of the annoyances to which a President on vacation is subjected is furnished in a letter to Senator Lodge on August 6, 1906:
"I have been having a real rest this summer, and incidentally have grown to realize that I have reached that time of life when too violent physical exercise does not rest a man when he has had an exhausting mental career. We have been having a delightful summer. The secret service men are a very small but very necessary thorn in the flesh. Of course they would not be the least use in preventing any assault on my life. I do not believe there is any danger of such an assault, and if there were it would be simple nonsense to try to prevent it, for as Lincoln said, though it would be safer for a President to live in a cage, it would interfere with his business. But it is not only the secret service men who render life endurable, as you would realize if you saw the procession of carriages that pass through the place, the procession of people on foot who try to get into the place, not to speak of the multitude of cranks and others who are stopped in the village. I have ridden and rowed and chopped and played tennis."
His estimate of Jefferson and Hamilton, as well as his views upon other interesting subjects are disclosed in a letter, August 9, 1906, to Frederick Scott Oliver, the English author of a 'Life of Alexander Hamilton' and 'Ordeal by Battle':
"I have so thoroughly enjoyed your book on Hamilton that you must allow me the privilege of writing to tell you so. I have just sent a copy to Lodge. There are naturally one or two points on which you and I would not quite agree, but they are very few, and it is really remarkable that you, an English man of letters, and I, an American politician largely of non-English descent, should be in such entire accord as regards the essentials. . . .
"Thank Heaven, I have never hesitated to criticize Jefferson; he was infinitely below Hamilton. I think the worship of Jefferson a discredit to my country; and I have as small use for the ordinary Jeffersonian as for the ordinary defender of the house of Stuart—and I am delighted to notice that you share this last prejudice with me. I think Jefferson on the whole did harm in public life. . . . He did thoroughly believe in the people, just as Abraham Lincoln did, just as Chatham and Pitt believed in England; and though this did not blind Lincoln to popular faults and failings any more than it blinded the elder and the younger Pitts to English failings, it was in each case a prerequisite to doing the work well. In the second place, Jefferson believed in the West and in the expansion of our people westward, whereas the northeastern Federalists allowed themselves to get into a position of utter hostility to western expansion. Finally, Jefferson was a politician and Hamilton was not. Hamilton's admirers are apt to speak as if this was really to his credit, but such a position is all nonsense. A politician may be and often is a very base creature, and if he cares only for party success, if he panders to what is evil in the people, and still more if he cares only for his own success, his special abilities merely render him a curse. But among free peoples, and especially among the free peoples who speak English, it is only in very exceptional circumstances that a statesman can be efficient, can be of use to the country, unless he is also (not as a substitute, but in addition) a politician.
'' This is a very rough-and-tumble, workaday world, and the persons, such as our 'anti-imperialist' critics over here, who sit in comfortable libraries and construct theories, or even the people who like to do splendid and spectacular feats in public office without undergoing all the necessary preliminary outside drudgery, are and deserve to be at a disadvantage compared to the man who takes the trouble, who takes the pains, to organize victory. Lincoln, who, as you finely put it, conscientiously carried out the Hamiltonian tradition, was superior to Hamilton just because he was a politician and was a genuine democrat, and therefore suited to lead a genuine democracy. He was infinitely superior to Jefferson of course; for Jefferson led the people wrong, and followed them when they went wrong; and though he had plenty of imagination and of sentimental inspiration, he had neither courage nor far-sighted common sense, where the interests of the nation were at stake.
"I have not much sympathy with Hamilton's distrust of the democracy. Nobody knows better than I that a democracy may go very wrong indeed, and I loathe the kind of demagogy which finds expression in such statements as 'the voice of the people is the voice of God'; but in my own experience it has certainly been true, and if I read history aright it was true both before and at the time of the Civil War, that the highly cultivated classes, who tend to become either cynically worldly-wise or to develop along the lines of the Eighteenth Century philosophers, and the moneyed classes, especially those of large fortune, whose ideal tends to the mere money, are not fitted for any predominant guidance in a really great nation. I do not dislike but I certainly have no especial respect or admiration for and no trust in, the typical big moneyed man of my country. I do not regard them as furnishing sound opinion as regards either foreign or domestic policies.
"Quite as little do I regard as furnishing such opinion the men who especially pride themselves on their cultivation—the men like many of those who graduate from my own college of Harvard, and who find their organs in the New York Evening Post and Nation. These papers are written especially for cultivated gentlefolk. They have many minor virtues, moral and intellectual; and yet during my twenty-five years in public life I have found them much more often wrong than right on the great and vital public issues. In England they would be howling little Englanders, would be raving against the expense of the navy, and eager to find out something to criticize in Lord Cromer's management of Egypt, not to speak of perpetually insisting upon abandoning the Soudan."
In August, 1906, an insurrection broke out in Cuba which the Cuban Government, headed by President Palma, was entirely unable to quell. It appealed to the President to intervene. It was evident that chaos was impending and that immediate intervention was imperative. "With his usual lack of hesitation, the President, without waiting to summon Congress to direct him, acted at once. "Thanks to the preparedness of our Navy," he said in his annual message to Congress in December following, "I was able immediately to send enough ships to Cuba to prevent the situation from becoming hopeless." He also sent the Secretary of War, Mr. Taft, and the Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Robert Bacon, to take charge in behalf of the United States Government. When President Palma resigned and there was no quorum of the Cuban Congress to accept his resignation, the Cuban Government came to a halt. Acting in accordance with the so-called Platt Amendment embodied in the Cuban Constitution, President Roosevelt proclaimed a provisional government for the island, with Taft acting as Provisional Governor, until one could be appointed. The President then named for that position Charles E. Magoon, who had formerly been Governor of the Canal Zone and United States Minister to Panama. He also sent a small army of pacification to relieve the navy for the protection of the lives and property of citizens. The insurgent chiefs immediately had their troops lay down their arms and disband. The Provisional Government left unchanged as far as possible the personnel of the old government and the old laws and administered the island until tranquillity was restored and a new government, chosen at a properly conducted election, was installed in January, 1909. In a letter to Senator Lodge, September 27, 1906, the President thus explained his action:
"I did not send Taft and Bacon to Havana until Palma had repeatedly telegraphed us that his unalterable purpose was to resign forthwith; that the Vice-President and the members of his Cabinet would decline to take or remain in office, and that he was entirely unable to quell the insurrection. I have, I need hardly say, a horror of putting what is in effect a premium upon insurrection by letting the insurrectionists receive benefit from their action; but P alma's utter weakness—or, to speak with literal exactness, his impotence—to do anything effective toward quelling the revolt (for I treat as of less moment the undoubted and gross misbehavior of the party in power at the last election) made it absolutely imperative that I should take some step unless I wished to see chaos come in the island.
"Of course if I had announced, as Mr. Bryan advised, that under no circumstances would I use armed force; or if, as Foraker desires, I had stated I could take no action until Congress decided what to do—just imagine my following the Buchanan-like course of summoning Congress for a six weeks' debate by Bacon, John Sharp Williams, and Tillman as to whether I ought to land marines to protect American life and property—the fighting would have gone on without a break, the whole island would now be a welter of blood. Of course our permanent policy toward the island must depend absolutely upon the action of Congress, no matter what construction is given the Platt Amendment. Congress has nothing to do but to refuse appropriations to put it into effect, and the Platt Amendment vanishes into air, and any stay of marines and troops in the island becomes impossible.
"Equally of course, I should be ashamed to look anybody in the face if I hesitated to take important measures to try to secure peace, if necessary by landing sailors and marines or even troops, so as to try to reestablish some government in Cuba and keep the island so far as possible in decent condition until Congress meets, when it can itself take action.
"I hope that we shall not have to intervene in any permanent form at present, and that we can simply make temporary arrangements to keep order until an election can be held and a new government or modified government started. I am inclined to think that, thanks to the fact that I have shown that I was ready to intervene by force of arms if necessary, the necessity will be for the present avoided; but I am greatly disheartened at what has occurred and doubt very much whether in the end we shall not have to exercise a more immediate control over Cuba, and of course it is possible that we shall be unable to make a working scheme even now, and that we shall have to take possession of the island temporarily this fall. But I shall do all that I can to avoid this and I hope to be successful."
An incident which excited wide public interest and much partisan rancor at the time occurred also in August, 1906. This was the attack by a body of colored troops of the regular army upon the city of Brownsville in Texas. The troops were stationed at Fort Brown, close beside the city, and considerable hostility had developed between them and the citizens. Near midnight on August 13, a body of colored soldiers, numbering from nine to fifteen or twenty according to varying estimates, scaled the walls of the fort and went through the town, shooting whomsoever they saw moving and firing into houses wherever they saw lights. They fired upon and hit in the arm the lieutenant of police who approached them, fired also at two policemen, killed one man in a saloon and wounded another, and came very near to killing several women and children. Investigation showed that the bullets and shells found on the ground were from government rifles and that bullet-holes in the houses were made by such bullets. There were no bullet-holes in the structure of the fort, showing that there had been no attack upon it. The commander of the fort testified that he was convinced that the raiders had slipped out of their quarters, got possession of their rifles, shot up the town and returned to the barracks without being discovered. All efforts to extort confessions from the suspected soldiers, or to get their associates to give evidence against them failed.
After full investigation of the facts, the President ordered the discharge of nearly all the members of three companies of the regiment that were known to contain guilty members, holding that the innocent members had entered into a conspiracy of silence to protect their guilty associates, thereby violating their oaths of enlistment by refusing to help discover the criminals. The President's action led to a bitter partisan debate in the Senate, led by Senator Foraker of Ohio, which continued for many weeks, but in the end the President's course was sustained. Letters that he wrote at the time disclose his feelings and motives in the case. Writing to Mr. Silas McBee, editor of The Churchman, on November 27, 1906, he said:
"I have been amazed and indignant at the attitude of the negroes and of shortsighted white sentimentalists as to my action. It has been shown conclusively that some of these troops made a midnight murderous and entirely unprovoked assault upon the citizens of Brownsville—for the fact that some of their number had been slighted by some of the citizens of Brownsville, though warranting criticism upon Brownsville, is not to be considered for a moment as provocation for such a murderous assault. All the men of the companies concerned, including their veteran noncommissioned officers, instantly banded together to shield the criminals. In other words, they took action which cannot be tolerated in any soldiers, black or white, in any policeman, black or white, and which, if taken generally in the army would mean not merely that the usefulness of the army was at an end but that it had better be disbanded in its entirety at once. Under no conceivable circumstances would I submit to such a condition of things. There has been great pressure not only by the sentimentalists but by the Northern politicians who wish to keep the negro vote. As you know I believe in practical politics, and where possible, I always weigh well any action which may cost votes before I consent to take it; but in a case like this, where the issue is not merely one of naked right and wrong but one of vital concern to the whole country, I will not for one moment consider the political effect.

    "There is another side to this also.   In that part of my message about lynching, which you have read, I speak of the grave and evil fact that the negroes too often band together to shelter their own criminals, which action had an undoubted effect in helping to precipitate the hideous Atlanta race riots. I condemn such attitude strongly, for I feel that it is fraught with the gravest danger to both races. Here, where I have power to deal with it, I find this identical attitude displayed among the negro troops. I should be recreant to my duty if I failed by deeds as well as words to emphasize with the utmost severity my disapproval of it."
To Dr. B. Lawton Wiggins, Vice Chancellor, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee:
"When I took the stand I did on these negro troops I of course realized that trouble would come of it politically because of the attitude certain to be taken, I regret to say, by unwise sentimentalists and self-seeking demagogues in our Northern States, especially in those where the negro vote is an important factor. But it was just one of those vital matters where I did not feel that I had any right to consider questions of political expediency, and still less of personal expediency. Do not misunderstand me. I believe in being thoroughly practical in politics, and in paying all proper heed to political considerations. As things actually are in this world, I do not feel that a man can accomplish much for good in public life unless he does so. But I believe still more strongly that when we come to root questions affecting the welfare of the entire nation, it is out of the question for an honorable man, whether in public or private life, to consider political expediency at all. In this instance the question was really one of those root questions. If the troops had been white troops, nothing would have been said about my action. It is a curious thing that these same politicians and sentimentalists who denounce me because I refuse to do injustice in favor of the colored troops, have always opposed me when I have endeavored to secure recognition for decent colored men by giving them appointments in their own northern communities."
To Mr. George F. Spinney, of New York City, on January 22, 1907:
"I have had a perfectly comic time with the Senate. They have been hopping about, insisting that they could not desert Foraker, because it would 'split the party'; and I finally told the most active of the compromisers that if they split off Foraker they split off a splinter; but if they split off me they would split the party nearly in two; and that I should state most unhesitatingly, and whenever it became necessary in public, that the opposition to me on Brownsville was simply a cloak to cover antagonism to my actions about trusts, swollen fortunes and the like. I added that this opposition would be shown by voting against the Blackburn amendment. Once this declaration was made, Foraker was left so completely without support that he actually came into line himself, and agreed to support an amendment a little stronger than the Blackburn amendment. That is, the Blackburn amendment merely said that they did not question the legality of my action; whereas the proposed amendment stated that they questioned neither the legality nor the justice of my action. I was sorry that Foraker was allowed the chance to offer the amendment, and it was against my earnest advice that the senators who were on my side permitted him to do so. But when he 'ate crow' and took the very amendment upon which I insisted, I did not see how I could make any open protest against it. There never has been a more complete case of backdown and humiliation than this of Foraker's."
I was stationed in Washington at the time and when talking with the President one morning I made a reference to the Brownsville debate in the Senate. "Oh," he said, "that is merely the latest log going down the stream." When in January following there appeared in the Century magazine, an article by him on "The Ancient Irish Sagas," which excited high praise from all persons most competent to judge of its merits, I asked him how he could find time for such research as the article showed. "I have always been interested in the subject," he replied, "and when this Brownsville row started in the Senate I knew it would be a long and possibly irritating business if I followed it; so I shut myself up, paid no heed to the row and wrote the article."
For William Jennings Bryan personally, Roosevelt always had a kindly feeling while abhorring his political opinions. When Mr. Bryan returned from his tour of the world in 1906 and made what was predicted would be the "greatest speech of his life" in Madison Square Garden, New York, the President wrote to Whitelaw Reid in London, on September 25, a brief and accurate account of the fiasco which occurred:
"Poor Bryan! I do not know whether I feel more irritated or sympathetic with him. I never saw a bubble pricked so quickly. No private citizen in my time, neither General Grant nor Mr. Blaine, for instance, has been received with such wild enthusiasm on his return from a foreign trip; and in twenty-four hours he made his speech and became an object of indignation and laughter. He has retained his good nature and kindliness; but he has still further lost credit since he made his speech and found out that his panacea of government ownership was unpopular, by attempting to craw-fish on it, and thereby has added an appearance of insincerity to an appearance of folly and recklessness."
The President's own views on government ownership were set forth in a speech which he made at the dedication of the new State Capitol Building at Harrisburg, Pa., on October 4, 1906: '' To exercise a constantly increasing and constantly more efficient supervision and control over the great common carriers of the country prevents all necessity for seriously considering such a project as the government ownership of railroads—a policy which would be evil in its results from every standpoint. . . . The Government ought not to conduct the business of the country; but it ought to regulate it so that it shall be conducted in the interest of the public."
He was deeply interested in the Republican candidacy of Charles E. Hughes for Governor of New York in the election of 1906, when the opposing Democratic candidate was W. B. Hearst. While he refused all efforts, and there were many and urgent ones, to induce him to exert influence openly in behalf of Mr. Hughes, he kept close watch upon the developments of the campaign and was in constant touch with the Republican managers. Writing to Senator Lodge, on October 8, 1906, he made these somewhat startling revelations:
"I have been more shocked than I can say by the attitude of some of the corporation men within the last two or three weeks. Last week Sherman called upon E. H. Harriman to ask for a contribution. Harriman declined flatly to give anything. He said he had no interest in the Republican party and that in view of my action toward the corporations he preferred the other side to win. Sherman told him that the other side was infinitely more hostile to corporations than we were; that all we were doing was to be perfectly honest with them, decline to give them improper favors, and so on, and that Harriman would have to fear, as other capitalists would have to fear, the other side more than us. To this Harriman answered that he was not in the least afraid, that whenever it was necessary he could buy a sufficient number of Senators and Congressmen or State Legislators to protect his interests, and when necessary he could buy the Judiciary. These were his own words. He did not say this under any injunction of secrecy to Sherman, and showed a perfectly cynical spirit of defiance throughout, his tone being that he greatly preferred to have in office demagogues rather than honest men who treated him fairly, because when he needed he could purchase favors from the former. At the same time the Standard Oil people informed Penrose that they intend to support the Democratic party unless I call a halt in the suits begun against the Standard Oil people, notably, a suit which Moody is inclined to recommend; and they gave the same reason as Harriman, namely, that rather than have" an administration such as the present they would prefer to have an administration of Bryans and Hearsts, because they could make arrangements with them—they did not use the naked brutality of language which Harriman used, but they did state in substance that they could bring about favors they needed.''
A valiant but unsuccessful effort was made by the President in 1906 to advance the cause of simplified spelling by committing the Government to the adoption of the system. On August 27, he sent an order to the Public Printer to use the system in all public documents thenceforward. The order was obeyed, and among the documents thus printed was the President's special message describing the results of his visit to the Isthmus of Panama and the canal in November, 1906, as noted in a previous chapter. The reform was not acceptable to Congress, however, and so much hostility was manifested that the President said that if the House would go on record against it he would rescind his order to the Public Printer. The House passed a resolution to that effect, and on December 13, the President rescinded the order. Brander Matthews, of New York, one of the chief advocates of the reform, wrote to the President remonstrating with him for abandoning the effort, and to him the President replied on December 16: "I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten. Do you know that the one word as to which I thought the new spelling was wrong— thru—was more responsible than anything else for our discomfiture? But I am mighty glad I did the thing anyhow. In my own correspondence I shall continue using the new spelling."
A "Dooley" article that Roosevelt had enjoyed especially was one on his campaign entitled "Alone in Cubia." Writing to the author on June 18, 1906, the President thus alludes to it: "Three cheers, Mr. Dooley! Do come on and let me see you soon. I am by no means as much alone as in Cubia, because I have an ample surrounding of Senators and Congressmen, not to speak of railroad men, Standard Oil men, beef packers, and venders of patent medicines, the depth of whose feelings for me cannot be expressed in words!"
Again, on January 9, 1907, he wrote: "Let me repeat that Dooley, especially when he writes about Teddy Rosen-felt, has no more interested and amused reader than said Rosenfelt himself. I have known that a few people have recently thought quite otherwise, as they have also told you that they thought; but this is not a feeling that I have shared in the least. On the contrary, I feel that what you have written about me, with exception too trivial to mention, has been written in just the nicest possible style—that what Dooley says shows 'the good-natured affection that the boys in the army felt for old Grant and the people in Illinois for Lincoln.' I hate to compare myself with two great men, even when I am only quoting you, and I do it of course merely to show how thoroughly I understand and appreciate our friend Mr. Dooley's attitude." 

CHAPTER THREE
 THE PANIC OF 1907
duRing no other portion of his Presidential service was Roosevelt more fiercely assailed with hostile criticism than he- was in 1907. Early in that year signs were visible of serious financial disturbances, not only in the United States but in Europe. A formidable and concerted effort was made by the opponents of the President's policy in regard to railway and other corporations suspected of violations of law, to use those disturbances as an inducement for him to moderate that policy and to abandon temporarily legal proceedings that had been instituted under his direction. In his message to Congress in December, 1906, he had adhered steadfastly to his policy and had declared that while the powers conferred upon the Interstate Commerce Commission had been productive of excellent results, still there would ultimately be need of enlarging those powers along several different lines so as to give the Commission larger and more efficient control over the railroads. In November, 1906, the Government had brought suit against the Standard Oil Company as a combination in restraint of trade, and about the same time had begun an investigation of the Union Pacific or Harriman lines. Appeals for modification or temporary suspension or compromise poured in upon him from many sources, including persons who had hitherto upheld his course. Lifelong friends turned against him and joined the chorus of those who had been his most venomous assailants. The assaults upon him increased in ferocity when he refused to swerve a particle from his course. His letters at this time show that he was entirely unmoved by the appeals either of friends or of foes, because he was convinced absolutely of the justice and wisdom of his policy. From a large number of these letters, among the most earnest and convincing that he ever wrote, I select a few which are typical of all, beginning with one written on January 24, 1907, to Paul Morton, a former member of his Cabinet, and at the time President of the Equitable Life Insurance Company of New York:
"I suppose that your letter was really based upon this Harriman investigation. It would in my judgment be most undesirable for the ultimate good of the railways to interfere in any way with a full and fair investigation. However, I am certain that we have got to make up our minds that the railroads must not in the future do things that cannot bear the light. If trouble comes from having the light turned on, remember it is not really due to the light but the misconduct which it exposed.
"I quite agree with you that there is danger in ill-directed agitation, and especially in agitation in the States; but the only way to meet it is by having the fullest and most thorough investigation by the national government, and in conferring upon the national government full power to act. The federal authorities, including the President, must state as clearly as possible that railroads which do well are to be encouraged and when they make a good showing it is to be emphasized; and that the people who invest will be given a chance of profit which alone will make them willing to invest, and which alone will make big men willing to undertake the job.
"Do you ever see Judge Gary? He has assured us that the publicity given by the investigation of the national government to the steel corporation is welcome and will do good and not harm."
An appeal from an attorney in the employ of Harriman, on January 31, 1907, called forth a reply which is an admirable specimen of Roosevelt's thorough and direct method of dealing with charges of misconduct against his associates in the Government:
   
"Last winter you came to me on several occasions, some times with and sometimes without Mr. Harriman, assuring me that very grave errors and shortcomings existed in the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission, these being due primarily to the work of the statistician, Mr. Adams. The allegations made were so grave that I had both of you meet certain members of the Commission, on which occasion you stated that you would be able to get the Commission in possession of information, which would practically revolutionize much of the work they were doing, if you were given the chance to have access to their books. The Commission, at my request, gave you such access. You were engaged in the research last spring. When I returned to Washington last fall I heard from both Mr. Harriman and you on different occasions that you had found errors of the gravest and grossest character in the work of the statistician—errors which completely nullified and rendered valueless the work of the whole Commission.
'' The charges you had made and were then making were of so grave a character that I did not feel justified in failing to give you every opportunity to substantiate them; for of course there was nothing more important than to find out whether or not the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission was accurate and trustworthy. I endeavored to have Mr. Harriman state to me definitely what the charges were. You admitted that your only knowledge of the matter was from him. I found it almost impossible to pin him down to any definite statement; and finally, in view of the repeated statements of both you and himself that only experts could go into the matter, I appointed Mr. O. P. Austin to look into the charges. He reported to me that after careful examination of the charges as presented in the paper of Mr. Harriman, and of the reply of Professor Adams, he believed the charges were without foundation.
"You and Mr. Harriman insisted that Mr. Austin had erred, and you yourself suggested that I should have Mr. Neill and one or more bank examiners examine your charges. I summoned Mr. Harriman to meet me with Mr. Neill, Mr. Garfield and Mr. Adams. I spent an entire evening endeavoring to get Mr. Harriman to make specific charges, telling him that he had been many months at work and that it was out of the question for me any longer to accept general allegations or sweeping accusations without specific statements to back them up. It proved exceedingly difficult to pin him down to anything specific; but I finally did pin him down to three definite charges. I explained to him repeatedly that he must then and there make any charges he had to make; that it was impossible to take up the time of officers of the administration any longer with loose declarations and that I would consider nothing whatever save what charges he then and there presented; that I would have them tested by a commission consisting of Mr. Garfield, Mr. Neill, and a Mr. Starek, one of the best bank examiners in the Government service. The examination has been made and the charges of Mr. Harriman are found to be without any foundation whatever. Under the circumstances it would be simply folly for me to pay any further heed to any allegations whatever made in regard to the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission by either Mr. Harriman or you. The incident is closed and I shall forward a copy of this letter to the Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission."
A rather persistent appellant was Colonel Henry L. Higginson of Boston, to whom these two replies were sent:
February 11, 1907.
"The present unsatisfactory condition in railroad affairs is due ninety-five per cent to the misconduct, the short-sightedness, and the folly of the railroad men themselves. Unquestionably there is loose demagogic attack upon them in some of the States, but not one particle of harm has come to them by Federal action; on the contrary, merely good. I wish very much that our laws could be strengthened, and I think that the worst thing that could be done for the railroads would be an announcement that for two or three years the Federal Government would keep its hands off of them. It would result in a tidal wave of violent State action against them throughout three-fourths of this country. I am astonished at the curious shortsightedness of the railroad people—a short-sightedness which, thanks to their own action, extends to would-be investors. Legislation such as I have proposed, or whatever legislation in the future I shall propose, will be in the interest of honest investors and to protect the public and the investors against dishonest action.
"I may incidentally say that I think that no possible action on railroads would have as disturbing an effect upon business as action on the tariff at this time. I earnestly and cordially agree with you on the need of currency legislation, and have been doing all I can for it; but the big financial men of the country, instead of trying to get sound currency legislation, seem to pass their time in lamenting, as Wall Street laments, our action about the railroads."
March 28, 1907.
"... You say that the fear of investors in railway securities must be dispelled; and you say that the people now have the impression that the greatest business interests (those of railroads) are imperiled. I am inclined to think that this is the case. If so, the responsibility lies primarily and overwhelmingly upon the railway and corporation people—that is, the manipulators of railroad and other corporation stocks—who have been guilty of such scandalous irregularities during the last few years. Secondarily it lies, of course, with the agitators and visionaries to whom the misdeeds of the conscienceless speculators I have named gave the chance to impress the people as a whole. Not one word of mine; not one act, administrative or legislative, of the National Government, is responsible, directly or indirectly, in any degree whatsoever for the present situation. I trust I have stated this with sufficient emphasis, for it would be quite impossible to overemphasize it. Two years ago the railroads were all clamoring against the passage of the rate law—an act of folly on their part and on the part of their friends and abettors which can not be too harshly stigmatized. The one hope for the honest railroad man, for the honest investor, is in the extension and perfection of the system inaugurated by that law; in the absolute carrying out of the law at present and in its strengthening, if possible, at the next session of Congress so as to make it even more effective.
"I will not deviate one hand's breadth from the course I have marked out, and anything I may say will contain this explicit statement. Moreover, it is an act of sheer folly and short-sightedness on the part of the railway men not to realize that I am best serving their interests in following out precisely this course. I have never seen more foolish and hysterical speeches and acts than those of the so-called industrial leaders during the past few months. At one moment they yell that I am usurping the rights of the States. The next they turn around in literally a panic frenzy and beseech me to make some public utterances forbidding the States to do the very things they have just asserted the States alone had the power to do."
On March 12, J. Pierpont Morgan visited the White House and had a long interview with the President, giving out for publication afterwards a statement in which he said he "had suggested to the President that it would be greatly to the public interest if he would see the railway presidents and confer with them as to what steps might be taken to allay the public anxiety now threatening to obstruct railway investment and combination, and especially to allay public anxiety as to the relations between the railways and the Government. The President had said that he would be glad to see them with this end in view."
When this suggestion was communicated to the presidents of the great railway systems they said they would go to see the President if he would invite them to do so. This he declined to do. Finally, one of them, President Mellen of the New Haven system, alone went. Writing to Jacob Schiff of New York, March 28, 1907, the President explained his attitude on the subject:
"It is difficult for me to understand why there should be this belief in Wall Street that I am a wild-eyed revolutionist. I can not condone wrong, but I certainly do not intend to do aught save what is beneficial to the man of means who acts squarely and fairly. When I see you I will explain at length why I do not think it advantageous from any standpoint for me to ask any railroad man to call upon me. I can only say to you, as I have said to Mr. Morgan when he suggested that he would like to have certain of them call upon me (a suggestion which they refused to adopt, by the way), that it would be a pleasure to me to see any of them at any time. Sooner or later I think they will realize that in their opposition to me for the last few years they have been utterly mistaken, even from the standpoint of their own interests; and that nothing better for them could be devised than the laws I have striven and am striving to have enacted. I wish to do everything in my power to aid every honest business man, and the dishonest business man I wish to punish simply as I would punish the dishonest man of any type. Moreover, I am not desirous of avenging what has been done wrong in the past, especially when the punishment would be apt to fall upon innocent third parties. My prime object is to prevent injustice and work equity for the future.''
A leading figure in the assaults upon the President was E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific lines. On April 2, 1907, a discharged employee in the Harriman service published a letter written by Harriman in which Harriman asserted that the President in the campaign of 1904 had sought his aid in raising a $250,000 campaign fund to aid in Roosevelt's election to the Presidency. When this was published the President gave out to the press a letter that he had written on October 8, 1906, to the Hon. J. S. Sherman, who was then chairman of the Republican Congressional Committee, in which he had denied Harriman's assertion about the $250,000 campaign fund as "a deliberate and wilful untruth," and had stated in detail his relations with Harriman, giving the text of various letters that had passed between them. These showed conclusively that his communications with Harriman related solely to the State campaign in New York in 1904, and not at all to the Presidential campaign of that year. A phrase in one of the President's letters to Harriman—"You and I are practical men"—was seized upon by the President's regular opponents in and out of the press as evidence of guilty partisan complicity with Harriman and it was in quite constant use for many months, and spasmodically for years afterwards, though the context of the letter showed clearly that such an interpretation was distortion of the President's meaning.
Other letters revealing the calm he maintained under the fierce storm which raged about him are appended.
April 8, 1907. To Hon. T. M. Patterson, Denver, Colorado:
"The real trouble with Harriman and his associates is that they have found themselves absolutely powerless to control any action by the National Government. There is no form of mendacity or bribery or corruption that they will not resort to in the effort to take vengeance. The Harriman-Standard Oil combination and the other owners of predatory wealth hate me far more than they do those who make a profession of denouncing them, because they have learned that while I do not attack them in words as reckless as those often used against them, I do try to make my words bear fruit in deeds. They have never before been obliged really to reckon with the Federal Government. They have never before seen practical legislation such as the rate bill, the beef inspection bill and the like become laws. They have never before had to face the probability of adverse action by the courts and the possibility of being put in stripes. Such being the case, and inasmuch as they have no moral scruple of any kind whatsoever, it is not to be wondered at that they should be willing to go to any length in the effort to reverse the movement against them."
oysteR bay, August 16, 1907.

To President David Scull, Bryn Mawr College, Overbrook, Penn.:
"You have written frankly to me and you are entitled to frankness in return. You say that you have been a supporter of my course until within the last few days; but that you have now changed and are an opponent. You seem to think that your change is due to some change on my part; but as my attitude now is practically what it has been for the last six years it is perfectly obvious that the change is in you. You do not surprise me in the least when you tell me that many men have experienced such a change. The very word 'panic' denotes a fear so great as to make those who experience it to become for the time being crazy; and when crazy with fear men both say and do foolish things, and, moreover, always seek for some one to hold responsible for their sufferings—usually without any regard as to whether he is or is not responsible. At the time of the flurry in stocks last March I received hundreds of letters exactly like yours. I am receiving plenty of letters like it to-day. These good people are ignorant, as you evidently are, that the trouble we have had here has been paralleled by similar troubles on the bourses in Berlin and Paris; they are ignorant, as you evidently are, that British consols are now selling lower than ever before in their history, and that the railway securities in England and Canada have also fallen, altho not to the same degree as ours. Surely, you can hardly believe that all this is due to my action in enforcing the law against wealthy wrongdoers.
"That some trouble has been caused by the action I have taken against great and powerful malefactors, I have no doubt; and in any such case there are always people of little faith who at once scream in favor of a continuance of corruption and dishonesty rather than see any unsettlement of values because of the enforcement of the principles of honesty. I shall pay no heed whatever to these people, whose attitude I regard as profoundly foolish and profoundly immoral. In other words, their attitude is precisely like that of a man who, having a cancer which can be cured by the use of the knife, nevertheless screams and refuses to submit to an operation because he knows that there will be temporary pain and discomfort.
"You say that there should be 'severe proceedings against' and 'punishment of a few prominent financiers. You describe exactly the action I have been taking. Do you suppose that Mr. Rockefeller is giving out interviews denouncing me because of his altruistic devotion to small outsiders? Certainly not; he has been attacking me because he has been hurt; and because he believes that by working on your fears he can count upon the support of you and men like you. You protest against my policy of 'prosecuting the railroads where evidences of criminal action on their part is obtained,' on the ground that, as you say, I have made no effort to show the 'limitations' of my 'intended course.' You might just as well ask a district attorney to make a statement as to the 'limitations' of his 'intended prosecutions' against liquor sellers who are guilty of illegal conduct. If people will obey the law they can count on my doing all I can to further their interests, but I will no more countenance crimes of greed and cunning by men of property than crimes of brutality and violence against property.
"Let me in closing point out that when you advocate, as you do in your letter to me, a policy of connivance at or condonation of law-breaking by men of wealth on my part, you advocate precisely the principles which have made certain corrupt political organizations in our cities by-words among the people, and you put yourself upon the level of politicians who have controlled them. How you can reconcile such an attitude with that of teaching young Americans respect for law and for proper ideals of justice, I am wholly unable to understand. But, this being your attitude, you are quite right in assailing me; for during the closing year and a half of my term I shall follow precisely the course I have followed during the last six years. I shall enforce the laws; I shall enforce them against men of vast wealth just exactly as I enforce them against ordinary criminals; and I shall not flinch from this course, come weal come woe."
December 1, 1907. To Dr, Alexander Lambert, New York:
"... Perhaps you remember the incident of a delegation of extreme antislavery people calling on Lincoln to get him to take some action which he could not take and which they said would bring the war to a successful conclusion. They warned him that the war would be a failure if he did not take this action, and that he would be responsible for the failure. He answered that whether he was or was not responsible for the failure, he knew that he would be held responsible. Of course the same thing is true now. Whether I am or am not in any degree responsible for the panic, I shall certainly be held responsible. At present most of those who hold me responsible are people who are bitterly against me anyhow; but of course the feeling will spread to those who have been my friends, because when the average man loses his money he is simply like a wounded snake and strikes right and left at anything, innocent or the reverse, that presents itself as conspicuous in his mind.
"Whether I can do anything to allay the panic I do not know. All the reactionaries wish to take advantage of the moment by having me announce that I will abandon my policies, at least in effect. Inasmuch as I believe that these policies are absolutely necessary, I shall not abandon them no matter what may be the stress for the time being. The big financial men, moreover, seize the occasion to try to escape from all governmental control, and believe they can now thus escape. My judgment is more firmly than ever that they must be brought under control, and that the only way to free them from the undesirable control of the States is to secure a more adequate control on the part of the nation. The situation is unpleasant and perplexing. I shall do my best to meet the needs of the hour, but I shall not do it in a way that will work harm in the future; and if I must choose between a temporary good and the ultimate good, my choice must necessarily be the latter."
November 8, 1907. To Mr. Ansley Wilcox, Buffalo, N. T.:
"You say that many of your friends 'are feeling keenly that there is much truth in what Shepard said in his recent Brooklyn speech.' This gives me a very vivid idea of the mischief that can be done by deliberate mendacity such as Edward M. Shepard has been guilty of in misleading men as good as yourself. You probably know Mr. Shepard, and you are quite welcome to show him this letter. In the speech in question he was guilty of wilful misrepresentation. I do not mean that he was merely guilty of untruth; I mean that he was guilty of deliberate and wilful untruth, either intentionally, or with a reckless disregard of facts which he could easily have found out, which puts his conduct in no better light. I am not speaking of what were merely matters of opinion on the part of Mr. Shepard. I am speaking of him where he said:
" 'But when a man is charged with enormous responsibilities, whose duty it is not to speak until he knows that he can make good, when such a man goes over the country, with every ear open to his words, and charges men of wealth and standing with crimes, saying that almost every captain of industry should be behind the bars, his words have a much greater effect than if he were a mere private citizen.
" 'And when he, from the White House, says that he will send from ten to fifty capitalists to jail, he attacks the very center of our confidence in our institutions.'
"Now, I call your attention to the fact that in this utterance he first of all says that it is my duty, the duty of the President, not to speak until I know, and not to make charges until I can make them good. In this Mr. Shepard is quite right; and the duty is as obligatory upon him, a lawyer, who ought to know something of evidence, something about criminal libel. Yet in this very same sentence where he says this as to my duty, he goes on to speak about what he does not know, or else what he knows to be untrue, and to make charges which he either knows or ought to know that he can not make good. He says in this sentence that I have been saying 'that almost every captain of industry should be behind the bars.' I have never said any such thing, and he either knows it or ought to know it. In the next sentence he says that I have said that I 'would send from ten to fifty capitalists to jail.' I have never said such a thing, and he either knows it or ought to know it. When Mr. Shepard makes such statements as these he is guilty of deliberate and wilful untruth.
"The trouble has come, my dear Mr. Wilcox, primarily, because of what certain big financiers did in the speculative spirit; secondarily, because the movement which I started has resulted in the uncovering of this rascality a year or two sooner than it would otherwise have been discovered; and in the third place, because papers like the Sun, Times, and Harper's Weekly, read by the financial classes and I believe financed by them also, the individuals like Shepard, in the effort to attack me, continually and habitually not merely misquote what I say, but deliberately invent statements which I have never uttered, and attribute to me an attitude which I have never held. They may have hurt me a little by this; but the people they have really damaged are the members of the business community whom they have persuaded to believe that I am attacking all wealth, preaching hostility against all rich men, and failing to discriminate between rich men who are honest and rich men who are dishonest.
"I am well aware how difficult it is to get people to understand what is said or to read what is said, but remember that it is not the 'yellow press' which is responsible in this matter. The yellow press has endeavored to misrepresent me by stating that I have not gone far enough in attacking the dishonest rich. It is the so-called conservative press, the capitalist press, that has misrepresented me by stating that I have gone too far."
November 12, 1907. To the Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Georgia:
"In the first place, my dear sir, I trust I need hardly assure you that I shall not 'surrender' to the bankers, or to any one else, and there will be no 'secret midnight conferences' with any big financier, or any one else. I have not seen Mr. Morgan, but I intend to see him soon, and he will  call at the White House just as openly as Mr. Gompers did the other day, just as openly as he has called in the past, and just as openly as Mr. Gompers and his associates have more often called in the past. I know I have your hearty support in the proposition that the doors of the White House swing open with equal readiness to capitalist and wage-worker, to the head of a great corporation or a union, to the man who is neither—all shall have a fair hearing from me, and none shall exert any influence save that their case, openly stated and openly repeated, warrants.''
November 16, 1907. To Douglas Robinson, New York City:
"Of course I am gravely harassed and concerned over the situation. Every kind of suggestion is made to me, almost always impractically. I am doing everything I have power to do; but the fundamental fact is that the public is suffering from a spasm of lack of confidence. Most of this lack of confidence is absolutely unreasonable, and therefore we can do nothing with it. There is a part for which there is substantial basis, however. There has been so much trickery and dishonesty in high places; the exposures about Harriman, Rockefeller, Heinze, Barney, Morse, Ryan, the insurance man, and others, have caused such a genuine shock to people that they have begun to be afraid that every bank really has something rotten in it. In other words, they have passed thru the period of unreasoning trust and optimism into unreasoning distrust and pessimism.
'' I shall do everything I can up to the very verge of my power to restore confidence, to give the banks a chance to get currency into circulation. Whether I can accomplish what I seek to do I can not say. Of course if I do not I shall be held responsible for the conditions. As a matter of fact, the growth of the speculative spirit and the scandalous dishonesty among some high financiers combined, made it absolutely certain that we would come a cropper. I am inclined to think that the exposures which were largely the result of the policies I inaugurated brought this cropper sooner than we otherwise should have had it, but I am also very certain that it was bound to come in a year or two, and that it would have been far more severe if it had been held off. But if it comes we may as well make up our minds to the fact that for the time being at any rate, and perhaps permanently, I will be blamed and that the administration will be held to have gone out under a cloud. Yet there is nothing that I have done that I would not do over again, and I am absolutely positive that the principles which I have sought to enforce are those that must obtain if this Government is to endure. But, as you say, the very people whom I have been seeking to protect by exposing what is rotten in trusts and railroads, when the dinner pail becomes empty will feel they would rather have full dinner pails, and watered stocks and other things against which they used to declaim, rather than to go thru the period of discomfort when readjustment takes place. Poor fellows! I do not blame them."
November 23, 1907. To Hamlin Garland, New York City:
"When hard times come it is inevitable that the President under whom they come should be blamed. There are foolish people who supported me because we had heavy crops; and there are now foolish people who oppose me because extravagant speculations, complicated here and there with dishonesty, have produced the inevitable reaction. It is just the kind of incident upon which one must count. It may produce a temporary setback for my policies in either one of two ways; that is in securing the election as my successor of a reactionary or of some good man who will be the tool of reactionaries; or else thru having the pendulum swing with violence the other way, so that my successor as a wild radical will bring utter discredit on the reforms by attempting to do too much, and especially by doing a number of things that ought not to be done, thereby ensuring a real reaction.
"But I am perfectly certain that in the end the Nation will have to come to my policies, or substantially to my policies, simply because the Republic can not endure unless the governmental actions are founded on these policies, for they represent nothing whatever but aggressive honesty and fair treatment for all—not make-believe fair treatment, but genuine fair treatment. I do not think that my policies had anything to do with producing the conditions which brought on the panic; but I do think that very possibly the assaults and exposures which I made, and which were more or less successfully imitated in the several States, have brought on the panic a year or two sooner than would otherwise have been the case. The panic would have been infinitely worse, however, had it been deferred.
"As for the New York financiers, their hangers-on, the innocent men whom they have deceived, or who follow them and the newspapers that they own or inspire, why, I have to expect that these people will attack me. Their hostility toward me is fundamental. I neither respect nor admire the huge moneyed men to whom money is the be-all and the end-all of existence; to whom the acquisition of untold millions is the supreme goal of life, and who are too often utterly indifferent as to how these millions are obtained. I thoroughly believe that the first duty of every man is to earn his own living, to pull his own weight, to support his own wife and family; but after this has been done, and he is able to keep his family according to his station and according to the tastes that have become a necessity to him, then I despise him if he does not treat other things as of more importance in his scheme of life than mere money getting; if he does not care for art, or literature, or science, or statecraft, or warcraft, or philanthropy—in short for some form of service to his fellows, for some form of the kind of life which is alone worth living."
November 26, 1907.
To  Mr.  W.  A.   White, Editor,  The  Gazette,  Emporia, Kansas:
"... It is to be expected as a matter of course that the corporation judge, the corporation senator and ex-senator, the big corporation attorney, the newspaper owned in or controlled from Wall Street will attack me. I should be very foolish if I expected anything else; I should be still more foolish if I were greatly disturbed over the attacks. If there is much depression, if we meet hard times, then a great number of honest and well-meaning people will gradually come to believe in the truth of these attacks, and I shall probably end my term of service as President under a more or less dark cloud of obloquy. If so, I shall be sorry, of course; but I shall neither regret what I have done nor alter my line of conduct in the least degree, nor yet be unduly cast down.
"As far as I am personally concerned, I am well ahead of the game, whatever happens. I have had an exceedingly good time; I have been exceedingly well treated by the American people; and I have enjoyed the respect of those for whose respect I care most. If for a moment I have to go under a cloud, why, it is all in the game. I am as sure as man can be of anything that I have been following the course which the best interests of this country demand; and tinder such circumstances, if I had known that the obloquy were to be permanent I should still not have altered this course. But I do not believe that it will be permanent, because I do not believe that there can be a permanent deviation from the lines of policy along which I have worked —that is, if the Republic is to endure at all. If there is such permanent deviation I shall esteem the calamity so great that any thought of my own reputation in the matter will be entirely swallowed up."
November 27, 1907.
To Lawrence F. Abbott, The Outlook, New York.
"I have been much amused by the decision of the State Court of Appeals in the recount bill. This was purely a personal measure of Governor Hughes'. While I did not think it the wise way to get at what he sought, and while both Root and I had advised against it, still I sympathized so thoroughly with his purpose that I hoped the bill would be declared constitutional. Root had said all along that it could not be so declared. Think of the yell that would have gone up from the capitalist press of New York City if any similar measure of mine had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the Nation!
"As you say, it is rather curious to realize that there are good men who actually do believe that I have been violating the law and the Constitution. They are usually somewhat puzzle-headed, as I found in talking to one of the most eminent bankers in New York the other day, who spoke of my 'illegal actions' not exactly with severity but with sorrow. I questioned him as to the illegal action in question, and found that what he meant was that I had been carrying on suits against Harriman and the Standard Oil Company ! Mind you, this man was not an exception. When the Sun, the Times, the Evening Post, Harper's Weekly, the New York Herald, the New York World, and company, denounce me as doing something unconstitutional, they mean that I have succeeded in getting through laws which have been declared by the Supreme Court to be constitutional, and when they denounce my 'illegal actions' they usually refer to a lawsuit which has been begun by the Department of Justice.
"I enclose you a most striking decision which has just been rendered by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. You will see that this decision takes exactly the view which I have taken about the power of the Government under the interstate commerce act, and it even goes a little further than what I have said went, although not further than I implied. This again makes rather ridiculous the attitude of the worthy people who have spoken of me as trying to usurp powers on behalf of the Federal Government. The great measure of my administration as Governor was the franchise tax. It was far more bitterly fought than the public utilities bill; and, mind you, it broke ground for the first time in New York in dealing with these big corporations, and it has been declared constitutional by the highest court in the land. So it is with the measures I have succeeded in getting through Congress while I have been President."

CHAPTER FOUR
INCIDENT OF THE TENNESSEE COAL AND IRON COMPANY
the panic in New York reached its height in November, 1907. The Knickerbocker Trust Company failed and there were heavy runs upon trust companies and other financial institutions. The President was in constant communication with the leaders in the financial world in the city, and both personally and through the Secretary of the Treasury sought by all legitimate means to arrest the panic before it extended to other sections of the country. Various methods of relief were granted by the Secretary of the Treasury on the President's authority, and finally an opportunity arrived when he was able to act in accordance with his pet doctrine of the "square deal" for everybody. He seized it with characteristic promptness and courage.
On November 4, 1907, Judge E. H. Gary and Henry C. Frick, on behalf of the Steel Corporation, sought and obtained an interview with the President, Secretary Root being present at the President's request. What occurred was at once communicated to the Attorney General in the following note which the President dictated in the presence of Messrs. Gary and Frick:
November 4, 1907. My dear Mr. Attorney-General:
Judge E. H. Gary and Mr. H. C. Frick, on behalf of the Steel Corporation, have just called upon me. They state that there is a certain business firm (the name of which I have not been told, but which is of real importance in New York business circles), which will undoubtedly fail this week if help is not given. Among its assets are a majority of the securities of the Tennessee Coal Company. Application has been urgently made to the Steel Corporation to purchase this stock as the only means of avoiding a failure. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed me that as a mere business transaction they do not care to purchase the stock; that under ordinary circumstances they would not consider purchasing the stock, because but little benefit will come to the Steel Corporation from the purchase; that they are aware that the purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them on the ground that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the business and prevent competition —not that this would represent what could honestly be said, but what might recklessly and untruthfully be said. They further informed me that, as a matter of fact, the policy of the company has been to decline to acquire more than sixty per cent of the steel properties, and that this purpose has been persevered in for several years past, with the object of preventing these accusations, and, as a matter of fact, their proportion of steel properties has slightly decreased, so that it is below this sixty per cent, and the acquisition of the property in question will not raise it above sixty per cent. But they feel that it is immensely to their interest, as to the interest of every responsible business man, to try to prevent a panic and general industrial smash-up at this time, and that they are willing to go into this transaction, which they would not otherwise go into, because it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express judgment in New York that it will be an important factor in preventing a break that might be ruinous; and that this has been urged upon them by the combination of the most responsible bankers in New York who are now thus engaged in endeavoring to save the situation. But they asserted that they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be done. I answered that, while of course I could not advise them to take the action proposed, I felt it no public duty of mine to interpose any objections.
Sincerely yours, (Signed) theodore roosevelt. hon. charles J. bonaparte, Attorney-General.
The Attorney-General responded at once in person, saying that the legal situation had been in no way changed and that no sufficient ground existed for prosecution of the Steel Corporation.
The Steel Corporation purchased the stock on the following day and the panic was arrested. While no details of the interview were published, the fact that it had been held was given to the press and its purpose and result were easily inferred from the purchase which was made on the following day and openly announced. There was no adverse comment on the President's action at the time but general and hearty praise from all quarters. After the lapse of a year or more, opponents of the President gave currency to assertions that he had been misled by Messrs. Gary and Frick, that the transaction had given the Steel Trust a monopoly of the steel industry and that by his action the President had been bound not to prosecute that trust. These assertions were repeated with increasing emphasis for several years, and in 1911 a committee of the House of Representatives conducted an inquiry on the subject. They summoned Mr. Roosevelt, who had returned in 1910 from his hunting expedition in Africa, to appear as a witness and he went before the committee with cheerful alacrity on August 5, 1911. He presented the note that he had dictated to the Attorney-General, and at the outset of a written statement which he had prepared, he said: "I wish it distinctly understood that I acted purely on my own initiative, and that the responsibility for the act was solely mine." His statement on this occasion was filed later in the suit which was brought under the Taft Administration against the Steel Trust in the United States District Court of New Jersey, in October 1911. In it he said:
"I was dealing with a panic and a situation where not merely twentyfour hours, but one hour might cause widespread disaster to the public. . . .

"I ought to say that from New York I had been told by banker after banker that the Tennessee Coal and Iron securities were valueless as securities that counted in that panic. . . .

"There were two matters to which my attention was especially directed. One was the condition of things in New York, the relief that the action would bring, not merely to New York, but throughout the entire country—just as much in Louisiana and Minnesota and California as in New York. That was one thing. The other thing to which my attention was particularly directed was the percentage of holdings the Steel Corporation had, and had had and would have after the Tennessee Coal and Iron properties were acquired. . . .
"The knowledge that I had was that the Steel Corporation had some years previously possessed nearly sixty per cent of the holdings of the steel industry in the country; that its percentage had shrunk steadily; that the addition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, which was something in the nature of four per cent,—somewhere between two and four per cent, I have forgotten the exact amount, somewhere around there,—did not bring up the percentage of holdings of the Steel Corporation to what it had been a few years previously. . . .
'' My knowledge was simply this, that it was a matter of general opinion among experts that the Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which was almost worthless on their hands, nearly worthless to them, nearly worthless to the communities in which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any financial institution that had the securities the minute that any panic came, and that the only way to give value to it was to put it in the hands of people whose possession of it would be a guaranty that there was value to it. ...
"I believed at the time that the facts in the case were as represented to me on behalf of the Steel Corporation, and my further knowledge has convinced me that this was true. I believed at the time that the representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the truth as to the change that would be worked in the percentage of the business which the proposed acquisition would give the Steel Corporation; and further inquiry has confirmed to me that they did so. I was not misled. The representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the truth as to what the effect of the action at that time would be, and any statement that I was misled, or that the representatives of the Steel Corporation did not thus tell me the truth as to the facts of the case, is itself not in accordance with the truth.''
On June 3,1915, the court rendered a decision adverse to the Government, dismissing as unproved the application for the dissolution of the corporation on the ground that it was a combination in restraint of trade. In its decision the court said the purchase of the stock of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company had been as stated by Roosevelt and was "made in fair business course," and, in the language of the Supreme Court, was the "honest exertion of one's right to contract for his own benefit, unaccompanied by a wrongful motive to injure others." This decision was a complete vindication of Roosevelt's course and put a permanent stop to all criticism of it.
The Government took an appeal from the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States and on March 1, 1920, that court rendered a majority decision sustaining that of the New Jersey District Court. In this decision the Supreme Court Justice said:
"There is, however, an important circumstance in connection with that of the Tennessee Company which is worthy to be noted. It was submitted to President Roosevelt and he gave it his approval. His approval, of course, did not make it legal, but it gives assurance of its legality, and we know from his earnestness in the public welfare he would have approved of nothing that had even a tendency to its detriment. And he testified he was not deceived and that he believed that 'the Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which was almost worthless in their hands, nearly worthless to them, nearly worthless to the communities in which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any financial institution that had the securities the minute that any panic came, and that the only way to give value to it was to put it in the hands of people whose possession of it would be a guarantee that there was value to it."
Thus the highest tribunal in the nation ratified finally the complete vindication that the New Jersey tribunal had pronounced nearly five years earlier. In its decision the Supreme Court used the phrase: "The law does not make mere size an offense." This was the position which Roosevelt took toward corporations and trusts when he was Governor of New York, namely, that they must be judged not by size but by conduct,—a position which he held unswervingly ever afterwards.
During the year 1907 the President made many addresses in various parts of the country and went on two tours through the West and South, one in the Spring and one in the Fall. In all his addresses he emphasized his unwavering adherence to the chief policies of his administration, showing that the financial disturbances that were current had not in the slightest degree influenced him in regard to them. In an address that he made at the opening of the Jamestown Exposition on April 26, 1907, he said:
"Our purpose is to build up rather than to tear down. We show ourselves the truest friends of property when we make it evident that we will not tolerate the abuses of property.''
"This great Republic of ours shall never become the government of a plutocracy, and it shall never become the government of a mob."
An address that he made at Indianapolis, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1907, aroused unusually bitter comment in capitalistic circles because of its vigorous defense of his railway and corporation policies and his avowed determination to pursue them without deviation or modification. "Every Federal law dealing with corporations or with rail roads," he declared, "that has been put upon the statute books during the last six years has been a step in advance in the right direction. . . . There can be no swerving from the course that has thus been marked out in the legislation actually enacted and in the messages in which I have asked for further legislation. We best serve the interests of the honest railway men when we announce that we will follow out precisely this course. It is the course of real, of ultimate conservatism. There will be no halt in the forward movement toward a full development of this policy; and those who wish us to take a step backward or to stand still, if their wishes were realized, would find that they had incited an outbreak of the very radicalism they fear."
Speaking at Keokuk, Iowa, on October 2, 1907, he said: "A year or two ago certain representatives of labor called upon me and in the course of a very pleasant conversation told me they regarded me as the 'friend of labor.' I answered that I certainly was, and that I would do everything in my power for the laboring man except anything that was wrong. I have the same answer to make to the business man. I will do everything I can do to help business conditions, except anything that is wrong.''
He made similar speeches in Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee.
His annual message to Congress, December 3, 1907, was even longer than usual, for all his annual messages were long, and gave more space than in previous messages to the subject of governmental regulation of corporations. "Until the National Government," he said, "assumes proper control of interstate commerce, in the exercise of the authority it already possesses, it will be impossible either to give to or to get from the railroads full justice. . . . The antitrust law should not be repealed, but it should be made both more efficient and more in harmony with actual conditions. It should be so amended as to forbid only the kind of combination which does harm to the general public, such amendment to be accompanied by, or to be an incident of, a grant of supervisory power to the Government over these big concerns engaged in interstate commerce business. This should be accompanied by a provision for the compulsory publication of accounts and the subjection of books and papers to the inspection of Government officials."
In his letter to Congressman Sherman, quoted in the preceding chapter, the President had spoken of Harriman as "at least as undesirable a citizen as Debs, or Moyer, or Haywood.'' This called forth a letter from a labor leader in Chicago, to which the President replied in a letter which won hearty approval throughout the country. In it he said:
the white house, washington,
April 22, 1907. 

Dear Sir:
I have received your letter of the 19th instant, in which you enclose the draft of the formal letter which is to follow. I have been notified that several delegations, bearing similar requests, are on the way hither. In the letter you, on behalf of the Cook County Moyer-Haywood conference, protest against certain language I used in a recent letter which you assert to be designed to influence the course of justice in the case of the trial for murder of Messrs. Moyer and Hay-wood. I entirely agree with you that it is improper to endeavor to influence the course of justice, whether by threats or in any similar manner. For this reason I have regretted most deeply the action of such organizations as your own in undertaking to accomplish this very result in the very case of which you speak. For instance, your letter is headed'' Cook County Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Conference," with the headlines: "Death—can not—will not—and shall not claim our brothers!" This shows that you and your associates are not demanding a fair trial, or working for a fair trial, but are announcing in advance that the verdict shall only be one way and that you will not tolerate any other verdict. Such action is flagrant in its impropriety, and I join heartily in condemning it.
   
But it is a simple absurdity to suppose that because any man is on trial for a given offense he is therefore to be freed from all criticism upon his general conduct and manner of life. In my letter to which you object, I referred to a certain prominent financier, Mr. Harriman, on the one hand, and to Messrs. Moyer, Haywood and Debs on the other, as being equally undesirable citizens. It is as foolish to assert that this was designed to influence the trial of Moyer and Haywood as to assert that it was designed to influence the suits that have been brought against Mr. Harriman. I neither expressed nor indicated any opinion as to whether Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were guilty of the murder of Governor Steunenberg. If they are guilty they certainly ought to be punished. If they are not guilty they certainly ought not to be punished. But no possible outcome either of the trial or the suits can affect my judgment as to the undesirability of the type of citizenship of those whom I mentioned. Messrs. Moyer, Haywood and Debs stand as representatives of those men who have done as much to descredit the labor movement as the worst speculative financiers or most unscrupulous employers of labor and debauchers of legislatures have done to discredit honest capitalists and fair-dealing business men. They stand as the representatives of those men who by their public utterances and manifestoes, by the utterances of the papers they control or inspire, and by the words and deeds of those associated with or subordinated to them, habitually appear as guilty of incitement to or apology for bloodshed and violence. If this does not constitute undesirable citizenship, then there can never be any desirable citizenship. The men whom I denounce represent the men who have abandoned that legitimate movement for the uplifting of labor, with which I have the most hearty sympathy; they have adopted practices which cut them off from those who lead this legitimate movement. In every way I shall support the law-abiding and upright representatives of labor; and in no way can I better support them than by drawing the sharpest possible line between them on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those preachers of violence who are themselves the worst foes of the honest laboring man."
(The letter is published in full in Roosevelt's 'Autobiography' and also in his 'Addresses and State Papers'— P. F. Collier & Sons.)
CHAPTER FIVE
 WORLD VOYAGE OF THE NAVY
pResident roosevelt always regarded his sending of the battle fleet of the navy around the world as a most important service to peace. He decided upon it at a critical moment in the relations between the United States and Japan. Throughout the entire year of 1907 he was endeavoring with zeal and infinite patience to induce the California Legislature to refrain from violently offensive action on the subject of Japanese immigration and the treatment of Japanese children who had been excluded from the public schools. In the end he succeeded completely, both in Congress and in California. Writing from Oyster Bay to Secretary Root, on July 13, he refers to his plan in regard to the fleet:
"I am more concerned over the Japanese situation than almost any other. Thank Heaven we have the navy in good shape. It is high time, however, that it should go on a cruise around the world. In the first place I think it will have a pacific effect to show that it can be done; and in the next place, after talking thoroughly over the situation with the naval board I became convinced that it was absolutely necessary for us to try in time of peace to see just what we could do in the way of putting a big battle fleet in the Pacific, and not make the experiment in time of war.
"Aoki and Admiral Yamamoto were out here yesterday at lunch. Aoki is a singularly cool and wise old boy. I am afraid he is much more so than his fellow countrymen. Yamamoto, an ex-Cabinet Minister and a man of importance, evidently had completely misunderstood the situation here and what the possibilities were. I had a long talk with Mm through an interpreter. 
"He kept insisting that the Japanese must not be kept out save as we keep out Europeans. I kept explaining to him that what we had to do was to face facts; that if American laboring men came in and cut down the wages of Japanese laboring men they would be shut out of Japan in one moment; and that Japanese laborers must be excluded from the United States on economic grounds. I told him emphatically that it was not possible to admit Japanese laborers into the United States. I pointed out to him those rules which Secretary Wilson quoted in his memorandum, which show that the Japanese Government has already in force restrictions against American laborers coming into Japan, save in the old treaty ports. I pointed out that under our present treaty we had explicitly reserved the right to exclude Japanese laborers. I talked freely of the intended trip of the battleship fleet through the Pacific, mentioning that it would return home very shortly after it had been sent out there; at least in all probability. I also was most complimentary about Japan, and repeated at length the arguments that I had written to Takahira and Kaneko. How much impression I made upon him I can not say."
The California controversy was at its height in the summer of 1907, and sensational newspapers in the United States and Japan were vying with each other in inflammatory utterances calculated to promote illfeeling between the two nations. The President had unhesitatingly taken action in behalf of the Japanese in the controversy. In view of the hostile utterances of the Japanese press he deemed it well, as he stated to me subsequently, that the Japanese people should not think that his action had been taken in fear of Japan, and he accordingly decided to send the battle fleet into the Pacific and around the world to show that the United States earnestly desired peace, but was not in the least afraid of war. '' This demonstration,'' he said to me, '' of combined courtesy and strength nowhere received a heartier response than in Japan, which is itself both strong and courteous. No English, German or other battlefleet had ever gone to the Pacific. I regarded the Pacific as home waters just as much as the Atlantic, and regarded it as essential to find out in time of peace whether or not the fleet could be put there bodily. I determined on the move without consulting the Cabinet precisely as I took Panama without consulting the Cabinet. A council of war never fights, and in a crisis the duty of a leader is to lead and not to take refuge behind the generally timid wisdom of a multitude of counselors. Except the digging of the Panama Canal this voyage of the battlefleet impressed Europe with a feeling of friendly respect for the United States more than anything else that had occurred since the Civil War." (See also his 'Autobiography' and the passage in his "Khartoum to London" letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Chapter fourteen.)
When the President's purpose was announced a great outcry was raised in certain New York newspapers against taking the fleet from Atlantic waters and appeals were made to Congress to forbid its sailing. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go, because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money. Roosevelt announced in response that he had enough money to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyway, that it would certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough money to get the fleet back, it would stay in the Pacific. There was no further difficulty about the money.
Writing to Dr. Albert Shaw, New York, on September 3, 1907, he said:
"Unless I am impeached I shall be President for nineteen months and I shall most certainly not be President any longer, and in all probability will hold no public office, so that the hysterical violence of the attacks of the Wall Street crowd are of no possible consequence to me. But they have shown signs recently of getting into a condition not much better than that of the Moyer and Haywood people. Their most servile and most violent and most unscrupulous representative (in the press) is, as part of its campaign on behalf of the wealthy malefactor class, trying to prevent the fleet from going to the Pacific. It can not prevent it. I will tolerate no assault upon the navy or upon the honor of the country, nor will I permit anything so fraught with menace as the usurpation by any clique of Wall Street Senators of my function as Commander-in-Chief."
The fleet sailed from Hampton Roads on December 16, 1907. It passed in review before the President who had gone to Hampton Roads on the Mayflower to be present at its departure. It was composed of 16 battleships, with officers and crews numbering about 12,000 men. The fleet went first to San Francisco through the Straits of Magellan under command of Admiral Robley D. Evans. At that point the command was turned over to Admiral C. S. Sperry, Admiral Evans being relieved at his own request. The President had always held Admiral Evans in high esteem as a naval officer, and in accepting his request he wrote to him, March 23, 1908:
"It is with very great regret that at your own request I relieve you from command. You have now practically finished your active service in the United States Navy; and you have brought your long and honorable career, identified to a peculiar degree with the whole history of the navy, to a close by an achievement which marks the entrance of the United States into the rank of naval powers of the first class. In your early youth as a young officer you won a signal gallantry in the Civil War. You have closed your career by conducting a great battle fleet from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific in a manner which has shown you to be a master of your profession. The fleet comes to San Francisco in better shape than when it left Hampton Roads; better fit for service in every way; and the officers and men owe no small part of their improvement in their profession to the mastery of your profession which your handling of the fleet has shown.
With thanks, congratulations and good wishes, believe me,	Sincerely yours,
theodoee roosevelt.

From San Francisco the fleet went to New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, China and Japan, and home by way of the Suez Canal. It was gone about 16 months, arriving at Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909. In placing Admiral Sperry in command the President wrote him a letter, March 21, 1908, which shows in the following passages how desirous he was to maintain friendly relations with Japan:
"I need not tell you that you should exercise the most careful watch throughout the time that you are in Oriental waters—for you will naturally exercise the most careful watch at all times both before and after you leave the Orient. I wish to impress upon you, what I do not suppose is necessary, to see to it that none of our men does anything out of the way while in Japan. If you give the enlisted men leave while at Tokio or anywhere else in Japan be careful to choose only those upon whom you can absolutely depend. There must be no suspicion of insolence or rudeness on our part.
"I firmly believe that the Japanese Government will use every effort to see that the highest consideration and courtesy are accorded to our people, and you of course will do everything in your power to show the utmost consideration and courtesy to the Japanese with whom you are brought in contact, not only in Japan but elsewhere. We want to take peculiar care in this matter."
The President went to Hampton Roads to meet the fleet on its return, and on board the flagship of the Admiral he delivered an address of congratulation which is published in full in his ' Autobiography.'
The return of the fleet was greeted with a great outburst of pride and praise, and the newspapers that had been most violent in their opposition to the voyage were loudest in their congratulations and expressions of national rejoicing over its achievement.

CHAPTER SIX
LETTERS ON MANY SUBJECTS—GENERAL LEE—VISITING ROYALTIES—JEFFERSON—"IN GOD WE TRUST"
As in other years, RooseVelt's letters in 1907 exhibit the wide range of his interests. One that he wrote on January 16,1907, to the committee of arrangements for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of General Robert E. Lee, commanded warm approval in the South because of its generous estimate of General Lee's character. In it he said:

"General Lee has left us the memory, not merely of his extraordinary skill as a general, his dauntless courage and high leadership in campaign and battle, but also of that serene greatness of soul characteristic of those who most readily recognize the obligations of civic duty. Once the war was over, he instantly undertook the task of healing and binding up the wounds of his countrymen, in the true spirit of those who feel malice toward none and charity toward all; in that spirit which from the throes of the Civil War brought forth the real and indissoluble Union of to-day. It was eminently fitting that this great man, this war-worn veteran of a mighty struggle, who, at its close, simply and quietly undertook his duty as a plain, every-day citizen, bent only upon helping his people in the paths of peace and tranquillity, should turn his attention toward educational work; toward bringing up in fit fashion the younger generation, the sons of those who had proved their faith by their endeavor in the heroic days."
To Melville E. Stone, Manager of the Associated Press, who had written to him about the approaching visit of a prince from one of the smaller European countries, he wrote on July 16, 1907: 
"I hope he will come incog. To be perfectly frank, I think it unfortunate that he should come at all. As you know, we make a strong effort to prevent royalties coming here. Mr. Bacon will send you a circular issued by John Hay some years ago to our diplomatic and consular representatives, explaining this point. I am continually importuned to get over here, now Emperor William, now President Diaz, now King Edward, and now all sorts and kinds of princes. If one comes it makes a precedent which others are apt to follow, and you know as well as I do that with all these princes we are apt to have difficulties—sometimes because some demagogue thinks it will help him to say disagreeable things about them; sometimes because of the officious and rather snobbish action of the people who regard themselves as of high social position in desiring to entertain the princes; and sometimes from the simple fact that in a democratic government like ours it is very hard to arrange properly for the reception of members of royal houses. Of course you understand that I can not make him a guest of the nation. Congress only can do that."
His absorbing interest in the welfare of the working people of the land, which began when he was a member of the New York Legislature and deepened steadily throughout his life, finds expression in a letter to his official associate, Justice W. H. Moody, of the Supreme Court, on September 21,1907, together with his estimate of Jefferson:
"I am continually brought in contact with very wealthy people. They are socially the friends of my family, and if not friends, at least acquaintances of mine, and they were friends of my father's. I think they mean well on the whole, but the more I see of them the more profoundly convinced I am of their entire unfitness to govern the country, and of the lasting damage they do by much of what they are inclined to think are the legitimate big business operations of the day. They are blind to some of the tendencies of the time, as the French noblesse was before the French Revolution; and they possess the same curious mixture of hnpotency to deal with movements that should be put down and of rancorous stupidity in declining to abandon the kind of reaction and policy which can do nothing but harm. Moreover, usually entirely without meaning it, they are singularly callous to the needs, sufferings, and feelings of the great mass of the people who work with their hands. They show this in their attitude toward such a matter as the employers' liability bill. They are simply unable to understand what it means to a working man's family to have the breadwinner killed or crippled. They are not able to grasp the unmerited and dreadful suffering thus brought on many different people. Heaven knows how cordially I despise Jefferson, but he did have one great virtue which his Federalist opponents lacked—he stood for the plain people, whom Abraham Lincoln afterwards represented.
"By the way, speaking of Jefferson, isn't it humiliating to realize that Jefferson—who I think was, not even excepting Buchanan, the most incompetent chief executive we ever had, and whose well-nigh solitary service as President to his country, the acquisition of Louisiana, was rendered by adopting the Federalist principles which he had most fiercely denounced—isn't it humiliating to think that he should have been, as President, rather more popular than Washington himself at the very close of his administration, and that almost all the State legislatures, excluding Massachusetts but including Rhode Island and Vermont, should have petitioned him to serve for another term and should have sent him formal messages of grateful thanks for his services after his term was over? "We lived through Jefferson's administration, though he did us much damage; and we could live through Bryan or a reactionary; but I do not want to see the experience tried."
To a clergyman who had differed with him about placing "In God We Trust" on the new coinage, he wrote on November 11, 1907:
"When the question of the new coinage came up we looked into the law and found there was no warrant therein for putting 'IN GOD WE TRUST' on the coins. As the custom, although without legal warrant, had grown up, however, I might have felt at liberty to keep the inscription had I approved of its being on the coinage. But as I did not approve of it, I did not direct that it should again be put on. Of course the matter of the law is absolutely in the hands of Congress, and any direction of Congress in the matter will be immediately obeyed. At present, as I have said, there is no warrant in law for the inscription.
"My own feeling in the matter is due to my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins, or to use it in any kindred manner, not only does no good but does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence which comes dangerously close to sacrilege. A beautiful and solemn sentence such as the one in question should be treated and uttered only with that fine reverence which necessarily implies a certain exaltation of spirit. Any use which tends to cheapen it, and above all, any use which tends to secure its being treated in a spirit of levity, is from every standpoint profoundly to be regretted. It is a motto which it is indeed well to have inscribed on our great national monuments, in our temples of justice, in our legislative halls, and in buildings such as those at West Point and Annapolis —in short wherever it will tend to arouse and inspire a lofty emotion in those who look thereon. But it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.
"As regards its use on the coinage we have actual experience by which to go. In all my life I have never heard any human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of its having appealed to any high emotion in him. But I have literally hundreds of times heard it used as an occasion of, and incitement to, the sneering ridicule which it is above all things undesirable that so beautiful and exalted a phrase should excite. For example, throughout the long contest, extending over several decades, on the free coinage question, the existence of this motto on the coins was a constant source of jest and ridicule; and this was unavoidable. Every one must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In God we trust for the other eight cents'; 'In God we trust for the short weight'; 'In God we trust for the thirty-seven cents we do not pay'; and so forth, and so forth. Surely I am well within bounds when I say that a use of the phrase which invites constant levity of this type is most undesirable. If Congress alters the law and directs me to replace on the coins the sentence in question the direction will be immediately put into effect; but I very earnestly trust that the religious sentiment of the country, the spirit of reverence in the country, will prevent any such action being taken.''
Three letters on literary subjects display his varied reading:
January 11, 1907.
To Mrs. H. C. Lodge: I return Gissing's book on Dickens and also 'The Greek View of Life.' Isn't it curious how much resemblance there is between the Japanese spirit and the Greek spirit of the Periclean age! The Japanese, unlike the Greeks, were able to transform their spirit of intense but particularistic patriotism into a broad national patriotism, and so they have been formidable as a nationality in a way in which it was wholly impossible for the Greeks ever to be. It is curious that one of the worst of the Greek attitudes, that toward women, should be reproduced in the Japan of to-day.
January 29, 1907.
To W. C. Brownell: Every now and then one suddenly comes across a sentence which exactly phrases a thought which there has long seemed to be need of formulating, but as to which the words to express it have been lacking. In your article on Lowell, which of course I liked all through (except that I would put parts of 'The Big-low Papers' higher with reference to the 'Commemoration Ode'" than you do), I particularly like your phrase 'the American democratic ideal is Brahminism in manners and taste, not in sympathies and ideas.'
Abraham Lincoln's democracy was so essential and virile that it would not have lost in any way if he had had the manners and tastes of Lowell. One can like to se'e the White House restored by McKim, and our gold coinage modeled by Saint-Gaudens, without the least abatement of the feeling of being one of Abraham Lincoln's plain people and of keenest sympathy with, admiration for and desire to represent, them.
oyster bay, July 20, 1907.
To Brander Matthews: What delightful reading Lang always is! Your letter, with his essay on the American President of the future, was sandwiched in this morning between internal politics and our relations with Japan; and I appreciated the diversion. Who but Lang could write with such genuine humor, and be so amusing, and yet leave no sting behind?
By the way, I wish Lang would tell me if there really is an 'Aryan' race; Aryan speech, yes; Aryan race—well, I am very doubtful.
Three letters to John Burroughs, whom he always addressed as "Oom John," display his keen delight in studying bird and animal life:
oyster bay, June 22, 1907.
I hope you know what a pleasure it was to have you and Childs out here the other day, and I am so glad that the purple finch, the black-throated warbler and the red-winged blackbird all behaved like gentlemen and turned up as I had said they would.
oyster bay, July 11, 1907.
Yesterday we cut that fine clover, which I horrified you by walking about in while looking for that redwing black bird's nest. After we cut it I was interested to see two orchard orioles (the ones you saw in the garden) come and industriously hunt over the cut clover for insects.
Three days ago I shot a yellow-throated or Dominican warbler here—the first I had ever seen. I was able to identify it with absolute certainty, but as the record might be deemed of importance I reluctantly shot the bird, a male, and gave the mutilated skin to the American Museum of Natural History people so that they might be sure of the identification. The breeding season was past, and no damage came to the species from shooting the specimen; but I must say that I care less and less for the mere "collecting" as I grow older.
oyster bay, July 19, 1907.

I have your letter of the 12th instant. As you well know, my friendship with you has been one of the things that I have most valued, and I should be particularly glad to have a little book made up of the sketch in question, with the Yellowstone article, with the article that you have given it.
In cutting that clover field we were working very hurriedly to avoid a rain. There were four of us at work, and I simply never thought of the nests till afterwards, when we were loading the hay from the cocks into the hay wagon. I am as positive as I can be, however, from the behavior of the female redwings, that there was certainly one, and I think two, of the nests within fifty yards of that corner of the old barn.
Have you Chapman's book on the warblers? If so, you will find the description and picture of the Dominican or yellow-throated warbler. Although the picture does not portray the bird as it ought to, with the long bill of the black-and-white warbler instead of the ordinary Dendroica. If you will tell me what book of birds you have by you, which contains an account of the warblers, I will write you back the page on which you will find the description.
  
    It is funny how incidents sometimes crowd together. Really I have begun to feel a little like a nature fakir myself during the last fortnight; for I have seen two or three things which I very much wish you could have seen with me. The other night I took out the boys in row boats for a camping-out expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This time two young foxes, evidently three years' cubs, came around the camp fire half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our presence. Yesterday on the tennis ground I found a mole shrew. He was near the side lines first. I picked him up in my handkerchief, as he bit my hand, and after we had all looked at him I let him go, but in a few minutes he came back and deliberately crossed the tennis grounds by the net. As he ran over the level floor of the court his motion reminded all of us of the motion of those mechanical mice that run around on wheels when wound up.

A chipmunk that lives near the tennis court continually crosses it while the game is in progress. He has done it two or three times this year, and either he or his predecessor has had the same habit for several years. I am really puzzled to know why he should go across this perfectly bare surface, with the players jumping about on it, when he is not frightened and has no reason that I can see for going. Apparently he grows accustomed to the players and moves about among them as he would move about, for instance, among a herd of cattle. I suppose that Mr. Blank would describe him as joining in the game!
I was immensely amused at Blank's outburst concerning your visit here. It was his evident belief that I had picketed out the black throated green warbler on the top of that locust tree in anticipation of your presence.

CHAPTER SEVEN 
PERSISTENT REFUSAL OF A THIRD TERM
from the very beginning of 1907 the newspapers were filled with gossip about a possible third term for the President. There was scarcely a break in the current of it throughout the year. Writing to his intimate and valued friend, Charles G. Washburn, of Worcester, Mass., on April 17, 1907, he said: As for myself you are entirely right. I have never for a moment altered my views as to the wisdom of my declaration after the election of 1904. It is time for some one else to stand his trick at the wheel." To his son Kermit, on May 15, 1907, he wrote: "At the moment I am having a slightly irritating time with the well-meaning but foolish friends who want me to run for a third term. The curious thing about it is that there are plenty of people who really think they want me to run for a third term who, if I did run, would feel very much disappointed in me and would feel that I had come short of the ideal they had formed of me. I think the talk will all die out and I do not want to make another statement just at the moment. If necessary, however, next winter I shall make another statement so emphatic that it must put a stop to any further talk.''
The third term talk became so general in August that the New York Times took a canvass of Republican editors on the subject, and on August 7, 1907, published letters from 63 of those editors in reply to the question whether President Roosevelt was as popular and as strong generally with the voters as he was at the time of his election. In editorial comment on these replies the Times said: 
"The most remarkable social and political phenomenon observable in this republic to-day is the immense and growing popularity of Theodore Roosevelt. Through the large numbers of dispatches from the editors of Republican newspapers which we print this morning there runs this single note—the President's popularity is growing; he is to-day stronger with the people than ever before. The enthusiasm he has aroused asks no questions, demands no pledges, imposes no conditions. Its confidence, like its admiration, is boundless.
"No American statesman ever had such an unquestioning support, a support so completely uncritical or one so manifestly due to the inspiration awakened by personality. It is an astonishing spectacle. To the renomination of President Grant in 1880 it was felt that the thirdterm tradition offered an insuperable obstacle. It will not in the slightest degree avail against the wave of popular favor that now promises to make Mr. Roosevelt the candidate next year. With the spirit he has invoked and stirred tradition counts for nothing. If the time for sobering up should be long deferred, we do not know that even institutions would count for very much."
To his cousin, Mr. "W. Emlen Roosevelt, on November 9, 1907, the President wrote:
"Most emphatically, I do not wish to run again for President. As I think I have made this remark in public, and in private letters which were not marked private, several hundred times, in addition to saying it quite as often in private conversation, it really does not seem advisable to say anything more at present. I find that it is absolutely useless to try to correct untruths or misrepresentations even of the most flagrant kind in the newspapers. If I should say anything whatever about not running again it would cause a furore for one week and then the next week they would say I was intriguing for a nomination and would expect a denial."
On November 19, 1907, he sent the following circular note to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Post Master General, and the Secretary of the Interior:
"I have been informed that certain office-holders in your Department are proposing to go to the National Convention as delegates in favor of renominating me for the Presidency, or are proposing to procure my endorsement for such renomination by State conventions. This must not be. I wish you to inform such officers as you may find it advisable or necessary to inform in order to carry out the spirit of this instruction,  that such advocacy of my renomination, or acceptance of an election as delegate for that purpose, will be regarded as a serious violation of official propriety and will be dealt with accordingly."
In the midst of the third term discussion a decided sensation was created by the publication on April 5, 1907, of what appeared to be a well-authenticated report of an incident that had occurred at a private dinner at a hotel in Washington. According to this report a Republican United States Senator, noted for his intense hostility to the President, while under the mellowing influence of food and drink, had revealed the existence of a plot for the defeat of any candidate who might be named by Roosevelt, or who was known to share his views on public affairs. The plot was to be backed by a fund of $5,000,000 which was to be used where "it would do the most good." "Favorite sons" were to be put forward to prevent any particular candidate from securing a nomination at the outset of the balloting; Roosevelt was to be ostensibly favored in Legislative resolutions and by delegates with the belief that he would refuse to accept a nomination and delegates professing to favor him could be switched to the candidate selected by the plotters when the time arrived for putting him forward. There was an animated discussion of the plot for a brief period and then it passed from sight never to be heard of again. If it had ever existed, publicity had made its success impossible.
In the meantime Roosevelt let it be known that Secretary Taft was his choice for his successor and there was scarcely a doubt that Taft would be named by the Republican National Convention. Third term talk persisted, however, but Roosevelt's letters show that he opposed it strenuously. In the end his renomination was prevented only by the determined opposition of his personal friends and authorized spokesmen in the convention.
But the approach of a national campaign in which his administration was to be the chief issue did not induce the President to alter in the slightest degree the policies which he had been advocating for six years. Although he had sent a very long message to Congress in December, 1907, he sent a special one to it on January 31, 1908, in which he urged the passage of a new Employers' Liability act to take the place of the one passed at a previous session and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and urged also additional legislation '' as regards the relation between capital and labor and between great corporations and the public," measures which were desirable because of the '' gravely significant attitude toward the law and its administration recently adopted by certain heads of great corporations." In defining the "gravely significant attitude," he said:

"The Standard Oil Corporation and the railway company have both been found guilty by the courts of criminal misconduct; both have been sentenced to pay heavy fines; and each has issued and published broadcast these statements, asserting their innocence and denouncing as improper the action of the courts and juries in convicting them of guilt. These statements are very elaborate, very ingenious, and are untruthful in important particulars.

"The amount of money the representatives of certain great moneyed interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent publication broadcast throughout the papers of this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of huge advertisements attacking with envenomed bitterness the Administration's policy of warring against successful dishonesty, and by their circulation of pamphlets and books prepared with the same object; while they likewise push the circulation of the writings and speeches of men who, whether because they are misled or because, seeing the light, they yet are willing to sin against the light, serve these their masters of great wealth to the cost of the plain people. The books and pamphlets, the controlled newspapers, the speeches by public or private men, to which I refer, are usually and especially in the interest of the Standard Oil Trust and of certain notorious railroad combinations, but they also defend other individuals and corporations of great wealth that have been guilty of wrongdoing."
In February the Louisville and Nashville Eailway Company announced its intention to reduce the wages of its employees, saying that "the drastic laws inimical to the interests of the railroads that have in the past year or two been enacted by Congress and the State Legislatures" were largely responsible for the reduction. Several other companies announced a similar purpose. On February 18, 1908, the President sent an open letter to the Interstate Commerce Commission, mentioning these announcements and requesting the commission to make a thorough investigation of the conditions of the roads and ascertain the real merits of the case. In his letter he said:
"If the reduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of business being such that the burden should be, and is, equitably distributed between capitalist and wage-worker, the public should know it. If it is caused by legislation, the public, and Congress, should know it; and if it is caused by misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the excuse of unfriendly legislation is advanced as a method of covering up past business misconduct by the railroad managers, or as a justification for failure to treat fairly the wage-earning employees of the company.

   "It is sincerely to be hoped, therefore, that any wage controversy that may arise between the railroads and their employees may find a peaceful solution through the methods of conciliation and arbitration already provided by Congress, which have proven so effective during the past year. To this end the Commission should be in a position to have available for any Board of Conciliation or Arbitration relevant data pertaining to such carriers as may become involved in industrial disputes. Should conciliation fail to effect a settlement and arbitration be rejected, accurate information should be available in order to develop a properly formed public opinion."
The President's letter achieved its purpose, for the reduction was not made.
Writing to Col. Henry L. Higginson, of Boston, on February 19, 1908, the President thus explained his action:
"The trouble that I have comes from the fact that the big corporations that are working to discredit the laws and prevent proper laws being passed continually force me into action which is unavoidable, unless I am content to see the policies in which I believe overthrown, and yet which I very sincerely regret having to take. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, for instance, in this endeavor to discredit the law, announces a reduction of wages, which it says is due to our unwise legislation. Such a challenge as that must at once be accepted by the Government to the extent of ordering an immediate investigation to ascertain its truth. So it is with my message to Congress. The outrageous fabrications and falsehoods of the Standard Oil and Harriman people, the Santa Fe people and others, were producing an effect that had to be counteracted. These corporations have probably spent a million dollars in their enormous advertisements and books and insertion of matter in 'patent insides' for the country papers, and the like—prominent newspaper men having told me that they reckoned that a million dollars was an under estimate of the amount they must have spent—and this is an earnest of how much more they are willing to spend for a reaction. Now it is simply out of the question for me to submit, on behalf of the great mass of our people, to the success of such a movement, so engineered, and for such purposes. It is they who force the fighting, and not I.
"Take another instance—that of legislation I am advocating. I am advocating just the legislation the necessity of which you have again and again pointed out—that is, amendments to the anti-trust and interstate commerce laws in order to make legal proper combinations. But the very corporations that have been loudly insisting that those laws are bad, take not the slightest interest in their amendment. They do not want them changed and they do not care to have them removed from the statute books, but they expect to have them administered crookedly. Of course, as far as I am concerned such expectation is vain.

'' Now about the banking and currency system: I agree with you in your main contentions. I would like to see a thoroughly good system of banking and currency; but apparently you think little of the Aldrich bill, and yet this is the only measure that has been proposed that we can seriously consider. The trouble is that the minute I try to get action all the financiers and business men differ so that nobody can advise me, nobody can give me any aid, and only Senator Aldrich has proposed a bill. I have taken the liberty of sending to Senator Aldrich what you say about the banking and currency measure, together with a communication from Andrew Carnegie."
When Congress adjourned he wrote to his son Kermit, May 31, 1908, a statement of what it had done:
"Congress has not given me nearly all the legislation I should have had, but there has been some advance after all. In foreign matters and as regards the navy and the army Congress has really done well. A number of treaties have been ratified, the upbuilding of the fleet continued, the army and navy better paid, the Tokio Exposition has been provided for, the Chinese indemnity returned. Then in home matters we have passed a good Employers' Liability bill and a child labor bill for the District of Columbia. "We have handled the Alaska coal fields as they ought to be handled. So that, although I am chagrined that more has not been done, I am glad that we have gone a little ahead and not a little behind.''
To "Whitelaw Reid, in London, he wrote, on May 25,1908: '' Congress is ending, but by no means in a blaze of glory. The leaders in the House and Senate felt a relief that they did not try to conceal at the fact that I was not to remain as President, and need not be too implicitly followed; and they forget that the discipline that they have been able to keep for the last six years over their followers was primarily due to the fact that we had a compact and aggressive organization, kept together by my leadership, due to my hold, and the hold the policies I championed had upon the people. Accordingly they have seen their own power crumble away under their hands and both the House and Senate are now in chaos. All opposition 'to Taft has died down and he will be nominated easily. But in electing him we shall have no help from the record of the present Congress. The election must be won upon his own personality; upon the general Republican achievement of the past twelve years; and, by no means, upon the rather absurd attitude of the Democracy."
Efforts to nominate him for a third term became rapidly active in May, 1908, and his letters show how earnestly he was opposing them and what his reasons were for objecting to them:
May 28, 1908.
To Hon. Alston G. Dayton, U. S. District Judge, Philippi, Virginia: "I see that two of the West Virginia delegates who were elected under instructions for Taft have announced that they will go for me, and I have seen a letter from Governor Dawson in which he stated that he has first-hand information that they have done this in response to pressure from the Standard Oil Company.
 I should doubt the trustworthiness of the last, because all the information I have, public and private, is that the first thing the Standard Oil Company wishes is to have anybody else nominated to succeed me in the Presidency, and they are trying to deter all litigation simply to have it passed over the fourth of March next. But the rumor is of importance because it shows the kind of thing that will be said, and will inevitably be said of any man who, having been instructed for Taft, changes and goes for me. . . . Can you not quietly inform the gentlemen in question how strongly I feel (and I trust how strongly you also feel) that they ought to abide by their instructions? I think this is important from their own standpoint, and what is of infinitely more consequence, from the standpoint of the party and the country."
May 29, 1908.
A line in addition to what I wrote you yesterday, as I fear I did not express quite as plainly as I should my feeling on one point. I most strenuously object to any friend of mine going for me on any ballot. But what I wanted to convey was that as regards the first ballot the only honorable course, in my judgment, which an instructed delegate can follow is to vote in accordance with his instructions. To do otherwise would necessarily give rise to very unpleasant comment, not only as regards the delegate himself but as regards the man for whom he voted. As a matter of fact, we will nominate Taft on the first ballot by about 700 votes; so we do not really have to concern ourselves with what comes after the first ballot, and my object is to keep men square on this ballot. But I need hardly add that even if there should have to be another ballot, my friends are not to go for me.
May 29, 1908.
To the Rev. Dr. Lyman Abbott: As to the matter of my renomination, it seems to me that the proper ground to take is that any one who supposes that I have been scheming for it is not merely a fool, but shows himself to be a man of low morality. He reflects upon him self, not upon me. There has never been a moment when I could not have had the Republican nomination with practical unanimity by simply raising one finger. At this moment I am still actively engaged in getting delegates for Taft—as in Texas, for instance, to mention something that occurred a week ago; or in preventing delegates who have been instructed for Taft for declaring that they would go for me anyhow—to cite action which I took yesterday as regards two delegates in West Virginia. Any man competent to express any opinion whatever knows this perfectly well. He knows that not merely the far West but that, for instance, the conventions of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Vermont would have gone for me with the wildest enthusiasm if I had merely said I was willing to abide by the judgment of the party as to whether or not it was expedient that I should run.

Under such circumstances, when I could without the slightest difficulty have made each State convention declare for me with infinitely greater enthusiasm than any State convention has shown about anything yet, it is simply silly to suppose that I would go into some intrigue even more futile than tortuous—an intrigue that would have to be kept secret from all my best friends, including, for instance, Senator Lodge, and Loeb, and all my family—an intrigue which would be entirely pointless, and almost certainly of no avail. Moreover, be it remembered that the same people who speak of this as my secret intention are at other times the ones who are loudest in denouncing me for trying to bring about Taft's nomination. The real fact is, as most of them know perfectly well, that nothing could have prevented my renomination excepting the most resolute effort on my part to get some one else accepted as representing me and nominated in my place; and I had this object partly in view in endeavoring to get Taft nominated, although I was of course mainly actuated by the fact that I think that of all men in the country Taft is the best fitted at this time to be President and to carry on the work upon which we have entered during the past six years.
The facts about the third-term agitation are that it does not come from any men high in public life, but from plain people who take no very great part in politics, and who seem to have been puzzled at my attitude in declining to run. The politicians, like the big business men, all cordially agree with me that I ought not to run again. A few weeks ago there was an article published that you ought to see if you have any desire to know where the third-term talk comes from. It isn't "inspired" from above at all. Yesterday, for instance, Vorys, Taft's campaign manager in Ohio, suddenly told me that he had difficulty in Ohio in preventing the ordinary voters, the men whom he would meet at the drug stores or in the cars, or in similar places, from insisting upon my being nominated. Under such circumstances I would be exasperated, if I were not amused, at so much as anybody talking about the supposition that I was engaged in an effort to have the renomination forced upon me. As a matter of fact I doubt if Taft himself could be more anxious than I am that Taft be nominated, and that any stampede to me be prevented. I wish it on every account, personal and public, and I am bending every energy now to prevent the possibility of such a stampede; because if the convention were stampeded and I were nominated an exceedingly ugly situation would be created, a situation very difficult to meet at all and impossible to meet satisfactorily; whereas if, as I have every reason to believe, Taft is nominated almost by acclamation, certainly on the first ballot, everything is as it should be.

CHAPTER EIGHT 
THIRD  TERM  STAMPEDE  PREVENTED
Two letters that Roosevelt wrote when the National Convention was about to assemble furnish conclusive evidence of his determination to stifle all schemes for making him the nominee:
June 1, 1908.
To F. H. Hitchcock, Chairman of the Republican National Committee: I hand you a copy of a letter to Judge Dayton which explains itself. If any other delegates elected for Taft or instructed for him, or from constituencies which, being favorable to me and knowing my feeling in the matter, have expressed a preference for Taft—if, as I say, any such delegates show the slightest symptom of weakening, such as these West Virginia delegates have shown, I hope you will show them this letter and say that it applies to all delegates who, under such circumstances, may be tempted to do as these West Virginia delegates have done. Such action is not only to be deeply regretted from their standpoint but also from my standpoint. It can not but give rise to the very most unpleasant type of comment not only as regards them but as regards me. We have every reason to believe that Taft will be nominated on the first ballot by an overwhelming majority and it may not be necessary for you to show this letter to any one; but I want you to have it and to show it should necessity arise. I of course desire if possible to avoid making another public statement in the matter, and this is on Taft's account just as much as mine, so do not let this letter get into the newspapers. 
June 1, 1908.

To Senator Lodge: I enclose a letter of which. Hitchcock has a copy. It is to be shown quietly to any of the Taft delegates who show the slightest symptoms of going for me, for you will see that it is written for use with the two Taft delegates from West Virginia. Just this morning I have spoken to Hopkins, of Illinois; and Campbell, of Kansas, telling them that they were to join with you and Hitchcock to see that no stampede for me was to gather headway for a moment. I am exceedingly anxious on every account, my own no less than Taft's, to avoid the necessity of another public utterance, which I think would do real damage and make us both look rather ridiculous. So I hope that you and Hitchcock can use the letter I enclose with any delegates who seem at all doubtful, and I should think it would straighten them out. I think the best plan to follow would be not to show this letter to any person unless both you and Hitchcock agree that it is really necessary. Be extremely careful that it is regarded as absolutely secret, and under no circumstances is reference to it to be made in the press. I fear that if it does get out it will be put in the position of protesting too much.
The National Convention met at Chicago on June 10, 1908, and the first and only ballot for Presidential nominee was taken on June 18. I arrived in Washington on the morning of that day from the Isthmus of Panama, where I was in the Government service as Secretary of the Isthmian Canal Commission. As I spent most of the day with the President I had peculiar facilities for observing his bearing at the time. Immediately after leaving Washington a few days later I wrote an account of what I had witnessed and from it I make the following quotations:

"About eleven o'clock I called on the President and was admitted at once to his private office, where I remained till 1.30 p. m., when I went to luncheon with him. He was then in constant telegraphic touch with the party managers at Chicago, and was kept thoroughly informed as to what was going on in and out of the convention. His chief anxiety was lest the convention should be stampeded for himself. During the early afternoon several private telegrams came to him from personal friends in Chicago, saying that unless he made a fresh and most emphatic declaration that he would not accept a nomination, the convention would name him in spite of all efforts to the contrary. He was much disturbed by these messages and asked me if I thought he should make a further declaration, getting from his secretary, Mr. Loeb, copies of letters and telegrams that he had already sent to Senator Lodge and others defining his position. I read these carefully and found them so emphatic and unequivocal that I advised him to say nothing further, expressing the opinion that if he were repeatedly to follow one denial with another he would make himself ridiculous, for no fresh denial could be couched in more emphatic and conclusive language than he had already used. He accepted this view.
"We went to the White House for luncheon at 1.30 p. m. There was only one other guest present. The table was set in the open air on the south porch, looking out past the Washington Monument over the Potomac. Mrs. Roosevelt and the children were present and the meal was a delightful and informal family affair. From time to time telegrams continued to be handed to the President, some of them still begging for an additional renunciation, but he adhered to his determination not to make reply. He had strong faith that Taft would be nominated but could not quite rid himself of uneasiness about it.''
When late in the afternoon news came that Taft had been nominated on the first ballot, the President was greatly relieved and expressed his delight with characteristic emphasis.

That strict adherence to Roosevelt's desires and instructions by Senator Lodge, who was the presiding officer, put an end to an attempt to stampede the convention into the nomination of Roosevelt, is a matter of record. There had been several efforts in this direction before the final and most formidable one was launched. A huge portrait of Roosevelt was displayed on the platform and the convention—in the language of an eye witness—"exploded." In the midst of the pandemonium Senator Lodge began to call the roll for a ballot. So deafening was the noise that not till the name of Massachusetts was reached on the alphabetical list, were the reporters able to record the vote. The discovery was then made that Taft's nomination was assured, and the convention subsided into quiet. What Roosevelt thought of Senator Lodge's service to him on this occasion was shown in a letter that he wrote to Mrs. Lodge on the following day, June 19, 1908:
"I wish to send you just a line, primarily to say how admirably I think Cabot handled the peculiarly delicate and difficult work at Chicago. In point of judgment, taste and power it would be literally impossible to better either his words or his actions. He was in a peculiar sense the guardian not only of the national interests, but of my own personal honor; and to do his full duty as guardian it was necessary for him effectively to thwart the movements not merely of my foes but of the multitude of wellmeaning friends who did not think deeply or who were not of very sensitive fiber. It was absolutely necessary that any stampede should be prevented, and that I should not be nominated ; for now that it is over we can confess to one another that it would have been well-nigh impossible for me to refuse further the nomination, and perhaps ruin the party thereby, if the nomination had actually been made; and yet if I had accepted, my power for useful service would have forever been lessened, because nothing could have prevented the wide diffusion of the suspicion that I had not really meant what I had said, that my actions did not really square with the highest and finest code of ethics—and if there is any value whatever in my career, as far as my countrymen are concerned, it consists in their belief that I have been an efficient public man, and at the same time a disinterested public servant."
To Senator Lodge lie wrote on June 24, 1908: "On every side I hear of the great success you made as Chairman . . . you rendered a great public service, and you also rendered me a personal service."
A letter which he wrote to Sir George Otto Trevelyan at this time—June 19,1908—shows how deeply he had been thinking upon the subject of a third term. In many ways it is one of the most interesting of his many interesting letters to this illustrious Englishman:
"... There is very much to be said in favor of the theory that the public has a right to demand as long service from any man who is doing good service as it thinks will be useful; and during the last year or two I have been rendered extremely uncomfortable both by the exultation of my foes over my announced intention to retire, and by the real uneasiness and chagrin felt by many good men because, as they believed, they were losing quite needlessly the leader in whom they trusted, and who they believed could bring to a successful conclusion certain struggles which they regarded as of vital concern to the national welfare. Moreover, it was of course impossible to foresee, and I did not foresee, when I made my public announcement of my intention, that the leadership I then possessed would continue (so far as I am able to tell) unbroken, as has actually been the case; and that the people who believed in me and trusted me and followed me would three or four years later still feel that I was the man of all others whom they wished to see President. Yet such I think has been the case; and therefore, when I felt obliged to insist on retiring and abandoning the leadership, now and then I felt ugly qualms as to whether I was not refusing to do what I ought to do and abandoning great work on a mere fantastic point of honor.
"There are strong reasons why my course should be condemned; yet I think that the countervailing reasons are still stronger. Of course, when I spoke I had in view the precedent set by Washington and continued ever since, the precedent which recognizes the fact that as there in heres in the Presidency more power than in any other office in any great republic or constitutional monarchy of modern times, it can only be saved from abuse by having the people as a whole accept as axiomatic the position that no man has held it for more than a limited time. I don't think that any harm comes from the concentration of power in one man's hands, provided the holder does not keep it for more than a certain, definite time, and then returns to the people from whom he sprang.
"In the great days of the Roman Republic no harm whatever came from the dictatorship, because great though the power of the dictator was, after a comparatively short period he surrendered it back to those from whom he gained it. On the other hand, the history of the first and second French Republics, not to speak of the Spanish-American Republics, not to speak of the Commonwealth, in Seventeenth Century England, has shown that the strong man who is good may very readily subvert free institutions if he and the people at large grow to accept his continued possession of vast power as being necessary to good government. It is a very unhealthy thing that any man should be considered necessary to the people as a whole, save in the way of meeting some given crisis. Moreover, in a republic like ours the vital need is that there shall be a general recognition of the moral law, of the law which, as regards public men, means belief in efficient and disinterested service for the public rendered without thought of personal gain, and above all without the thought of self-perpetuation in office.
"I regard the memories of Washington and Lincoln as priceless heritages for our people, just because they are the memories of strong men, of men who can not be accused of weakness or timidity, of men who I believe were quite as strong, for instance, as Cromwell or Bismarck, and very much stronger than the Louis Napoleon type, who, nevertheless, led careers marked by disinterestedness just as much as by strength; who, like Timoleon and Hampden, in very deed, and not as a mere matter of oratory or fine writing, sought just the public good, the good of the people as a whole, as the first of all considerations.

"Now, my ambition is that, in however small a way, the work I do shall be along the Washington and Lincoln lines. While President I have been President, emphatically; I have used every ounce of power there was in the office and I have not cared a rap for the criticisms of those who spoke of my 'usurpation of power'; for I know that the talk was all nonsense and that there was no usurpation. I believe that the efficiency of this Government depends upon its possessing a strong central executive, and wherever I could establish a precedent for strength in the executive, as I did for instance as regards the external affairs in the case of sending the fleet around the world, taking Panama, settling affairs of Santo Domingo and Cuba; or as I did in internal affairs in settling the anthracite coal strike, in keeping order in Nevada this year when the Federation of Miners threatened anarchy, or as I have done in bringing the big corporations to book—why, in all these cases I have felt not merely that my action was right in itself, but that in showing the strength of, or in giving strength to, the executive, I was establishing a precedent of value. I believe in a strong executive; I believe in power; but I believe that responsibility should go with power, and that it is not well that the strong executive should be a perpetual executive. Above all and beyond all I believe as I have said before that the salvation of this country depends upon Washington and Lincoln representing the type of leader to which we are true. I hope that in my acts I have been a good President, a President who has deserved well of the Republic; but most of all, I believe that whatever value my service may have, comes even more from what I am than from what I do. . . .

"A few months ago three old back-country farmers turned up in Washington and after awhile managed to get in to see me. They were rugged old fellows, as hairy as Boers and a good deal of the Boer type. They hadn't a black coat among them, and two of them wore no cravats; that is, they just had on their working clothes, but all cleaned and brushed. When they finally got to see me they explained that they hadn't anything whatever to ask, but that they believed in me, believed that I stood for what they regarded as the American ideal, and as one rugged old fellow put it. 'We want to shake that honest hand.' Now this anecdote seems rather sentimental as I tell it, and I do not know that I can convey to you the effect the incident produced on me; but it was one of the very many incidents which have occurred, and they have made me feel that I am under a big debt of obligation to the good people of this country, and that I am bound not by any unnecessary action of mine to forfeit their respect, not to hurt them by taking away any part of what they have built up as their ideal of me."

CHAPTER NINE 
THE TAFT CAMPAIGN
eaRly in the fall, when the campaign for Taft's election was beginning to assume aggressive force, publication was made of letters which showed that Senator Foraker of Ohio, who had led the assault upon the President in the affair of the negro troops at Brownsville, had acted as the paid attorney of the Standard Oil Company while occupying a seat in the Senate. Senator Foraker had also opposed Taft's nomination and had not taken the stump for him after he was nominated. A public reconciliation of the two men had been arranged in accordance with which they were to appear on the same platform and shake hands. On the eve of this demonstration the disclosure of the Senator's connection with the Standard Oil Company was made. Mr. Taft was in a quandary as to what course to pursue. The President had no doubt whatever in the matter, for in a letter to Taft on September 19, 1908, he said:
"I have seen the correspondence between Archbold and Foraker, published in the morning papers. Now, it is difficult for any man to advise another as to a given act in a campaign. Personally, if I were running for President, I should in view of these disclosures decline to appear upon the platform with Foraker, and I would have it understood in detail what is the exact fact, namely, that Mr. Foraker's separation from you and from me has been due not in the least to a difference of opinion on the negro question, which was merely a pretense, but to the fact that he was the attorney of the corporations, their hired representative in public life, and that therefore he naturally and inevitably opposed us in every way; that he opposed us when it came to appointments on the bench just as he opposed legislation that we asked for in Congress. I think it essential, if the bad effect upon the canvass of those disclosures is to be obviated, that we should show unmistakably how completely loose from us Mr. Foraker is. If this is not shown affirmatively, there is danger that the people will not see it and will simply think that all Republicans are tarred with the same brush. In other words there is need for aggressive action on our part. My own feeling is that nothing is gained by temporizing in a matter like this, or by paying heed to the ridiculous little politician who thinks it is a good thing to get harmony between you and creatures of the Foraker stamp. I would like to see you in the strongest and most emphatic way do what I should do in your place—make a fight openly on the ground that you stood in the Republican party and before the people for the triumph over the forces which were typified by the purchase of a United States Senator to do the will of the Standard Oil Company, and that you had been opposed by him because of this fundamental antagonism and that for the American people to beat you was to serve notice that they were willing to see a man punished because he declined to yield on such an issue."
Two days later, September 21,1908, the President wrote to George E. Sheldon, Treasurer of the Republican National Committee, at New York:
"I have been informed that you, or some one on behalf of the National Committee, have requested contributions both from Mr. Archbold and Mr. Harriman. If this is true I wish to enter a most earnest protest, and to say that in my judgment not only should such contributions not be solicited, but if tendered they should be refused; and if they have been accepted they should immediately be returned. I am not the candidate, but I am the head of the Republican Administration, which is an issue in this campaign, and I protest most earnestly against men whom we are prosecuting being asked to contribute to elect a President who will appoint an Attorney General to continue these prosecutions. Four years ago Mr. Cortelyou returned, as I am informed, any money forwarded by any one who was being prosecuted or proceeded against by the National Government, or who had any personal interest whatever in any matter pending before the administration."
Mr. Sheldon's reply to this letter caused great surprise and distress to the President for it informed him that his directions to Mr. Cortelyou, Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1904, quoted in an earlier chapter, to return a Standard Oil contribution to the campaign fund, had not been obeyed. He replied to Mr. Sheldon's note as follows, on September 25, 1908:

"There is one feature of your letter of the 22d which causes me much surprise. You say that in 1904 the contribution of the Standard Oil Company I spoke of was made under the authority of its executive committee. This is the first time I was aware that such a contribution was made. In response to my letters Mr. Cortelyou told me that no Standard Oil money was received or would be received. Later, after the campaign closed, I was informed from a different source that certain individuals who had contributed had Standard Oil as well as other interests. Mr. Cortelyou informed' me that he made his statement on Mr. Bliss's authority, which he and I were of course warranted in accepting as final." (See Chapter twenty seven, Volume. I.)
The campaign was not proceeding with the aggressive vigor which the President considered desirable, and toward the end of September he yielded to the appeals of the campaign managers and decided to take a hand in it himself. He wrote a long letter, addressed to the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan, which was published in the newspapers and called forth a vigorous reply from Mr. Bryan. Roosevelt responded in a second and no less vigorous letter, and the desired aggressiveness was imparted to the canvass, remaining with it till the end. Writing to Lawrence Abbott, of the Outlook, at New York, on September 22, 1908, the President said:
". . . In this Foraker affair I made up my mind that I would hit from the shoulder, inasmuch as Taft did not. Taft is quite right in saying that he does not wish to hit a man when he is down; but this is not a case of that. This is a case of a fight to a finish, and in such a fight (if you will pardon the simile by an old-time boxer) if a man wishes to win it is absolutely necessary that he shall knock out his opponent when he has the latter groggy."
Writing to William Kent, Esq., California, on September 28, 1908, he said:
"Of course I do not dare in public to express my real opinion of Bryan. He is a kindly man and well-meaning in a weak way; always provided that to mean well must not be translated by him into doing well if it would interfere with his personal prospects. But he is the cheapest fakir we have ever had proposed for President."
Twice during his Presidency, Roosevelt offered a position on the Supreme Court bench to William H. Taft, and twice the latter declined to accept it. The first offer was made while Taft was Governor of the Philippines and was declined on the ground that he did not feel that he ought to abandon his work in the Islands at that time. The second offer was made in March, 1906, when Taft was Secretary of War. The correspondence between the two men at the time was first published during the campaign of 1908 and the revelation which it made of the affectionate relations existing between them caused something very like a sensation. When the appointment was offered, the President thought that Mr. Taft would be glad to accept it and was surprised when in a personal interview the latter expressed himself otherwise. Shortly after this interview the President, on March 15, 1906, wrote a long letter to him in which he said:
"I think I have been in error as to your feeling. You say that it is your decided preference to continue your present work. This I had not understood. On the contrary, I gathered that what you really wanted to do was to go on the hench, and that my urging was in the line of your inclination, but in a matter in which you were in doubt as to your duty.
"My dear Will, it is preeminently a matter in which no other man can take the responsibility of deciding for you what is best for you to do. Nobody could decide for me whether I should go to the war or stay as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Nobody could decide for me whether I should accept the Vice Presidency or try to continue as governor. In each case it is the man himself who is to lead his life after having decided one way or the other. No one can lead that life for him, and neither he nor any one else can afford to have any one else make the decision for him, because the vital factor in the decision must be an equation of the man himself.
"So far as I am personally concerned, I could not put myself in your place, because I am not a lawyer, and would under no circumstances, even if I had been trained for a lawyer, have any leaning toward the bench; so in your case I should, as a matter of course, accept the three years of service in the War Department, dealing with the Panama and Philippine questions, and then abide the event as to whether I became President or continued in public life in some less conspicuous position or went back to the practice of law.
"But I appreciate, as every thoughtful man must, the importance of the part to be played by the Supreme Court in the next 25 years. I don't at all like the social conditions at present. The dull, purblind folly of very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the way in which they have unduly prospered by the help of the ablest lawyers, and, too often through the weakness and short-sightedness of the judges, or by their unfortunate possession of meticulous minds; these facts, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition of excitement and irritation in the popular mind, which shows itself in part in the enormous increase in the Socialistic propaganda.

"Nothing effective, because nothing at once honest and
intelligent is being done to combat the great amount of
evil which, mixed with a little good, a little truth, is contained in the outpourings of	,	, 	,	,	.

"Some of these Socialists; some of them merely lurid sensationalists; but they are all building up a revolutionary feeling, which will, most probably, take the form of a political campaign. Then we may have to do, too late, or almost too late, what had to be done in the silver campaign, when in one summer we had to convince a great many good people that what they had been laboriously taught for several years was untrue.

"Under such circumstances you would be the best possible leader, and with your leadership we could rest assured that only good methods would prevail. In such a contest you could do very much if you were on the bench; you could do very much if you were in active political life outside. I think you could do most as President, but you could do very much as Chief Justice, and you could do less, but still very much, as Associate Justice. Where you can fight best I cannot say, for you know what your soul turns to better than I can.

"As I see the situation, it is this: There are strong arguments against your taking this justiceship. In the first place, my belief is that of all the men who have appeared so far you are the man who is most likely to receive the Republican nomination, and who is, I think, the best man to receive it. It is not a light thing to cast aside the chance of the Presidency, even though, of course, it is a chance, however, a good one.

"It would be a very foolish thing for you to get it into your thoughts, so that your sweet and fine nature would be warped and you would become bitter and sour, as Henry Clay became; and, thank heaven, this is impossible. But it is well to remember that the shadow of the Presidency falls on no man twice, save in most exceptional circumstances.

'' Now, my dear Will, there is the situation as I see it. It is a hard choice to make, and you yourself have to make it. You have two alternatives before you, each with uncertain possibilities, and you cannot feel sure that which ever you take you will not afterward feel that it would have been better if you had taken the other. But which ever you take I know that you will render great and durable service to the nation for many years to come, and I feel sure that you should decide in accordance with the promptings of your own liking, of your own belief as to where you can render the service which most appeals to you, as well as that which you. feel is most beneficial to the nation. No one can with wisdom advise you."
Mr. Taft had the offer under consideration for three and a half months before deciding, and on July 30, 1906, declined it in a letter written from Murray Bay, Canada, where he was on vacation. In it he repeated the Philippine reason that he had given when the first offer was made, and said:
"I know that few, if any, even among my friends, will credit me with anything but a desire, unconscious, perhaps, to run for the Presidency, and that I must face and bear this misconstruction of what I do. But I am confident you credit my reasons as I give them to you, and will believe me when I say that I would much prefer to go on the Supreme Bench for life than to run for the Presidency, and that in twenty years of judicial service I could make myself more useful to the country than as President, even if my election should come about.
"Please do not misunderstand me to think that I am indispensable or that the world could not run on much the same if I were to disappear in the St. Lawrence river. But circumstances seem to me to have imposed something in the nature of a trust to me personally that I should not discharge by now succeeding Justice Brown. In the nature of things the trust must end with this Administration, and one or two years is short to do much. Yet the next session of Congress may result in much for the benefit of the Filipino, and it seems to me it is my duty to be in the fight.''
The election took place on November 2, 1908, and Taft was elected triumphantly, receiving 321 electoral votes against 162 for Bryan, and a plurality of 1,269,800 in the popular vote. This was the largest electoral and popular vote ever received by any candidate except that recorded for Roosevelt in 1904, when he had 336 electoral votes and a plurality of 2,545,500 in the popular vote.
Five days after his election, November 7, 1908, Mr. Taft wrote from Hot Springs, Va., to the President a long letter, mainly composed of a review of the results in various States, and saying in recognition of the President's services on his behalf:
"I have just reached Hot Springs, and have only now taken up my correspondence. The first letter I wish to write is to you, because you have always been the chief agent in working out the present status of affairs, and my selection and election are chiefly your work. You and my brother Charley made that possible which in all probability would not have occurred otherwise. I don't wish to be falsely modest in this. I know, as you have said to me when we have talked the matter over, that neither you nor he could probably have done the same thing with any other candidate, under the circumstances as they were, but that doesn 't affect the fact as I have stated it, or my reason for feeling the deep gratitude which I do to you both for what has happened and the successful efforts which you have made, costing time and energy and subjecting you to severe criticism and, in some cases, the loss of personal friendships that you might have avoided."

CHAPTER TEN
LETTERS ON DECADENCE; WEALTH; BIRDS; HUMOR IN POLITICS; CLEVELAND; LIBEL SUIT; THE NAVY
roosevelt's correspondence during the spring and summer of 1908 shows the usual wide variety of interests. Always a patient listener, his remarkable alertness of mind which enabled him to foresee clearly the end of a talker's discourse long before the talker himself had arrived at it, frequently put his patience to a severe strain. Writing to Henry Adams, on March 9, 1908, he gives a hint of his sufferings at times: "Of course I have read your grandfather's diary; but I have at once sent for another copy to reread in part about those years. There was just two years' interval, then, between his Presidency and his nominal appearance in Congress. 0 Lord! I wish I did not sympathize with him and the rest of his family about being bored! The capacity to be bored, whether treated as a sin or a misfortune, is an awful handicap."
The extraordinary range of Roosevelt's reading and knowledge is revealed in a letter which he wrote to the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balf our, at the moment when he was in the very thick of his struggle with Congress for further legislation in regard to governmental control and regulations of corporations and when his daily correspondence was crowded with protests against his course. How many other men of his time, in or out of public life, could have written such a letter as this? I append it in full.
white house,
March 5, 1908. My dear Mr. Balfour:
Through Arthur Lee I have just received the copy of "Decadence," and thank you for it. I confess I began read it with some apprehension lest it might have something to do with some phase of French literary thought. Naturally, therefore, I was glad when the first few lines showed that my fears were groundless.

It seems to me that you are eminently right in seeing that it is good to give a name to something of vital consequence, even though in a sense the name only expresses our ignorance. It is a curious thing in mankind, but undoubtedly true, that if we do not give such a name to our ignorance, most of us gradually feel that there is nothing to be ignorant about. Most emphatically there is such a thing as "decadence" of a nation, a race, a type; and it is no less true that we can not give any adequate explanation of the phenomenon. Of course there are many partial explanations, and in some cases, as with the decay of the Mongol or Turkish monarchies, the sum of these partial explanations may represent the whole. But there are other cases notably, of course, that of Rome in the ancient world, and, as I believe, that of Spain in the modern world, on a much smaller scale, where the sum of all the explanations is that they do not wholly explain. Something seems to have gone out of the people or peoples affected, and what it is no one can say. In the case of Rome, one can say that the stocks were completely changed, though I do not believe that this in the least represents even the major part of the truth. But in the case of Spain, the people remain the same. The expulsion of Moor and heretic, the loss of the anarchistic and much misused individual liberties of the provincial towns, the economic and social changes wrought by the inflow of American gold—all of them put together do not explain the military decadence of the Spaniard ; do not explain why he grew so rigid that, at first on sea and then on land, he could not adapt himself to new tactics, and above all, what subtle transformation it was that came over the fighting edge of the soldiers themselves. For nearly a century and a half following the beginning of Gonsalvo's campaigns, the Spanish infantry showed itself superior in sheer fighting ability to any other infantry of Europe. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, neither the Hollanders, fighting with despair for their own firesides, nor the Scotch and English volunteers, actuated by love of fighting and zeal for their faith, were able on anything like equal terms to hold their own against the Spanish armies, who walked at will to and fro through the Netherlands, save where strong city walls or burst dykes held them at bay. Yet the Hollander, the Englishman and the Scotchman were trained soldiers, and they were spurred by every hope and feeling which we ordinarily accept as making men formidable in fight. A century passed; and these same Spaniards had become contemptible creatures in war compared with the Dutch and Scotch, the English and French, whom they had once surpassed. Many partial explanations can be given for the change, but none that wholly or mainly explains it.

What is true of military prowess is even more true of national life as a whole. I do not see how any thinking man can fail to feel now and then ugly doubts as to what may befall our modern civilization—the civilization of the white races, who have spread their influence over the entire world—and the culture they have inherited or acquired in extreme western Asia and in Europe during the last three or four thousand years. There are unpleasant analogies between the twentieth century and Hellenistic antiquity in the first period of the past Alexandrian monarchies; and of course the resemblance is even closer with the orderly, peace-loving, cultivated Roman world from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius. The resemblances are in the way of analogy rather than homology, it is true, and there are deep fundamental differences. But the resemblances are there. Why the creative literary spirit should practically have vanished from Roman lands after the time of Trajan, we do not know. We can see better why the citizens lost the traits which make good individual soldiers; but we can not see why the very time of the astounding urban growth of North Africa, Gaul and Spain should have been coincident with the growth of utter inability to organize on a sufficiently large scale either in peace or war, until everything jr grew to depend upon the ability of one or two men on top. Much of the fall of the Roman Republic we can account for. For one thing, I do not think historians have ever laid sufficient emphasis on the fact that the widening of the franchise in Italy and the provinces meant so little from the governmental standpoint because citizens could only vote in one city, Rome; I should hate at this day to see the United States governed by votes cast in the city of New York, even though Texas, Oregon and Maine could in theory send their people thither to vote if they chose. But the reasons for the change in military and governmental ability under the empire between, say, the days of Hadrian and of Valens are hardly even to be guessed at.
I have always been greatly interested in what you point out as to the inability of the people of that strip of western Asia which is geographically North Africa ever to recover themselves from the downfall of the Roman Empire. It is a rather irritating delusion—the delusion that somehow or other we are all necessarily going to move forward in the long run no matter what the temporary checks may be. I have a very firm faith in this general forward movement, considering only men of our own race for the past score or two centuries, and I hope and believe that the movement will continue for an indefinite period to come; but no one can be sure; there is certainly nothing inevitable or necessary about the movement. For a thousand years, from the days of Alexander to the days of Mahomet, in spite of fluctuations, the civilization of Asia west of the Euphrates was that of Greeks and of Asiatics profoundly affected by Greek influence. Then it disappeared from the land; just as the extraordinary Roman civilization disappeared from North Africa, and left not a single vestige behind save the ruins of cities and the masonry around the springs that have dried up under the destructive impotence of the rule that succeeded it.
It is hopeful of course to think how peoples do revive now and then; peoples doubtless partly the same in blood as those that fell, and at least with the ancestral inheritance of language, of culture. You have pointed out the greatest instance of this in Italy. A totally different and much smaller example is furnished by modern Switzerland.

The intrusion of an alien race into another civilization, its growth and supremacy and dying away, is of course curiously paralleled by what we see in the animal world, and the parallel is complete in at least one point—that is, in the fact that in such case the causes may be shrouded in absolute darkness. South America, until the middle of the Tertiary period, had a mammalian fauna almost as unique as that of Australia, composed chiefly of small marsupials, and of what we loosely call edentatas, also of small size. Then.there occurred physical union with the great arctogeal continent by the Isthmus of Panama. There followed an inrush of northern fauna and an extraordinarily powerful and abundant faunal life sprang up. The dominant forms were those of the intruders—saber-tooth tigers, bear, deer, elephants, swine, camels, tapirs, horses, all of great abundance in species, and many of the species of giant size. Under the pressure most of the old forms disappeared; but some of the so-called edentates developed into ground sloths and giant armadillos as large as elephants; and some of these forms when thus developed proved not only able to hold their own in South America, but gradually in their turn made their way north across the Isthmus and spread into North America in the teeth of the competition of the descendants of the forms that had anciently overrun South America. Thus there grew up in South America a faunal life as gigantic, as fierce, as varied, as that of Central Africa at this moment, and on the whole more like that of Central Africa than like the life of South America to-day, and infinitely more so than like the old eocene life of South America. Then there came a change, we know not why. In North America the glacial period may have had much to do with it, but surely this can not have been true of South America; yet all of these huge formidable creatures died out, alike the monsters of alien type from the North, and the monsters developed from ancient autochthonous types. A few weak representatives were left, of both types; but the old magnificent fauna completely vanished; and why we can not say, any more than we can explain why the Roman so completely failed permanently to leave North Africa to his descendants.
Of course there is a small side trouble, due to our terminology. All species of animals of course ultimately disappear, some because their kind entirely dies out, and some because the species is transformed into a wholly different species,, degenerate or not; but in our nomenclature we make no distinction between the two utterly different kinds of "disappearance." So it is, of course, with nations. I really believe that people sometimes think of "new" nations as being suddenly created out of nothing; they certainly speak as if they were not aware that the newest and the oldest nations and races must of course have identically the same length of racial pedigree. They talk, moreover, of the "destruction" of the inhabitants of Mexico, and of the "destruction" of the inhabitants of Tasmania, as if the processes were alike. In Tasmania the people were absolutely destroyed; none of their blood is left. But the bulk of the blood of Mexico, and a part of the blood of the governing classes of Mexico (including Diaz), is that of the Mexicans whom Cortez and his successors conquered. In the same way Australia and Canada and the United States are "new" commonwealths only in the sense that Syracuse and Gyrene were new compared with Athens and Corinth.
Another thing that makes one feel irritated is the way that people insist on speaking as if what has occurred during the last three or four hundred years represented part of the immutable law of nature. The military supremacy of the whites is an instance in point. From the rise of the Empire of Genghis Khan to the days of Selim, the Mongol and Turkish tribes were unquestionably the military superiors of the peoples of the Occident, and when they came into conflict it was the former who almost always appeared as invaders and usually as victors. Yet people speak of the Japanese victories over the Russians as if they had been without precedent throughout the ages.
One practical problem of statesmanship, by the way, must be to keep on good terms with these same Japanese and their kinsmen on the mainland of Asia, and yet to keep the white man in America and Australia out of home contact with them. It is equally to the interest of the British Empire and of the United States that there should be no immigration in mass from Asia to Australia or to North America. It can be prevented, and an entirely friendly feeling between Japan and the English speaking peoples preserved, if we act with sufficient courtesy and at the same time with sufficient resolution. But this is leaving speculative history for present politics. With regard,
Sincerely yours,
(Signed) theodore roosevelt.
Indifference to wealth was one of his strongest characteristics. His feeling in regard to it is defined in a letter to Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, on April 11, 1908:
"As a matter of fact, I am anxious to have it understood that it is not necessary to be a multimillionaire in order to reach the highest positions in the American diplomatic service. I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth. I very thoroughly understand the need of sufficient means to enable the man or woman to be comfortable; I also entirely understand the pleasure of having enough more than this to add certain luxuries, and above all, that greatest of all luxuries, the escape from the need of considering at every turn whether it is possible to spend a dollar or two extra; but when the last limit has been reached, then increase in wealth means but little, certainly as compared with all kinds of other things. In consequence, I am simply unable to make myself take the attitude of respect toward the very wealthy men which such an enormous multitude of people evidently really feel. I am delighted to show any courtesy to Pierpont Morgan or Andrew Carnegie or James J. Hill, but as for regarding any one of them as, for instance, I regard Professor Bury, or Peary, the Arctic explorer, or Admiral Evans, or Rhodes, the historian, or Selous, the big game hunter (to mention at random guests who have been at the White House not long ago)—why, I could not force myself to do it even if I wanted to, which I do not.
"The very luxurious, grossly material life of the average multimillionaire whom I know does not appeal to me in the least, and nothing could hire me to lead it. It is an exceedingly nice thing to have money enough to be able to take a hunting trip in Africa after big game (if you are not able to make it pay for itself in some other way). It is an exceedingly nice thing, if you are young, to have one or two good jumping horses and to be able to occasionally hunt— although Heaven forfend that any one for whom I care should treat riding to hounds as the serious business of life! It is an exceedingly nice thing to have a good house and to be able to purchase good books and good pictures, and especially to have that house isolated from others. But I wholly fail to see where any real enjoyment comes from a dozen automobiles, a couple of hundred horses, and a good many-different houses luxuriously upholstered. From the standpoint of real pleasure I should selfishly prefer my old-time ranch on the Little Missouri to anything in Newport."
In similar vein, with special reference to the desire of Americans to be "presented at court," he wrote to White-law Reid in London, on May 25, 1908:
"I have grown to have a constantly increasing horror of the Americans who go abroad desiring to be presented at court or to meet sovereigns. In very young people it is excusable folly; in older people it is mere snobbishness. ... I can not be too sincerely grateful that when Mrs. Roosevelt and I were abroad before I was President, we refused to be presented. I have a hearty respect for the right kind of a king and for the right kind of aristocracy, and for the right kind of Englishman who wishes to be presented or have his wife or daughter presented; but it is the business of an American to be a Republican, a democrat, to behave in a simple and straight-forward manner, and, without anything cheap or blatant about it, to be just what he is, a plain citizen of the American Republic; and he is thoroughly out of place, loses his dignity in the eyes of others, and loses his own self-respect, when he tries to play a role for which he is not suited, and which personally I think is less exalted than his own natural role.
"I have been immensely amused, and not a little astonished, to find how many people, some of them pretty good people, believe that when I am through here I shall visit the courts of Europe. It would take ten strong yoke of oxen to drag me thither; and my present intention is not to go to Europe at all until the memory of my Presidency has faded, so as not to make the wretched sovereigns and statesmen feel obliged to see me or entertain me. Then, if I can go just as I went before I was President, some time I should like to take Mrs. Roosevelt to see the picture galleries, the quaint cities, the scenery; but not otherwise. When I stop being President I stop being President. I become an ordinary citizen, entirely contented to be such; and as I am not a man of large means I neither wish myself to be put into the position of the earthern pot, driven down stream with the brazen pots, nor to see my children so placed. If, for instance, I could meet the German Emperor now, when each is head of a big State and there are plenty of things on which we could naturally talk from an equal standpoint, why, I should be delighted to do so. But I haven't the slightest desire to meet him when my hand is no longer at the lever. I hope to get a holiday next spring and go for nine months or a year to Africa, to see the big game, and shoot a very moderate number of head, taking my second boy, Kermit, with me; and if the British and German officers in the territories in which I go will then show me whatever consideration they show to other fairly well-known people of good character who behave themselves—why, that is all I shall ask, and quite as much as I have any right to expect."
During his Presidency he purchased a small tract of land in western Virginia, with a small cabin-like house, to which he and Mrs. Roosevelt were accustomed to go for brief visits from time to time. He named the place '' Pine Knot,'' and on one occasion he had as guest John Burroughs, the poet and naturalist. Writing to Frank M. Chapman, of the New York Museum of Natural History, on May 10, 1908, he described what occurred during the visit:
"John Burroughs and I had a very pleasant time during our three days at Pine Knot. I was much pleased to be able to show him all the birds I had said I would, including the Bewick's wren, the blue grosbeak, the gnatcatcher, the summer redbird, etc. The one bird about which we were doubtful was the Henslow's bunting. I think he found the place almost too primitive, for a family of flying squirrels had made their abode inside the house. This tended to keep him awake at nights, whereas we have become rather attached to them. In one plowed field I found a nighthawk sitting. If I had chosen to knock it down with my hat I could have done so, but I wanted not to hurt it; and as I endeavored softly to seize it, it got away just as my fingers touched it. It did not go far, but sat lengthwise along the limb of a small tree and let me come within two feet of it before flying. When I see you again I am going to point out one or two minor matters in connection with the song of the Bewick's wren and the looks of the blue grosbeak, where we were a little puzzled by your accounts. I suppose that there is a good deal of individual variation among the birds themselves as well as among the observers.

"I now feel as though I wonder how I ever got on without your 'Birds of the Eastern United States' and your book on warblers."
The subjoined letter to Senator Lodge, August 18, 1908, gives us a glimpse of Roosevelt's keen sense of humor: "To my immense delight, which I know you will share, the New York 'Herald, last Sunday contained the following item:

'Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday.—Word reached here today from Brownfield, in Terry County, Western Texas, that residents there on Thursday erected a life-size statue of President Roosevelt after a street fight in which fifty shots were fired. One person was killed and nine others were wounded. The statue represents Mr. Roosevelt in hunting costume and stands in the town square.

'Brownfield is one hundred miles from the nearest railroad, the Texas Pacific. Its population is 1,500, composed largely of cattlemen, cowboys and planters. The erection of the statue was vigorously opposed by democrats and some Republicans, but it had already been ordered from Denver by a citizens committee, which refused to turn from its plans. The unveiling was opposed because it was pointed out that Roosevelt was still President and because the democrats wanted a Bryan statue on the opposite side of the square and the town could not afford both statues.
'Efforts were made to steal the statue and it was buried for a week. When the ceremonies took place on Thursday a band of cowboys made a rush and met a determined crowd. Revolvers, clubs and fists were freely used, but the statue was not disturbed.
'After the riot a mass meeting was held, at which a compromise was effected whereby it was agreed that should Bryan be elected, his statue should be placed near that of Roosevelt.'
"I never heard of the statue and indeed I never heard of Brownfield before and I think there is something delightful beyond words in the idea of this sudden erection of a statue of me in hunting costume at the cost of a riot in which one man was killed and nine wounded; and the final compromise by which it was agreed to put up another statue of Bryan in case he was elected. I wonder what that statue looks like. Who with a sense of humor and a real zest for life would not be glad to be prominent in American politics at the outset of the 20th century?"
His deep and constant veneration for Lincoln, expressed in many letters, is seen in this letter to Dr. Duncan C. Milner, Chicago, on November 20, 1908:
"Great-Heart is my favorite character in allegory (which is, of course, a branch of fiction, as you say), just as Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' is to my mind one of the greatest books that was ever written; and I think that Abraham Lincoln is the ideal Great-Heart of public life."
When I was discussing with Roosevelt the writing of the present volumes, he said on one occasion when I spoke of Grover Cleveland: "I wish you would put in all letters of mine referring to him, for I respected the old fellow highly and greatly liked him." In accordance with this request I append two letters which the President wrote in the closing year of his administration:
To mRs. gRoveR cleveland,
Princeton, N. J.
oyster baY, July 13, 1908. My Dear Mrs. Cleveland:
It has recently been my privilege to sign a proclamation changing the name of the San Jacinto National Forest to the Cleveland National Forest. May I express to you the very great pleasure it gave me to take that action—a pleasure mingled with a keen sense of the loss to our country and to our citizens in the death of President Cleveland? On February 22, 1897, President Cleveland signed the proclamation creating the San Jacinto Forest reserve in Southern California. The date, February 22, was no mere accident since the signature of the proclamation was timed to coincide with the birthday of our first President.
President Cleveland was one of the first to recognize the need of forest preservation, and the creation of the San Jacinto and other Forest Reserves with a total area of 25,686,320 acres was one of the results of his foresight in this direction. Throughout his life he took great interest in conserving the natural resources of the Nation; and I particularly regretted his inability to attend the meeting of the Governors in May, because that meeting was in part the fruit of seed he had sown years before. (The meeting was called at the White House by President Roosevelt.)
The name of Grover Cleveland will always be prominently identified with the movement to protect the forests of the United States, and it seemed to me eminently fitting that one of the forests which he created should bear his name throughout all time.
 
To Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson.
white house, November 9, 1908. My dear Mr. Stetson:

I regret that it is not possible for me to be present in person at the meeting held under the auspices of the Cleveland Memorial Committee. I wish you all success in your efforts. I was a member of the Legislature when Mr. Cleveland became Governor of the State of New York at the beginning of the year 1883, and for the next twenty-five years on several different occasions I was brought into close contact with him. For two years during his second administration I served under him as Civil Service Commissioner. Like all others who were thrown closely with him I was much impressed by his high standard of official conduct and his rugged strength of character. Not only did I become intimately acquainted with the manner in which he upheld and enforced the civil service law, but I also saw at close quarters his successful fight against free silver, and the courage with which he, aided by men like the late Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, supported the judiciary at the time of the Chicago riot; and, finally, I happened to be in a position in which I knew intimately how he acted and the reasons why he acted in the Venezuelan matter. This knowledge gained at first hand enables me to bear testimony, which I am more than glad to bear, to the late President's earnest purpose to serve the whole country, and the high courage with which he encountered every species of opposition and attack. Owing to a peculiar combination of circumstances he went out of office assailed even more bitterly by his own party than by the opposing party, and shortsighted people thought that the great mass of American citizens had repudiated him and disbelieved in him. Six years later it happened that I was at St. Louis as President when Mr. Cleveland, then a plain private citizen, arose to make an address in the great hall of the Exposition; and no one there will ever forget the extraordinary reception given by scores of thousands present to the man who, six years before, had left the White House with seemingly hardly a handful of friends and supporters. It was an extraordinary testimony to the esteem and regard in which he was held, an extraordinary testimony to the fact that the American people had not forgotten him, and, looking back, had recognized in him a man who with straightforward directness had sought to do all in his power to serve their interests.
Moreover, all Americans should pay honor to the memory of Mr. Cleveland because of the simplicity and dignity with which as ex-President he led his life in the beautiful college town wherein he elected to live. He had been true to the honorable tradition which has kept our Presidents from making money while in office. His life was therefore of necessity very simple; but it was the kind of life which it is a good thing to see led by any man who has held a position such as he held.
Roosevelt had a warm regard for Baron Speck von Stern-burg, who for several years was the German Ambassador at Washington. The news of his death in September 1908 was, as his correspondence shows, the cause of genuine grief to him:
To hon. henRy white,
The American Ambassador,
Paris, France.	oyster bay,
September 10, 1908.
I sincerely mourn Speck's loss, though I can not be sorry for the gallant little fellow himself, for life was one long torture for him.   I have never met a man for whom I had a higher respect or regard.   It is very hard on the Baroness.
To ambassador david J. hill, Berlin, Germany.
oyster bat, September 10, 1908.
It was kind of you to write me in full of the funeral of my dear friend Sternburg. He was just that to me—a dear friend—and I mourn his loss. A more upright, fearless, and disinterested public servant, a more faithful and loyal friend, I have never seen.
One of the last letters Roosevelt wrote from the White House was in relation to the baseless rumors that had been circulating freely for a year or more about his drinking habits. To a gentleman in New York who was disturbed by them, he wrote on February 25, 1909:
"It happens that in the matter of drinking I am an extremely abstemious man; I suppose that no man not a total abstainer could well drink less than I do; and whiskey and brandy I practically never touch. The accusation that I ever have been addicted in the slightest degree to drinking to excess, or to drinking even wine—and liquor, as I say, I practically never touch—in any but the most moderate way, is not only the blackest falsehood but an utterly ridiculous falsehood; it does not represent any distortion or exaggeration; it has no slightest base in fact; it is simply malignant invention—just as sheer an invention as if they had said that at the age of five I had poisoned my grandmother or had been mixed up in the assassination of Lincoln by Wilkes Booth. One accusation would be exactly as infamous and exactly as ludicrous as the other.''
Several years later, in October 1912, when the editor of a Western newspaper published an article making definite charges that Roosevelt was an intemperate man, he, thinking the time had arrived to put a stop to such slanders once and for all, brought suit against the editor for libel. The suit was tried in May 1913, when Roosevelt attended with a large number of witnesses and so completely refuted the charges that at the conclusion of the testimony the editor withdrew them, stating that he had been unable to find any witnesses to give evidence in support of them, and admitting that in making the charges he had been mistaken. When the editor had concluded his retraction Colonel Roosevelt asked the court for permission to make a statement, and when it had been granted he said:
"Your Honor, in view of the statement of the defendant, I ask the Court to instruct the jury that I desire only nominal damages.
"I did not go into this suit for money. I did not go into it for any vindictive purpose. I went into it, and, as the Court has said, I made my reputation an issue, because I wished, once for all during my lifetime, thoroughly and comprehensively to deal with these slanders, so that never again will it be possible for any man, in good faith, to repeat them. I have achieved my purpose, and I am content."
Roosevelt's final and, so far as his correspondence shows, only appeal that he made to his successor before leaving office was in the following letter to Mr. Taft on March 3, 1909, in behalf of his beloved navy:
'' One closing legacy. Under no circumstances divide the battleship fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans prior to the finishing of the Panama Canal. Malevolent enemies of the navy will try to lead public opinion in a matter like this without regard to the dreadful harm they may do the country; and good, entirely ignorant, men may be thus misled. I should obey no direction of Congress and pay heed to no popular sentiment, no matter how strong, if it went wrong in such a vital matter as this. When I sent the fleet around the world there was a wild clamor that some of it should be sent to the Pacific, and equally wild clamor that some of it should be left in the Atlantic. 
I disregarded both. At first it seemed as if popular feeling was nearly a unit against me. It is now nearly a unit in favor of what I did.
"It is now nearly four years since the close of the Russian-Japanese war. There were various factors that brought about Russia's defeat; but most important by all odds was her having divided her fleet between the Baltic and the Pacific, and, furthermore, splitting up her Pacific fleet into three utterly unequal divisions. The entire Japanese force was always used to smash some fraction of the Russian force. The knaves and fools who advise the separation of our fleet nowadays and the honest, misguided creatures who think so little that they are misled by such advice, ought to take into account this striking lesson furnished by actual experience in a great war but four years ago. Keep the battle fleet either in one ocean or the other and have the armed cruisers always in trim, as they are now, so that they can be at once sent to join the battle fleet if the need should arise."

CHAPTER ELEVEN
PREPARATIONS   FOR   AFRICAN    TRIP—REFLECTIONS AFTER TAFT'S ELECTION
His African trip, which he was to enter upon after retiring from the Presidency, was much in Roosevelt's mind during the last year of his term and many references to it appear in his letters. To Lord Curzon, in England, who had asked him to deliver the Romanes lecture, at Oxford, he wrote on August 18, 1908:

"I can think of few things which I would rather do than deliver the Romanes lecture. I accept with pleasure, and if Oxford desires to give me a degree I shall be much pleased to receive it. Indeed, your letter relieves me from rather a quandary. Next March, immediately after leaving the Presidency, I shall go to Africa, starting in at Mombasa, working to and fro in British, and perhaps in German, East Africa, and coming out via the Nyanza and the Nile at Cairo about the first of April following. Now there are many friends whom I have in England whom I should really like to see; but I have rather a horror of ex-Presidents traveling around with no real business, and thereby putting unfortunate potentates who think they ought to show courtesy to the United States in a position where they feel obliged to entertain the said ex-Presidents, no matter how great a hero any one of them may be. If I could make the sovereigns and leading men of each country understand that I did not expect any attention and would be only too glad to be left to my own resources, and be permitted to call upon the people I already knew and a very few others whom I would like to know, why, that would be all right; but to make a kind of mock triumphal procession would offer about as unattractive an outing to me as could be imagined."
 On the same date he wrote to Senator Lodge: "Curzon, who is Chancellor of Oxford, has just asked me to go there to get a degree and to deliver the Romanes lecture in the spring of 1910 on my way back from Africa. This I am really glad to do. The lecture has been delivered in the past by men like Gladstone, Huxley, John Morley, and Bryce, and I regard it as an honor to be asked and moreover, as something right in my line. Then it gives me a legitimate reason for visiting England. I felt I would really like, when I left Africa, to spend a couple of months in Italy, France, Holland, and to end with a couple of weeks in England; but I rather hated to go there without a genuine object, because, if I finally came to the conclusion that I would have to be presented to the King and call on various public men, it would look as if I were simply traveling about for that purpose. Now this puts the matter right."
To Frederic Remington, for whom he cherished a warm friendship, he wrote on October 28, 1908, in reply to a letter of sympathy on his retirement:
"It was good of you to write us and I appreciate it. You are one of the men whose friendship I value. Do you know I am rather ashamed to say that I can not accept your condolence? I am still looking forward, and not back. I do not know any man who has had as happy a fifty years as I have had. I have had about as good a run for my money as any human being possibly could have; and whatever happens now I am ahead of the game. Besides, I hope still to be able to do some good work now and then; and I am looking forward to my African trip with just as much eagerness as if I were a boy; and when I come back there are lots of things in our social, industrial and political life in which I shall take an absorbed interest. I have never sympathized in the least with the kind of man who feels that because he has been fortunate enough to hold a big position he can not be expected to enjoy himself afterward in a less prominent position. In fact, I do not in the least care for a position because of its title, so to speak—I want to try to do good work wherever I am and I am far more concerned with that than with the question of what position it is in which I am to do the good work. Gushing, who sunk the Albemarle, was only a lieutenant, but there are mighty few admirals with whom, if I had been in his shoes, I should have thought it worth while to change positions."
When later proposals were made to him to have newspaper correspondents accompany him on his African trip, he declined them peremptorily, setting forth his reasons in a letter to Melville E. Stone, General Manager of the Associated Press, on December 2, 1908:
"When I start on this African trip I shall have ceased to be President, and shall be simply a private citizen, like any other private citizen. Not only do I myself believe, but I am firmly convinced that the great mass of the American people believe, that when the President leaves public office he should become exactly like any other man in private life. He is entitled to no privileges, but, on the other hand, he is also entitled to be treated no worse than any one else. Now, it will be an indefensible wrong, a gross impropriety from every standpoint, for any newspaper to endeavor to have its representatives accompany me on this trip, or to fail to give me the complete privacy to which every citizen who acts decently and behaves himself is entitled.''
Roosevelt's gratification at the great victory achieved for Taft and the Republican party in the election found expression in his letters written immediately afterwards. One to E. S. Martin, of Life, on November 6, 1908, is a fair sample of many others:

"Naturally I am greatly pleased at the election. I have finished my career in public life; I have enjoyed it to the full; I have achieved a large proportion of what I set out to achieve; and I am almost ashamed to say that I do not mind in the least retiring to private life. No President has ever enjoyed himself as much as I have enjoyed myself, and for the matter of that I do not know any man of my age who has had as good a time. Of course if I had felt that I could conscientiously keep on in the Presidency I should have dearly liked to have tried again; and I shall miss a very little having my hands on the levers of the great machine; but I am really almost uneasy to find that I do not mind the least bit in the world getting out."
On November 6, 1908, the President wrote a letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan which is a worthy supplement to the one that he wrote to him on June 19, 1908, quoted in a previous chapter. A noteworthy passage in the later letter is that in which Roosevelt expresses the absolute faith that he then had in Taft's ability and determination to carry forward the causes and policies which had been the chief features of the Roosevelt administration—a faith which he was to learn later with sadness was misplaced:
"Well, the election is over, and to say that I am pleased with the result is to express it mildly. I can hardly express my satisfaction. If the result of my 'renunciation' had been either the nomination of a reactionary in the place of Taft, or the turning over of the government to Bryan, I should have felt a very uncomfortable apprehension as to whether I did not deserve a place beside Dante's pope who was guilty of il gran rifiuto. Renunciation is so often the act of a weak nature, or the term by which a weak nature seeks to cover up its lack of strength, that I suppose that every man who feels that he ought to renounce something also tends to feel a little uncomfortable as to whether he is really acting in accordance with the dictates of a sound morality or from weakness. Yet feeling as I do about this people and about the proper standard for its chosen leaders, I would not have acted otherwise than as I did; and naturally the relief is very great to have the event justify me.
"Taft will carry on the work substantially as I have carried it on. His policies, principles, purposes and ideals are the same as mine and he is a strong, forceful, efficient man, absolutely upright, absolutely disinterested and fearless. In leaving, I have the profound satisfaction of knowing that he will do all in his power to further every one of the great causes for which I have fought and that he will persevere in every one of the great governmental policies in which I most firmly believe. Therefore nothing whatever is lost by my having refused to run for a third term, and much is gained.
"Washington and Lincoln set the standard of conduct for the public servants of this people. They showed how men of the strongest type could also possess all the disinterested, all the unselfish, devotion to duty and to the interests of their fellow countrymen that we have a right to expect, but can only hope to see in the very highest type of public servant. At however great a distance, I have been anxious to follow in their footsteps, and anxious that, however great the difference in degree, my service to the Nation should be approximately the same in kind as theirs.''
To his friend, Mr. Strachey of the London Spectator, he wrote on November 28, 1908, giving his views on the use of ex-Presidents:
"When people have spoken to me as to what America should do with its ex-Presidents, I have always answered that there was one ex-President as to whom they need not concern themselves in the least, because I would do for myself. It would be to me personally an unpleasant thing to be pensioned and given some honorary position. I emphatically do not desire to clutch at the fringe of departing greatness. Indeed, to me there is something rather attractive, something in the way of living up to a proper democratic ideal, in having a President go out of office just as I shall go, and become absolutely and without reservation a private man, and do any honorable work which he finds to do. My first work will be to go to Africa for the National Museum.

   "I am fifty, I have led a very sedentary life for ten years, and I feel that this is my last chance for something in the nature of a 'great adventure.' If a war should occur while I am still physically fit, I should certainly try to raise a brigade, and if possible a division, of cavalry, mounted riflemen, such as those in my regiment ten years ago. But if, as I most earnestly hope, there is peace then, after my return from Africa, and in view of the fact that I am not fit any longer for really arduous exploration, the work open to me which is best worth doing is fighting for political, social and industrial reform, just as I have been fighting for it for the twenty-eight years that I have been in politics.

"I feel very strongly that one great lesson to be taught here in America is that while the first duty of every man is to earn enough for his wife and children, that when once this has been accomplished no man should treat money as the primary consideration. He is very foolish unless he makes it the first consideration, up to the point of supporting his family; but normally, thereafter it should come secondary. Now, I feel that I can still for some years command a certain amount of attention from the American public, and during those years and before my influence totally vanishes I want to use it so far as possible to help onward certain movements for the betterment of our people."
In a letter to the Kaiser, on December 26, 1908, he repeated the remark about raising a regiment in case of war, which is of curious interest in view of his vain effort to get permission to raise a division in the war against the Kaiser in 1917:
"It is very unlikely that I shall ever hold office again. But if—what I most earnestly hope may never occur—there should be a big war in which the United States was engaged, while I am still in bodily vigor, I should endeavor to get permission to raise a division of mounted rifles—cavalry, in our use of the word; that is, nine regiments such as the one I commanded in the war with Spain. I hope the chance may never come, however."
The first explicit statement of Roosevelt's attitude towards woman suffrage which appears in his correspondence was in a letter addressed on November 10, 1908, to Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, of Warren, Ohio, Treasurer of the National American "Woman Suffrage Association:
"I will give you exactly my feeling about your request that I speak a word for woman suffrage in my annual message. I do not think it would be wise to do so; not in the least because of any consideration about myself, but because I think that it is not in any shape or way a live issue at this time, and because I do not see what good would come of my mentioning it.
"Personally I believe in woman suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it because I do not regard it as a very important matter. I am unable to see that there has been any special improvement in the position of women in those States in the West that have adopted woman suffrage, as compared with those States adjoining them that have not adopted it. I do not think that giving the women suffrage will produce any marked improvement in the condition of women. I do not believe that it will produce any of the evils feared, and I am very certain that when women as a whole take any special interest in the matter they will have the suffrage if they desire it. But at present I think most of them are lukewarm; I find some actively for it and some actively against it.
"I am, for the reasons above given, rather what you would regard as lukewarm or tepid in my support of it because, while I believe in it, I do not regard it as of very much importance. I believe that man and woman should stand on an equality of right, but I do not believe that equality of right means identity of function; and I am more and more convinced that the great field, the indispensable field, for the usefulness of woman is as the mother of the family. It is her work in the household, in the home, her work in bearing and rearing the children, which is more important than any man's work, and it is that work which should be normally the woman's special work, just as normally the man's work should be that of the breadwinner, the supporter of the home, and if necessary the soldier who will fight for the home. There are exceptions as regards both man and woman; but the full and perfect life, the life of highest happiness and of highest usefulness to the State, is the life of the man and the woman who are husband and wife, who live in the partnership of love and duty, the one earning enough to keep the home, the other managing the home and the children.
"I do not desire to go into a public discussion of this matter, so I will be obliged if you will treat this letter as private."
Both during the campaign and after the election Roosevelt was besought by men in public positions of various kinds to request his successor to retain them in office. To all he made replies similar to those in the subjoined letters to members of the diplomatic service, whose names, for obvious reasons, are omitted:
September 17, 1908.
Now, my dear Mr. Minister, about your request,—I can not ask Taft for any appointment. I will gladly tell him how highly I think of you, and of my belief that you would do excellent work if continued in the service. But of course I should not be willing to speak of any particular place to which I thought you would do good work. I am not asking Taft for any appointments of any kind, and I am certain that you will appreciate the wisdom of this position of mine when you think over it. You see, if I ask for any man, I could not well avoid asking for a countless number whom I have appointed in the service.
January 31, 1909.
I have not asked Mr. Taft to retain a single man; no Cabinet officer, nobody in any position; in the cases of a very few small men in different States who had been devoted adherents of his for the nomination I have informed him of the fact, and I have given him full information about a number of men in office concerning whom he asked me, and as to one or two in response to questions of his, I have told him positions in which I thought they would do well or which I thought they would like. But I have volunteered no information and said nothing to him unless he has asked me to say it; except that as regards one representative at a foreign court whom I had appointed I told him certain facts which I felt I ought to, as they were not to the representative's credit.
Roosevelt's own summary of his work as President was made in a letter to Sidney Brooks, a London publicist, on December 28, 1908:
"During my term as President I have more than doubled the navy of the United States, and at this moment our battle fleet is doing what no other similar fleet of a like size has ever done—that is, circumnavigating the globe— and is also at this moment in far more efficient battle trim, from the standpoint of battle tactics, and even from the standpoint of gunnery, than when it started out a year ago, while the individual ships are each just a trifle more efficient.
"Then take the Panama Canal. I do not think that any feat of quite such far-reaching importance has been to the credit of our country in recent years; and this I can say absolutely was my own work, and could not have been accomplished save by me or by some man of my temperament.
"Again, I think the peace of Portsmouth was a substantial achievement. You probably know the part we played in the Algeciras conference.
"Again, I believe what I did in settling the anthracite coal strike was a matter of very real moment from the standpoint not only of industrial but of social reform and progress.
"Again, I have doubled or quadrupled the forest reserves of the country; have put through the reorganization of the forest service, placing it under the Agricultural Department; and I may add as a small incident, have created a number of reservations for preserving the wild things of nature, the beasts and birds as well as the trees.
"In legislation I succeeded in getting through the national irrigation act in the development of the semi-arid States, of the great plains and Rockies; I think this achievement in importance comes second only to the creation of the homestead act; and indeed in those particular States it is more important than the homestead act.
"During these eight sessions of Congress I have succeeded in getting the administration of the civil government in the Philippine Islands put upon a satisfactory basis; and I got Congress to approve of my action in interfering in Cuba—and here, by the way, let me interject that I think we have given a pretty fair example of international good faith of the kind I preach, for after having our army for the second time for several years in Cuba, we are now about to leave the island prosperous and thriving, and with a reasonable hope that it can achieve self-government for itself; at least, if it can not, it is evident that we have done our best to put it on the road of stable and orderly independence.
"In Santo Domingo, after two years' delay I got the Senate to ratify the Treaty I had made (and under which, incidentally, I had been acting for two years) and have now put the affairs of the island on a better basis than they have been for a century—indeed, I do not think it would be an over-statement to say on a better basis than they have ever been before. The Senate has ratified our actions with regard to South America, and in consequence our position in regard to the Latin-American Republics is infinitely better than it ever has been before; and so, I may add, is the case with Japan, thanks to our demonstrating that we desire to act with fairness and courtesy, and in entire good faith, and that we carry a big stick.
"We succeeded in passing a law improving the administration of the army, and also a law improving the administration of the national guard or militia. We got another law passed which established the Department of Commerce and Labor, with the Bureau of Corporations, and thereby enabled us to take the first really efficient step toward exercising proper national supervision and control over the great corporations.
"Partly by law and partly by executive order we have completely reorganized the consular service of the United States. We passed a law giving vitality to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and for the first time providing some kind of efficient control by the National Government over the great railroads. We passed a law providing for Federal meat inspection of the packing houses, and also the pure food law, both of them of the utmost importance from the sanitary standpoint. In matters of social and industrial reform I got a law creating a juvenile court for the District of Columbia; another, providing for the investigation of the condition of women and child workers of the United States; an employers' liability law for corporations engaged in interstate commerce, and for the Government service itself, and for the District of Columbia; where we have also regulated child labor by law. This means, all told, a considerable sum of legislative achievements.
"We settled the Alaskan boundary dispute; we have laid the Pacific cable. By the establishment of army and navy maneuvers I have, I think, much increased the efficiency of the army and doubled the efficiency of the navy. I have started the movement for the development of our inland waterways as part of the great movement for the conservation of our national resources. I also started the movement for the betterment of the conditions of country life. All these latter, however, have been done by me without the assistance of Congress. Furthermore, through the Department of Justice we have brought big corporations and labor unions impartially before the courts, and have actually brought to justice and secured the punishment by fine and imprisonment of the most powerful wrongdoers in the land. So many successful suits, civil and criminal, have been undertaken by the Department of Justice that I would not even attempt to enumerate them. The anger of labor leaders like Gompers, and of the largest Wall Street magnates on the other side, is a sufficient guaranty of what we have done."
Roosevelt's allusion in this letter to his services for the conservation of natural resources is slight and far from adequate. The fact is that his services in that field, which began with his Presidency and continued without a break to its end, were exceeded in lasting public benefit by none others of his career. For seven and a half years he used the vast powers and influence of his office to advance this cause by stimulating and informing public opinion, by preparing and urging upon Congress fundamental legislation, and, most of all, by the vigorous and fearless use of executive powers under the laws. The full story of what he accomplished is told by him in his 'Autobiography.'
One of the last acts of Roosevelt as President was in taking personal direction of proceedings to bring the Sugar Trust, as the American Sugar Refining Company was known, to book for fraudulent evasion of duties in the importation of sugar. In 1907 the discovery was made by a special agent of the customs service that by means of a spring attachment to the weighing scales of the company on the wharves where imported sugar was landed, the figures registered were far below the actual weight of the sugar. A suit was brought by the U. S. District Attorney of the Eastern New York district against the company's superintendent of the docks in Brooklyn where the fraud was perpetrated, but was not successful. At this point Roosevelt took personal charge of the matter. He had Henry L. Stimson, the U. S. District Attorney of the Southern District, appointed a special assistant by the Attorney General, in order to give him jurisdiction and put him in charge of the case. Roosevelt selected Mr. Stimson for the task because as District Attorney he had prosecuted the sugar companies for extorting rebates from railway companies and had won his suits, completely breaking up the practice. As special assistant to the Attorney General, Mr. Stimson, early in February 1909, brought a civil suit against the American Sugar Refining Company, in the Southern District where its offices were situated, for fraudulent evasion of customs duties, selecting a single cargo of sugar as a test case. The trial lasted about a month, and on March 4, 1909, the day on which Roosevelt retired from the Presidency and Taft was inaugurated as his successor, the jury, after an hour's deliberation, brought in a verdict of guilty against the company.
Through some occult but powerful influences, the local news accounts of the trial minimized or suppressed entirely the startling evidence of the fraud and the prompt verdict against the company. This curious silence in the press excited both surprise and indignation on the part of Roosevelt. He had, before leaving the Presidency, accepted the position of contributing editor of the Outlook and at his first meeting with his editorial associates he asked if they would favor the publication of an article giving the full story of the sugar frauds and the result of the trial. They replied unanimously and heartily that they would.
The story was published in the Outlook on May 1, 1909, with illustrations showing how the spring attachment had worked and giving figures showing that the company had by means of it smuggled through the customs many million tons of sugar.
The publication aroused great interest throughout the country and indignant protests came from the newspapers because the news had been kept from them. Almost immediately the guilty sugar company made an offer to pay over to the Government about $2,000,000 in evaded duties. Other sugar refining companies, guilty of various methods of defrauding the revenue, also confessed judgment, and paid over about $1,500,000 more, making the total result of Roosevelt's energetic personal leadership in the matter a gain of $3,500,000 to the Treasury of the United States.
In his final message to Congress, on December 8, 1908, Roosevelt reiterated his well-established views on the leading policies of his administration and urged continued support of them. Not much of value is usually accomplished at the session of Congress which comes at the end of the term of an outgoing President, but the following letter which Roosevelt wrote to his son Theodore, on January 31, 1909, shows that he kept firm control of the situation till the end:
"I have entered on the last month of my Presidency and I think I can hold Congress down so that no disastrous break-up can occur during that period. But they have been anxious to see if they could not do me up this winter. I have a very strong feeling that it is a President's duty to get on with Congress if he possibly can, and that it is a reflection upon him if he and Congress come to a complete break. For seven sessions I was able to prevent such a break. This session, however, they felt that it was safe utterly to disregard me because I was going out and my successor had been elected; and I made up my mind that it was just a case where the exception to the rule applied and that if I did not fight and fight hard, I should be put in a contemptible position; while inasmuch as I was going out on the fourth of March I did not have to pay heed to our ability to cooperate in the future. The result has, I think, justified my wisdom. I have come out ahead so far, and I have been full President right up to the end, which hardly any other President has ever been."
Among many letters which reached Roosevelt on his retirement was the following:
british  embassy, washington,
March 6, 1909. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
Now that you may have a little time to read letters, I want to tell you what has been much in my mind in reflecting on your seven years of office. You seem to me to have done more for the advancement of good causes, more to stir the soul of the nation and rouse it to a sense of its incomparable opportunities and high mission, for the whole world as well as for this Continent, than any one of your predecessors for a century save Abraham 'Lincoln himself. The results will endure; some of them will be even greater, I venture to think, than we can yet see. The bringing about peace between Russia and Japan, the construction of the Canal, the setting on foot of the Conservation of Resources Movement, all fall into their places along with and cohere with this appeal to the Nation's heart and its larger thoughts for the future which you have made.
I remember once saying to you that the one of your predecessors you most resembled in range and variety of interests was Thomas Jefferson. You are unlike him in this, that he lost nearly all his friends, and yours draw always closer to you and prize your friendship more.
One thing I can't tell you and that is how great and constant a pleasure it has been to me to represent my country to yours when you were at the latter's head, and to know that never were the relations so intimate and so trustful between the two peoples that ought to be the closest friends and fellow workers.
May you have a happy and healthful time and soon come back to your land, for which you have still much to do.
Always your sincere friend,
james bRyce.

CHAPTER TWELEVE 
ROOSEVELT AND TREVELYAN
No part of Theodore Roosevelt's voluminous correspondence is more interesting than that which he conducted with the literary men and women of his time. In this the catholic intellectual side of the man, his eager and all-embracing joy in the things of the mind, is revealed. An insatiable reader of books, he rejoiced greatly in the society of the writers of them. Whenever a book appeared that pleased him, the author, if within hailing distance, was certain to receive a letter of cordial appreciation and an urgent invitation to the White House or Oyster Bay in order that personal acquaintance might be made. While he was President there was scarcely a writer of even moderate fame with whom he had not established friendly relations. Many a young American author was both enchanted and amazed at discovering the minute knowledge which Roosevelt had of his works, and the genuine personal interest he took in him and in them.

To his intimate friends it seemed, literally, that he read every book that was published the day after it appeared, so rare was it that one could be named to him which he had not read. His usual reply was that he had not only read that particular one but several others on the same subject or by the same author. "Were you ever able to mention a book to the President that he had not read?" asked a lady of her neighbor at a dinner in the White House during the Roosevelt administration. When the reply was in the negative, the lady continued: "I have dined here many times and talked much with him, and I have never discovered a book that was unknown to him. On one occasion I thought I had found one which he surely could not have seen. It, was a rare book by an Icelandic author, and I came here confident that I should at last be able to tell the President something that he did not know. Luckily, I found myself seated next to him at table and when what seemed to be the opportune moment came, I said: 'Mr. President, are you interested in Icelandic literature?' With a bounce in his chair he turned an eager countenance upon me and said: 'Am I not!' and then proceeded to tell me not only all about my one lonely Icelandic book but dozens of others that I had never heard of."

He did not merely read books—he absorbed them and made their contents a part of his knowledge for all time, ready for instant use at a moment's notice. A book on a particular subject aroused thoughts of his own along the same lines, and when he wrote a letter of praise to the author the chances were that he gave him at the same time ideas and suggestions more or less novel to him, for the wide range of his reading had left few fields of knowledge untouched.

During the years of his presidency and those which followed he was in regular correspondence with the leaders in literary and intellectual life both in this country and in Europe. A bulky volume could be made of his correspondence with English writers alone. Among these the one with whom letters were most frequently exchanged, and during the longest period, was the Eight Honorable Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Baronet, 0. M., the English statesman and writer of many books, including 'The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay,' 'The Early History of Charles James Fox,' and 'The History of the American Revolution.' It was while Trevelyan was engaged in the preparation of the last-named work that the correspondence became intimate.
In this series of letters, covering a period of nearly twenty years, Roosevelt's characteristics as a letter-writer are conspicuously displayed, because in Trevelyan he had a correspondent who was peculiarly responsive to his own intellectual tastes and knowledge. "Thurlow is a, fine fellow," says Doctor Johnson. "He fairly puts his mind to yours.'' Roosevelt might have said the same of Trevelyan. Each put his mind to the other's, and the result was a correspondence of rare interest and value. Trevelyan himself said of it in a letter to me under date of April 23, 1919, gladly granting me permission to quote from his letters: "My vocation was only to return the balls struck over the net by the hand of a master! I deliberately think that better letters of that class were never written. Take for instance that one shortly before his Presidential contest, when he says that he would rather be a real President for three years and a half than a figurehead for seven years and a half. What wisdom is in this letter, and what courage! If there is a finer and truer description of a statesman's creed extant in the world, I do not know it."
The passage referred to was in a letter which Roosevelt wrote to Trevelyan on May 28, 1904, from which I shall quote again presently: "I certainly would not be willing to hold the Presidency at the cost of failing to do the things which make the real reason why I care to hold it at all. I had much rather be a real President for three years and a half than a figurehead for seven years and a half. I think I can truthfully say that I now have to my credit a sum of substantial achievement—and the rest must take care of itself."
The correspondence began while Roosevelt was Governor of New York, and I am much indebted to Sir George for an account of its beginning and the original of the first letter which Roosevelt wrote to him. He had sent to the Governor a copy of the first part of 'The American Revolution,' and on January 16, 1899, Roosevelt wrote:
My dear Sir George:
I have just received a copy of 'The American Revolution,' for which pray accept my sincere thanks. I am rather busy now, but as I have never failed hitherto to read everything you have written, I doubt if more than a day or two passes before I have gone through your whole book. You are one of the few blessed exceptions to the rule that the readable historian is not truthful. I think that in point of combining literary interest with historic accuracy you must come near satisfying even Mr. Frederick Harrison!
At the bottom of the letter there appears this memorandum :
"This is the hero! I suppose he will some day be President. I sent the book to him as he was so kind to Charles.''
Writing to me in explanation of this, on June 6, 1919, Sir George says: " At the foot of the 1899 letter there is a curious contemporary pencil note in my handwriting with a prophecy that came off. By 'the hero' I suppose I referred to his conduct in the Spanish war.''

Roosevelt's enjoyment and approval of Trevelyan's 'History of the American Revolution' was warmly expressed in a letter that he wrote to him on December 12, 1903, after he had finished reading the second part. "I feel," he said, "that it is far and away the best account of the Revolution written by any one. For interest, for delightful humor, for absolute fairmindedness, for exactness of narrative, for profound insight (and for the English!)—• why, my dear Sir, no other book on the Revolution so much as approaches it. There are two or three points you raise which I should like to discuss with you, but they are not important,''
Writing again to Trevelyan, on January 23, 1904, he attributed to Sir George a published article entitled 'Clio' which had been written by his youngest son, George Macau-lay Trevelyan, himself an author of distinction. In this letter Roosevelt gave expression with much feeling and spirit to his views on the proper writing of history, with lively comments upon pedantic writers of it:

"In a very small way I have been waging war with their kind (pedants) on this side of the water for a number of years. We have a preposterous little historical organization which, when I was just out of Harvard and very ignorant, I joined. Fortunately I had enough good sense, or obstinacy, or something, to retain a subconscious belief that inasmuch as books were meant to be read, good books ought to be interesting, and the best books capable in addition of giving one a lift upward in some direction. After a while it dawned on me that all of the conscientious, industrious, painstaking little pedants, who would have been useful people in a rather small way if they had understood their own limitations, had become because of their conceit distinctly noxious. They solemnly believed that if there were only enough of them, and that if they only collected enough facts of all kinds and sorts, there would cease to be any need hereafter for great writers, great thinkers. They looked for instance at a conglomerate narrative history of America—a book which is either literature or science in the sense in which a second-rate cyclopedia is literature and science—as showing an 'advance' upon Francis Parkman— Heaven save the mark! Each of them was a good enough day laborer, trundling his barrowful of bricks and worthy of his hire; so long as they saw themselves as they were they were worthy of all respect; but when they imagined that by their activity they rendered the work of an architect unnecessary, they became both absurd and mischievous.

"Unfortunately with us it is these small men who do most of the historic teaching in the colleges. They have done much real harm in preventing the development of students who might have a large grasp of what history should really be. They represent what is in itself the excellent revolt against superficiality and lack of research, but they have grown into the opposite and equally noxious belief that research is all in all, that accumulation of facts is everything, and that the ideal history of the future will consist not even of the work of one huge pedant but of a multitude of articles by a multitude of small pedants. They are honestly unconscious that all they are doing is to gather bricks and stones, and that whether their work will or will not amount to anything really worthy depends entirely upon whether or not some great master builder hereafter arrives who will be able to go over their material, to reject the immense majority of it, and out of what is left to fashion some edifice of majesty and beauty instinct with the truth that both charms and teaches. A thousand of them would not in the aggregate begin to add to the wisdom of mankind what another Macaulay, should one arise, would add. The great historian must of course have the scientific spirit which gives the power of research, which enables one to marshal and weigh the facts; but unless his finished work is literature of a very high type small will be his claim to greatness."
This letter deeply interested Trevelyan, who greatly admired Roosevelt's eloquent disquisition on history, which struck him as very unlike the letters written by the rulers of states on the European side of the Atlantic; at all events, since Frederic the Second of Prussia brought his literary correspondence to a close. In regard to the mistake about authorship, Sir George wrote, February 10, 1904:

"A letter has seldom given greater pleasure than yours to me. In the first place I entirely concurred in all you wrote, and was greatly stirred and fired by the style in which it was written. And, in the next place, the article was not by me, but by my youngest son. He is called George Macaulay Trevelyan; and he is the first who ever gained a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, for history; and that fellowship he obtained two years younger than others. His life and times of Wickliffe, which had a really great success, was written at one and twenty; and this year he is going to publish a book which he will, no doubt, do himself the honor to send you; and which I think will justify the praise you give to his article. Next month he will marry (young for an Englishman) the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Humphry Ward—She pleases herself by the recollection that her grandfather, Doctor Arnold, saw the Lays of Rome in Manuscript, and persuaded their author to publish them. Macaulay had doubts whether they would take a place in English literature. He had the same apprehension with regard to the Essays. I shall show George your letter; but I am very careful to keep what you write to me for my own private delectation.

"We have just parted from Henry James. He comes to us every year, and is never tired of this beautiful and classical neighborhood. In one of his early books he gives a charming description of Warwickshire and Stratford-on-Avon;—in his 'Portraits of Places,' which, with the little companion volume, 'Foreign Parts,' forms what is, personally, my favorite book of travels. I thank you once more for the immense pleasure which your letter gave to me and my wife, and will give to my son."
Replying to this letter, on May 28,1904, Roosevelt wrote: "My blunder in my last letter brought me a better reward than I deserved, because owing to it I have read your son's 'Age of Wickliffe' with great pleasure. Pray congratulate him from me upon all that he is doing.''
It was a standing wonder with Roosevelt's intimates that such a thing as intellectual weariness was unknown to him. Beading never tired him as it does most persons, and the reason why it did not he gave in this letter to Trevelyan, on May 28, 1904:
"I find reading a great comfort. People often say to me that they do not see how I find time for it, to which I answer them (much more truthfully than they believe) that to me it is a dissipation, which I have sometimes to try to avoid, instead of an irksome duty. Of course I have been so busy for the last ten years, so absorbed in political work, that I have simply given up reading any book that I do not find interesting. But there are a great many books which ordinarily pass for 'dry' which to me possess much interest— notably history and anthropology; and these give me ease and relaxation that I can get in no other way, not even on horseback!"
In the same letter he made an allusion to a difference between the governmental systems of the United States and England which called out an interesting comment from Trevelyan. The President wrote:
'' There is one point of inferiority in our system to yours which has been very little touched upon, and that is the way in which the Presidential office tends to put a premium upon a man's keeping out of trouble rather than upon his accomplishing results. If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies; and unfortunately human nature is such that more enemies will leave their party because of enmity to its head than friends will come in from the opposite party because they think well of that same head. In consequence, the dark horse, the neutral-tinted individual, is very apt to win against the man of pronounced views and active life. The electorate is very apt to vote with its back to the future! Now all this does not apply to the same extent with your Prime Minister. It is not possible for the politicians to throw over the real party leader and put up a dummy or some gray-tinted person under your system; or at least, though perhaps it is possible, the opportunity and the temptation are much less.''
To this Trevelyan replied under date of November 10, 1904:
"With regard to what you say of the difference between us and you in the selection of the man who is to govern, I should express it by saying that in America the country elects the ruler, and in England the country elects the party."
Referring to the visit of John Morley to the "White House, a short time previous, Trevelyan wrote in the same letter:

"There is much for which you are to be envied; and among other things, for having John Morley as a guest. Thirty years ago I thought him and Henry Sidgwick the most delightful company of our generation; and Sidgwick is gone. For ten years I sat next Morley in the House of Commons, and it was a great antidote to the dreariness and bad rhetoric which was the prevailing atmosphere of that, as I suppose of all national assemblies. I have never heard from him a sentence, or read from him a letter, which was dull or common.''
Roosevelt's reply to this letter, under date of November 24, 1904, gives an interesting glimpse of his reading during the campaign for his election to the presidency:
"I was saying the other day to John Morley how much I regretted that it did not seem likely that you could get over here. By the way, Morley spent three or four days with us, and I found him as delightful a companion as one could wish to have, and I quite understand the comfort he must have been to you when you sat beside him in the House. Incidentally, it is rather a relief to have you speak as you do about the tedious and trivial quality of most of the eloquence in the House. I am glad to find that it is characteristic of all parliamentary bodies, and not merely of those of my own country!
"In my hours of leisure (during the campaign) I did a good deal of reading. I re-read your history of our Revolution and liked it more than ever, but came to the conclusion that you had painted us a little too favorably. I also re-read both your Macaulay and your Fox, and then re-read Macaulay's 'History.' When I had finished it I felt a higher regard for him as a great writer, and as in the truest sense of the word a great philosophical historian, than I have ever felt before. It is a pretty good test of such a history to have a President who is also a candidate for the Presidency read it in the midst of a campaign.

"I read a number of other books during the campaign; Rhodes's excellent history, for instance, and a good deal of Dickens. In the American characters in 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' Dickens made a mistake in generalizing and insisting that all Americans were represented by his figures, which, of course, is as nonsensical as to say that Pecksniff, Bill Sykes, and Sir Mulberry Hawk, taken in the aggregate, typify all of English society. But all the same I would like to have 'Martin Chuzzlewit' studied as a tract in America."
Roosevelt's allusions to Macaulay called forth from Trevelyan this remarkably interesting reply:
wallington, northumberland,
December 8, 1904.

I ventured to copy out and read to my sister, Lady Knutsford, the passage in your letter about your re-reading ' of Macaulay's history. It is a curious proof of Macaulay's goodness that, as she and I get old—older than he ever was —our affection for him seems rather to grow than to lessen. To those whom he loved, he was the most lovable of mankind. This would be a good house in which to read him; for the place was a seat of Sir John Fenwick, whose fate Macaulay described with such fulness. A few years before the Act of Attainder Wallington was bought by my great grandfather's great grandfather, Sir William Blackett, from Sir John Fenwick; a principal part of the purchase money being an annuity on Sir John Fenwick's life of 2,000 pounds a year. Blackett pulled down the castle, and built the house in which I live. He was a famous Whig, and (I suppose) voted in every division with his party on Fenwick's Bill of Attainder. But I hope not.

There is a still older literary association with Wallington. In the 'Beeves Tale' of Chaucer, about the two young rascals who went out to " Trompington, not fer fro Cantebrigge," the leading scapegrace of the pair of undergraduates is called "Alein de strother," and Chaucer says that he came "Of a town" (township) "Far in the North, I cannot tellen where." This was Allan de Strother, a very great personage indeed, who lived at Wallington, and was a friend of Chaucer's at Edward the Ill's court. The story is taken from Boccaccio, and Chaucer evidently put in deStrother's name as chaff. There can be no other explanation. A Fenwick married the Strother heiress; and from the Fenwicks the place came into our family. I should dearly love to show it you, and still more to show you Macaulay's books with their marginal notes. Personally, I think those notes better than his writings, his speeches, his conversation, or his letters. Goodness, how they light the books up! Frederick Myers said to me of Macaulay: "He always seems to have read in the state of eagerness in which I am during the first five minutes of a great author.''

I write about these things inasmuch as I am sure you have enough about politics from your other correspondents. But I must express the delight with which I read the sentence: "A great free people owes it to itself and to mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil." In the present state of the world that makes for peace, and not for war; and it is one of the phrases which will stick to the memory of mankind.
A few days after his inauguration as President, March 9, 1905, Roosevelt wrote a long letter to Trevelyan, giving a description of the inauguration exercises, mentioning his efforts to bring about peace between Russia and Japan, and saying:
"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.

"I suppose that almost always and in almost every country there has been cause for anxiety. The most marvelous growth in population and material prosperity, and, I believe, in the average of human happiness, that the world has ever seen in any race, has taken place among the English-speaking peoples since the time when Goldsmith gave poetic expression to the general feeling of gloom which prevailed among educated men at what they were pleased to consider the morbid growth of the cities and the decadence of the men in England. Much good has gone hand in hand with the evil of the tremendous industrial development of the day. I do not think the average American multimillionaire a very high type, and I do not much admire him. But in his place he is well enough; and I am inclined to think that on the whole our people are, spiritually as well as materially, on the average better and not worse off than they were a hundred years ago."
Trevelyan's reply to this letter contained, as usual, much interesting material:
london, March 30, 1905.

Always and especially now that you have such an all important role as the newspapers indicate with reference to Russia, it is certainly a great advantage to be exempt from the wearing, distracting, and sometimes most ignoble details of parliamentary warfare. It was very painful to see Mr. Gladstone exposed to such an ordeal when he had affairs of vast moment upon his hands. I really think that you can have no conception what he went through when he was conducting such pieces of work as the Alabama Treaty; the Egyptian Occupation; the life and death crisis with Russia over the affairs of Pendjdeh;. and (above all) in his old age, the frightful problem of Ireland.
Think only of one circumstance, that, while he was passing his last very great measure, the Irish Land Act of 1881, and at the same time was face to face with what was practically a fierce revolution in Ireland, he was daily involved in the sordid detraction and humiliation (if a great man who is doing his duty according to his lights can be humiliated) of the Bradlaugh difficulty with all its clouds of calumny and virulence.

   I know that you have your own share of the troubles and annoyances which beset every ruler who is working for the country, and not for himself; but I am glad to think that you can choose your own time for making a communication to the public, and are not bound to engage in controversy with every coxcomb in a white tie and evening clothes who comes down after dinner to worry a Minister who has been working continuously since he rose from a bad night's sleep.

I have ventured to send you a small book, ' Cawnpore.' I wrote it at five and twenty, having lived for a year in India, which was still scarred with the mutiny, among friends, many no older than myself, who had played a part all through that extraordinary period. One of them told me that the twelve months, during which the crisis lasted, flew like as many weeks. He was in Calcutta. If he had been in Lucknow, or outside Delhi, the time might have seemed longer. An Irish member of Parliament, who served with the French army in 1870 and 1871, told me that he was in Dijon during the battle. He and another officer were posted in a high church tower to observe the field of action, and send expresses to the generals engaged. All of a sudden the two officers were surprised by an ominous and sudden darkening of the atmosphere, which seemed to be an unnatural and unaccountable phenomenon. As a matter of fact, it was the approach of night; so absorbing was the interest of watching a battle without sharing the bodily danger. I do not know whether that effect is usual; but people whose business kept them in Calcutta appear to have felt it during the mutiny.
I do not know whether I am correct in addressing you as "Excellency" but I like doing it because of Charles Lee's objecting to that title being applied to Washington.
Trevelyan's inquiry about the title of "Excellency" touched a sensitive point with the President, for almost from the moment of taking office he had protested against its use. Replying on May 13, 1905, he wrote:

   "I would rather not be called Excellency, and this partly because the title does not belong to me and partly from vanity! The President of the United States ought to have no title; and if he did have a title it ought to be a bigger one. Whenever an important prince conies here he is apt to bring a shoal of 'Excellencies' in his train. Just as I should object to having the simple dignity of the White House changed for such attractions as might lie in a second-rate palace, so I feel that the President of a great democratic republic should have no title but President. He could not have a title that would not be either too much or too little. Let him be called the President, and nothing more.

"I suppose each of us is inclined to envy the advantages of a system different from that under which he himself lives. I was much struck by your congratulations upon my being free from 'the wearing, distracting, and sometimes most ignoble details of parliamentary warfare.' They must be wearing and distracting, and often ignoble, but upon my word I can hardly believe they are worse than what conies to any American President in the matter of patronage. I have done all I could, and I think I may say more than any other President has ever done, in the direction of getting rid of the system of appointing and removing men for political considerations. But enough remains to cause me many hours of sordid and disagreeable work, which yet must be done under penalty of losing the good will of men with whom it is necessary that I should work.
"I can quite understand how Mr. Gladstone suffered at some great crisis like that with Russia, or in the Egyptian matter, or the Irish matter, when he was forced to submit to the insolence of men his inferiors in every respect, men not deserving serious notice by him, who yet had the power to force him into controversy. But as I say, each man knows where his own shoe pinches. I have had a most vivid realization of what it must have meant to Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the heartbreaking anxieties of the Civil War, to have to take up his time trying to satisfy the candidates for postmaster at Chicago, or worse still in meeting the demands of the Germans or the Irish, or one section or another of Republicans or War Democrats, that such and such an officer should be given promotion or some special position. It is of course easy for the mugwump or goo-goo who has no knowledge whatever of public affairs to say that the proper thing is to refuse to deal with such men or to pay any heed to such considerations. But in practical life one has to work with the instruments at hand, and it is impossible wholly to disregard what have by long usage come to be established customs. Lincoln had to face the fact that great bodies of his supporters would have been wholly unable to understand him if he had refused to treat them with consideration when they wished to discuss such questions of patronage. You have your difficulties from men who are thrust into positions to which they are not entitled because of their social standing, or the social standing of those on whom they are dependent or with whom they are connected. We have our difficulties with men of an entirely different class for whom the demands are made because of the political services which they have rendered. I suppose that those suffering from either system are tempted at times to think that they would prefer the other. But after all the great fact to remember is that really we are both living under free government, and while both of these governments, and the people behind the governments, differ somewhat from one another, they are closer kin than either is to any other folk. There are numerous and grave evils incident to free government, but after all is said and done I cannot imagine any real man being willing to live under any other system."
The news of John Hay's death called forth from Trevelyan one of the most notable letters of the correspondence:
wallington,
July 15, 1905.

I have felt very much for you about John Hay; the more so as the last letter with which you honored me was hopeful with regard to him. Some of his recent letters were very interesting. In 1903, speaking of my having left politics, he says: "As for me, like the Thane of Cawdor, 'I am chained to the stake, and bear-like must fight my course.' I am tired—even to the marrow of my bones; but at present there seems no way out; and in truth I have been wonderfully favored by fortune. Almost everything I set out to do, five years ago, is done; and I ought to be thankful."
Last January he wrote to me with much feeling about the noble compliment which you paid him by announcing that he was to remain Secretary of State until 1909. "I have no idea, however," he says, "that my term of office will extend to that length. In fact, I have grave doubts whether this tenement of clay which I inhabit will hold together that long. I wish I could look forward to so cheery a prospect as that of visiting Stratford-on-Avon in your company; but that prospect also is dim. "Walking with Henry Adams the other day, I expressed my fear that, by the time I got out of office, I should have lost the faculty of enjoyment. As you know Adams, you can understand the dry malice with which he replied: 'Make your mind easy on that score, sonny! You've lost it now.' "
It is a very serious matter in free countries, full of able men struggling to the front, the great age of successful statesmen. I am satisfied that a good man, with an early chance, is most valuable any time on from five or six and twenty, and seldom good for much after five and sixty. Politics is like war, inasmuch as when a man shrinks from anything great or small, which requires doing, from considerations of health and strength, he is no longer a true campaigner. Our generation in England was curiously affected by the question of age. Mr. Gladstone, in gifts and faculties, was exactly a whole generation better than his time of life; and, while the Liberal party in some respects gained by it, it in some respects was damaged. In his later years he sometimes retained in important offices old colleagues who, though they were actually his juniors, were entirely worn out; and it was noticeable how certain clever men and ambitious outsiders were thrown into very unfortunate political courses by the sense of being overshadowed by him, and not being favorites with him. When John Morley, and Bryce, and I were men of fifty he was old enough, and more, to be our father; and he regarded us with great indulgence—at times even to the verge of spoiling us—as so many promising sons. We certainly were very fond of him. But I cannot help wishing that he had retired from office long before he did, and had allowed the Liberal party to work out its own salvation, make its own mistakes, and learn from its own experience.
When the treaty of peace between Russia and Japan was signed in September, 1905, Roosevelt wrote a long letter to Trevelyan describing the negotiations. In the same letter he wrote: "Your letter about John Hay interested me very much. I think he will be missed more and more instead of less and less as time goes on by all who knew him." Two other passages on his recent reading are worth quoting:
"Last night I was reading the poems of William Morris. Of course they are rather absurd and one gets tired of them very soon; but there are some of them which have a kind of pre-Raphaelite attraction of their own. I also happened to pick up the fifth volume of Lecky. It seems to me that in the opening page he takes rather too sordid a view of the characteristics which we have a right to expect of a modern statesman. It does not seem to me that it is fair to say that passionate earnestness and self-devotion, delicateness of conscience, and lofty aim are likely to prove a hindrance instead of a help to a statesman or a politician. Of course if he has no balance of common-sense, then the man will go to pieces; but it will be because he is a fool, not because he has some of the qualities of a moral hero. Undoubtedly many great statesmen whose names are written in history in imperishable—though personally I think in rather unpleasant—character, have lacked these characteristics, yet there are other great men who certainly have possessed them. But I suppose Lecky was thinking of the creatures analogous to our mugwumps; the people who actually pride themselves on a fantastic and visionary morality, utterly unbalanced by common-sense; the people who attracted the scorn of Macaulay's eminently sane and healthy mind."
What Trevelyan thought of the peace victory, of Washington, Lincoln, and Morris, and incidentally of Lowell, appeared in his next letter:
wallington, September 25, 1905.

Your letter was extraordinarily interesting and acceptable. What a thing you have done! It is unique in history; but it is in the footsteps of the pair whom you like to follow. Washington, so far as I can see (for it is a period in your history which is dim enough to me), prevented a terrible war with England in 1795, at the cost of a great part of his popularity, and at a time of life when his enormous personal position, and the moral dignity by which he was universally and for so long before surrounded wherever his name was known, rendered the brutalities and vulgarities of political detraction, as directed against him, humiliating and almost grotesque. Lincoln, again, under immense temptations and difficulties, prevented another desolating war with us at the time of the Trent. The whole case is wonderfully well put by Lowell in his 'Bridge and Monument'—the cleverest thing, I think, he ever did.
"We recollect how sailors' rights were won: Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissing gun."
That is the way to write!
I agree with you about Morris's poems. Himself, and his wall papers, were the real things of value which he gave to the world. He wrote most excellent letters, and lived a high and inspiring life. That life has been written in two volumes by Mackail, son-in-law to Burne-Jones. I read it with the greatest interest, and, on the chance of your not having it, I have directed a copy to be sent you, which I hope you will accept as my tribute to you as a peace-maker.
In acknowledging the volume of 'Interludes,' containing a paper on 'An Ancient Greek War,' that Trevelyan had sent him, Roosevelt gave his own views on the Greeks, on October 7, 1905:
"I am not quite sure that I agree even with your carefully guarded statement as to your liking to have lived in Greece in the classic age. The proviso you put in includes a great deal! We should have to get rid not only of our present conventions of morality, but of what has come to be our ordinary instincts of humanity, in order to tolerate even the best and simplest of the society of that day; and we should have to lose entirely the beautiful love of husband and wife, with all that it has so incalculably meant for the home. What a strange thing it is that those wonderful Greeks, so brilliant that I suppose Galton is right in placing the average Athenian in point of intellect as far above the average civilized man of our countries as the latter is above the upper class barbarian, yet lacked the self-restraint and political common sense necessary to enable them to hold their own against any strong aggressive power.''
Several letters which passed between the two men at this time contain references to books read and liked by both, with comments on the same:
roosevelt to trevelyan
white house,
November 8, 1905.
Sometimes I get discouraged by the enormous amount of utterly worthless written matter published in America, in all kinds of forms, from Sunday newspapers through magazines to books. It is such a veritable ocean of worthlessness that one tends to lose sight of some really good things that are published. I send you herewith three little volumes that have appeared during the last year, each of which seems to have some real stuff in it. The 'From Epicurus to Christ' seems to me to go pretty well down toward the heart of things in getting at the worth, even in very brief fashion, of those ancient philosophies which stand at the base of our present moral structure. The other two volumes deal more lightly with lighter subjects, for they are only collections of essays; but I have enjoyed them so that I am sure I shall like to reread them now and then. I send them to you on the off chance of your liking them.
I have just finished a fortnight's trip in the Southern States, where I was received with the utmost enthusiasm. As far as I know I did not flinch from one of my principles; but I did do my best to show the Southern people not only that I was earnestly desirous of doing what was best for them, but that I felt a profound sympathy and admiration for them; and they met me half way. This does not mean any political change at all in the South, and it means but a slight permanent change in the attitude of the Southerners; but I think it does mean this slight permanent change, and it marks one more step toward what I believe will some day come about—the complete reunion of the
two sections.
•
tRevelyan to Roosevelt
palace hotel, rome,
December 1, 1905.
I am greatly pleased and honored by your sending me those books which you have proved yourself. I am afraid that the trash, of which you speak in America as flooding the press, is produced not alone in America of English-speaking nations. The best signs in England are the innumerable reprints of good old books, which continue to be issued side by side with much balderdash. The very titles of the volumes which you have been kind enough to send me testify to our tastes in common. For the last five or six years—after caring nothing for philosophy all my life, except in the exquisite literary setting of Plato—I have acquired a deep and intense passion for Cicero's philosophical writings. Perhaps it is that he was an old public man, who had gone through all the most virile and stirring human experiences, and had retained his eagerness for truth and his lofty views of man's destiny. His ethical illustrations are all taken from high political and warlike events, and the diction is divine, and inspiring and suggestive as no other writing. I have brought here the ' Tusculan Disputations,' and the 'De Natura Deorum'; and in truth I now regard this wonderful city, which I know as perhaps none but specialists know it, with a perceptibly increased interest and respect on Cicero's account.
We have a glorious view from a fifth floor window on the Pincian hill, straight across the heart of Borne. On the Janiculan summit opposite—where no Pope or Emperor ever was allowed to be placed—Garibaldi sits on his charger, nobly sculptured in bronze, overlooking all the city from the point where he fought the French in 1849. / saw him once carried by four gens d'armes, within three feet of me; one by each arm, and one with an arm under each knee. It was an arrest, by the Italian authorities, to which he submitted in order to save bloodshed after the battle of Mentana. And now he stands there, the master of all he sees; and he deserves it, too; for though his material did not allow him any certainty of military success, he had the sacred fire which kept everything alive till the work was' done. Last night we ate our Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce with your Ambassador and Ambassadress—very old friends of ours. They lived for many years next door to us in London. How my wife and I would have wished you there! and what I would give to take you, as I took John Morley, to the Forum and the Palatine!! Nine out of ten people at the sights here are Americans; very humble folk, especially the women, but most intelligent and eager, and essentially refined. It is a pleasure to see them poring over their guidebooks and reading them aloud to each other.
welcombe, stratford-on-avon, 
January 8, 1906.

On our return from Italy I found the books you had been good enough to send me; and primarily the "American Hunter," copy No. 3, which in itself is an honor. That honor is greatly enhanced by the inscription which you have written. The portrait is a great acquisition. It could not be improved; and, if for no other reason, the book would be to me a valued possession. But I like it extremely, and have enjoyed every word of it. The hunting books I care for I have always cared for much; but they are very few, and this is among the very best. The whole about the cougars is as good as it possibly can be; and there is a melancholy romance about the Yellowstone Park which produced a great impression on me. I never miss spending five minutes, when I visit our Zoological Gardens, in front of the Bisons. What a sequence of ideas the sight of those animals presents! But I think your bears round the refuse. in the hotels are almost a more significant testimony to the irresistible, unideal, triumph of civilization. However, romance has lasted my time; and the last six weeks have proved to me that Rome at any rate is romantic as ever. To have produced Rome is, and I suppose always will remain, the most remarkable feat accomplished by mankind. It is a place where no one can feel old, and no one unhappy.
Have you got 'Sponge's Sporting Tour'! Many years ago I had a bad Typhoid fever; and, as then was the custom, it was concealed from me what was the matter with me. But I gradually lost all interest in books, and in most other human things; when suddenly there came on me a craving to read 'Sponge,' which I had read a dozen times, and have read several times since; and I even then read it with delight. I never understand how 'Jorrocks' can be placed on a level with it. Macaulay—whose knowledge of a horse was confined to a pretty clear recognition of the difference between its head and its tail—was much interested in 'Sponge.' If you have read the book, I will send you something else which you may like.
Roosevelt to trevelyan
white house, January 22, 1906.
Yes, Mrs. Roosevelt and I are both as fond as you are of the immortal 'Soapy Sponge'; but I shall be very grateful if you will send me that copy, because the only copy we have in the house is one Mrs. Roosevelt inherited from her father. It is a rather cheap American edition, though with the John Leech pictures, and we have read it until it has practically tumbled to pieces. So you see I am greedily closing with your offer.
I find it a great comfort to like all kinds of books, and to be able to get half an hour or an hour's complete rest and complete detachment from the fighting of the moment, by plunging into the genius and misdeeds of Marlborough, or the wicked perversity of James II, or the brilliant battle for human freedom fought by Fox—or in short, anything that Macaulay wrote or that you have written, or any one of the novels of Scott and of some of the novels of Thackeray and Dickens; or to turn to Hawthorne or Poe; or to Longfellow, who I think has been underestimated of late years, by the way.
tRevelyan to Roosevelt
london, March 15, 1906.
I have been an unconscionable time in sending you 'Soapy Sponge'; but it was not my fault. As long as I was in the country I could not get it in the right shape. The new reprints had the engravings reduced in size, and the type—the dear old type—altered. Soon after my arrival in London I picked up the right edition at a book stall, and since then have been getting it bound. 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
ROOSEVELT AND TBEVELYAN—CONCLUDED
in November, 1906, President Roosevelt made a visit to the Isthmus of Panama, to inspect the work of building the canal, making the journey on the battleship Louisiana. While on the return trip he wrote a letter, November 23, to Trevelyan, in which, after describing what he had seen on the Isthmus, he said:
"In a very amusing and very kindly, and on the whole not unjust book in which Captain Younghusband describes the Philippines, he spoke of our army out there as looking not like an army in the European sense but like the inhabitants of a Rocky Mountain mining town. I know just what he meant, and the comparison was not unjust, and in some ways was more exact than he realized. Our army in service now wears a flannel shirt, light or heavy khaki trousers, leggins and a soft slouch hat, and each man on the average believes in his work and has much power of initiative. Well, in dress and traits the five thousand men on the Isthmus keep making me think of our army as I have actually seen it busily at work at some half war-like, half administrative problem. Of course there are many exceptions, but on the average the white man on the Isthmus feels that he is doing a big job which will reflect credit on the country, and is working with hearty good will. He is well housed and well fed. He often has his wife and children with him, in which case he lives in a really delightful cottage, the home life being just such as one reads about in Octave Thanet's stories of the West and of American labor people.
"I do not like a sea voyage myself, though of course I am interested very much in this great battleship and in her officers and crew. The other day we dined at the chief petty officers' mess, and the men are of the type which make the strength of our navy and of yours.
"I have had a good deal of time for reading, naturally, and among other things have gone over Milton's prose works. What a radical Republican, and what a staunch partisan, and what an intense Protestant the fine old fellow was; subject to the inevitable limitations of his time and place, he was curiously modern too. He advocated liberty of conscience to a degree that few were then able to advocate, or at least few of those who were not only philosophers like Milton, but also like Milton in active public life, and his plea for liberty of the press is good reading now. His essay on divorce is curious rather than convincing, and while it is extremely modern in some ways it is not modern at all in the contemptuous arrogance of its attitude toward women. Personally I like his 'Eikonoklastes,' but then I am a radical about punishing people like Charles the First or Jefferson Davis. It may be very unwise to kill either, but it is eminently righteous to do so—so far, that is, as anything is righteous which is not in its deepest and truest sense also expedient.
"I have also been reading Dill's account of Roman society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. You, my dear Sir, who are so blessed as to read all the best of the Greeks or Latins in the original must not look down too scornfully upon us who have to make believe that we are contented with Emerson's view of translations. I am now trying to get some really good English editions of Tacitus. I want to see if it is possible to pick up some old edition with good print and good binding.
"After I read Milton and Tacitus until I feel that I can stand them no longer I devour short stories or novels. In the novels I am sorry to say I usually have to go back to those I have read already."
To this letter Trevelyan replied:
wallington,
 December 12, 1906.
I was unusually glad to get your letter, for I seemed to detect in it the note of out-doors zest and freshness which betokened that you had what to you, at any rate, was something of a holiday. It interested me extremely to read your impressions of the Isthmus; and one felt proud of what man can do to make this world more habitable when one compared your account of the health of the employees, and their families, with the story of Darien which Macaulay tells with such extraordinary picturesqueness in the twenty fifth chapter of his History. Spain is not so formidable to you as she was to those poor souls of Scotch settlers in 1699: and you have had a hand in. bringing that result about. Captain Younghusband's description of your army in the Philippines is curious. I fancy that must have been very much the appearance of the legionary in remote quarters under the Roman Empire. But it pleased me most to know that you had dined at the petty officers' mess on the Louisiana. I should like to have seen the faces around the Board of Admiralty if, as a junior Lord, in the year 1869, I had accepted the hospitality of the Warrant officers! They must be a fine set with you, as with us; and I am glad to think that they live exceedingly well.
I am leading a very tranquil life, finishing my next part of the American Revolution. It is most fascinating work describing the French element in the great affair. The statesmen at Versailles are in interesting contrast to Nathanael Greene and Jonathan Trumbull. Those ancient heroes do not lose by the comparison.
Almost our last visitors here were Charles Francis and Mrs. Adams. He went on to inspect Flodden, as he is very fond of battle-fields. He has seen some warm work in his time, or omitted to see it; for he slept all through Pickett's charge with his tired cavalry in the rear of the line. I am glad to say he is older than I am. Very few of my contemporaries are still going; except Bryce, and John Morley, and the Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman (fine fellow that he is!), and one or two of the tougher Judges. All who held any humbler rank have been mustered out of employment on account of their advanced years. Even a friend of mine has been superannuated from being President of the Society of Antiquaries, which seems the ne plus ultra of superannuation. There is great comfort in being old. A man feels responsible for his own contemporaries, and critical of those among them who get more than their deserts; but he has no feeling beyond a mild amusement as connected with personal matters in a younger generation—except a genuine pleasure in seeing young merit rewarded. One troubles oneself little about the actors, but retains one's interest in the cause. I look up to you as a reader of Milton's prose. I never have taken to sixteenth or seventeenth century prose; but I may some day; for I never read Chaucer till three years ago, and I have since read him twice through aloud, and he had spoiled me for any other poetry. As for classical history, have you ever tried beginning Grate's Greece at the 35th chapter, the Ionic revolt; leaving out all that precedes it, much of which is hopelessly unreadable? The interest of what then follows, through volume after volume, is unequaled in all the world.
Hints of the wide range of Roosevelt's reading are conveyed in these two letters:
white house, April 10, 1907.
Do you know Negris' 'History of Julian the Apostate'? Julian's career has always been interesting to me, and I was particularly interested in seeing it treated by an Italian of Negris' type. By the way, while I knew that one of your diplomatists, Rennell Rodd, was a poet, I did not realize that he was a historian until the other day Mrs. Roosevelt presented me with a couple of volumes of his on those curious Frankish principalities which existed in Greece for a couple of centuries as the sequence of the Fourth Crusade. It has always been to me an interesting episode in history, although it led absolutely nowhere, and as far as I can see had almost no practical effect whatever— beyond fixing in the minds of Chaucer and his contemporaries the idea that feudal titles sat naturally on the heroes of old Greece.
oyster bay, June 20, 1907.
Some little time ago I received your son's volume on Garibaldi which you so kindly sent me. I have been delighted with it, especially because I was able to read it in connection with De la Gorce's 'History of the French Republic,' which in a couple of chapters gives the French-clerical view of the transaction. By the way, I suppose you are familiar with De la Gorce's 'History of the Second Republic and Second Empire.' To me it is a most interesting and attractive work, and the man ranks high among historians in spite of his pronounced clerical sympathies and his distrust of democracy.
In October, 1907, Roosevelt received an additional volume of Trevelyan's 'American Revolution,' which in acknowledging, he said: "I look forward to reading it as eagerly as any girl ever looked forward to reading the last volume of a favorite novel." A few weeks later, November 11, 1907, he wrote a letter to Trevelyan which contains interesting views of his own on some of the personages of the Revolution:
"I have now read through your last volume. It is a little difficult to say just what I feel about your history without subjecting you to the discomfort always felt by a fastidious -man when he suspects he is over praised. Yet I can not refrain from expressing my sincere opinion that you have not only written the final history of our Revolution, but that you have done what is given to so very, very few men to do—that you have written one of the few histories which can deservedly be called great. I do not want to be misled by national feeling; and yet I can not help believing that the American Revolution was one of the great historic events which will always stand forth in the story of mankind; and now we have been fortunate enough to see that rare combination of a great historic event treated by a great writer, a great student, a great historian. How fortunate we should be if Napier had written not merely the Peninsula War, but all of Napoleon's campaigns! How fortunate we should be if there had been a Thucydides to write of Alexander as he actually wrote of the Peloponnesian War! How I wish that some man could arise to do for the great English civil war of the 17th century, or for the American civil war of the 19th century, what Macaulay did for the English revolution and its hero! Well, it seems to me that you have done just this for the American Revolution.
"By the way, I am especially pleased at the justice you did to Lord Grey, he who cut up Wayne's troops with the bayonet, and thereby taught Wayne a lesson which Stony Point and the Fallen Timbers afterwards showed he had learned in good fashion. Was this Grey the ancestor of either your present Foreign Secretary or present Governor General in Canada? I have always felt a keen sympathy with the men who receive no credit for their great and brilliant deeds simply because an inexorable fate has compelled' them to fight on the losing side. The very greatest captains in history, the Hannibals and Napoleons, leave a fame un-dimmed by the fact of final failure, for their colossal might forces the unwilling attention of mankind, and the recognition of the fact that no human greatness can in the end prevail against the stars in their courses. But the lesser men are generally judged merely by success. In the Revolutionary War, for instance, I have never felt that Cornwallis received justice, or that minor men like Tarleton and Grey received justice. (I am putting them together from a military standpoint and without any intention at the moment of alluding to any possible difference of character among them.) It was not possible that Cornwallis should win, as events actually were; yet he defeated army after army, battling always against superior numbers, conquered the Southern States—though no man with his resources could have held them down—and succumbed only when neither he nor any one else could have altered the final outcome by further resistance. Tarleton was a most dashing leader of dragoons in partisan warfare; and if he was often ruthlessly unsparing, so were many among his opponents. "I also thank you for the very interesting 'Marginal Notes by Lord Macaulay.' It is the kind of book that I rejoice in, especially when I have many things to worry me, and do not feel like reading books that are too long or too serious unless they are also very interesting!"
tRevelyan's Reply
palace hotel, rome,
 November 27, 1907.

Yesterday I had the immense double pleasure of a letter from you, which was as gratifying personally as I ever received; and of arriving for a six weeks' holiday—from happy labours—in this wonderful and most attractive of cities. What a delight it would be to show you about it! for I know it as well as Horace knew it—as well as you know Washington. And yet, in my inmost heart, I wish that that opportunity might not come until I am a lustrum older—too old to be your cicerone. Now that you have expressed your approbation of my last volume I may say that, while writing it, I was conscious of having a firmer and larger grasp of the subject than in the previous volumes. I have noted what you say about Cornwallis for quotation in the next volume, which, if I can violate all literary precedent by writing a book of any value after seventy years of age, will be the last volume.
I am reminded, by this place, of the circumstances that there is, at last, a good history of the great days of Rome. It is by Professor Ferrero of Bologna, 'La Grandeur et Decadence de Rome.' It is well translated into French, in which I am reading it; and the first two volumes are translated into English. I read them aloud, every word; and a book of greater interest, more vigorously and credibly written, it is difficult to imagine. I should strongly recommend it for your periods of comparative leisure—of those you may from time to time have. I hope I may say with how much sympathy I watch the great difficulties that are upon you, tempered by the certainty that you are the same in all fortunes and circumstances. The financial tornado into which my book fluttered from the publishers will, I suppose, be to its disadvantage; but that matters less in the case of a long, continuous work.
In December, 1907, the President united with Secretary Root and Senator Lodge in the present of a silver loving-cup to Trevelyan, with the inscription: "To the Historian of the American Revolution from his friends—Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Elihu Root." The first mention of it occurs in the letter which the President wrote to Trevelyan, on December 9, 1907, in which he informs him that he had read Ferrero's book on Rome a year earlier:

"I read Ferrero's work last year and I entirely agree with you that it would be impossible to imagine a book of greater interest, more vigorous, or conveying more clearly the conviction of its essential truth. I quoted it in one of my public speeches, in Keokuk, the other day. While I like it in translation, I think it is so big a book that I want it in the original, and accordingly I some little time ago ordered it in the Italian. It is the first history of that period of Rome which I have thought really satisfactory.
"Root and Lodge and I are sending you a trifling token of our affection and esteem which I hope you will receive about Christmas.
"Within the last fortnight I have again reread your last volume from beginning to end, and I am more pleased with it than ever."
The loving-cup was acknowledged in two letters by Trevelyan:
rome,
December 22, 1907.
I have received your letter, which was as great, and as agreeable, a surprise as ever befell me. I can think nothing a greater honor than being remembered in this kindly and courteous fashion, by three such men; and it is a real reward for the trouble and thought I have so long given to this work of mine that it should have pleased such judges. We are starting for England about the 5th of January, and your Christmas present will reach me at our beautiful home at Stratford on Avon, where we earnestly hope some day to receive each and all the donors.
london,
January 9, 1908.
On our return yesterday from the Continent we found the box. The pleasure and pride which its contents gave us surpasses, I think, anything of the sort that I remember. The cup is a noble piece; and the simplicity and singular beauty of proportion struck us much while fresh from Italian Museums, and impressed us with the notion that there must be much artistic feeling among silver-workers in America. I look forward to your seeing it on our dinner table. We always have silver for our ornaments there; and none more valued than this. Such an expression from three such men will make it a real heirloom to a coming generation which is well able to appreciate it.
Roosevelt's reading of the third volume of the 'American Revolution' was the inspiring cause of two letters which come very near to being the most interesting of the series:
Roosevelt to trevelyan
white house, 
January 1, 1908.
I look forward eagerly to your next volume. With one of the smaller fights with which you will have to deal, that of King's Mountain, I am fairly well acquainted. I made rather a study of it, as well as of the western campaigns of George Rogers Clark during the Revolution, in a book I wrote called 'The Winning of the West.' I look forward to seeing what you say of Tarleton. My admiration for that dashing, even though somewhat ruthless, cavalryman has steadily grown. In my library his volume stands side by side with the memoirs of Lighthorse Harry Lee—where it belongs. As you so well say, men are very apt to consider as cruel any form of killing to which they are unaccustomed. The British thought the sharpshooters who picked off their officers were nothing short of murderers; and the Americans stigmatized as a massacre any fight that was won by unsparing use of saber or bayonet, whether under Tarleton or Grey. It seems to me you have been eminently just to Burgoyne, Howe and Clinton. It is nonsense to attack them as so many British historians, and with still less excuse so many American historians, have done. They were not military men of the first rank; but very few such are produced in any war; and many far less deserving men to whom the fates were kind, now hold respectable positions as victors in the histories of commonplace campaigns against mediocrities. I shall be interested in seeing what you say of Rawdon. His name always possesses for me an attraction which I suppose is due to subconscious feeling that he must be connected in some way with his namesake, that fundamentally good fellow, Captain Crawley.
I look forward especially to your account of Cornwallis. Greene and Cornwallis were the two commanders who stood next to Washington. Wayne got his growth after the Revolutionary War had ended. It seems to me that there has never been a more satisfactory summing up of Washington as a soldier than is contained in your pages 284 to 286. How well you have done Benedict Arnold! How will you deal with his fall; with the money-paid treason of the rider of the war storm! What a base web was shot through the woof of his wild daring! He was at heart a Lucifer, that child of thunder and lover of the battle's hottest heat; and dreadful it is to think that when he fell his fall should have been, not that of the lightning-blasted Son of the Morning, but that of a mere Mammon or Belial. Your etching of Morgan's riflemen is fine. The Victors of King's Mountain were just such men, but without a Morgan to train them.

Now, for a bit of brag. My Bough Eiders, hunters of the mountains and horsemen of the plains, could not, taken as a whole, have walked quite as well as Morgan's men, nor yet have starved as well, though they were good enough at both. But they rode without thought horses that Morgan's men would not have ventured so much as to try to get on,-and I firmly believe that they were fully as formidable in battle. Mine was a volunteer regiment, and at least half of the officers at the outset were very bad, so that in a long campaign I should have had to make a complete change among them—a change that was already well begun when the regiment was disbanded. But as compared with any volunteer regiment of the Revolution, of the Civil War during a like short period of service—four months—I think its record stood well. It was raised, drilled—so far as it was drilled—armed and equipped, kept two weeks on transports, and put through two victorious aggressive (not defensive) fights, in which it lost over a third of its officers and nearly a fourth of its men, and this within sixty days. The men already knew how to ride, shoot, and live in the open; and they had the fighting edge.

You speak of the Indians just as they should be spoken of; although I am not sure that from your account men will realize what formidable and terrible foes they usually were on their own ground.

I was especially delighted with your account of Franklin abroad, and of the unfortunate diplomats whom Congress first sent to Europe. You have, it seems to me, done justice as regards the civilian agents of the Revolution.

Now, poor Andre! His tragedy was like that of Nathan Hale; and the tragedy was the same in the case of the brilliant young patrician, brilliant, fearless, devoted, and the plain, straightforward yeoman who just as bravely gave up his life in performing the same kind of duty. It was not a pleasant kind of duty; and the penalty was rightly the same in each case; and the countrymen of each man are also right to hold him in honor and to commemorate his memory by a monument. Among our monstrosities in the statue line in New York we have one really by a master; it is Nathan Hale's. By the way, it is one of the sad ironies of history that a difference in the outcome of a war should necessarily in so many cases utterly change the way the descendants of the two sides look at one another's heroes. In Canada, for instance, Wolfe and Montcalm are equally national heroes now, because the English conquered the French and yet live in the country on terms of absolute equality with them, so that of necessity, if they are to have a common national tie, they must have as common heroes for both peoples the heroes of each people.
So in a very striking fashion it is with us and the memories of the Civil War. My father's people were all Union men. My mother's brothers fought in the Confederate navy, one being an admiral therein, and the other firing the last gun fired by the Alabama before she sank. When I recently visited Vicksburg in Mississippi, the State of Jefferson Davis, I was greeted with just as much enthusiasm as if it had been Massachusetts or Ohio. I went out to the national park which commemorates the battle and siege and was shown around it by Stephen Lee, the present head of the Confederate veterans' organization, and had as guard of honor both ex-Confederate and ex-Union soldiers. After for many years talking about the fact that the deeds of valor shown by the men in gray and the men in blue are now the common heritage of all our people, those who talked and those who listened have now gradually grown first to believe with their minds, and then to feel with their hearts, the truth of what they have 'spoken. But where such results flow from battles as flowed from Bannockbum and Yorktown, centuries must pass before the wound not only scars over but becomes completely forgotten, and the memory becomes a bond of union and not a cause of division. It is our business to shorten the time as much as possible; and no one has done better work toward this end than you yourself.
This Christmas I was given an original proclamation issued in 1776 by my great-great-grandfather, the first governor (or, as he was called, President) of the Revolutionary State of Georgia, Two among my forbears were soldiers who fought under Marion and Sumter, one was in the Continental army of the North, and one a member of the Continental Congress. They were plain people, farmers or merchants, for the most part, though I suppose one or two would have been ranked among the gentry. In 1698 one of these was "Landgrave" of South Carolina under Locke's absurd constitution.
trevelyan's reply
welcombE, stratford-on-avon,
 January 18, 1908.
I am extraordinarily complimented by the minute and detailed interest which you express as to the manner in which I shall treat of the heroes of that part of the War of Independence which still remains to be told. I shall like to go over ground, some of which you. have trodden—if that expression can be applied to your rate of movement when writing about military affairs; and I shall like very much to read what you said about the Southern battles. But you must not expect too much. Remember that I shall be seventy on the 20th of next July; and no good history— and, so far as I know, only one good book of any sort— was ever produced in our language by an author who had passed that age. But I shall work in a leisurely, unanxious, and enjoyable manner—encouraged to it by the kindness and favor which has been shown me by Americans, and most of all by you. Of one thing I am quite resolved, that the next volume shall, and ought to, end the work; and I have prepared the ground carefully to obtain that result, if time is given me to bring it about.
Your account of the Rough Riders is very enlightening to one who has never seen fighting. What a rough business the whole thing must be, and how unlike most of the books! But the more I read, the more I am impressed with the belief that the actual conduct of a fight with firearms is, and has always been, essentially the same in all ages and countries. It is now beginning to be understood that the colossal successes of the early French Republic, and of Napoleon, were mainly won by the straighter shooting, in line of skirmish, of soldiers who individually were more intelligent than Austrians and Russians, and than Prussians of the old regime. As to Andre, I have a central idea about Washington's action in the matter which I am anxious to put on paper. I was much struck by your comparison between the mutual feelings left by struggles which ended in union, like those in Canada and the War of Secession, and those which end in a separation, like yours and ours. I am glad that you think I have done something towards that work of conciliation in which you have borne so signal a part.
While on a hunting tour in Africa in 1910 Roosevelt wrote to Trevelyan a letter which may quite accurately, I am sure, be called the supreme gem of this correspondence. In sending it to me for publication, Sir George says of it: "It is faultlessly written and perfectly legible. I received it at Rome, where my wife and I enjoyed the privilege of seeing not a little of Mrs. and Miss Roosevelt. When I opened the penciled envelope I expected a story of great game shooting, written by the light of a camp fire; instead of a story about an hippopotamus or lion, it was a wonderfully wise and eloquent comparison of Carlyle 's and Macaulay 's views of Frederick the Great; and marvelous in sagacity as being written years before the German war. Though surprised by the contents of the letter, I was very far from being disappointed. It must be remembered that this scathing judgment upon the Silesian and Polish policy of Frederick the Great, and the approval of that policy by Carlyle, and the condemnation of it by Macaulay, was put on record by Mr. Roosevelt nearly five years before the cult and tradition of the Hohenzollern family, and the deification and worship of Frederick the Great, culminated in the invasion, the spoliation and the torture of Belgium."
north of kenia, B. E. A.,
September 10, 1909. My dear Trevelyan:
No ex-President, and no ex-Prime Minister, for that matter, ever enjoyed six months as I have enjoyed the six months now ending. We have had great sport with the noblest game in all the world; the country is fascinating; and it is most interesting to see, and admire, your government officials at work—while your settlers, especially those from South Africa or Australia, are in all essentials just like my own beloved westerners.
I always take in my saddle pocket some volume (I am too old now to be satisfied merely with a hunter's life), and among the most worn are the volumes of Macaulay. Upon my word, the more often I read him, whether the History or the Essays, the greater my admiration becomes. I read him primarily for pleasure, as I do all books; but I get any amount of profit from him, incidentally. Of all the authors I know I believe I should first choose him as the man whose writings will most help a man of action who desires to be both efficient and decent, to keep straight and yet be of some account in the world. I have also been reading Car-lyle; and the more I read him the more hearty grows my contempt for his profound untruthfulness and for his shrieking deification of shams. What a contrast he offers to that real and great historian, your uncle! If only Car-lyle were alive how I would like to review his Frederick the Great with the same freedom of epithet which he practised! and with all the sincerity and truthfulness to which he paid such lip worship, and in the practice of which he so wholly failed. Some of his writing is really fine; his battles for instance; but a far more truthful idea of the real Frederick can be gained from Macaulay's concise and brilliant essay, than from Carlyle's five long, brilliant and utterly disingenuous volumes. What I can't stand is his hypocrisy; his everlasting praise of veracity, accompanying the constant practise of every species of mendacity in order to give a false color to history and a false twist to ethics. He actually reprobates, with sanctimonious piety, the French for doing wrong much less than that which he imputes to Frederick for righteousness. When he speaks of his hero—indeed of any of his heroes—he always uses morality as a synonym for ruthless efficiency, and sincerity as a synonym for shameless lack of scruple; but in dealing with people who he does not like, the words at once revert to their ordinary uses, and he himself appears as the sternest rebuker of evil and treachery; whereas your uncle was a great teacher of uprightness and sound principle joined with that common sense the lack of which makes morality a mere balloon on the winds of chance.
The porters are just bringing in to camp the skin and tusks of a bull elephant I killed three days ago, and Kermit got another yesterday. We have killed 17 lions between us.
Sir George, to whom I am indebted beyond measure in the preparation of this correspondence for publication, not only for contributions of inestimable value, but for suggestions scarcely less valuable, prompted by his affection and admiration for Roosevelt, sends to me also this memorable tribute to Roosevelt by King George of England, uttered at an extemporized luncheon at Lord Rosebery's:
"On the 26th of April, 1910, I was in a small company with a gentleman who ten days afterwards became the first Personage in the country, and who himself was a famous master of the gun. Some question arose about Mr. Roosevelt as a rifle-shot; and the principal guest at table said, very quietly, 'I know on good authority that he always shoots straight when there is danger.' I well remember the pleasure with which I heard these generous and manly words."
On October 14,1912, Roosevelt, while on a speaking tour in the West as the Progressive candidate for the Presidency, was shot and slightly wounded by a half-crazed fanatic in Milwaukee. Four days later, when it was known that the injury was not dangerous, Trevelyan wrote:
wallington,
 October 18, 1912.

I have been unable to forbear sending you a few lines; although perhaps I ought to have waited. This matter has given me the full measure of the personal affection which I bear towards you. It had been already proved to me, in part, by the deep, constant, and overpowering interest, and earnest hopes, with which for the last six months I have followed all that I could learn of your public action. But this dreadful event, and your bearing after it, have made me as proud of your friendship as I am sadly interested in your health and comfort. I say no more;, because quiet words, if they are true, are best under the greatest, as under the daily and slightest, conditions of life. My privilege in knowing Mrs. Roosevelt, and your daughter and son, intensify, if possible, my feeling; and in this, as in all else, my wife is one with me.
On the Saturday before the news came I was passing through London, and lunched at Brooks's with Edward Grey. I was greatly pleased, but not surprised, to find that his personal feeling about you is the same as mine.
In replying to this letter Roosevelt gave expression to views about the assassination of public men which his intimate friends had often heard him utter. It was a frequent saying of his: '' There are worse deaths than for a man to be killed in the service of his country":
oyster bay, October 29, 1912.
Your letter touched and pleased me very much. I shall always keep it. I have not yet reached the point where it is wise for me to write with my own hand, so I shall only send you these few typewritten lines of greeting.
It is just as you say; prominence in public life inevitably means that creatures of morbid and semi-criminal type are incited thereby to murderous assault. But, my dear Sir George, I must say I have never understood public men who get nervous about assassination. For the last eleven years I have of course thoroughly understood that I might at any time be shot, and probably would be shot some time. I think I have come off uncommonly well. But what I cannot understand is any serious minded public man not being so absorbed in the great and vital questions with which he has to deal as to exclude thoughts of assassination. I do not think this is a question of courage at all. I think it is a question of the major interest driving out the minor interest. It is exactly as it is in the army. I can readily understand any enlisted man having qualms about his own safety, but the minute that a man gets command of others and has responsibilities for more than his own personal safety, especially when he becomes a Colonel or a General, I don't see how, in the middle of his wearing anxieties, he has a chance to wonder whether he personally will be shot. As I say, it is not a question of courage: it is a question of perspective, of proper proportion. If tomorrow I were to go fox-hunting I would probably feel a little more need of hardening my heart when I approached an uncommonly stiff jump than I would have felt thirty years ago; just because there would be no responsibility in the matter, no duties to be first considered, nothing whatever to appeal to me except the chance of a smash-up as balanced against the fun of the hunting and the galloping. But if I had a division of cavalry and were in battle with it, so far as I thought selfishly at all, it would be as to whether I were handling the cavalry creditably. It would not be as to whether I was in danger of being shot. So that I never have felt that public men who were shot whether they were killed or not, were entitled to any especial sympathy; and I do most emphatically feel that when in danger it is their business to act in the manner which we accept as commonplace when the actor is an enlisted man of the Army or Navy, or a policeman, or a fireman, or a railroad man, or a miner, or a deep-sea fisherman.
I am really pleased at what you tell me about Edward Grey. I have felt toward him almost as I feel toward you— and that is as strongly as I feel toward any man not in my immediate family.
In acknowledging the receipt of a portrait of Macaulay, Roosevelt wrote on March 19, 1913:
"Your letter and the really delightful picture of Macau-lay have both come. I shall put your letter in an envelope pasted to the back of it. You say well that it brings out his homely, shrewd, and above all his kindly look; but it brings out something more; it brings out the great power of the man. As you know, I am rather a fanatic about Macaulay. Of course in a man with such an active life, and a man who wrote so much, there will be occasional expressions or convictions with which I do not agree; but in most cases I think these were matters as to which it was impossible that he and I should have the same understanding. In all the essentials he seems to me more and more as I grow older a very great political philosopher and statesman, no less than one of the two or three very greatest historians. Of course I am undoubtedly partly influenced by the fact that he typifies common sense mixed with high idealism, but also the sane and tempered radicalism which seem to me to make for true progress. I am always having to fight the silly reactionaries and the inert, fatuous creatures who will not think seriously; and on the other hand to try to exercise some control over the lunatic fringe among the reformers."
A glimpse of Roosevelt's growing popularity among his countrymen as a molder and leader of opinion on questions arising from the European war is afforded in the following citations from a notable letter from Trevelyan 
wallington,
 September 1, 1914.

All through our long correspondence, on the existence and character of which I set as high a value as on any possession of my life, I have never ventured to put forward anything in the shape of counsel or suggestion. And this for three reasons. I never find occasion to take exception to your views about public expediency and public morality; I have not detailed knowledge which would justify me in giving an opinion; and (to speak quite plainly) I was as unwilling to obtrude my advice on the chief ruler of the American Republic as upon the Czar of Russia, if he had thought fit to write me a private letter.
But I have something special to tell you. In the course of the last nine or ten months I have been brought into singularly intimate relations with a new class of American friends belonging to the Democratic party; and I have entertained here, or have received long and spontaneous letters from, old friends and acquaintances of the Republican party who did not support you at the last election. Three distinguished Democrats,--two of them public men, and the other of exceptional literary and educational note,—held to me exactly the same language. They all talked with me of your immense administrative power and success, as evinced in such questions as the Panama Canal, the Russian and Japanese war, the Labor troubles, and other like matters; and they all spoke of, and seemed to sympathize with, the wide-spread affection which your countrymen feel for you. The Republicans, men of the highest eminence, held the same language on both heads; and in their case the personal feeling for you was based upon a far more intimate knowledge. They seemed in this respect to share the sentiment of their party. I hope you will take it from me that all those of whom I write are practical and able men, of high and deserved reputation.
The deduction I draw from these letters and conversations is a conviction that it is of untold importance that you should have a leading part at this conjuncture. What course you would take in any given matter I cannot foresee; but I am sure that it would be a righteous and wise one. The accounts with which you have honored me about your diplomatic and international action in the past inspire me with an assurance on that point. The need of you is not for the present only, inasmuch as a vast number of intricate problems will arise during the war, and after the war, on the bold and just solution of which the welfare of countless millions must depend. Multitudes of people are at this moment bound to serve their respective countries in the field; but perhaps you are, of all other living men, the one who is most bound to serve the world, let alone his own people, by his guidance. The most vital interests at stake are, and for years to come will be, the existence and independence of the most industrious and virtuous of the smaller communities of the civilized world,—Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and (and may I not say?) Italy, and the poor French people themselves. Your mode of thought on international policy, and your deep and wide interest in the history of the past, would be of immeasurable service now and hereafter.
I may be biased in this matter by my own regard for you, and my earnest desire to see you at the center of the world's affairs; but, after all, that is on my part no ignoble motive.
In a published interview in May, 1915, Roosevelt said of the proposal to forbid the shipment of munitions of war to the Allies: "The manufacture and shipment of arms and ammunition to any belligerents is moral or immoral according to the use to which the arms are to be put. If they are to be used to prevent the redress of hideous wrongs inflicted on Belgium, then it is immoral to ship them. If they are to be used for the redress of those wrongs and the restoration of Belgium to her deeply-wronged and unoffending people, then it is eminently moral to send them." Commenting on this utterance, Trevelyan wrote:
welcomes, stratford on-avon,
May 13, 1915.
This morning I read the sentence in which you set forth the moral side of the Munitions of War question—whether they were to be employed for the rescue of Belgium, or for her continued enslavement. The reading of it kindled into a flame the smoldering consciousness which always underlies my feelings—the consciousness that there is a man in the world who is never wanting in chivalry, humanity, and the dictates of high national duty. You know that you are my hero, and always will be; and there is no need to enlarge on that topic. When Senator Lodge was with me at Wallington in the summer we had some comfortable talk about the sentiments towards you which we possess in common. I would pray "God bless you" in your great objects; but that word is of ill omen to me. We had a noble battalion of regular infantry quartered at Stratford on Avon, to be "acclimatized" from India. In the course of six or seven weeks I became entirely at home with them, officers and men alike; and then they all marched off to the war past our front gate, along the Warwick road, with their baggage and Maxim guns, bidding me good-by with jolly cries and assurances all down the long column. I bade the Colonel— a grand soldier—"God bless you" at the head of his regiment. Then the news came. At the landing in the Dardanelles the Colonel, the senior Major, and the Brigadier General were killed at once; and almost every marked young fellow in that mess has gone to join them. I now know what the feelings of a stay at home citizen of seventy-six years of age must have been when your young men went to battle in 1861-1865.
The correspondence had now entered the period of the European war and the letters took on a new interest. Replying to Trevelyan's letter of May 13, Roosevelt wrote on May 29, 1915:
"Your letter was very welcome. I do not in the least deserve what you say of me; but I am glad that you should think as you do, all the more so because I am out of sympathy with the great majority of my countrymen, and especially with those who claim the foremost place in light and leading. I am not in the least a hero, my dear fellow. I am a perfectly commonplace man and I know it; I am just a decent American citizen who tries to stand for what is decent in his own country and in other countries and who owes very much to you and to certain men like you who are not fellow-countrymen of his.
"That's a dreadful tragedy of which you speak in connection with that noble battalion of regular infantry and the fate they encountered at the Dardanelles.
"Booth was at my house just at the time of the outbreak of the war last year. To think of the horror that has befallen his partner!
"Your son lunched here the Sunday before he sailed. As you know, he is one of the young men whom I especially admire.''
In 1918 Roosevelt had four sons and a son-in-law in the war, and Trevelyan's youngest son, George Macaulay Trevelyan, had been in it since 1915. This common interest and anxiety naturally drew them more closely than ever together and the letters reveal an added tone of tender affection. When in the spring of 1918 the news came of the wounding of two of the Roosevelt boys, Trevelyan sent to Roosevelt a letter of sympathy, to which the latter replied on April 9:
"Yes; you know exactly how I feel about Archie's wounds. In this great and terrible war we are indeed proud that events here so shaped themselves that our four sons are at the front, and Ethel's husband also; we would not for anything have them anywhere else; but I fear we would welcome their return home, each with an arm or leg off, so that they could feel that they had played their parts manfully, and yet we could have them back! Archie's arm was badly fractured, and a shell splinter went into his knee; he continued in command for some time, until the loss of blood overcame him; it was fourteen hours before he reached a hospital; a French general gave him the croix de guerre while he was on the operating table. The rest in the hospital will do him good. Ted was knocked down by a shell, but was merely bruised. He and Quentin are now in the battle to beat back this huge German drive.
"I have heard again and again of George's high and gallant valor; indeed you must feel equal pride and anxiety over him."
Writing to me on June 6, 1919, and referring to the above letter, Sir George gives this graphic picture of a most interesting incident of the war:
'' This letter was in my mind on last Friday, the 30th of May. We were traveling to this place from Stratford on Avon, and we spent an hour or two in Birmingham, and went to the Cathedral, where the Lord Mayor and Corporation had come to do honor to Commemoration day. Some hundred and fifty young Americans, without side-arms, marched past us in single file up the center of the nave, the last twenty or thirty of them carrying immense armfuls and handfuls of most beautiful flowers. They took their seats in long rows beneath the mural tablet bearing the fine inscription to the famous Loyalist exile, 'Peter Oliver, formerly His Majesty's Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England.' There they sat, unconscious of the historical contrast; and, as I watched their calm grave young faces, lighted by the glorious and inimitable windows of Burne-Jones, I thought how Theodore Roosevelt would have loved to see them, and they him.''

CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
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 yout 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.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
FROM KHARTOUM TO LONDON—CONTINUED
I was immensely impressed with my whole visit to Rome. I attended a dinner given me by Mayor Nathan, the Syndic, and his colleagues of the municipal council. Mayor Nathan was a Jew, who spoke excellent English, and was apparently a good public servant. When I dined with him I had already taken lunch with a number of Members of the Administration, sitting beside the Prime Minister, also a Jew, and a man of more intellectual type than Nathan. Think what a contrast this meant! In the Eternal City, in the realm of the popes, the home of the Ghetto, I lunched sitting beside one Jew who was Prime Minister of Italy, and dined as the guest of another Jew who was the head of the Roman Government itself! The Prime Minister and his colleagues struck me as upright men, sympathizing with liberal and progressive ideas, and anxious to do justice, and also on the whole as cultivated men, well read, and, in short, good fellows; but they did not strike me as possessing very great force. Mayor Nathan was precisely like many an American municipal politician of good type. Pie would have been quite at home as Reform Mayor of any American city of the second class. Among his colleagues were a number of Socialists, mostly parlor or study Socialists of the Latin type, well-meaning people with lofty aspirations, wild eyes, and a tendency to pay over-much heed to fine phrases. What I saw of Italy made me feel that there was infinite need for radical action toward the betterment of social and industrial conditions; and this made me feel a very strong sympathy with some of the Socialistic aims, and a very profound distrust of most of the Socialistic methods. 
The king and queen were delightful people. I had already seen the king, for when I was on my way to Africa he had come down in a battleship to Messina, and at his request I had gone aboard the battleship and had been presented to him; and I had a very genuine respect for him. Moreover, I found him most companionable. There were many things in which both of us were interested, from big game hunting to history and social progress. Some time before he had written asking me to come on a shooting trip with him after ibex, and I was genuinely sorry to refuse; and when I made my formal call upon him he showed me the heads of all kinds of game animals, including for instance the very rare South Italian chamois; and he showed that he took much more than a pure sportsman's interest in them. As for his general reading, I need only mention that I found on his desk, open, a copy of Mahaffy's 'Empire of the Ptolemies,' in which he was interested. I have always had a liking for the early history of the House of Savoy. Happening to say that I supposed that the fact that the House of Savoy had elected to live under Roman and not under Lombard law indicated that it was probably of native and not of invading Germanic origin, the king at once became interested and he told me many queer incidents of early Savoy history; and showed us his noteworthy collection of Savoyard coins, from the earliest to modern times. While I was President he had sent me, together with a handsome edition of Dante, a score of volumes of the original reports and papers of Eugene of Savoy—one of my favorite heroes.
The king showed that he was deeply and intelligently interested in every movement for social reform, and was not only astonishingly liberal but even radical, sympathizing with many of the purposes and doctrines of the Socialists. He took me in to see his children, who were well behaved and simple. When I spoke of how well the queen was bringing them up, he laughed and said, yes, he wished his son to be so trained that if necessary he would be fit to be the First President of the Italian Republic. Later he called for me at the hotel, causing thereby frightful agitation among the hotel attendants and guests, and spent a morning driving me round the city—I had already made the correct formal calls and had left a wreath on Victor Emmanuel's tomb in the Pantheon. He slightly embarrassed me by making me sit on the right-hand in the carriage, as almost all the kings did—I suppose on the theory that I was a kind of ex-sovereign myself; I always wished they wouldn't do it, but after one or two trials I made no further protest, as it always became evident that if I insisted on sitting on the left-hand I should cause a fuss, which was just exactly what I was desirous of not doing. He took me to the cavalry school, where I was greatly impressed by the riding of his officers, and especially by the way in which they took their horses down well-nigh perpendicular banks. Evidently he knew the army and its needs just as he knew the civil and social needs of the country; and in fact I do not see how Italy could have a more intelligent, devoted, and sympathetic ruler. I told him I wished we had a few men like him in the Senate! He asked us— Mrs. Roosevelt and I—to drive out with him and the Queen and spend a day and a couple of nights at their country place not far from Rome, saying that they would dig out some badgers—I think it was badgers—but we had so many other engagements and were so pressed for time that, as he asked me to say frankly whether it would be convenient or not, I begged off, stating that we would infinitely rather go with him to his place, but that it would cause us serious inconvenience in keeping our other engagements; and he at once acquiesced, being as considerate as possible. In a way, I should have liked to see more of him; but after all I am doubtful whether it would have been worth while, for even with the pleasantest and kindliest king there must of necessity be a little that is artificial in association with a civilian foreigner, and especially a civilian foreigner from a huge overseas democracy. To have gone with him on a hunt, where we should have had a real object in common, or to have met him while I was President, when also we would have had interests in common, would of course have been an entirely different thing.
I thoroughly liked and respected almost all the various kings and queens I met; they struck me as serious people, with charming manners, devoted to their people and anxious to justify their own positions by the way they did their duty—it is no disparagement to their good intentions and disinterestedness to add that each sovereign was obviously conscious that he was looking a possible republic in the face, which was naturally an incentive to good conduct; I was very glad to have met them; and it was pleasant to see them for a short while; but longer intercourse, or renewed intercourse, would have been unnatural unless there had been, as there was not, some real intellectual interest, or other bond in common, and if there was any such, it happened not to develop itself.
I was much amused, by the way, when I reached Borne, at finding that our Ambassador was engaged in an intricate controversy with the puffyfaced, entirely pompous and well-meaning local baron who was Court Marshal or Master of Ceremonies, or something of the sort; the Ambassador wishing to have me treated with the courtesies granted a visiting sovereign, and the Court Marshal taking the entirely proper view that I was simply a private citizen, with no title or no claim to any precedence. I hastily interfered, telling the Ambassador that I absolutely shared the views of his opponent, that I wished him himself to act upon, and to notify all our other ambassadors that they were to act upon, the theory that I was purely a private citizen, with no claim to any position of precedence at all, and that at any function, formal or informal, I should be perfectly happy to walk or sit or stand anywhere, and below any one, just as the local people desired—or not to appear at all, unless they expressly wished it. I added that I was really speaking less in a spirit of humility than of pride. I have a hearty and sincere respect for a king who does his duty and acts decently, and am delighted to show him any kind of formal courtesy which is customary; but I have no patience with a sham and least of all a snobbish sham; and of all snobbish shams there is none more contemptible than that of the democrat who loudly contends that he is such and yet wishes in private or public life to grasp privileges which give the lie to his contention. To me there is something fine in the American theory that a private citizen can be chosen by the people to occupy a position as great as that of the mightiest monarch, and to exercise a power which may for the time being surpass that of Czar, Kaiser, or Pope, and that then, after having filled this position, the man shall leave it as an unpensioned private citizen, who goes back into the ranks of his fellow-citizens with entire self-respect, claiming nothing save what on his own individual merits he is entitled to receive. But it is not in the least fine, it is vulgar and foolish, for the President or ex-President to make believe, and, of all things in the world, to feel pleased if other people make believe, that he is a kind of second-rate or imitation king. It is as if a Roman ex-dictator wished to be treated like a king of Pergamum or Antioch! The effort to combine incompatibles merely makes a man look foolish. The positions of President and King are totally different in kind and degree; and it is silly, and worse than silly, to forget this. It is not of much consequence whether other people accept the American theory of the Presidency; but it is of very much consequence that the American people, including especially any American who has held the office, shall accept the theory and live up to it.
However, in this case, the Italian king insisted upon treating me upon "the most favored guest" principle. When we dined at the palace, by the way, I struck one bit of etiquette which I did not strike at any other court. I had endeavored to dispose of my hat when I left my coat in the, anteroom, but it was returned to me with every symptom of surprise and horror, and as the other male members among the guests retained theirs, I went on with mine. When the royal party came in, and I was brought up to the queen to take her in to dinner, I again thought it was time for me to get rid of the hat. But not a bit of it! I found I was expected to walk in with the queen on my arm, and my hat in my other hand—a piece of etiquette which reminded me of nothing with which I was previously acquainted except a Jewish wedding on the East Side of New York, where the participants and guests of honor wear their hats during the ceremony, and where, on the occasions when I was Police Commissioner, and occasionally attended such weddings, I would march solemnly in to the wedding-feast with the bride, or the bride's mother, on one arm, and my hat in my other hand. Both at the Italian Court and at the East Side weddings, however, some attendant took the hat as soon as I sat down at the table. 

At dinner I took as great a fancy to the queen as I had already taken to the king. I sat between the queen and her niece—whom she had always treated as an elder daughter or younger sister—the Princess Royal of Servia. Both spoke French, not English. I am sorry to say that I am too much like Chaucer's Abbess in that my French is more like that of Stratford-at-Bow, than to French of Paris. But still, such as it is, I speak it with daring fluency; and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The queen is a really fine woman, with a strong touch of the heroic in her, and I greatly liked the princess also. They interested me because, to an American, it was curious to meet cultivated women, fond of reading, whose acquaintance with books barely touched the limits of English literature. In other words, they were cultivated people of the Balkans of southeastern Europe. They knew French well and some German, but very little English. Both had a passionate love for the Montenegrin land, for its people and its history, and they were delighted when they found that I really did know its history and shared to the full their admiration for it. They were also interested to find that I knew Carmen Sylva's writings, especially her translations of the Rumanian folk-songs; and the various translations of the poetry of the Balkan Slavs. The princess was in sympathy a thorough Montenegrin and not a Servian, and I found respected the Bulgarians more than she did the Servians. I was amused to find that the princess knew all about my family, and put me many questions about my elder daughter, whom she laughingly referred to as "the Princess Alice."
The Italian queen herself was obviously a fine and noble woman, and she was the real peasant queen, the Saga queen, the queen of the folk stories and fairy-tales—the kind of queen whom the hero meets when he starts out with his wallet and staff and travels "far and far and farther than far," and finally comes to a palace up to which he strolls, and sees the king sitting in front of the door looking at the sheep or the chickens. To be king or queen in a country like Italy at the present day means unending strain and worry, and both the king and the queen were faithfully and conscientiously and wisely, and with great self-devotion and self-abnegation, doing everything they could to meet the difficulties of an uncommonly difficult situation. They are loving and faithful to each other—I know you share my bourgeois prejudices against domestic immorality, which are stronger directly in proportion as the social position of the offenders is higher—and it was good to see their relations, together and with their children. The queen spoke with horror of war and violence, and mentioned that she did not think she could ever strike a blow herself, unless in defense of her children, or if her husband was attacked by an assassin; and as she spoke her eyes smoldered and she straightened her tall form. She loves to talk of her life at home in Montenegro, and one anecdote she told me gave me an insight into the reason why the Montenegrins show a more than medieval devotion to their sovereign. She said that when she was a child a famine came to the people, who were finally reduced to eat only rice; and her father, then reigning prince and present king, summoned his family together, and told them that "their mother had much to do and needed meat and would continue to eat it, but that he and the children would from that time on eat only rice, until the people too had more than rice to eat; and his proposal was carried out to the letter.
After leaving Rome Mrs. Roosevelt and I tried to repeat the drive over the Cornichi which we had taken twenty-three years before on our honeymoon, doing it the reverse direction. We started in an old-style three horse carriage —not a motor—from Spezia, and as we had been able to conceal the fact that we were going to Spezia our first day's drive to Sestri Levante was delightful, and we enjoyed the night at a funny little old-style hotel, the waves washing the wall beneath our balcony. But they found us out even before the end of this afternoon, and the officers of the municipality called upon us that evening, and the band gave us a serenade; and next day both the natives and the tourists all along our route had heard about our coming; and by noon it had become evident that the enjoyment of our trip was at an end, and we abandoned it. After that, throughout my stay in Europe, the visits to Arthur Lee and yourself, and my twenty-four hours with Edward Grey in the valley of the Itchen, and through the New Forest, represented the only occasions when I was able to shake off my semi-public character for more than an hour or two at a time.
We spent a week with Mrs. Roosevelt's sister at her house at Porto Maurizio; then I left Mrs. Roosevelt and Ethel there, for I wished them not to get over-tired, while Kermit and I made a flying trip to Vienna and Budapest.
I had originally intended to come straight home to America from Africa. I abandoned this idea on receiving the invitation to deliver the Romanes lecture at Oxford, because this was an invitation I wished to accept; and I appreciated being asked to deliver the lecture. It was the kind of thing I was really glad to do. But immediately afterward I was asked to speak at the Sorbonne. This again I was glad to do. When I accepted, however, I was certain that the Kaiser would not stand my speaking in England and France and not in Germany; and, sure enough, I soon received from the German Ambassador, by his direction, a request to speak at the University of Berlin; and this again I was glad to do. I then felt that I had entered into all the engagements I could carry through without hurrying myself, and I endeavored to avoid making any others; and I also endeavored to avoid visiting any other countries save France, Germany, and England. But I soon found that while the different rulers did not really care a rap about seeing me, they did not like me to see other rulers and pass them by; and that the same state of mind obtained among the peoples.
At Messina the King of Italy had made a point of my returning to Italy, and the municipality of Rome had—then a year in advance—made such representations about my coming through Rome as to make it evident that I would give grave offense if I went round it in order to get up into France. Accordingly I had to go. Then the Austrian Ambassador (a Hungarian), whom I like, raised a perfect clamor against my omitting Austria; and I also found that the Hungarians would really have had their feelings hurt if I did not visit Hungary. Then the Norwegian Minister to Washington, and our own Minister in Norway, both wrote me that the Norwegians would feel permanently aggrieved if after having received the Nobel Prize I failed to come to Christiania and give the Nobel Lecture customary in such cases, inasmuch as I was giving addresses in Berlin, Paris, and Oxford. As soon as I accepted this, I found that Sweden and Denmark would in their turn have had their feelings injured to the last point by failure on my part to visit them when I was so near, and that Holland was already making great preparations because, on account of my Dutch descent, they claimed a certain proprietorship in me. As I had to pass through Belgium, and as the Belgians had been very kind to me in Africa, I was glad to stop there also, I had not intended to be presented to any sovereign; for I have the strongest feeling about the attitude of so many Americans in desiring to be presented to the different sovereigns. The latter, poor good people, must be driven nearly mad by such requests; for which there is no warrant whatever, in the great majority of cases.
Moreover I believed that the sovereigns could not care to see me; an attitude of mind with which I most cordially sympathized. I can imagine nothing more dreary than being called upon to receive retired politicians, who have no official standing and no right to any official honors, and who nevertheless may be sensitive if they are not given the honors to which they have no claim. However, the unfortunate sovereigns evidently felt that it would be misunderstood if they did not show me attention, and through the ambassadors or foreign ministers I was requested to visit almost every country in Europe, and to visit the sovereign of every such country. Switzerland was an exception. Here I had been asked to attend the Calvin Quadricentenary which I could not do; and as I was not asked by the Government until my trip was half over, when I was eagerly endeavoring to cut out every possible engagement, I did not go there. The result has been that to this day I am now and then called upon to explain why I did not go there; and to my concern I found that I had hurt the feelings of a great many good people who thought I had slighted them—not that they would ever have dreamed of caring one way or the other if it were not for the fact that they saw a fuss made about me in other countries; whereupon they illustrated Lincoln's view that "there's a deal of human nature in mankind" by promptly proceeding to feel injured.
I had precisely the same experience with Russia. I do not for a moment believe that the Russians wished to see me, and least of all the Czar; they would have been anything but pleased had I come; but inasmuch as I never went near Russia, they all now feel slightly aggrieved; and only the other day I received a warm invitation from the Czar to come to Russia this summer, together with a complaint about my not having visited it already. I did not deem it necessary to explain in full, as no good would come of it; but I would hate to go to Russia in any way as guest of the ruling authorities, and feel that I was thereby stopped from speaking on behalf of Finland, of the Jews, of the persecuted Russian liberals, and of all the many other people upon whom the iron despotism of the bureaucracy bears with such crushing weight.
I said above that I doubted whether the sovereigns cared to see me. I am now inclined to think that they did, as a relief to the tedium, the dull, narrow routine of their lives. I shall always bear testimony to the courtesy and good manners, and the obvious sense of responsibility and duty, of the various sovereigns I met. But of course, as was to be expected, they were like other human beings in that the average among them was not very high as regards intellect and force. Indeed the kind of driving force and energy needed to make a first-class President or Prime Minister, a great general or War Minister, would be singularly out of place in the ordinary constitutional monarch. Apparently what is needed in a constitutional king is that he shall be a kind of sublimated American Vice-President; plus being socially at the head of that part of his people which you have called "the free masons of fashion." The last function is very important; and the king's lack of political power, and his exalted social position, alike cut him off from all real comradeship with the men who really do the things that count; for comradeship must imply some equality, and from this standpoint the king is doubly barred from all that is most vital and interesting. Politically he can never rise to, and socially he can never descend to, the level of the really able men of the nation. I cannot imagine a more appallingly dreary life for a man of ambition and power.
The kings whom I saw were not as a whole very ambitious or very forceful, though fine, honest, good fellows; and the monotony of their lives evidently made them welcome any diversion in the shape of a stranger, who gave them an entirely new point of view, and with whom, because of the nature of the case, they knew they could be intimate without any danger of the intimacy being misconstrued, or leading to unpleasant situations in the future. They had made the advances, not I; they knew that I was not coming back to Europe, that I would never see them again, or try in any way to keep up relations with them; and so they felt free to treat us with an intimacy, and on a footing of equality, which would have been impossible with a European, the subject of some one of them (I think this was why they asked us to stay in the palaces).
In a way, although the comparison sounds odd, these sovereigns, in their relations among themselves and with others, reminded me of the officers and their wives in one of our western army posts in the old days, when they were all shut up together and away from the rest of the world, were sundered by an impassable gulf from the enlisted men and the few scouts, hunters, and settlers around about, and were knit together into one social whole, and nevertheless were riven asunder by bitter jealousies, rivalries, and dislikes. Well, the feelings between a given queen and a given dowager-empress, or a. small king and the emperor who on some occasion had relished bullying him, were precisely the same as those between the captain's lady and the colonel's spinster daughter, or the sporting lieutenant and the martinet major, in a lonely army post.
As we traveled, we found that the royalties at one court were almost sure to have written to their kinsfolk at the next court (for they are all interrelated) things about us, just exactly as people would write from one army post to another in the old days. They were always sure to wish to hear from me about some of the things that I had done while I was President, especially the building of the Panama Canal, the voyage of the battle fleet, the handling of the coal strike, and various matters concerning the control of the trusts and the control of the mob, and the relations of both with Socialism; and they were at least as anxious to hear about my regiment, and especially about my life in the West, evidently regarding it as an opportunity to acquire knowledge at first-hand and at close range concerning the Buffalo-Bill and Wild-West side of American existence.
   
    Most of them had obviously read up my writings for the occasion, and would appeal to me for enlightenment upon points which they could not understand; and then when I illustrated these points by stories and incidents, they would usually need further enlightenment about some of the expressions I used in telling the stories, and they would evidently solemnly write or tell one another just what these expressions were. Accordingly, after the usual formal and perfunctory conversation with the new king or crown prince, or whoever it was, he would, with a little preliminary maneuvering, ask me if I would mind repeating the story I had told some preceding king about this, that, or the other frontier hero who had afterward become a public servant holding my commission—wishing to know just how and why it was that Benjamin Franklin Daniels, afterward Marshal of Arizona, had his ear "bit off" in the course of the exercise of his duties as peace officer, or why Hon. Seth Bullock, who was Marshal in South Dakota, and was to meet me in London, had regarded homicide as a regrettable but inevitable incident of a political career in territorial days; or he might (and in two cases actually did) say'' I beg your pardon, but I do not quite understand what is a two-gun man," which would necessitate a brief review of the exercise of the right of private war under primitive conditions in the Far West, and the advantages accruing to the cause of virtue if its special champion was able to use a revolver in either hand. All these small kings had vague ambitions, which they knew would never be gratified, for military distinction, and hunting dangerous game, and they always had questions to put about the Spanish War and the African trip. They also all stood distinctly in awe of the German Kaiser, who evidently liked to drill them; and both the big and the small ones felt much jealousy of one another, and at the same time felt joined together and sundered from all other people by their social position.
Before I had seen them I had realized in a vague way that a king's life nowadays must be a very limited life; but the realization was brought home to me very closely on this trip. I can understand a woman's liking to be queen fairly well (that is, if she is not an exceptional woman), for if, as is sometimes the case, as was the case for instance with both the Queen of Norway and the Crown Princess of Sweden, she has made a love match, she has the ordinary happiness that comes to the happy woman with husband and children, and in addition the ceremonial and social part would be apt to appeal to her and to be taken seriously by her. But as for the man! It would be very attractive to be a king with the power of a dictator, and the ability to wield that power, to be a Frederick the Great, for instance, or even a man like the old Kaiser "William, who if not exactly a great man yet had the qualities which enabled him to use and be used by Bismarck, Moltke, and von Boon. But the ordinary king—and I speak with cordial liking of all the kings I met—has to play a part in which the dress parade is ludicrously out of proportion to the serious effort; there is a quite intolerable quantity of sack to the amount of bread. If he is a decent, straight, honorable fellow, he can set a good example—and yet if he is not, most of his subjects, including almost all the clergymen, feel obliged to be blind and to say that he is; and he can exercise a certain small influence for good on public affairs in an indirect fashion. But he can play no part such as is played by the real leaders in the public life of to-day, if he is a constitutional monarch.
Understand me. I do not mean that he fails to serve a useful purpose, just as the flag serves a useful purpose. Only a very foolish creature will talk of the flag as nothing but a bit of dyed or painted bunting, because it is a symbol of enormous consequence in the life and thought of the people. Similarly, the king may serve a purpose of enormous usefulness as a symbol, and I have no question that for many peoples, it would be a misfortune not to have such a symbol, such a figurehead. I am not speaking of the king from the standpoint of his usefulness to the community, which I fully admit; I am merely saying that from his own standpoint, if he is a man of great energy, force and power, it must be well-nigh intolerable to have to content himself with being simply king in the figurehead or symbol fashion. When I went to Vienna, I met Harry White, an old friend and the best man in our diplomatic service, who had, most unfortunately and improperly, and for reasons of unspeakable triviality, been turned out of the service by President Taft. Without White's help I really do not see how I could have gotten through my Austro-Hungarian experience. The Hengelmiillers, the Austrian representatives in Washington, had crossed the ocean to meet me, and I was so flooded with attractive invitations, public and private, both in Vienna and Budapest, that I hardly had one moment to myself. I did, however, get an hour to visit certain bookstores, because I wanted to buy some of the old German hunting books. The popular reception in Vienna was even greater than the popular reception in Rome; I was received very much as I was received when as President I visited San Francisco, or Seattle, or St. Louis, or New Orleans. The streets and squares around the hotel were blocked with crowds, and when I drove to Schonbrunn to dine with the Emperor, the whole route was lined on both sides with onlookers. It was evident to me that the people did not in the least understand my real position, although I had done everything in my power to make it plain; they thought of me as still the great American leader, the man who was to continue to play in the future of American politics something like the part he had played in the past. Moreover this was the view that almost all the statesmen took. No explanations of mine were treated as anything but rather insincere and affected self-depreciation, and my statement of the bald fact that under our system and traditions an ex-President became of little or no importance was always greeted with polite but exasperating incredulity; and I finally gave up any attempt to do more than at each successive capital to state the fact with entire clearness, and then to let them refuse to believe it if they chose. I hated to have them deceive themselves; but they absolutely refused to let me undeceive them, and that was all there was about it.
The Emperor was an interesting man. With him again I had to speak French. He did not strike me as a very able man, but he was a gentleman, he had good instincts, and in his sixty years' reign he had witnessed the most extraordinary changes and vicissitudes. He talked very freely and pleasantly, sometimes about politics, sometimes about hunting; and after my first interview, when he got up to tell me "good-by," he said that he had been particularly interested in seeing me because he was the last representative of the old system, whereas I embodied the new movement, the movement of the present and the future, and that he had wished to see me so as to know for himself how the prominent exponent of that movement felt and thought. He knew that I disliked the old king of the Belgians who was just dead, and suddenly asked me if I would have visited Belgium if he had been alive; and when I said no, he responded that he quite understood why, and added "c'etait un homme absolument mediant,'' explaining that there were very few men who were absolutely and without qualification "mechant," but that Leopold was one.

The dinner at Schonbrunn was interesting, of course, and not so dull, as those functions are apt to be. The Emperor and all the Austrian guests had one horrid habit. The finger-bowls were brought on, each with a small tumbler of water in the middle; and the Emperor and all the others proceeded to rinse their mouths, and then empty them into the finger-bowls. I felt a little as if the days of Kaunitz had been revived—I believe that eminent servant of Maria Theresa used to take a complete toilet-set with him to dinner, including a tooth brush, which he used at the close of the feast. However, all of the guests were delightful; and both the men and the women who came in after dinner were on the whole charming. I was told that Viennese society was frivolous, but it happened, I suppose naturally, that those men whom I saw were most of them interested in real problems of statecraft and warcraft. However, the world that lives for amusement was much in evidence at the Jockey Club. This struck me as a typical Viennese institution. Only the higher nobility belong, and a few outsiders of note. The people were charming, well bred, with delightful manners, joining to the love of sport among corresponding Englishmen, a love of gambling, and a propensity to fight duels, which gave them a different touch, and living in a world as remote from mine as if it had been in France before the Revolution. They hailed me with the utmost good comradeship, because they were almost all big game hunters, and were immensely interested in my African hunt, and were also much interested in my regiment and my experiences in the Spanish War.
Of course the fact that I had been President, and at the same time had done the kind of thing in war and sport which it would have gratified their ambitions to do, also impressed them; and then, to my intense amusement, I found that they were in cordial sympathy with me because I had attacked the big financial interests, and because I frankly looked down on mere moneyed men, the people of enormous wealth who had nothing but their wealth behind them, and whose power was simply the power of the "money touch." There was to me something very humorous in finding what in America was regarded as a democratic movement against the powerful and arrogant aristocracy of wealth was among these Viennese looked upon as a movement fundamentally in the interests of the right kind of aristocracy, because it was teaching the man of mere money bags that his money by itself simply rendered him vulgar, and entitled him to no consideration. In the same way I was much amused to find from casual remarks made by my hosts that what they called the "Kleiner Adel" were not admitted to the club any more than the financiers were.1 They had not such feeling against me and Kermit. We represented men of a totally alien life.
I found that they already knew that I as strongly objected to Americans marrying into their titled families as they could object themselves. This gave them, on the one hand, a feeling of understanding and sympathy with me, and, on the other hand, put our relations just as they ought to be; that is, they felt they could be absolutely courteous to me, and establish absolutely good relations with me, just as they could with an Arab Sheik, and ask me to their houses and visit my house and yet not be afraid of any complications following. One or two of them had a slight curiosity to find out exactly why I objected as strongly to any closer alliance with them as they did to any closer alliance with Americans; but most of them were too well bred to think it worth while to make inquiries. To those that did make the inquiries I laughed and told them that they would understand my position if they realized that I wished to keep for myself and all my kinsfolk and all my people an attitude which would make us respect equally and feel equally at home with Andreas Hofer on one side and Count Andrassy on the other, and that such an attitude could only be kept as long as their people and our people met on a footing of entire equality and good-will, but with full recognition of the fact that any attempt at too intimate relations would result in showing utter discordance. In other words we could really enjoy not merely friendship, but a substantial measure of intimacy, if we did not try to make it too close; because if we came too close we should find that our systems of life were fundamentally irreconcilable, although each might have many good points and might be the best for a given set of surroundings.
I visited the riding-school, one of the very few places in Europe where one can still see the manege as it is described in that great book of the Duke of Newcastle's—I think it is his—in the seventeenth century; and I inspected a Hungarian Hussar regiment, which interested me immensely, and where again I was received with the most genuine cordiality as a fellow soldier, all the officers, who of course had themselves seen no actual fighting, being very anxious to know about my regiment. I was very much impressed by both the officers and the enlisted men, and also by the horses.
We went out to lunch with a perfect old trump, Count Wiltczek, who had a castle a few miles out of Vienna which he had restored, so that it looked exactly as it did in the Middle Ages and was similarly arranged within—although he had embellished it with books and pictures of a later period. On this trip—here while visiting this castle, just as at Cairo—I was helped for the first time in my life by the fact that I had always gratified my thirst for useless information. I have never demanded of knowledge anything except that it shall be useless. Now this means that while I know nothing that the average scholar does not know, yet that I know a good deal as to which the average politician or man of affairs is abysmally ignorant; and as naturally my life has been chiefly led among politicians and men of affairs, when it was not led among frontiersmen, there are a great many things I have studied about which I have rarely or never had a chance to speak—largely, my dear sir, because it is only occasionally that I am thrown for a few hours intimately in your company! Until I went abroad this time I doubt if I had ever derived the slightest benefit, however small, from such things as a knowledge of Moslem travels in the thirteenth century, or Magyar history, or the Mongol conquests, or the growth of the races of Middle Europe and the deeds of their great men. On this occasion, however, my knowledge of these things really added to my pleasure, and brought me into touch with people. For instance, Wiltczek hugely enjoyed finding that, besides a general interest in sport and in medieval ways and customs, I had taken it for granted that his family, if not Czeck, was of Polish origin, and descended from the Piasts and from Boleslav the Glorious; that when he showed me a portrait of Batory, I was familiar with that Hungarian king of Poland and his wars against Ivan the Terrible; that I knew the details of Rudolph's fight with Ottocar of Bohemia;, and so on and so on. He took a great fancy to Kermit, whom he called "leetle" Kermit—for although Kermit was nearly six feet, Wiltczek towered above him—led him round by the hand through most of the building, and then kissed him good-by! Kermit is an impassive person, and was much less upset by this than an English boy would have been; still he was distinctly embarrassed; and I had fearful apprehensions myself when I came to say good-by, but fortunately the Count merely enfolded me in a bear-like arm clasp.
After leaving Vienna I went to Hungary. On the way to Budapest, we stopped for lunch at Count Apponyi's. Apponyi met us at the station (where there was the usual reception) and drove us to his castle. It was interesting to an American to pass successively through various villages each consisting only of Slavs, Magyars or Germans. Apponyi is a really fine fellow. He had been in Washington with the Inter-Parliamentary Peace Congress, and had dined with me at the White House. He represented a type of Liberal much more common in Continental Europe prior to 1848 than at present; but in some ways, purely Hungarian. In Hungary, in striking contrast to what was the case in France, in Italy, and I believe in Spain, and certainly in much of Germany, I found that Liberalism and very strong religious feelings were not regarded as incompatible. In France and Italy devout Catholics were almost always reactionary, not only in matters ecclesiastical but in matters governmental; and Liberals were always anticlerical—probably inevitably so.
In Hungary I met many Liberals, most of them Catholics, some of them Calvinists, who were good "church people" in much the same sense that so many of my associates in America are good church people; and in consequence they felt that I understood them and that they were in sympathy with me, as they could not be expected to be in sympathy with men sharing their political views who at the same time ridiculed, or at least were wholly unable to understand, their religious views. Apponyi was a devout Catholic, but he was not only an advanced Liberal in matters political but also in matters ecclesiastical; he was a staunch friend of many Protestants, and later took me round to see the younger Kossuth, a Protestant. In this respect he was like an American Liberal of the best type; yet in matters purely political it was half amusing, half melancholy, to realize the doctrinaire limitations of his attitude. He was in theory an almost irrational advocate of immediate international peace; just as the Norwegians also were, in theory; and he and the Norwegian delegates, whom I had met among the various international peace delegations, were all for universal arbitration and disarmament, and for passing high-sounding resolutions in favor of immediate peace all over the earth, resolutions which always remind me of Tilman Joy's sneer in one of John Hay's poems, at those who "resoloot till the cows come home,'" and cannot and will not give practical effect to their resolutions; and yet he represented the violent and extreme Hungarian party which was practically working for a separation from Austria that would probably bring war; just as the Norwegian peace people were at the very time championing separation from Sweden, a separation which certainly told against peace and might well have produced immediate war. In other words, these peace champions of Hungary and Norway, who in word and in resolution, and in proclamation at their conventions, went much further in demanding arbitration and peace than I was willing to go (simply because for a really cool and far-sighted man to act as they were acting would have been base hypocrisy) were, as regards the only practical matters where they could give effect to their theories, doing all they could to provoke war. This is not an exceptional attitude among professional peace advocates. I have met it again and again. In my own country I have had labor unions and similar organizations pass resolutions, and send them to me, demanding that we cease building up the Navy and insist on universal international arbitration, at the very same time that they demanded that I adopt the policy of Japanese exclusion in such form as would certainly have brought us war with Japan. War would probably have come if I had either yielded to their wishes as to the form which the policy of exclusion was to take (in accordance with their wishes), or had failed to keep at the highest point of efficiency the American Navy. It would certainly have come if I had yielded to their wishes in both regards. Apponyi in Hungary was honestly convinced that he was standing up for the oppressed and for the cause of righteousness by insisting that the Magyar should be at least on an equality with the Austrian German; and he was shocked and puzzled by finding that a large number of Hungarian Slavs regarded his attitude, and the attitude of the Magyars, toward them as itself an attitude of pure oppression, and which showed the fundamental hypocrisy of the Magyar attitude toward the German.
One reason why he and the other Hungarian politicians whom I met got on well with me was probably the fact that I knew a good deal of Hungarian history and Hungarian constitutional claims; that I understood, for instance, that the Emperor of Austria was not emperor in Hungary, and always alluded to him as the king—to give him his full, and delightful title, "apostolic king"—while I was in Hungary ; that I understood that the analogy between England and Ireland was to be found, not in Austria's attitude toward Hungary, but in Hungary's attitude toward Croatia, etc., etc. As I have said, any ordinary scholar with a good second-hand knowledge of history is acquainted with all this as a matter of course; but among politicians the one-eyed is apt to be king—so far as concerns foreign history, or indeed so far as concerns any branch of abstract knowledge not dealing with applied politics, applied economics, or money-making.
When I was received in the legislative hall at Budapest, I was at first a little bit puzzled to know why they so immensely appreciated my allusions to Arpad, St. Stephen, Mathew Corvinus, and other Hungarian heroes, to the battle of Mohacs, to the provisions of the Golden Bull of one King Bela, and to the curious indirect results of the Bogo-mil heresy, and the double part played by racial and religious considerations in causing the Protestants of Hungary and Transylvania to side with the Turk rather than with the Austrian; ultimately I found that the reason was their sensitiveness to the fact that all these names meant nothing whatever to the public men of other European countries. Evidently they felt as regards the ignorance they encountered concerning their own national history when they went to Berlin, Paris, or London, much as an American felt forty or fifty years ago, when he found that Europe quite simply ignored the men and events that he had believed to be of capital importance. It was the feeling of injured dignity natural to the man who does not like to have his cherished heroes and their deeds treated as provincial, and who is not as yet sufficiently self-confident to realize that such treatment reflects, not on him or them, but on those who really show themselves provincial by failing to appreciate the fundamental importance of what has happened outside their own kin. To a Hungarian the fact that the Golden Bull was analogous to the Great Charter, and was issued about the same time that the latter was signed, seemed of such interest that he could not understand an Englishman never having heard of the said Golden Bull; and in consequence he was much pleased to find that an ex-President from across the ocean had heard about it, and knew for instance that it solemnly reserved to the nobles the right of revolution if the king misbehaved himself—I did not think it necessary to elaborate the comparison between this and the action of certain South American republics in inserting into their constitutions a guarantee of the right of secession.
In Vienna they had been very much pleased when, while President, I had cordially approved the action of Austria in changing the title, although not really the substance, of the Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ultimately I hope that the Balkan States will be able to stand by themselves, perhaps in some sort of confederacy; but as yet the example of Servia is not sufficiently encouraging to make me believe that Bosnia and Herzegovina would make more progress alone than under Austria; for Austrian rule bears no resemblance to Austrian rule half a century ago, and in any event is infinitely preferable to the rule of the Turk. In Hungary they knew that I had approved of this action, and were on the whole glad—the Austrian Governor of the two provinces (Kallay) did a really remarkable work in developing them—but the Magyars were a little uneasy at anything that tended to increase the Slav populations of the Dual Empire.
In Budapest the Austrian archduke who represented the empire and who was a very good fellow, but whose name I cannot now remember, gave me a lunch, and the Prime Minister a dinner, and the head of the Opposition another dinner, and I was taken out to see a stock-farm where I took lunch. The really interesting part, however, was meeting the people themselves. They were delightful. Of course I became hopelessly mixed as to their names; it was impossible to meet a couple of hundred men and women, even very intimately, for forty-eight hours, and disentangle them completely from the couple of hundred different men and women I had met in the previous forty-eight hours, or the couple of hundred whom I met in the preceding forty-eight hours. However, the general impression was very vivid.
I was struck in Hungary, as later in Holland and the Scandinavian countries, by the fact that I was really more in sympathy with the people whom I met than with the corresponding people of the larger continental nations. Their ways of looking at life were more like mine, and their attitude toward the great social and economic questions more like those of my friends in America. The Hungarian women, for instance, were almost the only women of Continental Europe with whom I could talk in the same intimate way that I could with various American and English women whom I have known—Mrs. Lodge, Mrs. La Farge, Mrs. Selmes, and other friends, of my own country, and Lady Delamere and Mrs. Sanderson of your country, whom I met at Nairobi, and Lady Spring Bice, and others. The Hungarian women were charming. They seemed to have the solid qualities of the North Germans, and yet the French charm, which the North Germans so totally lacked. I was genuinely sorry to think that I should never see them again. I greatly liked the Hungarian men. Whether it was simply an accident, or whether those I met were typical, I cannot say, but I certainly met an unusual number who were both interesting, and interested in things that were worth while; and who were keenly alert about political and economic matters, and yet were enthusiastic sportsmen or were well read or had other interests that were not merely stodgy. Teleki, the African explorer, was one; either his wife or his sister-in-law had written a novel worth reading. By the way, a Hungarian novelist whose books I had always liked, the author of "St. Peter's Umbrella," also called on me, and later caused me no slight embarrassment by giving an interview in which he contrasted my attitude of appreciation of his novels with the lack of such appreciation on the part of the Austrian imperial family!
At the different dinners and in the houses I visited I found almost everybody able to speak English, and well acquainted with whatever of note was written in either French, English, or German. Of course there is not much written in Magyar, and in order to hold communion with the rest of the world cultivated people in Hungary have to know foreign languages in a way that it is not necessary for Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Germans, and so they are pleasanter for foreigners to get on with. One of the leading public men I met—I think an ex-Prime Minister—was a Calvinist, and I was interested to see the strong impress that Calvinism had stamped upon the Magyar character. Evidently the Calvinistic theology was much more of a force with him than with most even of the descendants of the Puritans with whom I am intimate in America; and while the liberalizing spirit of the age and of his political party and the needs of Hungary had greatly broadened him, he still retained to a curious degree traits which reminded me all the time of those of men with whom I was familiar in my own country. His ancestors and mine had been at the Synod of Dort together three centuries before, and though he was very much broader and more tolerant than they were, he was not able to look at their work from quite the detached standpoint that to me seemed the only possible standpoint. But he was a fine fellow, and I was in thorough sympathy with him; and his wife was a brilliant and charming woman. Altogether I could not overstate how thoroughly at home I felt in Hungary, and how I enjoyed myself in spite of the rush in which I was kept.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
 FROM KHARTOUM TO LONDON—CONTINUED
there was a sequel to my visit to Vienna which was rather amusing.   By appointment I called on the Prime Minister. He was a statesman and diplomat of the old school, very polished and cultivated, with real power, and entirely cynical.   Down at bottom he had no more sympathy with me than Merry del Val, but unlike Merry del Val he recognized the fact that the world had moved; and went out of his way, as did the Emperor, to thank me for what I had done at Rome, saying that it made their task a little easier; and I think he was instrumental in having the Papal Nuncio call on me when our Ambassador, who is himself a Catholic, gave me a reception at the Embassy—a fact which drove the ultras of the Vatican nearly crazy.   He speedily brought the subject round to the question of universal peace and disarmament, and cautiously tried to draw me out as to what my attitude would be on these subjects when I saw the Kaiser in Berlin.   Carnegie, personally and through Root, my onetime Secretary of State, had been asking me to try to get the Emperor committed to universal arbitration and disarmament, and had been unwary enough to let something leak into the papers about what he had proposed. Root was under obligations to Carnegie for the way that Carnegie had helped him in connection with the Pan-American movement, and he had also helped the Smithsonian in fitting out the scientific people who went with me on my African trip; and Carnegie's purposes as regards international peace are good; and so I told him that I would see whether I could speak to the Emperor or not, but that I did not believe any good would come of it. 

From America, I suppose through some inadvertence  on Mr. Carnegie's part, it got into the newspapers that I was to speak to the Emperor about peace; whereupon all the well-meaning and unspeakably foolish busybodies who, partly from sincere interest and partly from fussiness and vanity, like to identify themselves with large reforms, and whose identification therewith always does damage to the said reforms, began to write to me and to the papers. Evidently this had much alarmed the German foreign office people, and probably the German Kaiser himself. Those responsible for Germany's policies at the present day are most ardent disciples of, and believers in, Frederick the Great and Bismarck, and not unnaturally have an intense contempt for the mock altruism of so many worthy people who will not face facts—a contempt which Bismarck showed for Motley when Motley very foolishly thrust upon him advice about how to deal with conquered France. Having been trained to believe only in loyalty to the national welfare, and in the kind of international morality characteristic of one pirate among his fellow pirates, they are unable to understand or appreciate the standards of international morality which men like Washington and Lincoln genuinely believed in, which have been practised on a very large scale for two or three generations by your people in India, and latterly in Egypt and which are now being applied by our own people on a smaller scale in the Philippines and the West Indies.

Evidently the German foreign office availed themselves of the very close relations between Austria and Germany, and got the Austrian Prime Minister to sound me as to my intentions. He took advantage of a question I put to him anent a remark to me by the Duke of Abruzzi, who had told me that in Europe they firmly believed that two wars were certain, one between Japan and ourselves, one between you and Germany. After repeating this remark, I said that I did not believe war would ever come between Japan and ourselves, certainly not if we kept up a sufficiently efficient navy, and fortified Hawaii and the Canal; and I asked the Prime Minister whether such a calamity as a war between England and Germany would really be provoked by Germany. He at once answered that he had first-hand information which made him sure that Germany had no intention whatever of provoking a war, but that she did not intend to be at the mercy of any power; and that as her trade was growing, and her overseas interests growing, she believed it necessary to build up a big fleet. I mentioned that while President I had sounded, unofficially and informally, Germany and England as well as other powers to see if we could not limit the size of armaments, at least by limiting the size of ships; but had found that while all the other powers were willing, Germany and England would not consent; Germany taking the ground that the status quo put her at an improper disadvantage, and England saying— as I believe quite properly—that naval superiority was vital to her existence and that if Germany intended to alter the status quo she could not agree under any consideration to refrain from a policy of shipbuilding which would prevent such alteration from coming into effect. I added that while I had no proposition to make myself I did wish that the German authorities would seriously consider whether it was worth while for them to keep on with a building program which was the real cause why other nations were forced into the very great expense attendant upon modern naval preparation.
The minister asked me if I intended to speak about this in Berlin. I answered that I did not know, that I could not tell whether or not the chance would arise. I of course expected him to inform the Berlin foreign office of what I had said, and indeed desired him to do so; but I had not expected what followed. Two days later the Berlin papers came out with semi-official statements to the effect that the Berlin foreign office had been informed that I wished to talk to them on the subject of universal peace and disarmament, but that they did not believe for a moment that I would be so lacking in understanding of the requirements of the situation as to take advantage of my friendly personal visit to broach a subject which would be very distasteful and which the government authorities would have to refuse to discuss.
I was really grateful, not only to the Austrian for what he had done, but to the Berlin Government for taking such public action. Not only Mr. Carnegie, but a multitude of well-meaning and ignorant people had wrought themselves into the belief that if I chose I could do something with the Emperor for peace; and I was glad to be able to point out to them this announcement from the German foreign office in advance of my visit, which saved me the necessity of trying to explain why I could accomplish nothing. On the other hand it did give me exactly the chance that I wished with both the Emperor and the Chancellor in Berlin. To each of them I pointed out these statements in the German papers, and stated that I had had no intention of broaching the subject unless it had become evident that they were willing to have me speak; but after such a publication, obviously inspired by my conversation with the Austrian Prime Minister, it was due to myself that I should tell them at first-hand just what that conversation had been; and I accordingly repeated it to them, -ending by saying that I knew perfectly well not only from what had appeared in the press but from other information I had received, that they were reluctant to discuss the matter, that I hoped they understood that I was a practical man and in no sense a peace-at-any-price man, and that all I had felt was that the subject was of such importance as to warrant consideration as to whether or not it was feasible to do something practical toward limiting expense and putting difficulties in the way of war.
The Emperor was very courteous, and said that he really had no control over the matter, that it was something which affected the German people, and that the German people, or at least that section of the German people upon whom he relied and in whom he believed, would never consent to Germany's failing to keep herself able to enforce her rights either on land or at sea. The Chancellor was obviously a good deal taken aback at my remarks, and at first started to deny that they had inspired the articles in the press, whereupon I laughed and told him not to bother about denying it because I had not minded in the least. He then laughed too, and said that he had become sorry that the articles were ever published, and had not personally approved of their being published. The Austrian Ambassador in Berlin was very anxious to see me and was wholly unable to resist asking whether I had spoken to the Emperor and the Foreign Office about peace and disarmament; so I replied by asking him whether the publication in question had been made by him prior to communicating the matters to the German Foreign Office, or by the German Foreign Office after he had communicated my conversation with his chief; and I added that I did not mind in the least, that while I thought the publication in the papers unnecessary, it had given me the chance to say what I had to say, a chance which otherwise I probably would not have had. He nearly choked in trying to invent some appropriate remark in response; but failed.
From Vienna I went to Paris, where I joined Mrs. Roosevelt at the Bacons'. Bacon, old college friend of mine, was then, and is now, Ambassador to Paris. He and his wife are dear people, and staying with them was an oasis in a desert of hurry and confusion. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Paris, but by the end I began to feel jaded. Jusserand had come across the ocean to meet me. We are very fond of him. Frenchmen, thank heavens! do understand a liking for the things in life that are most interesting, and though official deputations accompanied me round to the three or four museums or picture galleries which I insisted on visiting, the officials differed markedly from the corresponding type in most other countries and were pleasant companions. The Royalist press, being Catholic, was inclined to receive me coldly because of the Vatican incident, but my Sorbonne speech delighted them; and, curiously enough, it also delighted the Republicans who were getting very uneasy over the Socialist propaganda, or at least over the mob work and general sinister destruction in which Socialist propaganda was beginning to take practical form. Accordingly, all the Republican leaders hailed what I said because it came from a radical Republican, whose utterances they could applaud and hold up as an excuse for strong action on their part, without its being possible for their foes to taunt them with being royalists and reactionaries in disguise.
Besides various formal functions such as dinner and receptions by the municipal government and by the Institute (of which I had been made a member and where, by the way, I genuinely enjoyed myself), I was also given two or three private breakfasts and dinners at which I met Briand, and various other members of the Government and the Opposition, in intimate and informal fashion. These I especially liked. Neither the President nor the ex-President was interesting; they were good honest respectable figureheads ; but the members of the various ministries were thoroughly competent men, of much ability. It shows my own complacent Anglo-Saxon ignorance that I had hitherto rather looked down upon French public men, and have thought of them as people of marked levity. When I met them I found that they had just as solid characters as English and American public men, although with the attractiveness which to my mind makes the able and cultivated Frenchman really unique. I speedily realized that it was not they who were guilty of levity, it was the French nation, or rather the combination of the French national character with the English parliamentary system; a system admirable for England, taking into account the English national character, the customs and ways of looking at things inherited generation after generation by both the English people and their public men, and especially the fact that there are in England two parties; but a system which has not worked well in a government by groups, where the people do not mind changing their leaders continually, and are so afraid of themselves that, unlike the English and Americans, they do not dare trust any one man with a temporary exercise of large power for fear they will be weak enough to let him assume it permanently.
Of course in talking with these French Republicans, who are absorbed in the questions that affect all of us under popular government, I had a sense of kinship that it was impossible to feel with men, however high-minded and well-meaning, whose whole attitude of mind towards these problems was different from mine. With the French Republicans I could on the whole, and in spite of certain points on which we radically differed, feel a sympathy somewhat akin to that which I felt in talking with English Liberals. Of course there are plenty of French Republicans, just as there are plenty of English radicals and American progressives, with whom I am as completely out of sympathy as with any ecclesiastic or royalist reactionary. But fundamentally it is the radical liberal in all three countries with whom I sympathize. He is at least working toward the end for which I think we should all of us strive; and when he adds sanity and moderation to courage and enthusiasm for high ideals he develops into the kind of statesman whom alone I can whole-heartedly support. In France I also met a number of men of letters whom I had really wished to see, men like Victor Berard and De la Gorce and Boutroux. What a charming man a charming Frenchman is!
There was one incident which interested me. The French were bound that I should see some of their troops. I had at first refused to accept a review, simply because I did not have the time; but Jusserand finally told me that they understood that the German Emperor would have a big review in my honor, and that the French people would take it amiss if I so acted as to give the impression that while I believed France had charm and refinement, so that it was worth while seeing her museums and picture galleries, her salons, her doctors of the Sorbonne and the Institute, yet I did not take her military power seriously, nor deem her soldiers worth seeing; for, said Jusserand, the French pride themselves upon being a military nation, and admit no military inferiority to any people, no matter how much they may also pride themselves upon proficiency in all that tells for the grace and refinement of life. Of course I hastily withdrew my declination, saying with entire sincerity that I was a very great admirer of the French soldiers ; and so off I went and saw a sham battle.
I was in the usual dreadful dress of the "visiting statesman," with frock coat and top hat; but when the colonel of the cavalry regiment asked me if I would not ride I said I would if they gave me a pair of leggings, having first hastily consulted Jusserand to find if there would be objection. For reasons which I never quite clearly understood, they were all, officers and men, very much pleased at my riding, and a couple of days later I received a letter written by the senior non-commissioned officer on behalf of the enlisted men of the squadron to which the horse belonged, thanking me and saying they would always take special care of the horse and commemorate in their company records the fact that I had ridden it. I wrote them back telling them that when I got back home I would send them a photograph of myself in my uniform as colonel of the cavalry regiment with which I had served in Cuba; and this I accordingly did, and they hung it in their caserne. I was a good deal struck by the fact that this was done by the enlisted men, as I found out, without consultation with their officers. It was the kind of thing that our own enlisted men would have done; the kind of thing that the men of the battleship Louisiana did when Mrs. Roosevelt and I went down to Panama, when after our return the Jackies, purely on their own initiative, subscribed a fund with which to have Tiffany make a huge loving cup, which they then sent to Mrs. Roosevelt by a deputation of four of their number. All bursting with pride and so clean that they looked as if they had been holy-stoned.
From Paris I went to Brussels, where we were only able to stay twenty-four hours. I made an address at the Brussels Exposition, the king presiding over the meeting. The American Minister had made a point of my accepting the invitation to make this address because he was heartily ashamed, as was I, of the fact that Congress had failed to make any appropriation for an American exhibit—one of the many exasperating features of Congressional action being a tendency continually to pass resolutions asking nations to send exhibits to our own Expositions, and a bland disregard of requests sent by foreign countries for us in return to make exhibits at their expositions. The Belgian officials and leading men whom I met impressed me very favorably, and their women seemed to me to have the domestic qualities developed much more like our women in England and America than was the case in France, and yet to have the charm and attractiveness of the Frenchwomen. The king was a huge fair young man, evidently a thoroughly good fellow, with excellent manners, and not a touch of pretension. I slipped off for an hour or two to see a couple of things which I wished to see, and at one place he suddenly came across me and instantly took me in his carriage, driving me through the streets as if he had been one of his own subjects, and being greeted by the people in cordial democratic fashion. He afterwards drove me out to the palace, where I dressed for dinner, as he wished to show me some things beforehand. The queen proved really delightful, really cultivated and intellectual, so much so that we made especial inquiries about her; it proved that she was the daughter of a German prince, who was a great oculist, a man who had done first-class work as such; and evidently she had inherited her father's ability. Every evening, as she informed us, she read aloud to the king books in which they were both interested; and altogether they led a thoroughly wholesome life.
Next day we went to Holland, and on our way to The Hague stopped for lunch at Het Loo with the Queen Wilhelmina. The Hollanders had shown so strong a feeling of pride in having a prominent American President who was of Dutch blood visit them that I had naturally appreciated it.
I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Holland, both at The Hague and Amsterdam. The people were charming, and the crowd behaved exactly as if I was still President and home in America; and we got a few hours to ourselves in which to see one or two of the picture galleries, one or two villages, and the tombs of William the Silent and de Ruyter. I was surprised to find how widely English was understood and even spoken, I had to make a speech in a church, which was crowded, and evidently a very large proportion of the audience followed me carefully and understood practically all that I said, not only applauding but laughing at the points I made. There was one thing I found really consoling about Holland. After the beginning of the eighteenth century it had gone steadily downhill, and was very low indeed at the close of the Napoleonic wars. Since then it has steadily risen, and though the nation itself is small I was struck by the power and alertness and live spirit of the people as individuals and collectively. They had completely recovered themselves. When I feel melancholy about some of the tendencies in England and the United States, I like to think that they probably only represent temporary maladies, and that ultimately our people will recover themselves and achieve more than they have ever achieved; and Holland shows that national recovery can really take place.
From Holland we went to Denmark, where we stayed at the palace. This much upset all the diplomats, and especially the Russian representative, who complained to our representative—a close friend of ours and a delightful fellow, Maurice Egan—"Why! they have never before had a private citizen in the palace. I understand Mr. Roosevelt is now nothing in his own country. He is not even an Excellency; and yet he and his family are staying in the rooms the Czar occupied last Summer." The king was somewhere in South Europe, and I did not meet him until I went to London, but his son the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess received us, and also a couple of delightful brothers or uncles, really fine old gentlemen. Through some mistake our trunks did not come on the same train with us. By wire we found they would reach us at about seven thirty. The Crown Prince then came to Mrs. Roosevelt and said that they had asked some people to dinner (it was a formal court dinner) at seven, and there was to be a reception immediately afterwards; that if we waited for the trunks and then got dressed, instead of getting dressed for the reception as soon as the dinner was over, everything would be delayed; and so he wished to know whether she would mind our all coming in our traveling clothes—fortunately we had clean linen in our handbags. The Hof-Mareschal, a Baron somebody, described the incident afterwards to Egan, who wrote to us: "The baron was immensely impressed with Mrs. Roosevelt's indifference on the subject of clothes. He said: 'His Highness asked her if she would mind coming in her traveling dress, and she sai<J certainly not, and came at once, and evidently never thought of the matter at all.' Then, holding up both hands, 'C'etait vraiment royale!'
I was interested in the Old Age homes, and in the cooperative farming, although I 'could only get a glimpse of both; but I was rather puzzled to find that the very great growth of what I should call the wise and democratic use of the powers of the State toward helping raise the individual standard of social and economic well-being had not made the people more contented. It seems to me that the way Denmark has handled the problem of agricultural well-being, and the problem of dealing with the wageworkers who do manual labor, and of securing them against want in their old age, represents a higher and more intelligent social and governmental action than we have begun to have in America; yet I encountered much bitterness towards the national government among the large and growing Socialistic party. This party had control of the municipality of Copenhagen, and the mayor, or official corresponding to the mayor, who sat by me at the municipal dinner was a Socialist. He was a Jew banker, and I was much interested in finding such a man occupying such a position; he stated that as long as individualism persisted he would be foolish not himself to be a banker or other business man, but that he hoped for the advent of Socialism in such form as to destroy the very kind of individualistic business in which he was engaged.

At Christiania we were taken at once to the palace, where we stayed; and I could hardly speak too strongly of King Haakon, Queen Maud, and little Olaf. They were dears; we were genuinely sorry, when we left them, to think that we would never see them again; if ever Norway decides to turn Republic we should love to have them come to live near Sagamore Hill.
Of course Norway is as funny a kingdom as was ever imagined outside of opera bouffe—although it isn't opera bouffe at all, for the Norwegians are a fine, serious, powerful lot of men and women. But they have the most genuinely democratic society to be found in Europe, not excepting Switzerland; there are only two or three states in the American Union which are as real democracies. They have no nobles, hardly even gentry; they are peasants and small townspeople—farmers, sailors, fisher folk, mechanics, small traders. On this community a royal family is suddenly plumped down. It is much as if Vermont should off hand try the experiment of having a king. Yet it certainly seemed as if the experiment were entirely successful.
I was interested to find that the Norwegians in America had on the whole advised a constitutional kingdom rather than a republic, on the ground that the king would not in any way interfere with the people having complete self-government and yet would give an element of stability to the government, preventing changes from being too violent and making a rallying point; one philosophic leader pointing out that this was not necessary in America, where people had grown to accept the republic as a historic ideal, in itself a symbol and pledge of continuity, but that in Norway the republic would not stand for any such ideal of historic continuity, and moreover would be looked down on by its monarchic neighbors—the last being a touch of apprehension on the score of possible international, social inequality which was both amusing and interesting.

   For such a kingdom, constituted of such materials and with such theories, the entire royal family, king, queen, and prince, were just exactly what was needed. They were as simple and unpretentious as they were good and charming. Olaf was a dear little boy, and the people at large were immensely pleased with him. The King was a trump, privately and publicly; he took a keen and intelligent interest in every question affecting his people, treated them and was treated by them with a curiously simple democracy of attitude which was free from make-believe on either side, and therefore free from the offensive and unpleasant characteristics that were evident in, for instance, the relations of Louis Philippe and the Parisian populace, and while he unhesitatingly and openly discussed questions with his ministers, never in the slightest way sought to interfere with or hamper their free action.
In such a monarchy formal state and ceremonial at the court would have been absurd. Staying at the palace was Ijike staying at any gentleman's house with exceptionally charming and friendly hosts. On the first afternoon, shortly after arriving, I was in the sitting room, when in came the King and Queen with Olaf. Mrs. Roosevelt was in her room, dressing. I gave Olaf various bits of bloodcurdling information about lions and elephants; and after a while his mother and father rose, and said: "Come, Olaf, we must go." Olaf's face fell. "But am I not to see the wife?" he said. We assured him he should see the wife at tea. He was not a bit spoiled; his delight was a romp with his father, and he speedily pressed Kermit and Ethel, whom he adored, into the games. In the end I too succumbed and romped with him as I used to romp with my own children when they were small. Outside of his own father and mother we were apparently the only persons who had ever really played with him in a fashion which he considered adequate; and he loudly bewailed our departure.

When we reached London, where he had been brought by his father and mother to attend his grandfather's funeral, Princess Beatrice brightened up for a moment as she told me that Olaf had announced to her: "I would like to marry Ethel; but I know I never shall!" Later, after the funeral, when I called to pay my respects to Queen Alexandra at Buckingham Palace, after being received by her I was taken to see her sister the Dowager-Empress of Russia. She was a very intelligent woman, and kept me nearly an hour discussing all kinds of subjects. Towards the end I began to hear little squeals in the hall, and when I left the Empress, there was Olaf patiently waiting outside the door. He had heard I was in the Palace, and had refused to go down to his dinner until he could see me—with the obvious belief that I would have a game of romps with him. I tossed him in the air, and rolled him on the floor while he shouted with delight; then happening to glance up, I saw that the noise had attracted the Empress, who had opened the door to look on; I paused for a moment, whereupon Olaf exclaimed with a woe-begone face "but aren't you going on with the play?"
At Christiania I saw Nansen the arctic explorer; he reminded me that a dozen years before, when he had dined with me while in America, he had told me that Peary was the best man among the living arctic explorers, and that he had a first-class chance to reach the pole. I had to speak to the Nobel Committee, at the University, at a huge "Banquet" of the canonical—and unspeakably awful type—and thoroughly enjoyed seeing the vigorous, self-reliant people; they lined the streets in dense masses, and had a peculiar barking cheer, unlike any I ever heard elsewhere. But we enjoyed most the family life—it was real family life—of our host and hostess; it was not only very pleasant, but restful, in the palace; we felt as if we were visiting friends, who were interesting and interested, and who wished us to be comfortable in any way we chose. They both frankly commiserated us because we were to stay in the palace at Berlin, for they looked back with lively horror to the way the Kaiser had drilled them when they were at the palace. Said Queen Maud: "I was so frightened that finally I grew afraid to speak to any of them; and when I tried to speak to the servants, I found that they were just as much afraid of me!" They were much interested when I told them my experience about the invitation the Emperor had sent me. This was at Cairo; and the invitation to stay at the palace was to me only. I saw Count Hatzfeld, the German diplomatic agent, an old friend, and told him that I was sure that this was a mistake, and that the Emperor did not know that Mrs. Roosevelt was with me; because of course I could not accept if Mrs. Roosevelt was not included. A couple of days later he came to see me, told me that he had cabled to Berlin, that, as I had supposed, it was simply a mistake, and that we would at once receive an invitation for both of us; which came immediately afterwards.
In Norway I got an attack of bronchitis, which nearly destroyed my voice, and I had to do a good deal of doctoring for the rest of the trip; but I managed to meet every engagement, though in Sweden and Germany I had some hard times.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
PROM KHARTOUM TO LONDON—CONCLUDED
sweden was delightful! We stayed at the Palace, and the Crown Prince and Princess were our hosts, as the king was in the South of Europe. There was a serious-minded uncle, a very strong Y. M. C. A. man, and another uncle, of the hussar colonel type. The Crown Prince himself was a thoroughly good fellow, very serious and honest, the kind of man who, if he were in England, would have made a good, rather radical, Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am sure would on the whole have backed up your son. His wife was physically, mentally and morally a thoroughly healthy and charming woman, and their three little children were evidently being brought up well in all respects, and were as attractive, busy, vigorous small souls as one could wish to see; the elder couple playing with steam-engine-like energy, and the baby crowing with lusty delight. We lunched with a younger brother, Prince Wilhelm. He had lunched with me in America, but as at that time there had been nothing specially to identify him, it had entirely slipped my mind, and I nearly got into a scrape by asking his wife if I had not met him before. She, by the way, was a Russian princess, rather a young girl with a pretty mutinous face, very fond of her baby. She was a curiously Russian type; one of the things that amused me with all these royalties was the way that they resembled the types of their respective countries, although of course they were all of mixed blood, and, in all of them, the predominant strain was German—this quite as much out of Germany as within it. The princess in question was intelligent and cultivated.

   There was one little incident in connection with our host and hostess which quite amused me. We breakfasted and dined with them either alone or with only other members of the family present, owing to the court being in mourning for the King of England. This was a great relief to us. They were thoroughly nice people, and we enjoyed being with them, as it was interesting to get their ideas; although we found that there was no use trying to talk of books with these or any other of the royalties, excepting the Italians and the Queen of Belgium. At dinner the Crown Princess turned to me and said: "Will you let me ask a question which I have no right to ask I" I answered:" Certainly," and she said: "Is it true that Mrs. Roosevelt would not meet the Grand Duke Boris when he was in America; and why?" I laughed and told her I had not the slightest objection to answering; that the Grand Duke in question had led a scandalous life in America, quite openly taking women whose character was not even questionable to public places, and behaving in restaurants and elsewhere so that the police would have been warranted in interfering. We were not at the White House but at Sagamore Hill at the time, and the Russian Ambassador asked permission to bring the Grand Duke to see me, coming over from Newport in a yacht. The request, coming in such a way, I did not feel I could refuse, and told the Ambassador to bring the Grand Duke to lunch; but I made up my mind that I would make the meeting as obviously formal as possible; and Mrs. Roosevelt, who more than shared my feelings and regarded his presence in our private house as both a scandal and an insult, said that she intended to go out, as she saw no necessity why she should meet him, and her absence would emphasize the entirely formal character of the reception. Accordingly out she went. The Ambassador and the Grand Duke were both disturbed by her absence and the former asked me if she would not return in time to meet the Grand Duke, and when I did not answer, repeated the question, whereupon I merely said: "Mrs. Roosevelt has gone out to lunch and is not in the house, Mr. Ambassador." Neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor I ever said anything on the subject; but apparently the Ambassador and the Grand Duke were not able to conceal their feelings, and expressed their chagrin to a sufficient number of people to insure the matter getting into the papers, which it accordingly did.

Stockholm was a delightful city, and the Swedes fine people. Sven Hedin was among the many interesting people whom I met, and I went to the museum and saw the collection of battleflags—German, Danish, Spanish, Russian—gained in the great days from Gustavus Adolphus to Charles the Twelfth, when for a century this little nation stood on the perilous heights of greatness and waged war on equal terms with the Titans of the day. I was saddened to see how Socialism had grown among the people, and in a very ugly form; for one of the Socialist tracts was an elaborate appeal to stop having children; the Socialists being so bitter in their class hatred as to welcome race destruction as a means of slaking it. Personally, as Sweden practically has not only free but almost democratic institutions, I could not understand the extreme bitterness of the Socialist attitude, and in view of what at that very moment the Russians were doing in Finland, I felt that any weakening of Sweden in Russia's face came pretty near being a crime against all real progress and civilization. In Sweden, as in Hungary and France, the reception given me was not merely one of general friendliness, but a reception coming from people who felt that they were jeopardized alike by the apostles of reaction, and by the preachers of license under the guise of liberty, and who clutched at any leadership which could be regarded as genuinely popular and yet genuinely sane.
From Sweden we crossed to Germany. The Emperor had been much upset by the King's death, and I found was very much concerned as to whether, if he had me at the palace, it would not look as if, while the king was still un-buried, he was showing levity and lack of consideration; and yet was afraid he might hurt my feelings by withdrawing his invitation. I had guessed this and made inquiries by wire through our Ambassador, and, evidently to the Emperor's relief, asked him whether in view of the circumstances he would not permit us to stay at the Embassy; which he accordingly did.
At Berlin and in Germany I was well received, that is, the Emperor and all the people high up were more than cordial. So were the professors and the people of the university and the scientific men generally; and the crowds were civil. But it was curious and interesting to notice the contrast between my reception in Germany and my reception in the other countries of Europe which I had already visited or visited afterwards. Everywhere else I was received, as I have said, with practically as much enthusiasm as in my own country when I was President. In Germany I was treated with proper civility, all the civility which I had a right to demand and expect; and no more. In Paris the streets were decorated with French and American flags in my honor, and when I went to the theater at the Frangais every one rose and applauded so that I had to get up in the box and bow repeatedly, first to the actors, who had stopped the piece, and then to the audience. In Berlin the authorities showed me every courtesy, and the people all proper civility. But excepting the university folk, they really did not want to see me. When I left Sweden I left a country where tens of thousands of people gathered on every occasion to see me; every station was jammed with them. When I came into Germany a few hundred might be at each station, or might not be. They were courteous, decorously enthusiastic, and that was all. It was just the same on our trip from Berlin to London. We were given the royal carriage, and every attention shown us by the officials; at each station there were a few score or a few hundred people, polite and mildly curious. Late in the evening we crossed into Holland; and at the first place we stopped there was a wildly enthusiastic mob of ten thousand people cheering and calling. The Swedes and Hollanders, and indeed as I have said the people of all the other countries I visited, felt a quite unwarranted feeling of interest in and liking for me, because to them I symbolized my country, and my country symbolized something that stirred them.
The Germans did not like me, and did not like my country; and under the circumstances they behaved entirely correctly, showing me every civility and making no pretense of an enthusiasm which was not present. I do not know quite what the reason of the contrast was; but it was evident that, next to England, America was very unpopular in Germany. The upper classes, stiff, domineering, formal, with the organized army, the organized bureaucracy, the organized industry of their great, highly-civilized and admirably-administered country behind them, regarded America with a dislike which was all the greater because they could not make it merely contempt. They felt that we were entirely unorganized, that we had no business to be formidable rivals at all in view of our loose democratic governmental methods, and that it was exasperating to feel that our great territory, great natural resources, and strength of individual initiative enabled us in spite of our manifold shortcomings to be formidable industrial rivals of Germany; and, more incredible still, that thanks to our Navy and our ocean protected position, we were in a military sense wholly independent and slightly defiant; and they felt that I typified the nation they disliked, and, more especially, that as a volunteer soldier and an adventurer who had fought for his own hand and had risen in irregular ways, I typified the very qualities to which they objected.
Moreover, the German upper classes, alone among the European upper classes—so far as I knew—really did not like the social type I represented. All the other people of the upper classes in Europe whom I met, even the extremely aristocratic Austrians, seemed eager to see me, just because I did represent something new to them. They regarded me as a characteristically American type, which however had nothing in common with the conventional American millionaire; to them it was interesting to meet a man who was certainly a democrat—a real, not a sham, democrat—both politically and socially, who yet was a gentleman, who had his own standards, and did not look down upon or feel defiant toward, or desire to offend, them, but who did not feel that his standards or position were in any way dependent upon their views and goodwill. For instance, the different sovereigns, and the men like the Austrians whom I met in the Vienna Jockey Club, were very anxious, so far as good breeding permitted, to make inquiries as to my life and the lives that my sons were to lead. They thoroughly understood the part I had played in politics, my having been the colonel of a good cavalry regiment in a war, and my finding amusement in hunting big game during a year's trip in Africa—all of this they would have much liked to do themselves. They would have much liked to have held such positions as I had held. Also they all of them immediately fraternized with Kermit, feeling at home with him at once, and much admiring the fact that before he was twenty he had killed lion and elephants, that he could ride and shoot, that he was very quiet and modest, and yet entirely self-confident, and had his own ideals, which were alien to theirs.
Men who had done these things they could understand; and they also understood men who did the things that their own bourgeois class did; but what puzzled them was to find the two characters combined. They would often write to one another from one capital to another about this, and ask in one place questions as to what I had said in another. I told them, for instance, that Ted was a better shot and rider than either Kermit or myself, and if any war occurred I should start him to raise a cavalry troop at once, and would guarantee that he would acquit himself well in handling his men on the march and in battle; that as soon as he had left Harvard he had gone into a mill, had worked with blouse and tin dinner pail, exactly like any other workman for a year, and when he had graduated from the mill had gone out for the same firm to San Francisco, where he was selling carpets; and I added that after finishing his course at Harvard Kermit would do something precisely the same if either of them failed to work hard at any honest occupation for his livelihood, while at the same time keeping himself in such trim that he would be able to perform a freeman's duty and fight as efficiently as any one if the need arose.
All this, while very puzzling, was interesting to most of the people whom I met outside of Germany, and while they would most certainly have objected to their own sons having such ideals they were rather attracted by the fact that my sons and I had them. But in Germany, while of course there were exceptions, most of the upper classes regarded such theories of life as irregular, unnatural, and debasing, and were rendered uncomfortable by them. The lower classes, on the other hand, were Socialists who felt that I was really an enemy rather than a friend, and my ideals were just as alien to them as to the upper classes. The middle class looked on me as a representative of an America which was all middle class, and which consisted of their business rivals, whose manners of life and ways of thought they regarded with profound dislike, and whose business rivalry was irritating and obnoxious.
Of course I do not mean that this was the universal feeling. I never had a pleasanter experience than with Schillings, the African naturalist and explorer, and a number of other African explorers and scientific men whom I met while in Berlin. I thoroughly enjoyed being at the university, and meeting the professors there; and I became much attached to Major Korner, who was specially appointed as my aide because they knew how fond I was of the poet Korner, his collateral ancestor; and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the able men who were the head of politics and the Administration.
Von Tirpitz, the Secretary of War, I had seen when he was with Prince Henry in America. He is an exceedingly able man. He remarked one night at dinner to Mrs. Roosevelt that he had always heard that the Emperor and I were alike, that he now saw the resemblance, but of course I had had to take responsibilities and win my own way and do things for myself, which naturally made much difference between us! Indeed I was not a little surprised to find that the Emperor was by no means as great a character in Berlin as outsiders supposed him to be, and that both the men highest in politics and the Administration, and the people at large, took evident pleasure in having him understand that he was not supreme, and that he must yield to the will of the Nation on any point as to which the Nation had decided views. Von Tirpitz was particularly interested in the voyage of the battlefleet round the world, and he told me frankly that he had not believed we could do it successfully, and added that your (the English) Naval Office and Foreign Office had felt the same way—which I told him I knew. He then said that he expected that Japan would attack us while the fleet was on its way round, and asked me if I had not also expected this. I told him that I had not expected such an attack, but that I had thought it possible ; in other words, that I thought the chances were against it, but there was a chance for it.
My point of view at the time the fleet sailed, was that if the Japanese attacked it, it was a certain sign that they were intending to attack us at the first favorable opportunity. I had been doing my best to be polite to the Japanese, and had finally become uncomfortably conscious of a very, very slight undertone of veiled truculence in their communications in connection with things that happened on the Pacific Slope; and I finally made up my mind that they thought I was afraid of them. Through an ex-member of the Dutch Cabinet, and, rather curiously, through two of the Austrian secretaries of Embassy—all at or from Tokio—I found that the Japanese war party firmly believed that they could beat us, and, unlike the Elder Statesmen, thought I also believed this. Then Ian Hamilton (whose "Staff Officer's Note Book" I think particularly valuable) wrote me congratulating me upon my efforts to keep the peace, and adjuring me by all means to do so, and not under any circumstances to let America get drawn into war with Japan until industrialism had time to eat out the Japanese military fiber. On receipt of this letter I definitely came to the conclusion that, if this was the way a friend of ours felt who had ample opportunities of knowing, the Japanese undoubtedly also felt that they were our superiors ; and that it was time for a show down. I had great confidence in the fleet; I went over everything connected with it and found that the administrative officers on shore were calmly confident that they could keep everything in first class shape, while the officers afloat, from the battleship commanders to the lieutenants in charge of the torpedo boats, were straining like hounds in a leash, and the enlisted men were at least as eager, all desertions stopping and the ships becoming for the first time over-manned as soon as there was a rumor that we might have trouble with Japan, and that the fleet might move round to the Pacific. I felt that, in any event, if the fleet was not able to get to the Pacific in first class shape, we had better find it out; and if Japan intended to have war it was infinitely better that we should gain two or three months necessary to prepare our fleet to start to the Pacific, instead of having to take those two or three months after war began.
Accordingly, in answer to the question of Von Tirpitz, I told him that when the fleet had once started, it meant that we had gained three months anyhow, and that the fleet was doing what it would have to do in any event if the Japanese went to war; and so that if they did make war it would be proof positive that I had followed exactly the right course; and that if they did not go to war, but became peaceful, it would also be proof positive that I had followed exactly the right course. The latter was what actually happened; and every particle of trouble with the Japanese Government and the Japanese press stopped like magic as soon as they found that our fleet had actually sailed, and was obviously in good trim. As I told Von Tirpitz, I thought it a good thing that the Japanese should know that there were fleets of the white races which were totally different from the fleet of poor Rojestvensky. He said to me, as did the Emperor, that he regarded this voyage of the battlefleet as having done more for peace in the Orient than anything else that could possibly have happened.
I enjoyed meeting the various other ministers—the Chancellor, the Minister of War, and others. I hope it is not un-gallant of me to say that the North German women of the upper classes were less attractive than the corresponding women of any country I visited. They have fine domestic qualities, and if only they keep these qualities, then the question of their attractiveness is from the standpoint of the race, of altogether minor importance. But these domestic virtues seem to have been acquired at the cost of other attributes, which many other women who are at least as good wives and mothers as the German women, do not find it necessary to sacrifice. Perhaps they are cowed in their home life. Their husbands, who also have fine qualities, not only wish to domineer over the rest of mankind—which is not always possible—but wish to, and do, domineer over their own wives. Whether because of this, or for some other reason, these same wives certainly did not seem attractive in the sense not only that their more southern neighbors were, but their more northern neighbors, like the Swedes.
Of course my chief interest at Berlin was in the Emperor himself. He is an able and powerful man. The first day we went out to take lunch with him. Afterwards he drove us to Potsdam, and showed us over Sans Souci. He also held army maneuvers at which I was present. On this occasion I rode with him for about five hours, and he talked steadily; and on another afternoon we spent three hours together. He was much interested to find how he was looked at by outsiders, and finally put a practically direct question to me as to how he was regarded in America; and I answered: "Well! your Majesty, I don't know whether you will understand our political terminology; but in America we think that if you lived on our side of the water you would carry your ward and turn up at the convention with your delegation behind you—and I cannot say as much for most of your fellow sovereigns!" Of course this needed a little explanation, but he was immensely pleased and amused with it when he understood it. He has a real sense of humor, as is shown by the comments he wrote on the backs of the photographs he sent me, which had been taken of us while we were at the maneuvers by his court photographer. Morever, he is entirely modest about the many things which he thoroughly knows, such as the industrial and military conditions and needs of Germany. But he lacks all sense of humor when he comes to discuss the things that he does not know, and which he prides himself upon knowing, such as matters artistic and scientific.
In the fundamentals of domestic morality, and as regards all that side of religion which is moral, we agreed heartily; but there is a good deal of dogmatic theology which to him means much and to me is entirely meaningless; and on the other hand, as is inevitable with a man brought up in the school of Frederick the Great and Bismarck—in contrast to any one whose heroes are men like Timoleon, John Hampden, Washington, and Lincoln—there were many points in international morality where he and I were completely asunder. But at least we agreed in a cordial dislike of shams and of pretense, and therefore in a cordial dislike of the kind of washy movement for international peace with which Carnegie's name has become so closely associated. The Emperor, as was natural and proper, took a certain sardonic amusement in the fact that the Czar had started the two international peace congresses at The Hague, and between times had fought a needless and unsuccessful war, had seen his country indulge in most revolting massacres of the Jews, had kept Poland under his heel, and had shamefully broken faith with, and prepared for the infamous subjection of, poor little Finland. I do not wonder that cynics take unalloyed enjoyment out of the antics of those professional peace people who have discovered in Russia their champion and ideal.
The Emperor, as every one knows, talks with the utmost freedom with almost every one. I especially desired to talk with him about the relations of Germany with England, and these he discussed eagerly and at great length. Moreover, I believe he spoke exactly his mind. He is not down at bottom anything like as hostile to England as his brother Prince Henry, of whom he is rather jealous, by the way. Prince Henry is, I believe, a more really powerful man than the Kaiser, and a more cold-blooded man; and talking with him afterwards I was by no means sure that he did not have clearly in mind the chance of some day using the German fleet against England if exactly the right opportunity arose, simply on the theory that might rules, and that the one capital crime in international matters is weakness. The Kaiser, however, I am confident, never postulates to himself such an idea as the conquest of England. This does not mean that I regard his attitude toward England as free from menace. I do not believe that Germany consciously and of set purpose proposes to herself the idea of a conquest of England, but Germany has the arrogance of a very strong power, as yet almost untouched by that feeble aspiration towards international equity which one or two other strong powers, notably England and America, do at least begin to feel. Germany would like to have a strong navy so that whenever England does something she does not like she could at once assume towards England the tone she has assumed towards France. The Morocco incident shows how far Germany is willing to go in doing what she believes her interest and her destiny demand, in disregard of her own engagements and of the equities of other peoples. If she had a navy as strong as that of England, I do not believe that she would intend to use it for the destruction of England; but I do believe that incidents would be very likely to occur which might' make her so use it.

I said to the Emperor that it seemed to me that a war between England and Germany would be an unspeakable calamity. He answered eagerly that he quite agreed with me, that such a war he regarded as unthinkable; and he continued: "I was brought up in England, very largely; I feel myself partly an Englishman. Next to Germany I care more for England than for any other country." Then with intense emphasis: "I ADOBE ENGLAND!" I said that this was a stronger statement than I myself would be willing quite to make, but that I was very glad he felt so, because I believed that the English, Germans and Americans ought to be fundamentally in accord; and that nothing would so make for the peace and progress of the world. He answered that he entirely agreed with me; and then continued to speak of England with a curious mixture of admiration and resentment. From an experience I had had with him at the time of the Russo-Japanese peace, of which I think I wrote to you, I had grown to realize, very much to my astonishment, that he, the head of the greatest military empire of the day, was as jealously sensitive to English opinion as if he were some parvenu multi-millionaire trying to break into the London social world; and this feeling was evident in his talk. He complained bitterly that Englishmen of high social position never visited Berlin, but, when they came to the Continent, always went to Paris, or some watering place, or else to the Mediterranean. I could not well answer by telling my real thoughts, which were that Berlin, though admirable in the same sense that Chicago and Glasgow are admirable, was not much more attractive than either to the people of whom he spoke. I am convinced that it would make a real difference in the Emperor's feelings if occasionally some man like Londonderry, who has done something, at least, titularly, in politics, and possesses great wealth and high social position, would take a house in Berlin for six weeks during the season. Evidently the Emperor, and indeed the leaders of the North Germans generally, feel towards the English and at times even towards the French, much as the Romans of the Second Punic "War felt towards Greece—a mixture of overbearing pride in their own strength, and of uneasiness as to whether they really are regarded by cultivated and well-bred people as having the social position which they ought to have. The Emperor actually listens to gossip as to what is said of him in the London clubs, even to what he is told quite untruthfully that King George says of him.
I was especially interested in the Emperor, at seeing developed in him, to a much greater degree, what I had already seen traces of in some of the kings, that is, a kind of curious dual consciousness of events, a dual way of looking at them in relation to himself and his fellow sovereigns. Down at the bottom of his heart, he knew perfectly well that he himself was not an absolute sovereign. He had never had a chance to try. Taking into account the curious combination of power, energy, egotism, and restless desire to do, and to seem to do, things, which his character shows, it is rather interesting to speculate on what he would have done as a really absolute sovereign, a Roman Emperor. On the contrary whenever Germany made up its mind to go in a given direction he could only stay at the head of affairs by scampering to take the lead in going in that direction. Down at bottom he realized this, and he also knew that even this rather shorn power, but still a genuine power, which he possessed was not shared by the great majority of his fellow sovereigns, and that they really had no marked influence in shaping the action of their respective countries in spite of their great social importance and prestige. But together with this underlying consciousness of the real facts of the situation went a curious make believe to himself that each sovereign did represent his country in the sense that would have been true two or three centuries ago. In speaking of the late and the present kings of England, he would alternately show both of these attitudes. He evidently had a real affection and respect for King Edward, and also a very active and jealous dislike for him; first one feeling and then the other coming uppermost in his mind, and therefore in his conversation. He complained bitterly that King Edward had always been intriguing against Germany, and hated Germany. He spoke of King George, however, in entirely different terms, saying: "He is a very nice boy. He is a thorough Englishman and hates all foreigners; but I do not mind that at all, as long as he does not hate Germans more than other foreigners, and this I do not think he does. He is merely like other Englishmen and dislikes all people who are not Englishmen, and I don't object to that." This, by the way, amusingly illustrates what I think I have already spoken to you of; the way that each sovereign somehow felt himself of the same stock as his subjects, although of course all the sovereigns were of practically the same stock, and none of them of the blood of their countrymen. Moreover, I think that the Emperor was quite right in the idea he had of King George's attitude, although it was a little exaggerated.
I spoke with the Emperor as to the possibility of putting a stop to the ever-increasing naval expenditures of the nations. This, however, he said, there was no use of his discussing, because the element in Germany which he represented was bound to be powerful on the ocean. I told him that if I were an Englishman I should feel that naval supremacy was a vital matter to England, and that under no circumstances would I permit the fleet to sink to such a position that its mastership of the ocean could be threatened. A little to my surprise he at once answered that he entirely agreed with me, and that if he were an Englishman he would feel just as I had said I would. He went on to say that he did not object at all to England's keeping up her fleet relatively to all other powers, but that he did complain because English statesmen kept holding up Germany as the nation against whom they were to prepare; and he was particularly bitter about Balfour's having taken such an attitude, because he said that Balfour "was a gentleman" and not the ordinary type of politician, and that he knew, better, and ought not to be willing to excite national hostility for partisan ends. I asked him if he did not think that some of his German statesmen had acted in similar fashion, as American politicians I was sorry to say frequently acted; he admitted that this might be true. He earnestly asked me to say to any of the British leaders whom I had a chance to meet just what he had said to me, namely, that he was not hostile to England, and on the contrary admired England and did not believe for a moment that there would be war between England and Germany, that he did not in the least object to the English keeping their navy supreme above all other navies, but that he did very strongly feel "that it was wrong for Englishmen publicly to hold Germany up as the power against whom they were building their navy, because this excited the worst feelings both in England and Germany.
I talked with him over the agricultural conditions in Germany, over Germany's extraordinary industrial progress, and especially over what Germany had done to protect its wage-workers in old age, and when they are crippled by accidents, and when through no fault of their own, they are thrown out of employment; and on most of these matters he was most intelligent and took advanced views. He kept saying that he thought it was the business of those who believe in monarchical government to draw the teeth of the Socialists by remedying all real abuses. I went over the problems at length with him from this standpoint. Of course it was not necessary or advisable that I should speak to him about one thing that had struck me much in Germany, namely, that the discontent was primarily political rather than economic; in other words, that the very real unrest among the lower classes sprung not from a sense that they were treated badly economically, but from the knowledge that it rested not with themselves, but with others as to how they should be treated, whether well or ill, and that this was galling to them.
The Emperor showed an astonishing familiarity with all contemporary and recent history of the political and economic kind. The Japanese were much on his mind. This I was rather glad to see, for I have always felt that it would be a serious condition if Germany, which, industrially and from the military standpoint, is the only white power as well organized as Japan, should strike hands with Japan. The thing that prevents it is Germany's desire to stand well with Russia. The Emperor was sure that Japan intended to organize China, and then, at the head of the Mongolian race, threaten the white dominance of the world. I told him that I thought it very possible that the white race had hard times ahead of it, and that there were evident movements of hostility among the peoples alike of Africa and Asia, but that at this moment if China did develop an army her first use of it would be against Japan, and this Japan well knew. I could not forbear asking him why, as he felt so keenly that the Christian powers should stand as one against the Yellow Peril, he did not feel the same way about Turkey;, of course he could make no real answer, except to say that in the past England also had encouraged Turkey against Christian powers, for her own purposes; which I had to admit.
I liked the Empress and the Princess Royale and the Crown Princess, and I thought the family relations of the Emperor's family good. But it is very possible that the same spirit which makes the Emperor like to hector small kings also makes him dictatorial in his family. In public affairs, experience has taught him as far as his own people are concerned that he must be very careful in going too far in making believe that he is an all-powerful monarch by divine right, and I think he likes to relieve himself by acting the part where it is safer. In international affairs he at times acts as a bully, and moreover as a bully who bluffs and then backs down; I would not regard him nor Germany as a pleasant national neighbor. Yet again and again, and I think sincerely for the moment at least, he dwelt to me on his desire to see England, Germany and the United States act together in all matters of world policy.
Rudyard Kipling's verdict upon Roosevelt's visit to Egypt and England was given in a letter that he wrote to Brander Matthews, of New York, on June 10, 1910:
"Roosevelt has come and gone and done our state great service. Here you have one single-minded person, saying and doing quite casually, things which ought to set the world planning instead of which the world says:   ' Thank you! please do it again!'

"His Egyptian speech was, from certain points of view, the biggest thing he has ever done. I saw him for a hectic half hour in London, and a little at Oxford. Take care of him. He is scarce and valuable."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
ROOSEVBLT AND ROYALTIES
roosevelt's estimates of royal rulers and their functions are set forth in the foregoing narrative of his experiences in various courts of Europe on his journey from Khartoum to London. That he had no desire to become one of them he expressed with characteristic vigor in a letter that he wrote to his friend Charles Gr. Washburn of Worcester, Mass., on March 5, 1913: "You are quite right about my preferring a beetle to a throne; that is, if you use the word 'beetle' as including a field mouse or a weasel. I would not say this aloud, because I have been awfully well treated by kings; but in modern days a king's business is not a man's job. He is kept as a kind of national pet, treated with consideration and distinction, but not allowed to have any say in the running of the affairs of the national household." His impatience with the ceremonies and etiquette of courts found somewhat more vigorous expression when he exclaimed after describing his experiences with potentates of various kingdoms at the funeral of King Edward: "I felt if I met another king I should bite him!" Speaking of a ruler of a particularly petty kingdom, whose fussy anxiety about his prerogatives and the precedence to which he was entitled had both amused and irritated him, he said, drawing upon his bird lore for a simile: ''He is nothing but a twittering wagtail."
It was only the pettiest of the royalties who caused him this irritation. With the chief rulers of Europe, while taking unenvying view of their powers, he was on friendly terms both during and after his Presidency. This was especially the case with King Edward of England, as the correspondence between them shows. With the Kaiser, in spite of the fact that he called him to account on several occasions and forced him to yield to his will, amicable relations were maintained both during his Presidency and during the visit to Berlin in 1910. Probably no other President held such familiar intercourse with the foremost European rulers as Roosevelt did, and the letters that passed between him and them are of quite unusual interest, and present also an additional aspect of Roosevelt's abilities, that of a diplomatic letter-writer.
The correspondence with King Edward began in 1905 with the following letter, written in the King's own hand:
buckingham palace,
February 20, 1905. Dear Mr. President:
Although I have never had the pleasure of knowing you personally, I am anxious to avail myself of the opportunity which your inauguration as President affords, in order to offer you an assurance of my sincere good will and my warm and personal congratulations on this notable occasion.
You, Mr. President, and I have been called upon to superintend the destinies of the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race, and this trust should in my opinion alone suffice to bring us together.
It has often seemed strange to me that, being, as I am, on intimate terms with the rulers of Europe, I should not be in close touch with the President of the United States.
It would be agreeable to me, and I think advantageous to both countries, that this state of things should in future cease to exist. As a slight indication of the feelings which I have entertained for yourself, it gives me great pleasure to ask your acceptance of the accompanying miniature of a great Englishman—Hampden, who was once a landowner in America. I do so in memory of the Old Country and as a mark of esteem and regard for yourself.
The Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet, commanded by my nephew, Prince Louis of Battenberg, will visit my North American colonies this summer and I shall have much gratification in sending it in the autumn to some of the most important ports in your country.
I have had little doubt that the British Squadron will receive the same cordial welcome which your country always shows toward mine.
I sincerely hope that Mrs. Roosevelt and the members of your family are in the best of health, and begging you to bring me to the remembrance of your sister, Mrs. Cowles, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing, Believe me,
Dear Mr. President,
Very truly,
edward  R. &  I.
To this the President replied:
(Original sent in the President's handwriting.)
March 9, 1905. My dear King Edward:
On the eve of the inauguration Sir Mortimer (Durand) handed me Your Majesty's very kind letter, and the miniature of Hampden, than which I could have appreciated nothing more. White, who will hand you this, has repeated to me your conversation with him. Through him I have ventured to send you some studies of mine in our western history.
I absolutely agree with you as to the importance, not only to ourselves but to all the free peoples of the civilized world, of a constantly growing friendship and understanding between the English-speaking peoples. One of the gratifying things in what has occurred during the last decade has been the growth in this feeling of good will. All I can do to foster it will be done. I need hardly add that, in order to foster it, we need judgment and moderation no less than the good will itself. The larger interests of the two nations are the same; and the fundamental, underlying traits of their characters are also the same. Over here, our gravest problems are those affecting us within. In matters outside our borders, we are chiefly concerned, first with what goes on south of us, second with affairs in the Orient; and in both cases our interests are identical with yours.
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.
With hearty thanks for your cordial courtesy, Believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt.
Why the King decided to send the Hampden miniature to Roosevelt was explained several years later by the following letter from the Et. Hon. Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, afterward British Ambassador at Washington, to Roosevelt:
Personal.
30,  norfolk crescent, W.
May 7, 1910. My dear Theodore:
I think I ought to tell you something about our King who died last night. When I came back from seeing you in Washington after you were President he sent for me and talked a long time about you. I told him what I thought you stood for, quite frankly and fully though, if popular impressions at that time had been quite justified, he would not have sympathized much with what I told him. But he did listen very sympathetically. He said he wanted to get into personal relations with you, not as King and President so much as two men with certain aims in common. He mentioned what his father had done on his death bed for good relations, and wished to do something himself. 
He told me he intended to write to you himself and his first intention was to send quite an informal letter. He also wanted to send you some quite unofficial memento, and asked me what I thought you would like as a personal sign of good will — not as a formal presentation. I thought of something I had seen in his collection which was of great historical value — but not at all the sort of thing a King of England might be expected to give to an American President, because it was the picture of a man who had led a successful rebellion against the English crown. But that was the reason he jumped at the idea at once, because, as he said, you were a man who could understand why he like you (and you like himself) should join in admiration of a great Englishman.
I am quite sure that if you had seen him you would have understood some things which seem rather difficult to understand — that is why he did as a fact exert a great influence, and how very thoroughly and sincerely he desired certain things and did do a great deal to promote their accomplishment. I am very sorry you didn 't see him but I daresay you won 't forget what I tell you now — quite privately and for yourself.
Yours ever,
cecil Spring - Rice
In the autumn of 1905 the Cruiser Squadron of the British Atlantic Fleet, on the cruise mentioned in King Edward's letter of February 20, 1905, visited New York and other American ports under command of Prince Louis of Battenberg as Bear-Admiral. Writing to his son Kermit, November 6, 1905, Roosevelt described this interesting scene in the White House ("Theodore Roosevelt 's Letters to His Children," page 144. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919) :
"Prince Louis of Battenberg has been here and I have been very much pleased with him. He is a really good admiral, and in addition he is a well-read and cultivated man and it was charming to talk with him. We had him and his nephew, Prince Alexander, a midshipman, to lunch alone with us, and we really enjoyed having them. At the State dinner he sat between me and Bonaparte, and I could not help smiling to myself in thinking that here was this British Admiral seated beside the American Secretary of the Navy —the American Secretary of the Navy being the grand-nephew of Napoleon and the grandson of Jerome, King of Westphalia; while the British Admiral was the grandson of a Hessian general who was the subject of King Jerome and served under Napoleon, and then, by no means creditably, deserted him in the middle of the Battle of Leipsic.''
The visit of the Prince is referred to again by King Edward in the following letter:
(In the King's own handwriting)
windsor castle,
January 23, 1906. Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
As Lieutenant Colonel Count Gleichen is leaving for the United States in order to take up his appointment as Military Attache to my Embassy at Washington, I gladly take this opportunity of writing you a few lines to recommend him to your notice.
He is a cousin of mine—as his Father was nephew to my beloved mother Queen Victoria and served many years in the army. Gleichen has seen much service both in Egypt and South Africa, and has held important posts, his last being Military Attache at Berlin.
These lines will I trust find you and all the members of your Family in the best of health—and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity of sending my congratulations on the occasion of your daughter's approaching marriage.
I saw Prince Louis of Battenberg last week and heard from him of the great personal kindness he received from you—and how gratified he and the Fleet under his command had been by the splendid and cordial reception which they had met with at the hands of your people!
Trusting that this year may be one of peace and prosperity to all Nations and especially to our loved countries. Believe me,
Dear Mr. President, Very sincerely yours,
edward R. I.
To this the President replied:
(Original sent in the President's handwriting)
February 28, 1906. My Dear King Edward:
Your kind letter has just been handed me by Count Gleichen. It was a pleasure to meet him; he is evidently thoroughly well up in his work; I shall talk with him freely.
Permit me to thank you especially for your most thoughtful and friendly remembrance of my daughter's wedding. Longworth is a good fellow, one of the younger men who have done really well in Congress; he was from my own college, Harvard, and there belonged to my club, the Por-cellian, which is antique as antiquity goes in America, for it was founded in Colonial days; he was on the "Varsity crew," and was, and is, the best violinist who ever came from Harvard.
Have you seen Togo's address to his fleet when it was disbanded? It was so good that I put it in general orders for the army and navy. I enclose you a copy.
The other day I read Ian Hamilton's book on his campaigning with Kuroki. It is the best book I have seen on the Eusso-Japanese war. He stops, however, before he gets to the really big fighting; I suppose there is some red tape in the Department about his going on with it; I heartily wish that your Majesty would look over the volume that is out, and, if you like it, direct Hamilton to go on with the work and finish the account of the entire campaign; it would be a real service.
May I ask that you present my most respectful homage to Her Majesty. Again thanking you, believe me, sir, with great regard,
Very sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt. To His Majesty
King Edward the Seventh, E. & I.
P. S.—I shall send Choate to head our delegation to The Hague conference; its members will work in absolute accord with your delegation. My brother-in-law is an admiral, by the way.
A letter that Roosevelt wrote to King Edward on April 25, 1906, contains a reference to the Algeciras Conference of that year, the secret history of which is published for the first time in Chapters 36 and 37 of Volume 1 of this narrative.
Mr. Frederick "W. Whitridge, mentioned in the letter, was appointed by Roosevelt special American Ambassador to Spain for attendance at the wedding of King Alfonso:
(Original sent in President's handwriting)
April 25, 1906. My dear King Edward:
May I present to you the bearer of this note, Mr. Frederick W. Whitridge, my special ambassador to the King of Spain? He is a good fellow, and stands very close to me.
I think the outcome of the Morocco business was satisfactory, don't you? White speaks in the highest terms of your man Nicholson; between ourselves he grew to feel that neither the German nor French representatives at Algeciras were really straightforward. On the other hand, I am bound to say that both their ambassadors here, Jusserand and Sternburg, were as straight as men could be. I had some amusing experiences in the course of the negotiations.
With great regard
Very faithfully yours,
theodore  roosevelt. To
His Majesty
King Edward VII, E. & I.
The final letters in this series, so far as the letters have been preserved, were exchanged in 1908. Early in that year the King had presented Roosevelt with a book containing illustrations of the Sevres Porcelain Collection in Windsor Castle. In acknowledging the gift, Roosevelt made an allusion to the voyage of the American naval fleet around the world which was then in progress, and also to the question of Mongolian immigration:
(Original sent in the President's handwriting)
February 12, 1908. My dear King Edward,
The beautiful Sevres porcelain book has come, and I send this note of thanks by the Ambassador. The book is a delight to the eye—it is almost like seeing the porcelain.
I am much interested in the trip of our fleet to the Pacific; the ships have just come out of the Straits. I feel very strongly that the real interests of the English-speaking peoples are one, alike in the Atlantic and the Pacific; and that, while scrupulously careful neither to insult nor to injure others, we should yet make it evident that we are ready and able to hold our own. In no country where the population is of our stock, and where the wageworkers, the laborers, are of the same blood as the employing classes, will it be possible to introduce a large number of workmen of an utterly alien race without the certainty of dangerous friction. The only sure way to avoid such friction, with its possible consequences of incalculable disaster, is by friendly agreement in advance to prevent the coming together in mass of the wageworkers of the two races, in neither country.
But for the moment our internal problems here are far more pressing than our external ones. With us it is not as it is with you; our men of vast wealth do not fully realize that great responsibility must always go hand in hand with great privileges.
Again thanking you, and with very high regard, believe me,
Very sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt. To His Majesty
King Edward VII, E. & I.
king edward's reply
(In the King's own hand)
buckingham palace,
March 5, 1908. My dear Mr. President:
Accept my best thanks for your letter of the 12th inst: which >was delivered to me by your excellent and charming Ambassador, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, on his arrival in London, and it gave me great pleasure to learn from him that you were in such excellent health and spirits.
I am glad to hear you like the book with illustrations of the Sevres Porcelain collection at Windsor Castle as I know you have a great appreciation of china.
We have watched with the greatest interest the cruise of your fine Fleet in the Pacific and have admired the successful manner in which your Admirals have so far carried out this great undertaking. As you are no doubt aware, my Australian Colonies have conveyed through my Government an invitation to your Fleet to visit their principal ports—and if it be possible for your Government to authorize the acceptance of this invitation I feel sure that it will be warmly appreciated both here and in Australia.
   I cordially agree with you that the interests of the English speaking peoples are alike in the Atlantic and the Pacific—and I look forward with confidence to the cooperation of the English speaking races becoming the most powerful civilizing factor in the policy of the world.
The question of the immigration and competition of colored races in other countries is one which presents many difficulties and especially to me who have many colored subjects in my Empire.
It is one, however, which has so far proved capable of adjustment by friendly negotiation—and I rely upon the sound agreement at which my Government have arrived with that of Japan, being loyally carried out in all its detail by the Japanese Government.
Believe me with high regard
My dear Mr. President, Yours very sincerely,
edwaed R. & I.
Roosevelt's method of procedure with the Kaiser was always the same and was uniformly successful. He himself described it in a letter that he wrote on August 14,1906, to Henry White, who then was the American Ambassador at Rome:
"My course with him during the last five years has been uniform. I admire him, respect him, and like him. I think him a big man, and on the whole a good man; but I think his international and indeed his personal attitude one of intense egoism. I have always been most polite with him, have done my best to avoid our taking any attitude which could possibly give him legitimate offense, and have endeavored to show him that I was sincerely friendly to him and to Germany. Moreover, where I have forced him to give way I have been sedulously anxious to build a bridge of gold for him, and to give him the satisfaction of feeling" that his dignity and reputation in the face of the world were safe. In other words, where I have had to take part of the kernel from him, I have been anxious that he should have all the shell possible, and have that shell painted anyway he wished. At the same time I have had to speak with express emphasis to him on more than one occasion; and on one occasion (that of Venezuela) have had to make a display of force and to convince him definitely that I would use the force if necessary."
It is doubtful if the Kaiser ever experienced a more humiliating check than Roosevelt administered to him in the Venezuela incident of December, 1902, yet he seems to have cherished no resentment because of it, for barely a year later he wrote a letter to Roosevelt which reveals a fine rapture of delight because the President had written to him in terms of approval. No copy of the letter from the President which called forth this outburst is extant, for it was a private note, but happily that of the Kaiser has been preserved. It is here reproduced in full:
(In the Kaiser's own hand)
neues palais, January 14, 1904. Sir:
Profoundly impressed by the private letter which you kindly addressed to me, I hasten to cordially thank you for it; in reading the contents of which I felt a thrill of pride running through me. I am, I feel most flattered that you should have such a high opinion of my humble efforts in my work of furthering the welfare of my People and of developing the resources of my country. It strikes me that you should have so ably and clearly gauged the motives by which I am impelled. Besides I cannot refrain from feeling proud that so eminent a man as President Roosevelt should follow with such interest a monarch doing his very best to fulfil the arduous task with which heaven has entrusted him for the prosperity of his people and of the world. Praise as well as vituperation are generally heaped on kings by people often, alas, not free from selfish motives, which of course is not always easy for them to detect, and therefore makes them very careful in accepting them for what they are worth. But to elicit praise from a man like you is enough to make any ruler proud for the rest of his life, coming as it does from a judgment based upon experience. Your unlimited power for work, dauntless energy of purpose, pureness of motive moving toward the highest ideals, this all crowned by an iron will, form qualities which elicit the highest admiration from everybody over here. They are the characteristics of a "mem," and as such most sympathetic to me. The twentieth century is sadly in want of men of your stamp at the head of great nations, and there are few of them I own. But let us rejoice that, thank heaven, the Anglo-Saxon Germanic Race is still able to produce such specimen. We must accept it as a fact that your figure has moved to the foreground of the world and that men's minds are intensely occupied by you. You kindly allude to my work as traced for me by tradition, by numbering the most commanding figures among my ancestors, whose example I am trying with heaven's help to follow. This tradition is a strong impulse for the ruler to try to work up to the same line to which his ancestors brought their country and who left their mark in history. In some sense this is different with you. Though following in general the great lines laid down by the historical development of the United States, yet—in the absence of family tradition—every President is much more at liberty to give a far more personal stamp to his Government. This you have done in an uncommon way, and my wish is that you may be long spared to go on with your work as you began for the welfare of your country. May our common efforts ever prove successful for the maintenance of Peace and the fostering of good will between our two countries. With sincerest good will believe me sir,
Ever yours,
william I.R. 

To the President of the United States of America.
An amusing international episode, hitherto unpublished, in which the Kaiser was involved, occurred early in 1907, and is set forth in full in the following letter from the President to Whitelaw Reid, the American Ambassador in London, under date of January 10, 1907:
"There is one not very important thing of which I think you should be informed; although I do not see that either you or I can do anything about it. Apparently the members of the present British Cabinet talk with extreme freedom to Carnegie. In one instance, at least, this has been most unwise on their part, as is shown by the following incident. Mr. Carnegie recently came first to me and then to Root with a story that he had been told by a member of the Cabinet (whose name he gave me but which I forget) that the British Ambassador at Berlin had informed the said member of the cabinet, or else the whole cabinet, that at a recent conversation with him the Emperor had stated that he was building his navy against America, (this was to show that he was not building it against England,) and was also hostile to The Hague conference. Carnegie seemed much disturbed over the information, which naturally did not impress me in the least—in the first place, because even if the Emperor had said it I did not regard it as a fact of importance, and in the next place I could not be at all confident that the conversation coming through three or four people had by the time it reached me any resemblance at all to what it originally was. In other words, it was an instance of that international gossip with which one is deluged if one chooses to listen to it.
"So far Carnegie had not done any mischief; but what must he then do, of all things in the world, but call on Speck and complain bitterly of the Emperor's hostility to America and to peace, as shown by the conversation in question! Speck of course cabled the news home, and I received the somewhat lurid cable from the Emperor in consequence. I answered by letter. I enclose copies of both.''
kaiser's telegram
My Ambassador at Washington has telegraphed quite confidentially my Secretary of State that Mr. A. Carnegie has told you and Secretary Root about my opposition against the next Hague Peace Conference.
All Mr. Carnegie has heard in London are foul and filthy lies, the aim of which is but too clear: to sow distrust between us two. It is the most unheard intrigue ever set up against me and the German Empire. I trust that you did not for a moment believe that it could be true.
Since I met King Edward at Friedrichshof I have not discussed in words or writing with anybody The Hague Conference. At Friedrichshof the conference was discussed by the King in the presence of my Secretary of State and Sir Charles Hardinge, as well as Sir Frank Lascelles, and immediately afterward a memorandum about our discussion was drawn up. According to this memorandum, which I have before me in writing this telegram, the King himself took the initiative in telling me that he entirely disapproved of the new conference and that he considered it as a "humbug."
The King told me that he not only thought the conference useless, as nobody would, in case of need, feel bound by its decisions, but even as dangerous. It was to be feared that, instead of harmony, more friction would be the result.
In answer I did not conceal to His Majesty that I am not enthusiastic about the Conference, and told the King and Sir Charles Hardinge that Germany could not recede from her naval program laid down six years ago, but that Germany did not build up a fleet with aggressive tendencies against any other power; she did so only in order to protect her own territory, and commercial interests.
So far the memorandum. It is really too absurd to believe me so deprived of all common sense as to build my fleet against you!
I have not changed my attitude since last year, when I was ready and prepared to go to The Hague Conference. As you will remember the conference was adjourned at your own wish. At your request I used my good offices with Russia to postpone the meeting in order to enable the South American Republics to take part in The Hague Conference, which they would not have been able to do had the Pan-American Congress and The Hague Conference been held almost at the same time.
(Signed) wilhelm, I. R.
pbesident's  lettbe to the  kaisee
(Original sent in the President's handwriting)
January 8, 1907. My dear Emperor William:
There need never be so much as a moment's uneasiness on your part lest I should be misled by such a story as that which Mr. Carnegie repeated, first to me, and then—extraordinary to relate—to your Ambassador. Beyond a moment's wonder as to why, and in what form, the story was originally told Carnegie, and as to whether or not the original narrator himself believed it, I never gave the matter a second thought, until Speck spoke to me about it; I did not even mention it to Root. It is a story of a very common type. I am always being told of Japanese or German or English spies inspecting the most unlikely places— the Moro Castle at Havana, for distance, or some equally antiquated and indefensible fort; and now and then I learn of a high official in some West Indian island or South American republic who has been thrown into a fever by the (wholly imaginary) information that an agent of mine has been secretly inspecting his dominion. I have no time to devote to thinking of fables of this kind; I am far too much occupied with real affairs, both foreign and domestic. Your Majesty may rest assured that no such tale as this of your building your fleet'' against America'' will ever cause me more than good-natured amusement.
I have entire confidence in your genuine friendliness to my country, and I am glad to say that during the last five years there has been in America a steady growth of good will towards Germany. Primarily owing to your attitude, the relations of the two countries have been placed on an excellent footing. Let me add a word of hearty praise for the share which, under Your Majesty, Baron Sternburg has had in bringing about this happy result. He has more than justified your choice; for while jealously guarding the honor and interest of Germany, he has sought every opportunity to give Americans a feeling of confidence in and regard for Germany.
Such an attitude of credulous and unreasoning distrust as that portrayed in the tale Carnegie repeated is found here and there in every country at different times; there are always international backbiters who appeal to international suspicion. Do you remember in Thackeray's "Book of Snobs," the snob of the London clubs who is always repeating gossip and slander about foreign nations?
It was sixty years ago when Thackeray wrote of him:— "He is the man who is really seriously uncomfortable about the designs of Russia and the atrocious treachery of Louis-Philippe. He it is who expects a French fleet in the Thames, and has a constant eye on the American President, every word of whose speech (goodness help him!) he reads, . . . Lord Palmerston's being sold to Russia, the exact number of roubles paid, by what house in the city, is a favorite theme with this kind of snob." The type is not extinct yet in England; nor in my own and other countries, for that matter.
Let me repeat that no distrust will be sown between Germany and America by any gossip; I sincerely believe that the growth of good feeling between the two nations is steady and permanent.
Very faithfully your friend,
theodoee roosevelt. His Imperial Majesty William II,
Emperor of Germany, Berlin.
In replying, the Kaiser, as usual in his own hand, wrote as follows:
berlin schloss,
June 11, 1907. My dear Mr. President:
Your kind letter of the 8th of January, received on the 25th of that month, has given me great satisfaction and pleasure. As I was perfectly convinced, the slanderous lies with which Mr. Carnegie was fed in London have not made the slightest impression upon you. Your conjecture is right, that I never for a moment imagined you could believe such trash.
When two nations like the United States and Germany show such astonishing development, with an upward tendency, it is quite natural that they thereby create themselves enemies who will try to sow hatred and discord against and between them out of sheer jealousy. Like to you, so were also to me vouchsafed the most extraordinary information about espionage and dark plans!
The only effect such base intrigues, dictated by common envy and hatred, will have is to draw the two Governments and Nations closer together. The high terms of praise with which you, Mr. President, refer to the personality of my Ambassador have caused me the most intense satisfaction. I am most happy to know that my Ambassador, Baron von Sternburg, has gained a position in which he enjoys the confidence of the President of the People of the United States, and it is my fervent wish that he may continue to enjoy it as well as he fully has mine.
I have had the pleasure of receiving the members of the American Tariff Commission under Mr. North, their able chief, and to hear from them that they return quite satisfied with their stay here and with the results of their visit and of their work. I fervently hope, with you, that success may crown the joint labors of the Commissioners and of my officials.
Among the men of mark which my country is sending over for the celebrations on the kind invitation of the United States, two officers from my personal suite will be included. General Adjutant von Loewenfeld, whom you kindly received at the unveiling of Frederick the Great's statue, and Captain von Rebeur who was Naval Attache at Washington for several years.
As I know that your interest in everything regarding the Great King is very lively, I venture to offer for your library a new publication of the water colors by our great painter Menzel, illustrating the history of the uniforms of our army under the King's reign. The work, of which the two first editions have just been published, will be presented to you with this letter by Mr. Lengerke Meyer, who kindly volunteered to take them over.
I feel that you will have been pleased by the lively and decided manner in which the Germans have just pronounced themselves against the Socialists!
With my sincerest wishes for the welfare of the people of the United States, and that success may further crown your brilliant career under Heaven's guidance and blessing, believe me Mr. President
Ever Your true friend and admirer
william, I. R.
Mr. Reid desired to show the correspondence to King Edward, and asked the President if he might do so. To this request the President replied on January 14, 1907:
"It would never do to show that correspondence to the King, because if he happened to take offense at something the Kaiser had said, as he well might, it would bring me into trouble as violating the confidence of the Kaiser. I would not want the Kaiser to feel that I had communicated a letter of his, even though he did not mark it as confidential, to the King. But I feel that you should have the correspondence, so that, in case from the Kaiser's side the matter should get in twisted shape to the King, you would be able at once to set him right—even in that event, however, only after communicating with me. During my services as President I have had all kinds of queer confidences reposed in me, and queer letters to me by various individuals, from the Kaiser down, but I have been careful not to repeat them because I felt it would be doing merely mischief.''

CHAPTER NINTEEN
ROOSEVELT AND ROYALTIES—CONCLUDED
some letters which passed between the President and the Kaiser in the spring of 1908 are interesting as revealing their views in regard to the world voyage of the American navy and the integrity of China:
(Original sent in the President's handwriting)
April 4, 1908. My dear Emperor William:
In the first place I wish to assure your Majesty how deeply, as President of the American people, I feel and appreciate the admirable work you have done in promoting friendship between Germany and the United States. I know well how the natural prejudices of an old, conservative nation would tend to make it indifferent to the friendship of a nation of the New World; would tend to make it think that Europe was the world. I attribute the constantly growing feeling of good-will between the two nations more to your own influence than to anything else. Your Majesty's Ambassador to the United States has been peculiarly fortunate in the impression that he has had upon our people; and I very deeply appreciate the evident personal courtesy to me, and the thoughtfulness shown by you in appointing him.
Let me again express to Your Majesty my appreciation of your constant friendliness toward the United States. It has been a very real pleasure to me to be able so often to cooperate with you and to second your efforts. This reminds me to say that the Chinese Minister, although he has been here for some little time, has made no motion nor given any hint in reference to action upon the territorial integrity of, or the open door in, China.
I trust you have noticed that the American battleship fleet has completed its tour of South America on schedule time, and is now having its target practice off the Mexican coast. After visiting San Francisco and Puget Sound, it will start on its return voyage via Australia, Japan, China, the Philippines, and the Suez Canal. When it leaves the Orient it will have to hurry home without stopping. I saw the ships leave Hampton Roads, and if possible I shall go thither again to see them rise over the world's sea rim as they steam homewards into harbor after their long voyage.
Their target practice has been excellent. With high regards, believe me,
Very faithfully your friend,
theodore roosevelt. His Imperial Majesty William II,
Emperor of Germany, Berlin.
(In the Kaiser's own hand)
achilleion, corfu,
1/5, 1908. My dear President Roosevelt:
Your kind letter of April 5th reached me a few days ago and has given me real pleasure and satisfaction. You are quite right in thinking that it has been my constant wish to promote and foster the friendship between the United States and Germany. I have done it because I consider it to be in the interest of the two great nations that have so much in common, and I sincerely hope that the good will between our two countries will continue in its constant development.
I thank you most heartily for the very effective work you have done in this direction.
   That the way in which my Ambassador has fulfilled my instructions has met with your full approval gives me lively satisfaction. I trust that his health will permit him to continue in his endeavors to further enjoy your confidence as well as that of the American people. . . .
The punctual arrival of the U. S. Fleet in Magdalen Bay must be a matter of great satisfaction to you and the country. Admiral Evans has again proved his fine qualities as seaman and leader, and the officers and crews, not forgetting the engine room staff, have shown themselves well trained and up to the work. May I offer my sincerest congratulations on such a fine performance.
I see by your letter that the new Chinese Minister in Washington has not taken any steps yet referring to a "declaration of policy," in the question of Chinese integrity and the open door. I have just heard from my minister in China, that the Vice-President of the Wai-wu-pu, Liong-tun-yen, will be sent in about 2 months time to the U. S. and to Germany in order to lay proposals before our governments. I sincerely hope and trust that we shall be able to come to an agreement about such a "statement of policy," which will assure the maintenance of integrity of China and the open door to the trade of all nations.
With the sincerest wishes for the further success of the United States, and for the welfare of your family, believe me, my dear President,
Ever your sincere friend,
william, I. R.
(Original sent in the President's handwriting)
May 14, 1908. My dear Emperor William:
Since writing you I have received, through Sternburg, your very courteous letter, and the handsome volume on Wartburg; I thank you for it. When Sternburg presents this I hope he will have the chance to tell you in full how things stand here.I am particularly pleased at your appreciation of our fleet; but I wish I could get legislation that would give us in the higher grades officers as young as yours!
With great regard Faithfully yours,
theodoee roosevelt.

 To His Imperial Majesty William II,
Emperor of Germany.
I have searched Roosevelt's papers in vain for an answer from the Kaiser to the following letter from the President urging him to favor a treaty of arbitration between the United States and Germany. If one was sent it has been mislaid:
(Original in the President's handwriting)
May 6, 1908. My dear Emperor William:
I have asked your Majesty's Ambassador to present this to you personally. I hope you can see your way clear to have your Government enter into a treaty of arbitration with the United States. In the form in which the treaty now is I freely admit that it is not as effective as I could wish. Nevertheless good will result from the expression of good-will implied in the treaty; and it would have a certain binding effect upon the Senate, making it morally obligatory to accept any reasonable agreement which might subsequently be made. Moreover it would confer a real benefit in the event of any sudden flurry both by providing the executives of the two countries with an excellent reason for demanding cool consideration of any question by their respective peoples, and also by enabling them to make a strong appeal under the sanction of a solemn treaty to both the peoples and their legislatures to accept an honorable arbitration. It seems to me that these advantages are in themselves not to be overlooked; and furthermore the effect of such a treaty between Germany and the United States will be to furnish another evidence of the friend ship between the two countries, while not to have the treaty, when such treaties have already been made with France, England, Japan, Italy, Spain, and various other powers, would I think invite comment. Merely to exchange notes of good will between the Governments would be no adequate substitute. On the contrary, it would invite attention to the fact that there is no treaty with Germany, whereas there are treaties with the various Powers above named; and indeed might be construed by our people as meaning that Germany did not believe any treaty should be made with us in view of our form of government.
"With great regard and earnest good wishes for your continued success in your great career, believe me,
Sincerely yours,
theodoee Roosevelt. His Imperial Majesty William II,
Emperor of Germany.
The last letter from the Kaiser which appears in the correspondence is the following, which, unlike all the others, is not in the Kaiser's hand but in that of a secretary:
My dear President:
This letter will be delivered into your hands by Count Bernstorff, whom I have chosen after mature deliberation as successor to poor Baron Speck v. Sternburg, whose premature death I still lament as a severe loss to our two countries. He was not only a true and good German patriot, but a sincere and staunch friend of the United States. I know that you lost in him a personal and loyal friend and admirer.
I trust that my new ambassador will gain your entire confidence and that of Mr. William Taft, who has just been elected to be your successor at the White House. I have watched the electoral struggle in the United States with keen interest, and I wish to tell you quite confidentially that I am most satisfied with the outcome. Your advocating of Mr. Taft's candidacy would have been enough proof for me that he is the fittest man for the post, but I know besides what a splendid man he is and what an able public official he has shown himself in all the positions he has held during these last years in the Philippines, in Washington and in Cuba. I am sure that the United States will continue under his lead in the ways of progress and they will enter into a new era of prosperity, which has only lately been interrupted by one of these periods of depression which occur in all countries and at all times. I further sincerely hope that the good relations between our two countries, which have made so much progress during your presidency, will not only continue, but still extend to the best of the two peoples.
I have heard from Consul General Biinz, who is going now as minister to Mexico, that you will, after your expedition to Africa, come over to England and lecture at Oxford University. I should be very much pleased if we could meet somewhere and get personally acquainted.
Your desire to shoot in German East Africa has been made known to me and I assure you that every possible facility will be given to you during your stay on German territory, where you will find some of the best shooting grounds for big game.
With sincere wishes for the further welfare of your country and your own, I am, my dear President, your sincere friend and admirer,
william, I. R. Donaueschingen,
November 12th, 1908.
The President of the United States of America.
To this the President replied:
(Original in President's handwriting)
the white house, washington,
January 2, 1909. My dear Emperor William:
    Only a couple of days after I had written you, you Ambassador arrived and presented me both your letter and the book. I thank you heartily for both. Indeed, I find the accounts of the feats of the German '' Rough Riders''— as you so kindly call them—in southeast Africa most fascinating reading. What an extraordinary campaign it was, and how difficult for men in highly civilized countries to realize what grim work is needed in order to advance the outposts of civilization in the world's dark places!
All that your Majesty says about poor Speck is simply warranted by the facts. He was not only a devoted German, but he had an intense feeling of devotion to you personally, a feeling shared to the full by the poor Baroness whom his death has left so lonely. He was also sincerely attached to America, and he played no small part in promoting the good will between the two countries; which good will, however, is due primarily to your Majesty's own actions during the past six years.
I was much pleased with your new Ambassador. He is evidently an able man.
At the same time with the Ambassador there arrived the invitation from the University of Berlin, and I at once consulted the Ambassador about it. I shall accept with the utmost pleasure, partly because I shall be glad to speak before the university, and still more, I must frankly add, because it gives me a legitimate excuse for seeing you. If my plans are carried out as I hope, I shall be a year in Africa, and this will bring me to Berlin about the 1st of May, 1910, if this is a convenient date for you. My trip to Africa will be taken partly as a big game hunter, but primarily as a naturalist. If I am sufficiently lucky I shall get over the border of British East Africa into German East Africa, and hunt along it toward the Victoria Nyanza. I wish that my time would allow my visiting the districts in Africa where European settlement is thriving, but I am afraid if I tried that it would mean that I would have to abandon the object of the expedition.
What a dreadful catastrophe the Sicilian earthquake has been! I am doing whatever I can to help, but of course at such a distance there is really very little that I can do. I have cabled the Italian Government asking if any good purpose can be achieved by at once sending any or all of the American battleships now in Suez to the stricken region.
By the way, I am sure you would be delighted if you could see the accounts that have come from our battle fleet, which is now returning from its trip around the world. In gunnery and in battle tactics no less than in the ordinary voyage maneuvers, there has been a steady gain; and the fleet is far more efficient, collectively and individually, now than when it left these waters over a year ago.
The Chinese envoy here is completely upset by the very unexpected news of what has just happened in China, and I think intends immediately to return. The Chinese are so helpless to carry out any fixed policy, whether home or foreign, that it is difficult to have any but the most cautious dealings with them.
"With assurances of my hearty esteem and admiration, and of the eager pleasure with which I look forward to seeing you in person a year from this spring, believe me, Very faithfully yours,
theodore Roosevelt. To His Imperial Majesty William II,
Emperor of Germany.
The only personal correspondence that passed between the Czar of Russia and the President took place during the Portsmouth Peace Conference, as follows:
(Original in the Czar's handwriting)
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.
(Original in the President's handwriting)
September 6, 1905. To
His Majesty
The Emperor of Russia: My dear Emperor Nicolas:
Your very courteous letter was handed me by M. Witte. I need hardly say how delighted I am at the peace that has been made. I have given M. Witte, to present to you, copies of the letters I had sent the Japanese Government at the same time that I was cabling you.
I have an abiding faith in the future of the mighty Slav empire which you rule; and I most earnestly wish all good fortune both for you personally and for your people. With high regard, believe,
Very faithfully yours,
theodoee  roosevelt.
Roosevelt's correspondence with the Emperor of Japan began at the close of the Portsmouth Peace Conference in 1905, when the President wrote in his own hand a long letter to the Mikado expressing his "sense of the magnanimity, and above all, of the cool-headed, far-sighted wisdom" he had shown in making the peace treaty. This letter was given in full in the account of the Peace Conference published  in  Scribner's  Magazine  in   September,   1919.    The Mikado's reply was as follows:
(Translation) Mr. President:
I received some time ago your kind letter dated September 6th last, which you delivered to Baron Komura on the eve of his departure from your country. The warmest and sincerest sympathy which you expressed in that letter regarding the conclusion of peace touched me deeply. I feel extremely gratified to find that you have fully appreciated the course of action which I have taken with the view to promoting the cause of humanity and civilization as well as the true interests of Japan.
From the moment when you suggested to Japan and Russia to open negotiations for peace until the time when the Plenipotentiaries of the two Powers concluded their labors in your country, you have constantly exercised your noble efforts for the cause of peace and have greatly contributed to the speedy termination of the painful war. The two belligerents and the world at large owe deep and lasting gratitude to you.
In again tendering to you my heartfelt thanks I wish happiness of yourself and prosperity of your country.
With profound respect,
Believe me, Yours always sincerely,
(Signed)    mUtsuhito. Tokio, November 11, 1905.
At the same time the President sent a present to the Mikado, which is described in the following correspondence:
(Original in the President's handwriting)
September 6, 1905. Your Majesty:
   Through Baron Kaneko I venture to send you the skin of a large bear which I shot; I beg you to accept it as a trifling token of the regard I have for you and for the great and wonderful people over which you rule.
Let me take this opportunity to thank you for the distinguished courtesy you have  shown to  Secretary Taft and to my daughter.   Let me also say how much I have enjoyed reading the translation of the poems written by Tour Majesty, by Her Majesty the Empress, and by the other members of the Royal Family. I have also written you by Baron Koilura. With profound respect, believe me,
Always sincerely yours,
theodore  roosevelt. To
His Majesty,
The Emperor of Japan.
(Translation) Mr. President:
Your letter and the skin of a large bear shot by yourself which you delivered to Baron Kaneko at the time of his departure from your country, have reached me soon after his return here.
I am very happy to be the recipient of such a rare present, which, I can assure you, will ever be cherished by me as the trophy of a friend commanding my entire admiration.
It afforded me great pleasure to receive your daughter and your Secretary of War Mr. Taft on the occasion of their visit to this country. The only regret is that their short stay did not permit me to give them more cordial reception. With profound respect,
Believe me,
Yours very sincerely,
(Signed)    mtjtsuhito. Tokio, November 11, 1905.
Early in 1906 the northeastern portion of Japan was visited with a terrible famine, which threatened the death by starvation of many thousands of persons. When it was at its height President Roosevelt, on February 13, 1906, issued an "appeal to the American people to help from their abundance their suffering fellow men of the great and friendly nation of Japan." Thousands of dollars were contributed through the Red Cross and other agencies by which needed relief was afforded. In recognition of the, service rendered, the Mikado wrote to the President in July, 1906:
(Translation)
Great and Good Friend:
When I learned that you had, in great sympathy and good will, invited the American public to come to the aid and succor of the famine stricken people of my northeastern Provinces, I hastened to express to you, through my Representative at Washington, my deep sense of gratitude.
The very generous and substantial contributions subscribed and collected by different American individuals and organizations and especially by the American National Red Cross and the Christian Herald, were duly received by the local authorities concerned through the kindness of the State Department and were, with great care, distributed among the distressed in such a manner as to faithfully carry out the noble intentions of those who so liberally responded to your appeal. I need hardly assure you that by this means the most serious effects of the calamity were greatly mitigated.
Now that the immediate danger has been removed, I wish to assure you that I have been very deeply touched and gratified by the high example of international good will and friendship displayed by the people of the United States and that the memory of it will always be warmly cherished by me.
I remain, Mr. President, with the best wishes for your continued well-being.
Your sincere Friend
(Signed)    mutsuhito. Imperial Palace, Tokio,
the fourth day of the seventh month of the thirty-ninth year of Meiji.
(July 4, 1906) The President of the United States of America.
All of the Mikado's letters to the President were written in Japanese characters on very fine rice-paper, and in each was enclosed an English translation in script of copperplate perfection.
With Admiral Togo, Commander-in-Chief of the victorious Japanese navy, the President had the following interesting correspondence:
(Original in the President's hand)
December 18, 1905. My dear Admiral Togo:
I greatly appreciate the gift of that revolver which you sent me through Minister Griscom. He tells me that you are to come to the United States some time next year. I earnestly hope that this is so. I look forward to seeing you and entertaining you at the White House. May I ask that you will do me the honor of accepting my photograph, which I enclose? With great regard,
Sincerely yours,
theodore Roosevelt. Admiral H. Togo,
Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, Tokio, Japan.
naval general staff office, tokio,
January 29, 1906. My dear Mr. President:
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note together with your photograph enclosed therein. I highly appreciate your gift and shall ever value it as a token of friendship of the President of the Great Republic. As to my visit to your country, I fear I can as yet say nothing for definite, although I am very anxious to have an opportunity in the near future of paying my respects to you at the White House.
I shall esteem it a great honor if you will kindly accept my photograph, which I enclose herewith. With the highest esteem and admiration, I am yours respectfully,
admiral hEihachiRo togo. 

His Excellency,
President Roosevelt.
A letter of unusual interest came to President Roosevelt in 1905 from Queen Elizabeth (Carmen Sylva) of Rumania. In that year the United States sent J. W. Riddle as its first Minister to Rumania, and the President gave him a personal letter to hand to the Queen, in which he spoke of her literary works and of the pleasure he had experienced in reading certain of them. In reply the Queen wrote the following letter on a typewriter:
SlNAIA,
October 12, 1905. Sir:
I thank you with all my heart for the kind letter you sent me through your most amiable messenger! We are so glad to have an American representative to ourselves at last, and I am sure you will never regret it, as there are so many increasing interests that could not be thoroughly understood by some one who did not know our country at all. I felt a great deal of compunction in venturing to recommend to your notice the once great tragedian Gertrud Giers. I know how very annoying it is to have stage poor artists thrust upon one. But I could not refuse, as she always was a protegee of my mother and a most honest woman whose struggle for life was so much harder on account of her being so honest. I hope she hasn't bored you too much! You know the world and its wonderful snobbishness, only when the Great of the earth seem to pay attention the poor things can rise into notice, else they are left utterly in the cold!
That the Bard of the Dimbovitza gives you such real pleasure is to me a very great satisfaction. You must like the chain of pearls and the murderer and the bereaved husband and the woman after miscarriage. All those things are powerful! To me the book seemed a literary event and I felt very proud that such a light should shine from my poor little unnoticed country! We are always wondering where the origins of these songs may be, they must come from the far east, as there is not a word in them that seems to allude to Christianity. They are simply grand and natural and true, as only Shakespeare has ever been.
I am told you read German and so I venture to send you a true story I have put into somewhat poetic prose and also a tiny volume of poems I wrote in English, and in which you may like my joyful address to old age! It is true that I don't feel any older than at twenty-five and therefore I am no real judge, but I see that my feelings are about what you say and you may like them, even if my English verse should not be quite perfect!
"We have had a hard fight for existence all these last years and are not beyond much care still. It was nearly famine, only we didn 't allow it to grow into that, by making unheard of sacrifices to keep our peasants alive! This year is far from good again, but we hope to get on without buying in other countries the Indian corn that wasn 't nearly as good as ours! Your Minister will tell you all about our dire struggle and the unheard of difficulties we had to contend with! though thank God he hasn't seen the worst! Many have been the sleepless nights! I worked night and day to bring our silk industry on the market, as I saw that when everything failed the mulberry tree gave us enough leaves to keep our silk-worms alive! I do so hope we shall be able to do a great deal in that line!
Another burning interest to me is the question of the blind, as the terrible Egyptian disease has made ravages here. It seems there are about fifteen thousand blind people here, mostly strong young men having been soldiers, and a blind typesetter has found a new machine for printing for the blind and my valet de chambre, a very clever man who has been working for the blind for seven years, has taken up the blind man's idea and worked it out through long and patient months! The first machine was ready to start, when a jealous workman destroyed it in order to prevent his patron from earning money. In a few days it will be ready again. We have the patent for five countries, also America, and the inventors don't want to earn a penny, but wish to found what I call my blind city with the result of this machine. A blind man will henceforth be able to print five thousand pages a day. It will be a new life for the blind in the whole world! I have orders from everywhere already and I have also begun my blind city with two or three married people, an engineer and a monk and a sculptor and so on. I begin with fathers first, and let the children follow. A school would be utterly useless, it must come out of the city, but it would cost far too much to begin with it. I want to build something on a socialistic basis. If it interests you at all I shall send our plan of organization. I hope it may answer. I am afraid I am asking too much of your patience already and am beginning to make mistakes, as I always do when I begin to get the least bit tired. The typewriter is an enormous help to overworked hands, but the noise is still much too fatiguing to the brain. If I write more than three or four hours at a time I make mistakes in every word at last. And I can't dictate.
Once more kind thanks for your most amiable letter!
elizabeth.
Roosevelt, soon after the German invasion of Belgium, wrote to King Albert, enclosing his first public utterances on the subject and expressing his admiration for Belgium's heroic conduct and his deep sympathy with its sufferings. In reply, King Albert wrote:
(Original in French}
Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
I am very glad to receive your letter. It is very good of you to give me this cordial assurance of your friendly sentiments. What you have written in support of our just cause is an honor to us; my Government as well as myself, values it highly. My country is profoundly grateful to the United States for comprehending that Belgium, in defending her soil, has sacrificed all to duty; she knows that she can count upon the sympathy of the great American nation, which, always reverencing liberty and law, will never admit that treaties, contracted in good faith, can be violently torn up.
I thank you, the eminent statesman who knows well the sentiments of honor of his fellow citizens, for sending assurances of their sympathy.
I wish to say to you, my dear Mr. Roosevelt, that I remember always with pleasure your visit to Brussels and I beg you to believe me
Very affectionately yours,
albert. Furnes, 17th December, 1914.

CHAPTER TWENTY
GREAT WELCOME IN NEW YORK—ATTITUDE TOWARD TAFT
Roosevelt arrived in New York from his European travels on June 18, 1910, receiving a truly royal welcome. Nothing approaching it had ever been given a private citizen coming back to his native land after a brief absence abroad. He had been absent only a little more than a year. A greater part of that time had been passed in the wilds of Africa, and while only occasional and brief references to his doings had been published in the newspapers, his own account of his hunting exploits had been in process of publication monthly in Scribner's Magazine since October, 1909, under the title of "African Game Trails."
While he was in Europe, his various public addresses had been published widely and commanded extremely warm approval in all quarters, especially in those journals that had been his severest critics while he was in public life. His presence as special envoy of the United States at the funeral of King Edward, by request of President Taft, had been generally commended and he had figured in the press accounts of the ceremonies on that occasion. Beyond this he had done nothing to keep himself in the minds of the people. Yet when his return was announced the whole country joined in welcoming him home. A committee of citizens, headed by the mayor of the city, was formed to arrange a public reception and delegations and representatives of civic and other societies from many cities and states went to New York to join in it. The steamer upon which he arrived was met in the harbor by a great naval parade, and the harbor itself was crowded with pleasure yachts, excursion steamers and merchant craft of all kinds, making his progress to the landing place at the Battery through a long line of vessels laden with thousands of cheering people and amid salvos of artillery from the naval vessels and the forts on the shores of the bay. On landing he was met with an official greeting by the mayor, to which he responded as follows:
"I thank you, Mayor Gaynor. Through you I thank your committee, and through them I wish to thank the American people for their greeting. I need hardly say I am most deeply moved by the reception given me. No man could receive such a greeting without being made to feel both very proud and very humble.
"I have been away a year and a quarter from America, and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the heart of the growing wilderness and in the capitals of the mightiest and most highly polished of civilized nations. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and now I am more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my own country, back among the people I love.
"And I am ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am able, in helping solve problems which must be solved if we of this, the greatest democratic Republic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities.
"This is the duty of every citizen, but it is peculiarly my duty, for any man who has ever been favored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime obligation, and in private life as much as in public life so to carry himself that the American people may never have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their head."
A procession, composed of citizens, members of various civic societies and associations in the city and from other parts of the land, escorted him over lower Broadway and Fifth Avenue to Forty-second Street through solid walls of cheering humanity that crowded the sidewalks, windows and even roofs of buildings, all eager to get a glimpse of him. A squad of his old regiment of Rough Riders, who had gathered from the West to join in the welcome, acted as a guard of honor. On the afternoon of the same day, accompanied by members of his family, he went to his home in Oyster Bay, where he was greeted on arrival by his fellow townsmen, who assembled en masse to welcome him back.
The closing part of his speech at the Battery indicated clearly the course that he intended to pursue in future in regard to public affairs. By a few of the extreme radicals among his followers it was interpreted to mean that he would return to active politics, but his intimates knew that he had no such intention. He had said, before retiring from the Presidency, that the role of sage had no attractions for him; that he considered it both his privilege and duty to take active part in the discussion of public questions, commending or criticizing as his judgment dictated, but that he should never again be a candidate for political office, or engage in active political work. That he was firmly determined on this point when he landed in New York, there is no question; yet he had been in the country only ten days when he was persuaded, greatly against his will, to take sides in a factional political contest in New York State, and become the leader of one of the parties to it.
His first public appearance after his return was at the Commencement exercises at Harvard University. While there he met Governor Hughes of New York, who fairly besieged him to champion his cause in a contest that he was waging against the most powerful of the leaders of the Republican party organization for the enactment of a direct primary law. The Governor's appeal proved to be irresistible, and in explanation of his yielding, Roosevelt said in introducing him to the Alumni luncheon over which he was presiding on June 29, 1910:
"Our Governor has a very persuasive way with him. I had intended to keep absolutely clear from any kind of public or political question after coming1 home, and I could carry out my resolution all right until I met the Governor this morning, and he then explained to. me that I had come back to live in New York now; that I had to help him out, and after a very brief conversation, I put up my hands and agreed to help him."
On the same day he sent a telegram to the chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, giving his approval to the direct primary bill and expressing his earnest hope that it would be made law. From the minute that he took this action he became, of course, the leader of those supporting the bill, consequently the chief figure in an intensely bitter partisan contest.
It was not in New York alone that his aid was sought. He was overwhelmed on his arrival in the United States with a multitude of requests to visit various parts of the country and make addresses. Before he had been at home two months he had received about two thousand of these. One of them which appealed to him especially was to attend the Frontier Celebration at Cheyenne, Wyoming. He had many things in mind that he wished to say, for he felt that during his absence from the country the causes that were nearest to his heart had lacked a champion through the disinclination of the national administration to uphold them, and in consequence were slipping into the background of the public mind. To visit Cheyenne he would have to traverse many states and stop at many cities where addresses would be expected of him. He arranged an itinerary, prepared addresses for many of the principal points at which he was to speak, and in August, 1910, he set his face westward on a journey which covered more than five thousand miles and traversed fourteen States. He was accompanied by a host of newspaper correspondents and his formal addresses and occasional speeches were reported fully in the press. One of the first addresses to excite interest and hostile comment was made before the Colorado Legislature on August 29, 1910. In this he condemned the action of the Supreme Court of the United States in two cases, in one of which it had declared unconstitutional a Mw enacted in New York State designed to abolish unhealthy conditions in bakeshops. Of this decision Roosevelt said: "The decision was nominally against State rights, really against popular rights. Such decisions, arbitrarily and irresponsibly limiting the power of the people, are of course fundamentally hostile to every species of real popular government." He was accused of "attacking the courts," and in a later speech at Syracuse, New York, on September 17, 1910, and in an article in the Outlook, of which he had been a contributing editor since leaving the Presidency, he explained fully his first utterance, citing in defense of his course the words of Lincoln in regard to the Dred Scott decision: "I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it." He quoted also the dissenting opinion of three Justices of the Supreme Court in the Bake Shop case.
Another address which aroused even more bitter criticism was that made on August 31, 1910, at the dedication of the John Brown battlefield at Ossawatomie, Kansas, under the title of the "New Nationalism." In this he reiterated the views which he had held when he was President in regard to governmental regulation and control of corporations, and in regard to labor and capital and other subjects. One passage in particular was sharply criticized as an '' attack on property.'' It was:
"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being."
Writing to Senator Lodge, on September 12, 1910, in regard to the criticisms, he said: "Now what I said about the courts.   This was suggested to me by Moody, and it was gone over most carefully by Arthur Hill, who thoroughly approved it and made certain suggestions which I accepted verbatim—his approval was not an off-hand approval, for he wrote me later approving it and giving me the exact text of what I was to put in. Now of course I need not tell you that the responsibility is in no shape Moody's or Hill's. It is purely mine. But when the utterance is spoken of as revolutionary, as incendiary, as an attack on the courts, it is curious to think it was suggested to me by a Chief Justice who comes from Massachusetts, and approved by an ex-District Attorney of Boston. My point was to show by the use of these two decisions, which decisions were given me by Moody when he called my attention to the point as one which he would like me to make, that the courts not only sometimes erred in deciding against the National Government, but sometimes erred against States' rights, and thereby created a neutral ground in which no governmental body had power. Arthur Hill's word to me in his letter was stronger than I have used, for he said that in the Bake Shop decision, it amounted to turning the Supreme Court into an irresponsible House of Lords, a position which the people would never stand."
In the same letter, Roosevelt said:
"About my use of the word 'property': I only used it, so far as I now remember, as a quotation when I quoted Lincoln's remarks or commented on them. It is rather a curious thing that what people think is most revolutionary in my speech should be nearly a quotation from Lincoln. All my other statements have already been made, or at least have in effect been made, in my messages to Congress. I may have here and there strengthened them, or made them a little clearer, but substantially what I said at Ossawatomie consisted of assembling those points made in my messages to Congress which I regarded as of most importance at the moment."
Writing again to Senator Lodge, on September 20, 1910, he said with characteristic frankness:
"I am perfectly straight on my position, but it is also perfectly true that I had no business to take that position in the fashion I did. A public man is to be condemned if he states a proper position in such fashion that he fails to make his point clear, and permits good men to go wrong from misunderstanding. I ought to have made my original speech in such fashion that it would have included what I have since said at Syracuse and in the Outlook, and it was a blunder of some gravity not to do it."
Roosevelt returned from his western trip early in September and found himself unpleasantly involved in the bitter political wrangle into which his promise to Governor Hughes had precipitated him. That he entered the contest reluctantly and with little or no hope of success, his letters written at this time show conclusively. He had been requested by the Hughes leaders to be their candidate for temporary chairman of the Republican State Convention which was to meet on September 26, 1910, and had consented. The anti-Hughes faction, led by the recognized boss of the party, had selected Vice-President Sherman as its candidate for the same position. Writing to Senator Lodge on September 12, 1910, Roosevelt said: "It may well be that I shall be beaten at the Convention, and if not at the Convention, we shall in all probability be beaten at the polls. But that does not alter the fact, that, to quote the words once used by that worthy non-Mugwump, the Black Douglas: 'We have come to the ring and now we must hop.' "
Writing again to Senator Lodge on September 21, 1910, he said:

"Hughes made a fight on an issue upon which the people were not really aroused. He aroused a considerable fraction of people to support him, but left a much larger fraction lukewarm and even hostile. As a result he has put us in such shape that if we did not support him we were certain to be defeated, and if we did support him we were likely to be defeated. He had created a situation, and had put me in a situation, where the least of two evils was to stand by him. The fight is very disagreeable. Twenty years ago I should not have minded it in the least; it would have been entirely suitable for my age and my standing. But it is not the kind of fight into which an ex-President should be required to go. I could not help myself; I could not desert the decent people. But this whole political business now is bitterly distasteful to me. There is no way out of it that I can see."
When the Convention met on September 26, 1910, it was soon made apparent that Roosevelt was in comparatively easy control of it. He was chosen temporary chairman by a considerable majority, and the candidate of his selection, Henry L. Stimson, who, as United States District Attorney of New York, had conducted successfully the sugar fraud cases in 1909, was nominated for Governor. From first to last, Roosevelt dominated the Convention and by his forceful and uncompromising assaults upon the leaders of the opposition, he carried all points. In his speech to the Convention he did not mince matters at all in defining his political creed, saying in the opening part of it:
"Democracy means nothing unless the people rule. The rule of the boss is the negation of democracy. It is absolutely essential that the people should exercise self-control and self-mastery, and he is a foe to popular government who in any way causes them to lose such self-control and self-mastery whether from without or within."
That he had returned from his foreign trip grievously dissatisfied with President Taft's conduct of affairs, he did not conceal. Writing to Elihu Root on October 21, 1910, he said:
   
"I have been cordially helping the election of a Republican Congress, having split definitely with the Insurgents, on this point; for though I am bitterly disappointed with Taft, and consider much of his course absolutely inexplicable, I have felt that, as in so many other cases, I had to make the best of conditions as they actually were and do the best I possibly could to carry Congress and to carry the State of New York, with the entire understanding on my part that victory in either means the immense strengthening of Taft. In New York State I deliberately went in to put the close supporters of Taft in control of the Republican machinery, and have done and am now doing my best to elect a man whom, I assume, is a Taft man; because I felt that the one clear duty of a decent citizen was to try to put the Republican Party on a straight basis, and now to try to put that party in power in the State instead of turning the State over to Murphy of Tammany Hall, acting as the agent, ally and master of crooked finance.
"I have never had a more unpleasant summer. The sordid baseness of much or most of the so-called Regulars, who now regard themselves as especially the Taft men, and the wild irresponsible folly of the ultra-Insurgents, make a situation which is very unpleasant. From a variety of causes, the men who are both sane and progressive, the men who make up the strength of the party, have been left so at sea during these months that they have themselves tended to become either sordid on the one hand, or wild on the other. I do not see how I could as a decent citizen have avoided taking the stand I have taken this year, and striving to reunite the party and to help the Republicans retain control of Congress and of the State of New York, while at the same time endeavoring to see that this control within the party was in the hands of sensible and honorable men who were progressives and not of a bourbon reactionary type. But as far as my personal inclinations were concerned, my personal pleasure and comfort, I should infinitely have preferred to keep wholly out of politics. I need hardly say that I never made a speech or took an action save in response to the earnest and repeated requests of men many of whom I well knew, in spite of their anxiety to use me at the moment, were exceedingly anxious to limit that use before elections with the understanding that I should have no say afterwards.
"I have on every occasion this year praised everything I conscientiously could of both Taft and the Congress, and I have never said a word in condemnation of either, strongly though I have felt. Very possibly circumstances will be such that I shall support Taft for the Presidency next time; but this is not a point now necessary for decision, and if I do support him it will be under no illusion and simply as being the best thing that the conditions permit."
At the elections in November, 1910, the Democrats were victorious in all parts of the country, carrying New York State by a majority of 67,000, thus confirming Roosevelt's prediction in his letter to Senator Lodge, on September 12, 1910, quoted above. In the Outlook of November 19, 1910, Roosevelt published this announcement:
"On every hand, personally and by correspondence, I have been asked to make a statement regarding the election. So far as I am concerned, I have nothing whatever to add to or to take away from the declaration of principles which I have made in the Ossawatomie speech and elsewhere, East and West, during the past three months. The fight for progressive popular government has merely begun, and will certainly go on to a triumphant conclusion in spite of initial checks and irrespective of the personal success or failure of individual leaders."
Writing to me, at Panama, on November 21, 1910, he outlined freely the elements which had entered into the election, giving his reasons for the course he had pursued and his views of the effect that the result would have upon his political future:
"I faced a situation where there was no 'best course'; it was merely a choice between courses, all of them unsatisfactory. I think I took the only course that was right, and the only course that I could have taken without loss of self-respect. I told the exact truth as I saw it. I praised Taft for every action of his as to which I could conscientiously praise him. Where I could not praise him, or disapproved of what he had done, I kept silent. I was opposed by the lunatic Insurgents of all grades, receiving very lukewarm support, I am sorry to say, from those who were not contented with anything short of denunciation of Taft, and who have no conception of the difference in difficulty between tearing down and building up. On the other hand, the reactionaries, the representatives of the special interests and all those whom they control, literally went insane in their opposition.
'' The one comfort in the New York election is that I think it prevents my having to face the very unpleasant task of deciding whether or not to accept the nomination in 1912. If we had carried New York, I can see now that I would have had to make such a decision. Of course the decision seems easy enough; on the one hand to the well-meaning conservative person who regards Taft as a satisfactory President, and does not understand what any man sees to object to in him, and who feels that any reluctance to urge his renomination by me must be due to personal ambition on my part; on the other hand, the decision seems perfectly easy to the progressives who hate Taft so bitterly that they firmly believe every honest man must share their convictions, and that only an unworthy fear on my part, or a still more unworthy desire to truckle to ultra-conservatism, prevents my coming out openly against Taft. But the choice is really infinitely more difficult.
"I have refrained from saying that I would not be a candidate in 1912, not in the least from self-interest, for I should regard it as the greatest personal calamity to be forced into accepting the nomination, and if it is possible to avoid it, I do not intend to be so forced into accepting it; but because I do not wish to put myself in the position where if it becomes my plain duty to accept I shall be obliged to shirk such duty because of having committed myself. As things are now, I feel convinced that it will not become my duty to accept. They have no business to expect me to take command of a ship simply because the ship is sinking.
"Were I nominated under present conditions, it would mean that I should be broken down by a burden for which I was not in any way responsible, but which would have to be carried by the nominee who succeeded Taft; and, on the other hand, I would face the sullen resentment of the many respectable people with no special information or imagination, who would think that in some way or other I had been treacherous to Taft. Often when one does not like conditions it is nevertheless necessary to play the game through under the conditions, because they cannot be changed until the game is over without making things even worse. As I feel now, I would refuse the nomination if it were offered
Among the many friends who wrote to him at this time in regard to his future course was William Allen White of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette. Mr. White said to him that he did not wish to see him run for President again if he "could possibly help it." In reply Roosevelt wrote, from Oyster Bay, on December 12, 1910:
"You have struck the real reason of my nervousness on the subject. Of course the Wall Street crowd, and my enemies generally, think I have been scheming to be President. As a matter of fact there is nothing that I want less. Indeed this is not putting it strong enough. I feel that I did good work as President because the circumstances were such as to make me in sympathy with the men whom I really cared to represent. Now if I were again made President, it might be that the circumstances would be such that I could not do what was expected of me; and in any event I do not see how I could go out of the Presidency again with the credit I had when I left it this time. Moreover I have led such an active and vigorous life that I begin to feel rather old and to appreciate rest, now that I feel the right to it and so can enjoy it with a clear conscience. I have been almost ashamed of the fact that in spite of my concern and indignation over Stimson 's defeat, I have been unable to keep from being thoroughly happy since election. Mrs. Roosevelt and I have been out here in our own home, with our books and pictures and bronzes, and big wood fires and horses to ride, and the knowledge that our children are doing well. I do not think that I have had such a pleasant five weeks for a great many years. In fact I know I have not.
"Now under these circumstances, if I consulted merely my own feelings, I would promptly announce that never under any circumstances would I consent to be President again. But I don't think that this would be right. I think the chances are a hundred to one that I never shall be President again—perhaps a thousand to one. But however improbable, it is possible that circumstances might arise when it would be unpatriotic of me, when it would represent going back on my principles and my friends, to refuse to be President. Moreover, what is much more likely, the threat of my possible Presidency may influence for good some worthy people who need just to be influenced!
"As regards myself, I think that the American people feel a little tired of me, a feeling with which I cordially sympathize ; for they cannot be expected as a whole to understand that my speeches and writings during the last six months have been due not in the least to a desire to speak and write, but to the fact that I could not avoid doing so without shirking what I regarded as my duty. Moreover I am certain that the American people would greatly resent any thought that I would want them to give me another job of any kind for my own sake. I shall never wittingly put myself in a position where they can believe this. I feel most strongly that I never again should take any public position unless it could be made perfectly clear that I was taking it not for my own sake, but because the people thought it would be to their advantage to have me do so."

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
"NEW  NATIONALISM"—CANDIDACY AGAINST  TAFT
eaRly in 1911, Roosevelt made another speaking tour through the South and West, occupying about six weeks. One of the objects of this trip was to be present at the dedication of the great Roosevelt Dam at Roosevelt, Arizona, which took place on March 18, 1911. His speeches covered a variety of subjects and are chiefly interesting so far as they foreshadowed the principles which he was to make the basis of his national campaign in 1912. At Phoenix, Arizona, and at several points in California, he advocated the recall of judicial decisions, saying that he favored it only when by actual experience the people were driven to it in order to do away with some serious evil.
While passing through Reno, Nevada, and addressing a large assemblage of citizens in a public park, on April 3, he dealt a characteristically courageous blow at what might be called one of the State's chief industries. Speaking of its '' divorce colony,'' he said: '' It is one colony of which you want to rid yourselves; I don't care what you do with those of your own State who seek divorces, but keep citizens of other States who want divorces out of Nevada. Don't allow yourselves to be deceived by the argument that such a colony brings money to your city. You can't afford to have that kind of money brought here."
The chief topics of his speeches were treated in a series of eight articles which he published in the Outlook during this period under the general title of "The New Nationalism." In these he simply embodied the views which he had advocated while President, both in his messages to Congress and in his public speeches, in regard to the regulation and control of corporations and industrial combinations, the relations of capital and labor, social and industrial justice, special privilege, conduct of the judiciary and similar subjects which had been steadily occupying serious consideration in his mind from the time he had been a member of the New York Legislature. There was nothing really new in his advocacy of them; they were the logical development of thirty years of thought and experience and were based on a steadily growing faith in their patriotism, wisdom and justice. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the assertions which his persistent critics made in regard to them—that they were the outcome of sudden impulse, or hasty thought, or demagogic desire for popularity. No one who had followed his career could make such charges in relation to them. The story of his career as shown from his utterances and acts and recorded in these pages supplies complete and final refutation.
While he was on this Southern and Western tour in 1911, serious trouble occurred in Mexico and there were rumors of intervention and possible war. Roosevelt was at the time in San Francisco and on March 14, 1911, he wrote a letter to President Taft which it is interesting to compare with a similar one that he wrote to President Wilson a few years later on the eve of war with Germany:
"I don't suppose that there is anything in this war talk, and I most earnestly hope that we will not have to intervene even to do temporary police duty in Mexico. But just because there is, I suppose, one chance in a thousand of serious trouble such as would occur if Japan or some other big power were to back Mexico, I write. Of course I would not wish to take any part in a mere war with Mexico —it would not be my business to do peculiarly irksome and disagreeable police duty of the kind that any occupation of Mexico would entail. But if by any remote chance—and I know how remote it is—there should be a serious war, a war in which Mexico was backed by Japan or some other big power, then I would wish immediately to apply for permission to raise a division of cavalry, such as the regiment I commanded in Cuba. The division would consist of three brigades of three regiments each. If given a free hand, I could render it, I am certain, as formidable a body of horse riflemen, that is, of soldiers such as those of Sheridan, Forest and Stuart, as has ever been seen. In order to make it efficient and formidable, and to prepare it in the shortest possible time, I would need to choose my own officers. To follow any other course would be to risk losing half, or possibly all, of the efficiency of the force. I have my brigade commanders, colonels, and in many cases majors and captains already in mind, and they would be men under whose organization could be pushed to very rapid completion, while the ranks would be immediately filled to overflowing with men, every one of whom would be already a good horseman and rifleman able to live in the open and take care of himself."
Throughout the year 1911 the pressure upon Roosevelt by his most zealous followers to run as a candidate for the Presidency in 1912 steadily increased. He was greatly disturbed by this as two letters that he wrote to me at Panama in December show very clearly:
December 13, 1911.
"As for the nomination, I should regard it from my personal standpoint as little short of a calamity. I not merely do not want it, but if I honorably can, I desire to avoid it. On the other hand, I certainly will not put myself in a position which would make it necessary for me to shirk a plain duty if it came unmistakably as a plain duty. As yet I am not convinced that it will so come, and, on the contrary, believe there is practically little or no chance of it. I will not be a candidate in any ordinary sense of the word, and my judgment is that the Federal office holders together with the timid conservative people will give Taft the nomination. At any rate, as far as I am concerned, my anxieties are in this order: first, not to be nominated if it can honorably be avoided, and, second, if nominated, to have it made perfectly clear that it is in response to a genuine popular demand and because the public wishes me to serve them for their purpose, and not to gratify any ambition of mine."
December 29, 1911.
"I have been immensely worried and puzzled over the Presidential business. I am really not thinking of myself at all now, but as to what is right to do. Taft is utterly hopeless. I think he would be beaten if nominated, but in any event it would be a misfortune to have him in the Presidential chair for another term, for he has shown himself an entirely unfit President, and he merely discredits the Republican Party, and therefore discredits those of us who believe that, with the Democratic Party as it is now constituted, the Republican Party offers the only instrument through which to secure really sane, progressive government. . . .
"But I am sure that, from the personal standpoint, it would be rough on me to have me nominated, and I am as yet not sure that it would not be damaging from the public standpoint. I think a great many men would have a vague feeling that I was nominated to gratify my own ambition, and would pay no heed whatever to the circumstances of the nomination. The New York newspapers, for instance, would probably without a single exception assert that I had corruptly intrigued for the nomination, and keep up the assertion until they had deceived a good number of people. Very possibly I should be beaten if I ran, and if I was not beaten it might well be that I would be elected under circumstances which would render it impossible to put through any constructive program—and if ever I hold the Presidency again I shall regard it as a capital misfortune unless I am able to hold it not merely for the sake of holding the office but for the sake of doing a job. In other words, I want to see the Presidency handled along the lines that the job of digging the Panama Canal has been handled."
In January, 1912, Frank A. Munsey, then editor of The Press of New York City, made a public appeal to Roosevelt to announce that if nominated for the Presidency he would not refuse the nomination. In a long private and confidential letter to Mr. Munsey, under date of January 16, 1912, which was published several weeks later, Roosevelt gave his reasons for not granting the request. In this letter he said:
"I am not and shall not be a candidate. I shall not seek the nomination, nor would I accept it if it came to me as the result of an intrigue. But I will not tie my hands by a statement which would make it difficult or impossible for me to serve the public by undertaking a great task if the people as a whole seemed definitely to come to the conclusion that I ought to do that task. In other words, as far as in me lies I am endeavoring to look at this matter purely from the standpoint of the public interest, of the interest of the people as a whole, and not in the least from my own standpoint.
"If I should consult only my own pleasure and interest, I should most emphatically and immediately announce that I would under no circumstances run. I have had all the honor that any man can have from holding the office of President. From every personal standpoint there is nothing for me to gain either in running for the office or in holding the office once more, and there is very much to lose.
"Under such circumstances, if I consulted only my own interest, the obvious thing to do would be to announce that I would not obey any popular mandate, that I would not run if nominated. I shall not follow this course because I am sincerely endeavoring to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the popular interest. It is not only necessary for the people to have the right instrument, the right tool, with which to work in any given emergency, but it is necessary that they themselves shall choose, and shall believe in the sufficiency of, that instrument. If at this particular crisis, with the particular problems ahead of us at this particular time, the people feel that I am the one man in sight to do the job, then I should regard myself as shirking a plain duty if I refused to do it.
   
"What I am interested in, remember, is not in the least holding the office, but doing a job that is actually worth doing; this is the position that to the best of my belief I have always taken, and always shall take. If the people should feel that I was the instrument to be used at this time, I should accept even although I knew that I should be broken and cast aside in the using; for often it is true that at a given moment there is one tool, one instrument, particularly available, and then that instrument must be used even though to use it necessarily means to break it. The right motto for any man is ' Spend and be spent'; and if, in order to do a job worth doing from the public standpoint, he must pay with his own life, actual life on the field of battle, or political life in civic affairs, he must not grudge the payment.
"If my position were only a pose, I should certainly act differently from the way I am acting, for I am well aware that the way I am acting is not the way in which to act if I desire to be made President. But my attitude is not a pose, I am acting as I do because, according to my lights, I am endeavoring, in a not too easy position, to do what I believe the interests of the people demand. From this standpoint I am convinced that although it is entirely proper for other men to seek the Presidency, it is neither wise nor proper for me to do so, the conditions being what they actually are. I have been President; I was President for nearly eight years; I am well known to the American people; I am to be judged not by words but by my acts; and whether the people like me or dislike me, they have these acts all before them for their decision."
Writing to. me at Panama, on January 29, 1912, he enclosed a copy of the Munsey letter, and said:

"It may be necessary for me to speak, and very possibly I will have to speak before the first open primaries. I hope not, however. The trouble is that if I speak it looks as if I were making myself a candidate, and if I do not speak it looks as if I were acting furtively.
   
"I write you, confidentially, that my own reading of  the situation is that while there are a great many people in this country who are devoted to me, they do not form more than a substantial minority of the ten or fifteen millions of voters. I have had a great time; I have done my work. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the people have made up their mind that they wish some new instrument, that they do not wish me; and if I know myself, I am sincere when I tell you that this does not cause one least little particle of regret to me. If it becomes necessary for me in the popular interest to attempt any job, of course I would attempt it; but nothing would persuade me to attempt it in my own interest and welfare, and as far as in me lies I shall endeavor to make it clear that such is the case."
The pressure upon him to be a candidate increased in volume steadily and rapidly and during January, 1912, it extended virtually to the entire country with the exception of the South. Governors of States, recognized leaders of opinion, newspaper editors, and others whose utterances had weight, either visited him or wrote to him begging him to become a candidate. They convinced him that at least two-thirds of the rank and file of the party wished him to run. They convinced him also that the principles for which he had fought throughout his career were at stake and that unless he took the field as their champion no fight whatever would be made for them. While he was in this state of mind, which may justly be called a, but not the, psychological moment in his career—for he had many such moments—a letter reached him, written on February 10, 1912, signed by the Republican governors of seven States—Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Wyoming—formally requesting him to be a candidate for the Presidency. This letter was ingeniously framed to exert a powerful influence upon Roosevelt. Its authors declared their belief that a large majority of the Republican voters favored his nomination and a large majority of the voters favored his election; that he represented, as no other man did, the principles and policies which must appeal to the American people and which were necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the country; that in making the request the authors of the letter were not considering his personal interests, but the interests of the people as a whole, and that if he were to decline he would show himself unresponsive to a plain public duty.
Two days after the date of this letter, February 12, 1912, President Taft made a speech before the Republican Club in New York City in which he said:
"There are those who look upon the present situation as one full of evil and corruption and as. a tyranny of concentrated wealth, and who in apparent despair at any ordinary remedy are seeking to pull down those things which have been regarded as the pillars of the temple of freedom and representative government and to reconstruct our whole society on some new principle, not definitely formulated and with no intelligent or intelligible forecast of the exact constitutional and statutory results to be obtained. Such extremists would hurry us into a condition which would find no parallel except in the French Revolution or in that babbling anarchy that once characterized the South American Republics. Such extremists are not progressives; they are political emotionalists or neurotics.''
This was nothing less than a direct assault upon Roosevelt for his utterances in his Colorado and Ossawatomie speeches. Coming as it did at the critical moment when Roosevelt was considering the question of consenting to be a candidate, its effect was decisive. It removed from his mind the last lingering doubt as to the irreconcilable difference on matters of principle which existed between himself and Mr. Taft, and as to his duty to become a candidate against him. To his mind, Mr. Taft's words were not only an assault but a challenge, for never before in his career and never afterwards were more offensive epithets than "political emotionalist" and "neurotic" applied to him. If Mr. Taft had designed to goad him into acceptance of the proposal of the governors, he could scarcely have hit upon surer means. He fairly compelled Roosevelt to take one of two courses—either defend his principles or abandon them, and no one could have known better than Mr. Taft must have known what Roosevelt's choice would be. That he decided at once to be a candidate, and that personal considerations had nothing whatever to do with his decision, is too clear to dispute. Neither his past nor present personal relations with Mr. Taft entered into the matter at all. It was purely a question of principles and Mr. Taft's own utterances showed how hopeless agreement on them had become.
Before answering the letter of the governors, Roosevelt went to Columbus, Ohio, and on February 21 delivered an address before the Ohio Constitutional Convention, on "A Charter of Democracy," which by its radical utterances made it virtually impossible for the Republican National Convention to nominate him. While passing through Cleveland on his way to Columbus on February 21, he was asked if he was to be a candidate and in replying he used a phrase which became famous: "My hat is in the ring. You will have my answer on Monday." In this speech at Columbus he declared himself in favor of the initiative and referendum proposals and of the recall of judicial decisions, while at the same time reiterating and reaffirming his views in regard to corporations and trusts and other subjects. He had, as I have noted in a previous chapter, favored the recall of judicial decisions in his speeches in the West in 1911, but in his Columbus address he stated his views on the question with far greater emphasis. The address fairly startled the conservative sentiment of the country, and alienated hundreds of thousands of Republican voters. If he had studied to make his own nomination by the Republican Convention impossible he could not have hit upon a surer course. It was a plain defiance to the leaders of the party and a notification that they could hope for no compromise of principles from him; that he valued loyalty to those principles above any support that they were able to give. That he was perfectly aware of this effect of his utterances, is not to be questioned. He had thought the matter out most earnestly, as the letters that I have quoted show, and he had reached the conclusion that he must make the fight for the principles dearest to his heart, or leave them to be abandoned without a struggle. That there was no possibility of his own election, or of political advantage of any kind for himself, he was too shrewd a man not to perceive. Had he been seeking such advantage he would have refrained from saying what was not at all needed to bind his radical followers more closely to him, and what was certain to drive away thousands who would have remained with him had he kept silent. His answer to the seven governors, on February 24, 1912, was as follows:
"I deeply appreciate your letter, and I realize to the full the heavy responsibility it puts upon me, expressing as it does the carefully considered convictions of the men elected by popular vote to stand as the heads of government in their several States.
"I absolutely agree with you that this matter is not one to be decided with any reference to the personal preferences or interests of any man, but purely from the standpoint of the interests of the people as a whole. I will accept the nomination for President if it is tendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision until the convention has expressed its preference. One of the chief principles for which I have stood and for which I now stand, and which I have always endeavored and always shall endeavor to reduce to -action, is the genuine rule of the people; and therefore I hope that so far as possible the people may be given the chance, through direct primaries, to express their preference as to who shall be the nominee of the Republican Presidential Convention."
Writing to me at Panama on March 18, 1912, he said: "Do not get the idea into your head that I am going to win in this fight. It was a fight that had to be made and there was no alternative to my making it."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
 THE "STEAM ROLLER" CONVENTION OF 1912
the contests in the primaries for the election of delegates to the National Republican Convention became extremely animated after Roosevelt's consent to be a candidate was made known. With characteristic frankness and courage he stood by his principles without flinching. On March 20, 1912, he made a speech in Carnegie Hall, New York, when he declared "I stand by my Columbus speech," and reiterated the views he had expressed in it, taking occasion to reply at some length to the criticisms which President Taft had made of his remarks on the question of the recall of judicial decisions. In this speech he quoted an approval of his recall plan which had been given by William Draper Lewis, Dean of the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, and in which the Dean had said:
"I don't mind saying, however, that I think it unfortunate that it should have been proposed by Colonel Roosevelt. He is a man of such marked characteristics, and his place in the political world is such that he arouses intense enthusiasm on the one hand, and intense animosity on the other. Because of this, the great idea which he has propounded is bound to be beclouded, and its adoption to be delayed. It is a pity that anything so important should be confounded with any man's personality."
Commenting upon this, Roosevelt said:
"As regards the Dean's last paragraph, I can only say that I wish somebody else whose suggestions would arouse less antagonism had proposed it; but nobody else did propose it, and so I had to. I am not leading this fight as a matter of aesthetic pleasure.   I am leading because somebody must lead, or else the fight would not be made at all.''
In closing his speech he said:
"Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our purpose. The methods for achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected, according as actual experience shows that they work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty purpose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing. In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls. The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt, he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is, Spend and be spent. It is of little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us."
In the election of delegates to the Republican National Convention of 1912 a new element entered. In thirteen States,—California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin—preferential primary laws had been enacted and were to go into effect for the first time. Under these laws the rank and file of the party had the right to express their preference for Presidential nominees when they voted for delegates to the convention. In all, these States chose 382 delegates, and the result in their primaries justified the claim that Roosevelt was the choice of a large majority of the voters of the Republican party, for of the 382 delegates chosen 278 were instructed specifically to vote for him as the nominee for President and 68 for Taft, 28 of whom were from Georgia, a hopelessly Democratic State. There were 36 for Senator La Follette of Wisconsin. Early in the primary contests eight delegates-at-large in Massachusetts, avowedly Roosevelt men, had been chosen but under a confusing provision of the law a preference for Taft had been adopted by a small majority, about 3,000. Colonel Roosevelt at once announced that he should demand that this preference be obeyed by the eight delegates, though they had been chosen as Roosevelt supporters, giving as his reason that he intended to have the honest expression of the rank and file obeyed. The primaries in the 36 Congressional districts of the State had resulted in the election of 18 delegates for Roosevelt and 18 for Taft. Later, on the eve of the primaries in the Ohio districts, Mr. Taft announced that the result in them would settle the contest between him and Roosevelt, Ohio being Taft's home State. They resulted in the election of Roosevelt delegates in all the districts, 34 in number, by a majority of 47,000 votes, but neither Mr. Taft nor his managers accepted the verdict as final. On the contrary, they were able through their control of the party machinery to elect four Taft men as delegates-at-large when the State Convention met a short time later, thereby refusing to accept the 47,000 majority among the Republican votes of the State as indicating the will of the party. Their course was precisely opposite to that which Roosevelt had followed in the Massachusetts case.
As a matter of fact, so far as the primaries indicated the wishes of a majority of the Republican voters, they showed undeniably that Roosevelt was the favorite candidate. The total number of delegates in the National Convention was 1,078, and 540 were necessary for a nomination. The great majority of the delegates had been chosen in the old style of primary and their exact attitude toward candidates was, in many instances, not known. At the time the convention met, on June 18, 1912, the leaders of both Roosevelt and Taft forces claimed a majority. In a canvass of the delegates, published by the New York Tribune, a strong Taft advocate, a few days earlier, the number of delegates who had expressed their preference for Roosevelt was placed at 469% and those similarly committed to Taft at 454%. This was frank admission that Roosevelt, on the face of the primary and convention results, had a clear majority of the convention. In describing the proceedings both in the convention and in the National Committee anterior to the meeting of the convention, I shall quote from an account which was submitted to Roosevelt after the election in 1912 and received his approval. I am, therefore, giving his own version of the proceedings which, in his judgment, deprived him of a nomination which was rightfully his.
The seats of more than 200 delegates were contested, and in accordance with established procedure in the party all contests were referred to the National Republican Committee for investigation and report to the convention.
The committee assembled at Chicago ten days in advance of the meeting of the convention. Several of its most influential members had been defeated in the election of delegates and were not to be members of the convention. These were known to be bitterly opposed to Mr. Roosevelt, and it was quite generally asserted in the press that they would use their power to prevent his nomination by so deciding the contests as to secure a majority of the convention against him. It was claimed, also, that in accordance with precedent, the committee had authority to make up the temporary roll of the convention, and thus secure control of its organization.
The composition of the committee was peculiar. It had been the practise for many years for each State delegation to nominate and for the national convention, at the close of its work, to ratify the choice of members of its National Committee to serve for the ensuing four years. In this way each National Committee, through its control over contests, had it in its power to make up the roll of the next succeeding convention, although many or even a majority of its members might not be delegates in that body. In 1912 fifteen members of the committee had failed in their efforts to be chosen delegates; many of them had been thus repudiated by their own party by very large majorities. The total membership of the committee was 53. Of this number 10 were from the Southern States, not one of which would give the nominee of the convention an electoral vote, and four others were from territorial possessions—District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii, Philippines, and Porto Rico— which took no part in presidential elections. These three sets of members, 29 in all, actually represented nobody in the convention, yet they were its controlling and dominating force. The members of the committee who had been most signally repudiated by their own people were the leaders in all acts of the committee, and with them stood unswervingly on all questions the Southern and territorial members.
The first act of the committee was to elect Victor Rose-water, of Nebraska, who had failed to be elected a delegate, chairman, he, as vice-chairman of the committee, having been acting chairman because of the death of the occupant of that position. The moving spirits in the committee were Senator Penrose, of Pennsylvania, and Senator Crane, of Massachusetts, both defeated as delegates, and both, like Mr. Rosewater, not eligible for reelection as members of the National Committee. The unconcealed prominence of these repudiated leaders in the business of making up the temporary roll of the convention, and thereby securing control of it, very naturally aroused earnest protest, and impaired confidence in the strict impartiality of the committee's decisions.
But party precedent authorized it, and protest and appeal were vain. The leaders of the committee had the courage of their kind. They went about their task openly and with slight regard for either the rights or the merits of their opponents. They adopted a set of rules, the chief of which was that there should be no roll-call save on the request of twenty members, refusing to cut it down to ten, though under the Constitution of the United States one-fifth of members present is a sufficient number for a roll-call in the Senate or House of Representatives. Having a solid and unshakable majority of thirty-seven in the committee, the leaders knew that twenty members could not be collected in opposition, and that embarrassing roll-calls could thus be avoided. Although President Taft sent a personal request that the hearings of the committee on contests be thrown open to members of the press, the committee voted to hold them behind closed doors, admitting only representatives of the three or four press associations.
It was after the committee had refused to reduce the number of names required for a roll-call from twenty to ten that the brand of "Steam Roller" was applied to the committee's course. It was applied subsequently to the course of the convention, and adopted into general use both by the press in reporting its proceedings and by delegates on the floor.
Although the doors were closed to reporters generally, an occasional bit of illuminating information escaped from the committee room. One such was published in the Chicago Tribime on June 8, 1912, a few days after the committee began its work, as follows:
"While the ninth Alabama contest was under consideration, Senator W. Murray Crane suggested to several members of the committee that it would be wise tactics to seat the Roosevelt delegates.
" 'Big Steve'  Stephenson,  of  Colorado, who holds  a proxy from former Senator Nathan B. Scott, of West Virginia, is reported to have replied:
" 'We can't afford to let them have it. We might be able to spare two votes now, but we must look ahead to the time when we will have to give them something. We can't do it now.''
When the ninth district contest was settled by a vote of 38 to 15 in favor of the Taft forces, National Committee-man Mulvane, an ardent Taft man of Kansas, said to a man friendly to Colonel Roosevelt:
"Now you fellows have got an inkling of what you are going to get. Are you going to waste our time going over all these contests?"
'' What do you fellows intend to do!" Mulvane was asked. "You know you surely can't elect Taft?"
To which Mulvane is said to have responded:
"We can't elect Taft, but we are going to hold on to
this organization, and when we get back four years from
now we will have it and not those d	• insurgents."
At the conclusion of the committee's work, it was announced officially that 92 contests had been investigated and decided; there had been no roll-calls in 74 decisions; roll-calls in 16; unanimous vote in 4, and 2 contests had been abandoned. The net result was that 233 of the contested delegates were given to Taft and 6 to Roosevelt. The daily records of the proceedings of the committee were published in the newspapers of the country under such headlines as the "Steam Roller Continues Its Work." "The Steam Roller Goes on Crushing Out Roosevelt Hopes." "The Steam Roller Gives Forty-Two More Votes to Taft— None to Roosevelt."
When the convention came together it was predicted almost or quite universally by the newspaper correspondents in attendance that Taft's nomination had been assured by the action of the National Committee, since the "Steam Roller" would pursue its course as inflexibly in the convention as it had in the committee. This prediction was fulfilled literally. At the first session formal protest was made by the Roosevelt leaders against allowing seventy-four delegates, whose seats had been contested and whose names had been placed on the temporary roll of the convention, to vote in the election of temporary chairman, since by so doing each would be voting upon his own right to a seat.
In making the protest Governor Hadley of Missouri placed very clearly before the convention the real issue involved, which was simply whether the convention itself or the National Committee was to nominate the candidate for the presidency. He said:
"Were this question simply one of principle I would have no doubt what the decision would be; because upon a question of principle, if it is within the power of the thirty-seven men to say who shall constitute the majority of a convention, then we have ceased to recognize the principle of representative government in this country in the conduct of the Republican party. We have but one form of government in this country, and that is government by political parties, and if the decisions of parties in convention can be finally controlled by those who make up the temporary roll, then we have established within a political organization a political oligarchy with power to make candidates and to defeat candidates; with power to pass laws and to veto laws."
This protest was in complete accord with the one that Colonel Roosevelt, as recorded in Chapter 5, Volume 1 of this history, made in the Republican Convention of 1884, the first such convention he ever attended.
His protest in 1884, like that of Governor Hadley in 1912, was aimed at the assumption that a National Committee, under the control of men who were not delegates in the convention, should dictate the convention's action in utter disregard of the principles of representative government.
   The convention of 1884, not being under Steam Roller control, heeded Mr. Roosevelt's protest and elected Mr. Lynch by a vote of 431 in his favor to 382 for General Clayton. In 1912, however, the appeal of Governor Hadley was made to a very different body of delegates. By that time precisely such a "political oligarchy" as he described had been established within the party, firmly intrenched behind precedent, and this the Steam Roller operators proceeded to demonstrate. The rejected delegate who was in the chair by virtue of being chairman of the National Committee, had been coached in advance for the emergency and was, so to speak, "loaded" to meet it. He ruled against the protest, taking from his pocket a carefully prepared document in which it was claimed that his decision was in accordance with party precedent of more than half a century.
Mr. Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley"), who was present in the convention, wrote and published this account of the incident in the American Magazine of September 1912:
''After Mr. Victor Rosewater had been instructed in his duties as acting chairman of the National Committee by the delectable three—William Barnes, Jr., Murray Crane, and Boies Penrose—and had rehearsed his decision on the right of the National Committee to seat the Taft delegates (which was prepared for him) until he was almost letter perfect, and was about to retire to his sleepless couch, the Senator from Pennsylvania genially said to him: 'Victor, as soon as you've made that decision jump off the platform, for some one is going to take a shot at you, sure.' The effect of this kindly counsel upon young Mr. Rosewater was not soothing. Yet he made the decision. There is no doubt about that. It is in the official record, written down by the official reporters the night before. But no one heard him make it. The actual, physical disposition of the decision is unknown. The impression of those who sat in front of the chairman and watched the play of his throat muscles was that he swallowed it,"
After this ruling there was no doubt as to the dominating power of the National Committee over the convention. The Steam Roller went smoothly, relentlessly, and even proudly forward, crushing out all opposition. The committee's choice for temporary chairman, Senator Elihu Root, was placed in nomination and, by the votes of the 74 contested delegates whose names had been placed on the roll by the committee, was elected. The result of the ballot showed how vital their votes were, for the figures were 558 for Mr. Root and 501 for his chief opponent, with 19 scattering and not voting.
To have taken chances with less than 74 votes would have been reckless, for the Steam Roller would have been thrown off the track, thus making the convention itself the nominating power.
When Mr. Root had taken the chair and had delivered his address, the Roosevelt leaders renewed their protest against allowing the 74 contested delegates to vote in the selection of committees of the convention, including the committee on credentials. Mr. Root overruled the protest, sustaining his decision on the ground of party precedent and parliamentary practise. In giving his decision, he said:
"No man can be permitted to vote upon the question of his own right to a seat in the convention, but the rule does not disqualify any delegate whose name is upon the roll from voting upon the contest of any other man's right or from participating in the ordinary business of the convention so long as he holds his seat. Otherwise, any minority could secure control of a deliberative body by grouping a sufficient number of their opponents in one motion, and by thus disqualifying them turn the minority into a majority without any decision upon the merits of the motion. . . . To hold that a member whose seat is contested may take no part in the proceedings of this body would lead to the conclusion that if every seat were contested, as it surely would be if such a rule were adopted, there could be no convention at all, as nobody would be entitled to participate.''
Thus the National Committee's control of the convention was claimed to be in accordance with precedent. The claim could have been made with equal justice for the reverse course. Either claim would have been purely technical. The true test was, Did Mr. Root and his fellows in good faith seek to find out and give effect to the honestly expressed wish of the rank and file of the Republican party? The answer must be that they did not, for that answer was returned at the polls by the members of the rank and file themselves in the subsequent election.
After the decision was announced Roosevelt, who was in Chicago, instructed his delegates to take no further part in the deliberations of the convention. An offer had been brought to him to turn over a sufficient number of Southern delegates to secure either his own nomination or that of any one he would designate. To this Roosevelt answered—and this statement is made upon unimpeachable authority—that he was not interested in the fortunes of himself or any other one man, but in certain great fundamental principles which affected the right of honest self-government ; that if the roll was purged he would accept the nomination of any man made by the convention, but if the roll was not purged he would neither accept a nomination of himself nor support that of any other man.
With Mr. Root's decision in support of its course, the Steam Roller proceeded merrily on its way. With the aid of the votes of the 74 contested delegates, it secured the appointment of a committee on credentials which could be depended upon to ratify all the findings of the National Committee on contested seats, which it proceeded to do, reporting in favor of seating the 74 as permanent members. When the vote on acceptance of this report was put before the convention for adoption, the temporary chairman held sternly to his decision that no one of the 74 whose seat was contested could vote on his own case, but as his 73 companions in dispute could be relied on to vote for him, the deprivation was easily borne. All "regular," all "in accordance with precedent" in conventions since they were first established! The operators of the Steam Roller themselves had created the precedent in accordance with which they were operating it, and knowing their business thoroughly, they had made no mistakes. Again it may be said, they could have cited equally good precedent for an opposite course.
With the 74 contested delegates firmly in their seats, the remaining work of the convention went on with only slight and occasional friction. Nothing jarred the progress of the Steam Roller. Occasionally a delegate, not entirely reconciled to its crushing progress, made the point of order that it was "exceeding the speed limit," but so general had recognition of its control of the proceedings become that the chairman was able to look upon such protest as an uncommonly good joke, and join in the general laugh.
Only once was the beaten path of "regularity" departed from, and the responsible person in the case was Mr. Root, who had been elected permanent as well as temporary chairman. During the roll-call for the nomination of candidates for the presidency, the vote of Massachusetts was being polled. An account of what occurred was published by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University, who was a member of the delegation, and from this the following quotation is made:
"The first delegate-at-large replied to his name: 'Present and not voting.' Whereupon the Honorable Elihu Root, president of the convention, called the Taft alternate. Forthwith Frederick Fosdick, chairman of 'the Roosevelt Eighteen,' stepped out into the aisle, raising his hand to command attention, and said: 'Massachusetts is a law-abiding State, and will not stand for such a steal.' Thereupon, the honored president of the convention advanced to the edge of the platform and said: 'If the delegates from Massachusetts will not do their duty, we will call upon those who will do it.' To which Mr. Fosdick manfully replied: ' No convention can make me vote for any man.' A second Roosevelt delegate answered, 'Present and not voting, ' and a second alternate was called who voted for Taft. This, in brief, is the reason why the Massachusetts delegation, which was divided 18 to 18, shows on the record 20 votes 'Taft' and 16 'present and not voting.'
"If this transfer of two votes was fair play, good parliamentary law, and the traditional practice of a Republican convention, its basis can be found in the printed records of the successive Republican conventions since 1856. They have been examined by the writer from beginning to end as the basis of this article. There is not one single rule, vote, or decision in any one of the fourteen sets of proceedings which is a precedent for the decision of Mr. Root. On the contrary, the ruling was contrary to every precedent which bears on the case."
"Why Mr. Root thought it so necessary to get these two additional votes for Taft has never been revealed. His act, Professor Hart shows, had no precedent in its support, and as such mars the perfect record of "regularity" for the convention's conduct. The fact that no protest was made to it shows that the convention managers insisted on strict regularity and obedience to precedent only when such conduct was necessary for the accomplishment of their purpose. They thus confessed that it was in their power to violate law and precedent whenever they chose to do so, or whenever their chairman elected to lead them in a new departure. The two votes were not absolutely necessary to secure Taft's nomination, for when the roll-call was ended the record stood: Taft, 561; Roosevelt, 107; La Follette, 41; Cummins, 17; Hughes, 2; present and not voting, 349. Taft thus received 21 votes more than were necessary for a nomination, and the two snatched, as it were, from Massachusetts by Mr. Root were superfluous. The Roosevelt delegates, under Roosevelt's personal direction, had withdrawn from active participation in the proceedings of the convention, and only about a fourth of them joined in the balloting.
The Steam Roller had gone over them, but subsequent events were to show that it had by no means crushed them. One of the last acts of the convention was the election of a new National Committee to serve for four years, thus placing the controlling power of the convention of 1916 in the hands of a like body to that which had dominated the convention of 1912.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
THE   PBOGRBSSIVE   CONVENTION   AND   CAMPAIGN-SHOOTING OF ROOSEVELT
immediately following the completion of the roll-call, which resulted in the nomination of Taft, the Roosevelt delegates and alternates left the convention and accompanied by a great throng of people went to another hall in the city, which was filled to overflowing as soon as the doors were opened. A convention was organized and resolutions were adopted nominating Roosevelt as the candidate of the Progressive party for the presidency. A committee of notification, representing the strongest Republican States, twenty-two in number, was appointed to apprise him of the nomination. When he appeared in the hall a scene of the wildest enthusiasm followed. All witnesses of this scene describe it as something quite without precedent in convention history, being more like the beginning of a religious crusade than the founding of a political party. Roosevelt made a brief speech, in which he said:
"I think the time has come when not only men who believe in Progressive principles, but all men who believe in those elementary maxims of public and private morality which must underlie every form of successful free government, should join in our movement. I, therefore, ask you to go to your several homes to find out the sentiment of the people at home and then again come together, I suggest by mass convention, to nominate for the presidency a Progressive on a Progressive platform that will enable us to appeal to Northerner and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner, Republican and Democrat alike, in the name of our common American citizenship. If you wish me to make the fight, I will make it, even if only one State should support me. 
   
"I am in this fight for certain principles, and the first and most important of these goes back to Sinai, and is embodied in the commandment, 'Thou shalt not steal.' Thou shalt not steal a nomination. Thou shalt neither steal in politics nor in business. Thou shalt not steal from the people the birthright of the people to rule themselves."
A call for a National Progressive Convention, to meet at Chicago on August 5, 1912, in the same building as that in which the Republican convention had held its sessions, was issued on July 7. There were sixty-three signers to the call, representing forty States, mostly Northern, and no Territories.
When the convention assembled at Chicago there were delegates from every State except South Carolina. Many States sent three and four times the regular number of delegates, so that there were in attendance fully two thousand in all. There were negro delegates from several States, including West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Rhode Island—whose character and standing in the communities from which they came were equal in every respect to those of the white delegates.
The convention was as extraordinary in character as that which had been assembled so hastily in Chicago in June. Its members, like those of the June gathering, sang hymns and patriotic songs, like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the "Star-Spangled Banner," "Onward Christian Soldiers." When Roosevelt made his first appearance on the platform he was cheered continuously for nearly an hour. On the evening of the second day Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for President, and Hiram W. Johnson, of California, for Vice-President. The convention adjourned after singing the "Doxology."
In accepting the nomination, Roosevelt reiterated the principles for which he had been speaking and writing since his return from abroad, and in closing used a phrase which he had employed in the speech which he had made to his followers when they withdrew from the Republican convention in June and which had instantly become a sort of battle cry in the Progressive campaign: "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord":
"Six weeks ago here in Chicago, I spoke to the honest representatives of a convention which was not dominated by honest men; a convention wherein sat, alas! a majority of men who, with sneering indifference to every principle of right, so acted as to bring to a shameful end a party which had been founded over half a century ago by men in whose souls burned the fire of lofty endeavor. Now to you men who, in your turn, have come together to spend and be spent in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who face the future resolute and confident, to you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment of our nation, to you who gird yourselves for this great new fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of mankind, I say jn closing what I said in that speech in closing: We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord."
The campaign which followed the convention was one of the most exciting and remarkable that the country had ever witnessed. Its result was virtually certain from the outset, for with two Republican candidates in the field the success of the Democratic candidate was reasonably well assured. The Republican leaders who had brought about the renomination of President Taft admitted frankly among themselves that they had no hope of his election. They had deliberately chosen defeat for their party in preference to success for it with Roosevelt. As his letters show, Roosevelt had no hope of election when he consented to run as the Progressive candidate. He was not making the fight for personal success but in defense of the principles for which he stood. He took the stump and made a vigorous campaign, and almost from the outset it was generally recognized that although he was the nominee of a new party, and was called a third party candidate, the contest was between him and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
When the campaign was at its height in October its progress was arrested and the whole country was shocked by the attempted assassination of Roosevelt while he was on a speaking tour in the West. As he was leaving his hotel in Milwaukee, on the evening of October 14, a half-crazed fanatic shot him as he stood in an automobile bowing to a cheering crowd. His assailant was only a few feet away when he fired the shot which under ordinary conditions would have been fatal. One of Roosevelt's secretaries, Elbert E. Martin, who had been a football player, immediately sprang upon the assailant and forced him to the ground. The crowd, thoroughly incensed, was crying out, "Lynch him, lynch him," but Roosevelt, who had not been thrown down by the shot, calmed the crowd by saying: "Don't hurt him! Bring him here. I want to look at him." When one of his secretaries suggested that Roosevelt be taken at once to a hospital, he said: "You get me to that speech; it may be the last I shall deliver, but I am going to deliver this one."
He rode at once to the hall where he was to speak, and on arriving there one of his companions exclaimed as soon as they came into a lighted room: "Look, Colonel, there's a. hole in your overcoat!" Roosevelt looked down, saw the hole, and putting his hand inside his coat, withdrew it with blood upon it. Not at all dismayed, he said: "It looks as though I had been hit, but I don't think it is anything serious." Three physicians who were found in the audience examined the wound, said the bullet had penetrated his breast, that they could not tell how serious the injury was, but that in their opinion he should be taken at once to a hospital. He refused absolutely to permit this, saying: "I will make this speech, or die; one or the other," and strode to the platform. The great audience, in ignorance of the shooting, broke into prolonged cheering at his appearance, and when quiet was restored the presiding officer said: "I have something to tell you and I hope you will receive the news with calmness. Colonel Roosevelt has been shot. He is wounded.'' A cry of astonishment and horror ran over the audience and great confusion followed. Roosevelt stepped to the front of the platform and produced instant calm by raising his hand and saying: "I am going to ask you to be very quiet and please to excuse me from making you a very long speech. I '11 do the best I can, but you see there is a bullet in my body. But it is nothing. I'm not hurt badly."
He began at once upon his speech. On taking from the breast-pocket of his coat the folded manuscript of his speech he saw that it had a bullet hole completely through it, having first passed through a metal spectacle case which was also in his pocket, but this did not check him for a moment, though he said afterwards it did startle him a little. Showing it to the audience, he said: "It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose!" Several times during his speech he seemed to be growing weak but when persons on the platform rose to help him, he said: "Let me alone. I'm all right." In the course of his speech he said that certain newspaper utterances were to blame for the attempt to assassinate him—that a weak-minded man had been influenced by them. He finished his speech and later in the evening was taken by special train to Chicago, arriving there at half past three the next morning. Looking from the car window and seeing an ambulance standing by the station, he said: "I'll not go to a hospital lying in that thing. I'll walk to it and I'll walk from it to the hospital. I'm no weakling to be crippled by a flesh wound."
On arriving at the hospital a thorough examination of his wound, with X-rays, was made and it was discovered that the bullet had entered his chest at the right of and below the right nipple and was embedded in a rib; it had touched no vital part. One of the examining surgeons said: "Colonel Roosevelt has a phenomenal development of the chest. It is largely due to the fact that he is a physical marvel that he was not dangerously wounded. He is one of the most powerful men I have ever seen laid on anoperating table. The bullet lodged in the massive muscles of the chest instead of penetrating the lung."
Mrs. Roosevelt, who was in New York at the time, received news of the shooting while at a theater and, accompanied by her two daughters, went at once to Chicago, where she took personal charge of the patient. Dr. Alexander Lambert, Roosevelt's family physician, also hastened to Chicago and after examining him said: "The folded manuscript and heavy steel spectacle case checked and deflected the bullet so that it passed up at such an angle that it went outside the ribs and in the muscles. If this deflection had not occurred and the bullet gone through the arch of the aorta or auricles of the heart, Colonel Roosevelt would not have lived 60 seconds."
In the official bulletin of October 15, the attending surgeons said: "We find him in a magnificent physical condition, due to his regular physical exercise, his habitual abstinence from tobacco and liquor."
Senator Beveridge, of Indiana, visited him in the hospital on the day of his arrival, October 15, and to him Roosevelt dictated the following message to his followers, which the Senator delivered to a large audience at Louisville, Kentucky, on October 17, 1912:
"It matters little about me, but it matters all about the cause we fight for. If one soldier who happens to carry the flag is stricken, another will take it from his hands and carry it on. One after another the standard bearers may be laid low, but the standard itself can never fail.
"You know that personally I did not want ever to be a candidate for office again. And you know that only the call that came to the men of the 60's made me answer it in our day as they did more nobly in their day. And now, as then, it is not important whether one leader lives or dies; it is important only that the cause shall live and win. Tell the people not to worry about me, for if I go down another will take my place. Always the cause is there, and it is the cause for which the people care, for it is the people's cause."
Describing his sensations at the time of the shooting, a few days later, Roosevelt said: "It was nothing, nothing. I felt a little pain, but it was not serious. When I stretched out my arms or reached for my manuscript it made me gasp a bit, but that was all. It was quite amusing when I reached for my manuscript to see that it had a hole in it from the bullet and there was a hole in my spectacle case too."
"Amusing, did you say, Colonel?" some one asked.
"Well, it was quite interesting," he replied. "It was difficult to keep my temper," he added, "when at the close of my speech a half dozen men scrambled upon the platform to shake hands with me. Didn't they know that it is impossible for a man who has just been shot to shake hands with genuine cordiality?"
The shooting had completely arrested the progress of the campaign, both Taft and Wilson sending messages of sympathy and refraining from public utterances while the ultimate effect of the attack was in doubt. Two days after reaching the hospital Roosevelt made a statement for publication in which he urged that the campaign be resumed without regard to his condition. In this he said:
"I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact upon which we Progressives insist, that the welfare of any one man in the fight wholly is immaterial compared to the great and fundamental issues involved in the triumph of the principles for which our cause stands. If I had been killed the fight would have gone on exactly the same. ... So far as my opponents are concerned, whatever could with truth and propriety have been said against me and my cause before I was shot can with equal truth and equal propriety be said against me now, and it should be so said; and the things that cannot be said now are merely the things that ought not to have been said before. This is not a contest about any man; it is a contest concerning principles."
He remained in the hospital till October 21, when he went to his home in Oyster Bay. The man who shot him was a fanatic, named John Schrank, who was shown by papers found on his person to be of unbalanced mind, and to have been following Roosevelt about the country for some time seeking a favorable opportunity to shoot him. In a sort of diary, among these papers, were entries in which Schrank said McKinley had appeared to him and told him that Roosevelt was his murderer. Another entry showed that some of the campaign talk against Roosevelt as a candidate for a third term had affected his crazy brain, for it read: "Any man looking for a third term ought to be shot." When he was arraigned in court in Milwaukee, on November 12, 1912, he showed very clearly that this was the case, for when asked how he would plead he replied: "Why, guilty. I did not mean to kill a citizen, Judge; I shot Theodore Roosevelt because he was a menace to the country. He should not have a third term. I did not want him to have one. I shot him as a warning that men must not try to have more than two terms as President." Could there be furnished stronger evidence than this that violent denunciation of public men, in the press and on the stump, incites assassination by inducing persons of unbalanced minds to attempt it in the crazy belief that they are thereby doing a public service? The assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley were directly traceable to this source.
The court appointed a commission of five alienists to examine Schrank and report on his mental condition. They reported on November 22 that he was insane and he was committed to an asylum for the insane for an indefinite period.
Several letters that Roosevelt wrote at the time and subsequently contain exceedingly interesting observations upon the natural conduct of men in like situations:
November 15, 1912.
To the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Office, London: "I am a little amused, my dear fellow, at your saying that the account of the shooting stirred you with a curiosity to know whether, if the experience had been yours, you would  'have had the nerve to make the speech,' and whether your 'body would have proved as healthy.' I can answer both questions with absolute certainty. Your nerve would not have been affected in the least, you would have made the speech as a matter of course, and your body would have proved more healthy. You would have shown the absolute coolness and courage and lack of thought of self that your brother showed when mauled by the lions. Modern civilization is undoubtedly somewhat soft, and the average political orator or party leader, the average broker, or banker, or factory owner, at least when he is past middle age, is apt to be soft—I mean both mentally and physically—and such a man accepts being shot as a frightful and unheard-of calamity, and feels very sorry for himself and thinks only of himself and not of the work on which he is engaged or of his duty to others, or indeed of his real self-respect. But a good soldier or sailor, or for the matter of that even a civilian accustomed to hard and hazardous pursuits, a deep-sea fisherman, or railway-man, or cow-boy, or lumber-jack, or miner, would normally act as I acted without thinking anything about it. I believe half the men in my regiment at the least would have acted just as I acted. Think how many Bulgars during the last month have acted in just the same fashion and never even had their names mentioned in bulletins!
"Recently John Murray sent me 'The Life of Sir Harry Smith,' and I was reading his experiences in the Peninsula War, and his account of the many officers who continued to perform their duties with bullets in them, it being often many hours before a surgeon could attend to them. Why! even in our little San Juan fight there were thirteen men of my regiment who after being shot continued to fight. Now I wish to rank myself with such men as Harry Smith and his comrades in the Peninsula War, and with the men in my regiment, and I expect to be judged by their standards and not by the standards of that particular kind of moneymaker whose soul has grown hard while his body has grown soft; that is, who is morally ruthless to others and physically timid about himself.
"I doubt if any man has had a greater volume of obliquity poured upon him than I have had during the past nine months, and I have been assailed with an injustice so gross as to be fairly humorous. But there is a good deal in Emerson's law of compensation, and to offset this I have been praised in connection with the shooting with quite as extravagant a disregard of my deserts. The bullet passed through the manuscript of my speech and my iron spectacle case, and only went three or four inches into the chest, breaking a rib and lodging against it. I never saw my assailant, as it was dark and he was mixed with the dense crowd beside the automobile, and as I was standing unsteadily I half fell back for a second. As I stood up I coughed and at once put my hands to my lips to see if there was any blood. There was none, so that as the bullet was in the chest I felt the chances were twenty to one that it was not fatal.
"I would not have objected to the man's being killed at the very instant, but I did not deem it wise or proper that he should be killed before my eyes if I was going to recover, so I immediately stopped the men who had begun to worry him, and had him brought to me so that I might see if I recognized him; but I did not. There was then a perfectly obvious duty, which was to go on and make my speech. In the very unlikely event of the wound being mortal I wished to die with my Roots on, so to speak. It has always seemed to me that the best way to die would be in doing something that ought to be done, whether leading a regiment or doing anything else. Moreover, I felt that under such circumstances it would be very difficult for people to disbelieve in my sincerity, and that therefore they would be apt to accept at the face value the speech I wished to make, and which represented my deepest and most earnest convictions. If, on the other hand, as I deemed overwhelmingly probable, the wound should turn out to be slight, it was still likely that I would have little further chance to speak during the campaign, and therefore it behooved me to go on while I had the chance, and make a speech to which under the circumstances it was at least possible that the country would pay some heed. This is all there was to the incident."
December 16, 1912.
To J. St. Loe Strachey, Esq., Editor of the London Spectator: "Just one word about the madman who shot me. He was not really a madman at all; he was a man of the same disordered brain which most criminals, and a great many non-criminals, have. I very gravely question if he has a more unsound brain than Eugene Debs. He simply represents a different stratum of life and of temperament, which if not more violent is yet more accustomed to brutal physical expression. He had quite enough sense to avoid shooting me in any Southern State, where he would have been lynched, and he waited until he got into a State where there was no death penalty. I have not the slightest feeling against him; I have a very strong feeling against the people who, by their ceaseless and intemperate abuse, excited him to the action, and against the mushy people who would excuse him and all other criminals once the crime has been committed.''
December 31, 1912.
To Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice, British Legation, Stockholm: "I am as well as possible. I did not care a rap for being shot. It is a trade risk, which every prominent public man ought to accept as a matter of course. For eleven years I have been prepared any day to be shot; and if any one of the officers of my regiment had abandoned the battle merely because he received a wound that did nothing worse than break a rib, I should never have trusted that officer again. I would have expected him to keep on in the fight as long as he could stand; and what I expect lieutenants to do I expect a fortiori, a leader to do."
February 5, 1913.
To Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow, Boston: "I was getting into the barouche, having just left a lighted hotel, so that I could not see the crowd distinctly. What I said when the man was caught was: 'Don't hurt him. Bring him here. I want to look at him.' After the bullet I had no real pain. The wound felt hot. When I began to speak my heart beat rapidly for some ten minutes, but aside from that about all the real trouble I had was that on account of my broken rib I had to breathe quick and short, so that I could not speak as loudly as usual, nor use long sentences without breathing. When I got to the railway car I shaved and took out the studs and buttons from my bloody shirt and put them in a clean shirt, as I thought I might be stiff next morning. This all tired me a little, and when I lay down in my bunk my heart was again beating fast enough, and my breath was short enough, to make me feel somewhat uncomfortable. But after a while I found I could turn, if I did it very carefully, to my un-wounded side, and then I fell asleep."
February 17, 1913.
"By the way, I remember once or twice your speaking to me about why the bullet was not cut out. I never asked the surgeon, but through Dean Sumner, who had just been attended by Dr. Murphy and who questioned him about me, I found out the reason. Dr. Murphy said that the bullet had splintered the inside of the rib, and one or two of the splinters penetrated the pleura. My speech slightly aggravated the laceration, and they were afraid that if they took out the bullet immediately there might either be a collapse of the pleura, or an infection of the pleura cavity; and inasmuch as there was no infection for the moment they thought it was better to leave well enough alone.''
The bullet was never extracted and he carried it with him to his grave. Writing to his friend, Charles G. Washburn, of Worcester, Mass., on March 5, 1913, he said of it: "I do not mind it any more than if it were in my waistcoat pocket.''
Roosevelt remained quietly at Oyster Bay until he recovered completely from his wound, taking no active part in the campaign till a few days before election. On October 31, 1912, he addressed a great audience of 15,000 persons in Madison Square Garden in New York City, where he was received with unbounded enthusiasm and was seen to be in full health and vigor. In closing he repeated the passage from his Carnegie Hall speech of March 20, which I have quoted in Chapter 22 of this volume, and which he called his political creed, and added:
"Friends, what I said then I say now. Surely there never was a greater opportunity than ours. Surely there never was a fight better worth making than this. I believe we shall win, but win or lose I am glad beyond measure that I am one of the many who in this fight have stood ready to spend and be spent, pledged to fight while life lasts the great fight for righteousness and for brotherhood and for the welfare of mankind.''
The result of the election demonstrated conclusively that Roosevelt had been, as his advocates claimed, the first choice of a majority of the Republican voters, for his popular vote was 4,119,507, while Taft's was 3,484,056. He received the electoral votes of six States, 88 in all, while Taft received those of only two States, Vermont and Utah, or 8 in all. In the six States that Roosevelt carried were such Republican strongholds as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota. In nearly all other normally Republican States his vote greatly exceeded that of Taft, who, although the regular nominee of his party, ran third in the contest, while Roosevelt, the nominee of a new party, ran second. No new party in the history of the country had ever before developed such remarkable strength; but time was to show very speedily that it was not a party strength at all, but simply Roosevelt strength—that he himself was the party, for without him as its candidate it dissolved almost as quickly as it had been formed. Four millions of people had voted for him because he was Roosevelt and they had absolute faith in him, but in doing so they had not consolidated themselves into a permanent political organization. 

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY AND HIS OWN LEADERSHIP
that Roosevelt believed the career of the Progressive party had come to an end and that his political leadership was no longer desired by the country, his letters after election in 1912 and during 1913 leave no doubt. Writing to the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Grey, afterwards Viscount Grey, and British Ambassador to the United States in 1919, at London, on November 15, 1913, he said:
"As for the political fight here (1912), I did not believe we would win, and I can say quite honestly that I have little or no personal regret in the outcome. But I do feel sorry from the broader standpoint. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time, and if a country lets the time for wise action pass, it may bitterly repent when a generation later it strives under disheartening difficulties to do what could have been done so easily if attempted at the right moment. We Progressives were fighting for elementary social and industrial justice, and we had with us the great majority of the practical idealists of the country. But we had against us both the old political organizations and ninety-nine per cent at the very least of the corporate wealth of the country, and therefore the great majority of the newspapers. Moreover we were not able to reach the hearts of the materialists, or to stir the imagination of the well-meaning somewhat sodden men who lack vision and prefer to travel in a groove. We were fought by the Socialists as bitterly as by the representatives of the two old parties, and this for the very reason that we stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob.
   
"There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the 'money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers."
To Sir Henry Lucy, London, he wrote on December 18, 1912:
'' As for my own political future, I think the general English estimate is right. I hated to get into this fight at all, but I did-not see how to avoid it; and having gone in, there was nothing to do but to put it through. It was very bitter for me to see the Republican Party, when I had put it back on the Abraham Lincoln basis, in three years turn over to a combination of big financiers and unscrupulous political bosses. "What the future of the Progressive Party will be, nobody can say, but I am very confident that our principles in some shape or other will triumph. At present, however, I do not see how the party can triumph under me; but I have to continue to take a certain interest in it until a new man of sufficient power comes along."
A letter that he wrote to George D. Crocker, of Boston, on November 19, 1912, is interesting as showing a disposition to abandon the issue which he himself had misnamed the recall of judges:
"... Now as to the name which has been given by me to the doctrine. It was given by me in a number of arguments in which I was trying to show that what was needed was not to recall judges who gave wrong constitutional decisions, but to recall the decisions. I have myself regretted the continuous use of the term, but it is difficult to get a short term to explain just what we want to do.
There is another fundamental difficulty for which I am largely responsible. A name to me means very little and I perpetually have to remind myself that such is not the fact with most people. For instance, I found many good people very much concerned over the separation of Panama from Colombia as long as it was called a secession, but not minding it at all as long as it was called a revolution! It took me a long time to realize that they identified secession with the action of the Southern Confederacy, and revolution with our action in 1776! So it is in this matter. I do not in the least care whether the form is that the voters be called upon to decide whether the Supreme Court is right or wrong in its interpretation of the Constitution, or whether they are called on to decide whether they wish some specific act to become a law, notwithstanding the Constitution.
"If you will turn to the llth amendment of the National Constitution, you will find that there, in the administration of the older Adams, and with the sanction of Washington, and of all our statesmen, the people by popular vote in constitutional manner decided that the Constitution should be construed in the reverse way from that in which the Supreme Court had construed it in a given case. In this instance the people acted as a tribunal which decided the interpretation of the Constitution. But I think that the easiest way to put the case and avoid misconception is as you suggest, that is to say, that we propose a reasonably quick and definite method of changing the Constitution ad hoc on a specific case, and thus avoid the very real dangers of changing the general language of the Constitution."
As a matter of fact Roosevelt seems to have taken only slight interest in the recall question after 1914. It is quite possible that a decided change in the attitude of the courts toward cases involving relations between employers and employees had much to do with his abandonment of the subject, for three New York decisions which he had criticized most severely were reversed by the courts of last resort. These reversals could reasonably be traced to an influence upon the courts of a public opinion which his agitation of the subject had produced, leading to a construction of the law more in accordance with new social conditions. That the courts are subject to influences of this sort, and quite justly so, it would be idle to deny.
That Justice Moody of the Supreme Court, who while Attorney General had approved of Roosevelt's utterances, took this view of the matter, appears in a letter that he wrote to Charles Gr. Washburn, on May 11,1916, from which I quote these passages:
"There are some parts of Roosevelt's work as President which I think no one knew better than I did, and there are some results of it which ought to receive thorough study and be brought clearly to light. I have here in mind the effect of his acts and preachings upon economic thought and the development of the constitutional theory of our government. If one contrasts the state of opinion as to the proper relation between capital and labor and the proper attitude of government toward both as that opinion existed say, just before the War with Spain and as it exists to-day, one cannot fail to see that there has been an extraordinary change. In this change I believe he was the one great leader in this country; not that he was preaching things altogether novel or that he was originating a new system of social philosophy; but that at the right time he happened to be in the right place to convert his thoughts into acts and to teach them to a people anxious for constructive leadership, from what he once called the greatest pulpit in the world, the Presidency. . . . Perhaps he would scout the idea that he had been a guide in constitutional interpretation. I remember the state of legal thought and the attitude of the Supreme Court in the nineties toward what we call the new nationalism. I believe no one appreciates more clearly than I the great change that has come to both since then. It is but a revival of the doctrines of Marshall, which at one time seemed to have lost potency. By the legislation which Theodore Roosevelt promoted against great odds, there have been drawn from the Supreme Court decisions which have declared the complete nationalism which is necessary to our future national life." 
Writing on January 28, 1913, to Governor Hiram W. Johnson of California, who had been the Progressive nominee for Vice President, Roosevelt gave this estimate of the future prospects of the Progressive party as affected by the course which Wilson as President might follow:
"Our chance depends upon there being a break in the Democratic party. If they had nominated Judson Harmon last year, I think we should have won anyway; but Wilson was from their standpoint the best man that they could have nominated. I do not regard him as a man of great intensity of principle or conviction, or of much reality of sympathy with our cause. He is an adroit man, a good speaker and writer, with a certain amount of ability of just the kind requisite to his party under present conditions. He showed his adroitness during the campaign, and he may well be able to show similar adroitness during the next four years in the Presidency, and with the same result. In the campaign he talked ardent but diffuse progressiveness. He championed concretely a number of minor things for which we stand, and he trusted to the fact that the Bourbon Democrats, especially the Bourbon Democrats of the South, but also those of the North, would feel that they had to stand by him because their only hope is in the Democratic Party. He may do the same thing successfully as President."
Another estimate of President Wilson, together with Roosevelt's views on a single Presidential term amendment to the Constitution, appears in a letter to me at Panama on February 10, 1913:
"Wilson has a very difficult party situation, but a difficulty is always also an opportunity. If he is big enough to master his party he may make a great record and rivet the attention of the country upon him. At the moment they are trying to pass a constitutional amendment aimed primarily at me, but also at him. In his case they offer him the sop of six years certain instead of a possible eight years, and he may be willing to accept six. For my own sake I very earnestly hope they will pass the amendment, but from the standpoint of the country it is not an amendment they ought to pass. Think what a calamity it would have been if Lincoln had been ineligible for reelection! That one fact might have meant splitting the country absolutely into two."
His views on the Constitution as a "straight-jacket" were set forth in the following letter to a somewhat muddle-headed critic on April 2, 1913:
'' In your letter you say that the newspapers report me as saying that 'the time has gone by when the Constitution should be looked upon as a straight-jacket made by dead men to prevent live men from growing.' Then you add that it seems to you that I must have been incorrectly quoted, for you ' don't think that' I ' regard the Constitution of the United States as a straight-jacket.'
'' Really I don't understand you. I was correctly quoted; and that quotation shows that I do not regard the Constitution of the United States as a straight-jacket. Not only was I correctly quoted, but my statement is absolutely correct, and any one who disagrees with it does regard the Constitution as a straight-jacket; and moreover the man who disagrees with that statement is the man who, in your language, is 'teaching disrespect for our institutions.' You say you are proud of your country, and that you are sure that I am too. You are quite right about the latter fact. I am so proud of it that I positively decline to permit any people to go unrebuked who try to make us ashamed of our country; and this is precisely what those who treat the Constitution as a straight-jacket are engaged in doing."
A hunting trip with his sons which he took in August, 1913, is thus alluded to in a letter September 2, 1913, to Arthur Lee, M.P., afterwards Sir Arthur Lee, of London, who was his valued friend for many years:
"My trip with the boys in Arizona was a great success, although it is rather absurd for me now to be going on such trips, for a stout, rheumatic, elderly gentleman is not particularly in place sleeping curled up in a blanket on the ground, and eating the flesh of a cougar because there is nothing else available. Still we did have a wonderful trip, and this coming winter I shall make my last trip of the kind, coming north through the Brazilian forest. I leave for South America on October 4th to make half a dozen speeches before various universities in Brazil, the Argentine, and Chile. As I speak in English, and nobody will understand it, the trip seems really pointless, but our South American friends seem anxious that I should go."
In October, 1913, Roosevelt went to South America, where he delivered the addresses before universities mentioned in the preceding letter. He came north through Brazil at the head of an exploring party and put on the map a new river which the Brazilian Government subsequently named in his honor "Rio Teodoro." His experiences on this trip were published by him in 1914 under the title of '' Through the Brazilian Wilderness." (Charles Scribner's Sons)
He returned to the United States on May 19, 1914, and soon afterwards went to Madrid to be present at the wedding of his son Kermit, visiting England on the way. When he returned again to the United States on June 25th, he was confronted with an urgent request from his followers to run for Governor of New York as the Progressive candidate, but this he peremptorily declined to do. He took an active part, however, in the discussions about candidates for the governorship and advocated the nomination of a Progressive candidate. His labors were in vain, however, for no candidate of the party was put in the field. All over the country, in fact, the Progressive party showed few signs of vigorous life. Several letters that he wrote after the election in November show the conclusions he drew from the results and his ideas about the political future:
November 7, 1914. To Charles J. Bonaparte, Baltimore, Md.:
"The Progressive Party has come a cropper. Many causes have brought about the result. Our platform of 1912 was rather too advanced for the average man. Our typical leadership was also a little advanced along the lines of morality and loftiness of aim for the average man to follow. Moreover, we inevitably attracted great multitudes of cranks, who would like us to go into a kind of modified I. W. "W. movement, to the emotionalists in this state who represented fundamentally the same type as the Englishmen who in multitudes supported the Tichborne claimant a generation ago. Finally, we have to deal with certain political habits that have become very deep-rooted in our people. The average man is a Democrat or a Republican and he is this as a matter of faith, not as a matter of morals. He no more requires a reason for so being than an adherent of the blue or green factions of the Byzantine Circus required a reason. He has grown to accept as co-relative to this attitude entire willingness to punish his party by voting for the opposite party. Having done this, he returns to his own party.
"After 1896 it did seem as if there would have to be a realignment of the parties; as a matter of fact the gold-Democrats speedily returned to the Democratic party and the silver-Republicans to the Republican party, although of course there were exceptions on each side. Then, there is the perfectly proper feeling that there is only room for two parties, the party in power and the opposition. The immediately effective vote is always for one of these two parties. We were in the position of the Free Soil party, not of the early Republican party. Finally, in this election the fundamental question that interested the average man was the purely economic question of how he could best shape conditions so that he could earn his own living. The workingman was not interested in social or industrial justice."
November 7, 1914.
i
To W. A. White, Emporia, Kansas: "I am in very grave doubt as to what now should be done. Of course, as regards myself, as I have said before, the answer is simple. I shall fight in the ranks as long as I live for the cause and the platform for which we fought in 1912. And at present any attempt at action on my part which could be construed, and which certainly would be construed, into the belief that I was still aspiring to some leadership in the movement would, I am convinced, do real harm. It has been wisely said that while martyrdom is often right for the individual, what society needs is victory. It was eminently proper that Leonidas should die at Thermopylae, but the usefulness of Thermopylae depended upon its being followed by the victory of Themistocles at Salamis. It was evidently proper that Bowie and Travis and Crockett should die at the Alamo, but the usefulness of the Alamo depended upon its being followed by Houston's victory at San Jacinto.
"When it is evident that a leader's day is past, the one service he can render is to step aside and leave the ground clear for the development of a successor. It seems to me that such is the case now as regards myself. 'Heartily know that the half gods go when the gods arise.' There are certain things I can continue to say to small audiences in my writings, and where I think that these will be helpful and not hurtful, I shall continue to say them; but to make speeches on political subjects and to try to take the lead in questions of party politics would be, for the time being, at least, mischievous and not useful."
November 8, 1914.
To Hiram W. Johnson, Sacramento, California: "East of Indiana there is no State in which the Progressive party remains in condition even to affect the balance of power between the two old parties. It would be foolish for me or my friends to blink the fact that as things are now my advocacy of a man or a policy is in all probability a detriment and not an aid. The people as a whole are heartily tired of me and of my views; and while from time to time in my writings, where I think it can do some good, at least for the future, I shall state these views, it would be a great mistake for me to be making speeches on political subjects or taking any part in politics at the moment."
November 11, 1914.
To Kermit Roosevelt: "I cannot expect most people to believe that I have not for years been happier than since election. I have worked very hard and practically without intermission for a long time. Now what I most desire is to be free from engagements and stay out here with Mother and without too much to do, and since election I have been quite busy but it is not exhausting labor and will diminish rather than increase. We have had ten lovely days here. I have ridden once or twice. Two or three times I have taken Mother for a row and we have walked together and sat by the wood fire in the late afternoon and evening. I was going to say that I have been as happy as a king, but as a matter of fact I have been infinitely happier than any of the kings I know, poor devils! Just at the moment it seems to me that King Albert of Belgium, in spite of the awful misfortunes of himself and his country, is of all of them the one who is leading the life I most admire."
Writing again to Kermit on Jan. 27, 1915, he gave this interesting review of his career:
"My immediate and acute trouble is over. The Progressive party cannot in all human probability make another fight as a national party; and, if it does, there will be no expectation that I will have to lead. I am through my hard and disagreeable work. I do not mean that there won't come unpleasant and disagreeable things in connection with the party; but there won't be any such heart-breaking and grinding work as I had last summer. The trouble was that most of my lieutenants, who were good, fine fellows, as disinterested and upright as possible, could not realize that the rank and file had left them; and they felt that I was going back on them if I refused to head the old-style type of fight. I had to make it; and that was all there was to it.
"All my life in politics, I have striven to do just what you and Ted are striving to do in business and in your life generally, that is, to make the necessary working compromise between the ideal and the practical. If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful. If, on the other hand, he does not work practically, with the knowledge that he is in the world of actual men and must get results, he becomes a worthless head-in-the-air creature, a nuisance to himself and to everybody else.
"My chief knowledge of the working out of this theory is in politics. From the time I was elected to the Legislature in 1881 until 1911, when it became evident that I would have to part company with the Republican organization, I steadily strove to be loyal to my ideals and yet to strive to realize them in practical fashion. I always tried to administer each office well. I never did one thing personally that was not as straight as a string; and, where I had to work with other men, I tried my best to get the common results of as high a quality as possible, without insisting upon so much that it would mean a break-up with my associates. On a big scale I handle things just as I tried to handle them on a smaller scale as regards Father Zahm and Sigg and Fiala and our Brazilian friends on our trip.
"I was on the whole successful. When, after the Spanish War, I got to a position of such importance that a good deal of consideration had to be paid me, I was very successful ; and, as President, I was able to do a great deal that I wished to do. This was done merely because I utilized the reformers without letting them grow perfectly wild-eyed; and I yet kept in some kind of relations with the machine men, so as to be on a living basis with them, although I had to thwart them at every turn. But, when I got back from Africa, I found that everything had split. Taft had thrown in his lot with the sordid machine crowd, as had most of my former efficient political supporters. On the other
hand, the reformers of the type of	had begun to
run wild and to associate with a set of so-called reformers, who came dangerously near the mark of lunacy. I spent eighteen months in the vain effort to get them together on some kind of a basis that would permit of efficient joint action. It proved impossible; and, when the break had to come, I had to stand by the reformers as against the sordid apostles of self-interest. (But the reformers showed enough that was mean and base in addition to enough that was foolish themselves! What happened afterwards you know.)
"It may be that after I left the Presidency I ought not to have tried to take any part in politics at all. But all the men of the highest type made the strongest kind of appeal to me not to desert them. There was no use of my talking about virtue in the abstract, unless I applied it to concrete cases; and I either had to do just as I did or else completely abandon all effort to say anything on any public question whatsoever. Perhaps I ought to have done this; but, if I had done so, it is quite possible that I should now be feeling that I had a little shirked my duty.
"Well, as things are now, I am entirely out of touch with the American people. I abhor Wilson and Bryan; their attitude in foreign affairs is the worst we have seen since the days of Buchanan; and there is always the chance that they will bring the country to real disaster and disgrace.
"There is just one element of relief to me in the smash that came to the Progressive party. We did not have many practical men with us. Under such circumstances the reformers tended to go into sheer lunacy. I now can preach the doctrines of labor and capital just as I did when I was President, without being hampered by the well-meant extravagances of so many among my Progressive friends."
A conspicuous example of his habitual strong common sense on questions of mistaken religious zeal is furnished in a letter to Michael Schaap, on Feb. 22, 1915:
"I see you appeared against the bill making compulsory the reading of the Bible in the Public Schools. If I were in the Legislature or Governor, I should vote against or veto that bill, because I believe in absolutely non-sectarian public schools. It is not our business to have the Protestant Bible or the Catholic Vulgate or the Talmud read in those schools. There is no objection whatever, where the local sentiment favors it, for the teacher to read a few verses of the ethical or moral parts of the Bible, so long as this causes no offense to any one. But it is entirely wrong for the law to make this reading compulsory; and the Protestant fanatics who attempt to force this through are playing into the hands of the Catholic fanatics who want to break down the Public School system and introduce a system of sectarian schools. I shall ask you to treat this letter as private, because I have so many fights on my hands that there is no use my going into another; and just at present our people do not wish me to embark on a general course of lectures to them as to what they should do in the public schools."
A letter that he wrote a few years later, Aug. 28, 1917, to Major Joel E. Spingarn, U. S. E., well-known American scholar and author, gives an entertaining account of his taste in reading:
"I wish to thank you for that volume of capital essays. The two last were especially enjoyed by me because they were more within my very moderate powers of critical appreciation. I know nothing of the drama except that I am ashamed to say I don't care to go to the theater; and nevertheless I do very greatly care to read certain plays in my library. But your two final chapters dealt with matter I can fairly well understand, and I agree with every word. Personally, I don't care a rap whether we call the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, or certain passages in the Confessions of an Opium Eater, prose or vers libres. I think that it might help the eye to have parts of them arranged as the Spoon River Anthology is arranged, in irregular lines. But in any event I enjoy what seems to me to be the rhythm, and the beauty and majesty of the diction. I enjoy Wordsworth's sonnets and I enjoy Shakespeare's sonnets; and I don't care in the least if some one proves to me that Shakespeare did not write sonnets but something else. On the other hand, I loathe Wordsworth's Excursion, and not Matthew Arnold himself would persuade me to read it. I delight in the saga of King Olaf and Othere and Belisarius, and Simon Danz, and the Mystery of the Sea; and I don't care for Evangeline or any of Longfellow's plays; and I cannot give any reasoned-out explanations in either case!"
Roosevelt's cordial and appreciative relations with his publishers are shown in these letters to the chief of them:
October 5, 1901. My dear Mr. Scribner:
I want to thank you for the way you have managed the articles. I have appreciated it, and any hunting trips I do in the future will be written for you. You may be amused to know that in two different publications during the next year articles that I wrote, in one case this year, in one case five years ago, will appear, and I have instructed the people that they must behave exactly as you have behaved. Of course, these articles do not appear in magazines, but in
books.	-m •,! p I,
Faithfully yours,
theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Charles Scribner.
January 24, 1915.
Seriously, I want to say that I have never appreciated anything more than your willingness to go into the publication of the African Game Animals. It was characteristic of you and your firm and was a really disinterested bit of scientific service. I knew I would never get any payment for the labor I had put into the thing, but I was not at all sure that you would be willing to invest capital in something that represented non-remunerative labor—-which is very desirable from the standpoint of the community as a whole but which does not amount to very much from the standpoint of the individual laboring. I am very glad to be connected with your firm; and proud.
Faithfully yours,
theodoee Roosevelt.
Charles Scribner, Esq.
A few passages may also, not inappropriately, be cited from those letters that he sent to his publishers revealing his own methods as an author. He was a model of promptness and efficiency. When he promised a manuscript for a certain date, the promise was kept absolutely, no matter what intervened. Before he left the African wilderness in 1909 he had written in his own hand in triplicate and forwarded to the publishers of Scribner's Magazine the entire book known as "African Game Trails," including the Preface. One of the men who were with him said that, no matter how arduous the day in the hunting-field, night after night he would see him seated on a camp-stool, with a feeble light on the table, often with his head and face covered with mosquito netting, and gauntlet gloves on his hands, to protect him from insects, writing the narrative of his adventures. Chapter by chapter this narrative was sent by runners from the heart of Africa. Two copies were despatched at different times. When he got to the headwaters of the Nile one of the chapters was sent from Nairobi and the duplicate was sent down the Nile to Cairo. The blue-canvas envelopes often arrived much battered and stained, but never did a single chapter miss.
The same method was pursued in 1914 in regard to the chapters in his "Brazilian Wilderness." How clearly he was able to map out far in advance the entire plan of a book is shown in two letters to Robert Bridges, the editor of the magazine, one from the African and the other from the Brazilian wilderness, from which the following passages are taken:
October 15, 1909.
B. E. A.
"I forward herewith chapters 9 and 10. Chapter nine is too long, but is of course one of the most important yet. Chapter 10 is more like say chapters 4 or 5. It is too long; but I don't know where to cut it off. Both chapters are all right for the book. I mean 'too long' as being over 10,000 words. If, as I suppose, you have combined chapters 2 and 3 (in the Magazine,—of course they will be kept separate in the book), and if, as I anticipate, I write three more chapters, and further if—what is improbable—you find all the chapters worth using in the Magazine, this will make just twelve articles. I doubt if chapter 11 will be very thrilling; it will be like 4 or 5 or 10 and I trust shorter. But chapter 12 ought to be good. It will deal with utterly new conditions; however, the country I there traverse is very unhealthy, and of course there is always the remote chance that I will be laid up; or that the conditions will prevent our getting our game. If all goes well, I suppose you will publish the book a year from this fall? I agree with you that the best title is 'African Wanderings of a Hunter Naturalist.' As for the pictures, it is always hard to get in both the hunter and the game. The elephant that charged me was within a few feet; I killed a charging bull rhino when it was a dozen yards off; either of these ought to make drawings; a very good one would be the big maned lion in the foreground charging the dismounted horseman in the distance. It could be called 'Coming in.'
 "I am immensely pleased that you continue to like what I write. In chapter 10 the paragraph at the top of page 8 is perhaps too 'wrought up,' for the Magazine; if so, strike it out; but keep it for the book, for I really wish to try to preserve the impression these tremendous tropic storms made on me.
"It may well be that you will wish to end the series in your June or July number. The white rhino, or Uganda and upper Nile chapter, which, if all goes right, will be of interest, I could send you from Gondokoro about Feb. 15th, so that you could use it in either number. If you closed the series, say in the July number, I suppose you would wish the book to appear the end of June; in such case I would send you the foreword, title pages, appendices, etc., from Khartoum in March. Perhaps you will write me fully on these matters to Khartoum! Of course I a little prefer the book to appear in the fall; but I should accept your judgment.
"Could you have some one look up for me the statement in one of the 'Anglo Saxon Chronicles,' that either William the Conqueror or William Rufus 'loved the great game as if he were their father.' In one of the copies it appears as 'deer'; but in another I think it appears as 'great game.' "
bonofacio, February 25, 1914.
"Here is chapter seven. I have already sent you some of the photos, from the Juruena. I enclose others; and lists of both sets. The constant humidity, and the generally less favorable surroundings, have made it more difficult than in Africa to do the mechanical part of writing and photographing and sending you the results. I hope that the chapters have reached you in decent form. I am as unable as ever to tell whether they are of interest; but the trip itself is certainly of interest. No men except these pioneers who now accompany us have been over the ground before. No civilized man has ever been down the Diivida, the descent of which we shall begin in a couple of days. Anything may then happen. If it proves to be a short river, running into the Gy-Parana, we shall return here, and in that case I shall send you another chapter. Otherwise this will be the last chapter until I appear in New York, and hand you in person whatever I have. If we return here, we intend to go down the Ananas, another unexplored river, probably, but not certainly, entering the Tapajos. From the geographical standpoint the work we are now about to attempt will be worth while. We are all in good health—but sickness will, doubtless be one of the incidents of our trip into the unknown. We have weeded out every one unfit for exploration. The insects are at times a torment; but the trip has been both pleasant and interesting, with no real hardship.
"I enclose preliminary rough drafts of the title page, dedication, and necessarily incomplete preface. I enclose an Appendix. There will probably be another. Will you in Chapter 6, where I speak of the dog and the mantis, insert after the sentence in which I said that the dog was a jovial near-puppy the following: 'He had been christened the jolly-cum-pup, from a character in one of Frank Stockton's stories, which I suppose are now remembered only by elderly people, and by them only if they are natives of the United States.'" 

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE 
THE BARNES TRIAL
A supreme test of Roosevelt's fidelity to his political professions and principles was made in 1915, from which he emerged triumphantly. In the course of his advocacy of a Progressive ticket in the State campaign of 1914, he had published, on July 22,1914, a statement in which he charged that the rottenness which existed in the government of the State was due directly to the dominance in politics of the leader of Tammany Hall and his sub-bosses aided and abetted by William Barnes, the leader of the Republican organization; that there was an invisible government of party bosses working through an alliance between crooked bosses and crooked politicians. On the following day, July 23, Mr. Barnes brought a suit for libel against Roosevelt, basing it on this utterance. Roosevelt welcomed the suit with a statement in which he reaffirmed his utterance and declared his eagerness to have its truth tested in court. The suit was set down for trial in Albany, the home of Mr. Barnes, but, on October 25, Roosevelt's counsel applied for a change of venue on the ground that Barnes's absolute political control in Albany made a fair trial there virtually impossible. The Albany court denied the request, but an appeal was taken to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court and that court reversed the decision of the Albany court and granted the request, assigning Syracuse as the place of trial.
From the moment that the suit was brought the political enemies of Roosevelt assumed joyfully that he would lose it and that it would result in his political ruin. Mr. Barnes was the most bitter and implacable of these enemies and he had been induced to bring the suit by a legal adviser who had assured him that he would be able to produce evidence that would drive Roosevelt forever from political life. This adviser, William M. Ivins, had previously brought Barnes successfully through a litigation in which his political methods had been under inspection, and this success had given Barnes implicit faith in the ability of Ivins to do what he said he could do with Roosevelt's reputation. Ivins himself made open profession of his absolute confidence in the outcome of the trial. He went about telling his acquaintances that he had Roosevelt's doom in his hands. Among others he said to Elihu Root, on the eve of the trial: "I am going to Syracuse to-morrow to nail Roosevelt's hide to the fence." To this Mr. Root replied: "Ivins, let me give you a piece of advice. I know Roosevelt and you want to be very sure that it is Roosevelt's hide that you get on the fence."
The purpose of Ivins was to show, mainly by Roosevelt's letters, that he had during his public career been guilty of political methods similar to those with which he had charged Barnes, that while professing superior political virtue, he had in practice worked hand in hand with political bosses, yielding to their demands and acquiescing in their methods. With this end in view all of Roosevelt's correspondence for more than thirty years was ransacked for incriminating evidence. All of his letters to political leaders were sought and obtained and produced in court. Roosevelt himself testified that during his political career he had written from 100,000 to 150,000 letters. Interviews and speeches, as well as letters, were searched for evidence. Never before had the career of a public man been subjected to more exhausting inspection, and no public man had ever before written and spoken so voluminously about his political purposes, conduct, and acts.
The trial began on April 19,1915, and continued till May 22. Roosevelt was the first witness, taking the stand in his own behalf on April 20, and giving evidence in support of his charges against Barnes. On April 22, at the close of his direct testimony, Mr. Ivins began a cross-examination which continued for six days. In this examination Ivins went over the entire period of Roosevelt's public career, reading from his letters and utterances, and placing before the court every scrap of evidence that he had been able to find that seemed to throw doubt upon his political integrity. From the moment that this merciless examination began till its close, Roosevelt dominated the courtroom and was complete master of himself and of the proceedings, taking control of his own case and requesting his counsel to make no objection to any questions that were asked him. Every doubtful passage in a letter, which the opposing counsel sought to turn to his disadvantage or discredit, he dispelled at once by frank and convincing statements to the court and jury. To the letters that the opposing counsel produced, he added others through his own counsel, and repeatedly his marvelous memory supplied evidence that had been either wilfully or unintentionally overlooked. When a letter of a year long passed was read on one occasion, he asked: "Isn't there an interlineation in there which says so and so?" and an interlineation was found that fully explained an obscure passage and gave it an innocent meaning.
Full reports of the trial were published in the newspapers, filling many columns daily, and were eagerly read by the people. The whole country was thus following the case and with the court informing itself of the inside history of Roosevelt's political career. Long before the cross-examination was ended the public made up its mind in Roosevelt's-favor. The joyful anticipations of his enemies were turned into angry denunciations of Barnes for his stupidity in giving Roosevelt this opportunity to vindicate himself. One of these enemies, whose hatred of Roosevelt had for many years been so intense as to make him nearly inarticulate, said to me as the trial neared its end: "Of all the blundering lunatics I have ever known, Barnes is the worst. Here we had Roosevelt, after his candidacy against Taft, dead and buried politically. We were rid of him for all time. Now Barnes has not only opened the door for him to come back, but he has pushed him through to the front of the stage and made him a greater popular idol than ever."
In all Roosevelt was ten days on the stand, and when he left it not an utterance or act of his thirty years of public life remained unexplored and not an atom of evidence had been adduced from any source which smirched his political character. His enemies had, indeed, granted him complete vindication, had proved that throughout his career he had kept absolute faith with the principle of conduct in his dealings with political leaders which he avowed in his letter to Senator Lodge, under date of Oct. 11, 1901, already quoted in these pages: "They may ordinarily name the men (for public office) but I shall name the standard and the men have got to come up to it." Not an atom of proof was adduced to show that in a single instance he had yielded on a matter of principle; but abundant proof was adduced to s'how that in every instance he had compelled conformity to his standard. There could be no more convincing demonstration that evidence of infidelity to his principles did not exist, for the ability of his enemies to command all sources of information was equal to their zeal in pursuit of it. At the close of the day on which the last of the letters had been read in court he said to a friend: "Do you know what meant more to me than anything else in the trial? There was not a single thing in all these old letters of mine that I am ashamed to have my children read."
In the preparation of the present narrative of his career, I have read his entire correspondence, and there is not in all of it a single sentence about which he could not have truthfully made the same remark. His enemies could not find what they sought because it did not exist.
When the evidence was all in and the case was virtually ready to go to the jury, the news of the sinking of the Lusi-tania arrived and Roosevelt gave public expression to his views on that unparalleled outrage, which he sincerely believed at the time would turn the verdict against him. A full account of this will be found in the next chapter.
The case was given to the jury on May 20, and after being out many hours the jury came in with a verdict of 11 to 1 in favor of Roosevelt. They were sent back again, and later came in with a verdict for the plaintiff, with the '' suggestion that the costs be evenly divided between the two parties." The Justice informed them that this was not a proper verdict, that they must find for either the plaintiff or defendant, and not put in anything about costs. The jury again retired and on the morning of May 22, after having been out 42 hours, brought in a verdict for Roosevelt.
Anticipating an unfavorable verdict Mr. Barnes and his counsel, Mr. Ivins, had left town the day before and were not in court when the verdict was delivered. Mr. Ivins, in fact, was thoroughly worn-out. He returned to his home a hopelessly ill man and died a short time later.
The jury was warmly thanked by Roosevelt, who posed for a photograph with them and afterwards made them the following address:
"I have been more moved and touched than I can express by what you have done, and I want to say to you that I appreciate to the full the obligation that you men, representing every sphere of political belief, have put me under. There is only one return that I can make, and that, I assure you, I will try to make to the best of my ability. I will try all my life to act in public and private affairs so that no one of you will have cause to regret the verdict you have given this morning. I thank you from my heart. You have put on me a solemn duty to behave as a decent American citizen should, and I shall try to my utmost to fulfill that duty." •
The case was subsequently appealed to the Court of Appeals by Mr. Barnes but was never argued before that court.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
 EARLY ATTITUDE  TOWARD THE EUROPEAN WAR
roosevelt's intense interest in the European War and his anxiety about the attitude of the United States toward it are revealed in many letters that he wrote in the period immediately after its outbreak. An effort was made later by his critics to show that he had been at the outset of the war friendly to the Germans and the Kaiser, but this was short lived. How baseless it was, I am able to show by the report of a conversation which Mr. E. A. Van Valkenberg, editor of the Philadelphia North American, had with him on Sept. 5, 1914, only a few weeks after Germany's declaration of war. Mr. Van Valkenberg wrote an account of the conversation in a letter to a friend on Sept. 8, 1914, from which I make the following extracts:
"Dean Lewis and I rode from New York to Philadelphia last Saturday afternoon with Colonel Roosevelt.
"The Colonel, as you know, is a personal friend of the Kaiser and an ardent admirer of the Germans. There seems to be a widespread belief that he sides with Germany on this conflict. 'Germany is absolutely wrong,' was almost his first utterance after we joined him in his stateroom. The White Paper Book, he declared, places her squarely in the wrong from which nothing she can possibly do in the future will extricate her.
"He expressed the opinion that if Germany were to subjugate England in this war, Germany would invade the United States within five years. He said he would look for an early alliance between Germany and Japan in case the power of Great Britain were broken. The great 'engines' of war which have been perfected by the Kaiser's government profoundly fascinate him. He gave unstinted praise to the genius of the German people, but said that he could see but one possible outcome of the contest—that was, the defeat of Germany.''
Roosevelt's chief desire at the beginning of the European struggle was to uphold the hands of President Wilson and to do nothing to embarrass him in formulating a policy. With this desire in mind he published an article in the Outlook, of September 23, 1914, which was quoted afterwards, in garbled form, to show that he had at first upheld Wilson's policy of "neutrality even in thought," and had been inconsistent in his subsequent criticism of it. He said of it to his friends that when he wrote it he hoped the President would become convinced that an official protest should be made against the invasion of Belgium and he did not wish to put any obstruction in his way, while reserving the right to criticize him in case he failed to make the protest. The article is susceptible of this construction, as the following passage shows:
"Neutrality may be of prime necessity in order to preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in so much of the world as is not affected by the war, and to conserve our influence for helping toward the reestablishment of general peace when the time comes; for if any outside Power is able at such time to be the medium for bringing peace, it is more likely to be the United States than any other. But we pay the penalty .of this action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and possibly for others in the future, by forfeiting our right do anything on behalf of peace for the Belgians in the present. We can maintain our neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid unoffending weak Powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no fault of their own.''
His letters of the period are far more explicit in defining his real views. I quote a few from a very large number as fair samples of all.
October 3, 1914.
To Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, British Ambassador at Washington: "If I had been President, I should have acted on the thirtieth or thirty-first of July, as head of a signatory power of The Hague treaties, calling attention to the guaranty of Belgium's neutrality and saying that I accepted the treaties as imposing a serious obligation which I expected not only the United States but all other neutral nations to join in enforcing. Of course I would not have made such a statement unless I was willing to back it up. I believe that if I had been President the American people would have followed me. But whether I am mistaken or not as regards this, I am certain that the majority are now following Wilson. Only a limited number of people could or ought to be expected to make up their minds for themselves in a crisis like this; and they tend, and ought to tend, to support the President in such a crisis. It would be worse than folly for me to clamor now about what ought to be done, when it would be mere clamor and nothing more.
"The above is only for yourself. It is a freer expression of opinion than I have permitted myself in any letter hitherto."
October 5, 1914.
To Elbert Francis Baldwin, London, England: "I am very sad over this war. I believe that, in a way, it was fatally inevitable as regards the continental nations, and that each was right, from its own standpoint, under conditions as they actually were. But, to my mind, as regards Belgium, there is absolutely no question that all the right was on her side and all the wrong was committed against her, and she will have to receive full redress and assurance against the repetition of the wrongs, or else our civilization is to that extent broken down. England could not have done other than she did, in interfering for her."
November 8, 1914.
To Charles McCarthy, Madison, Wisconsin: "As for my being popular, my dear fellow, I take the liberty to doubt it, more especially because I suppose my fellow citizens of German descent will resent my attitude about Belgium. I admire the men of German descent more than almost any other men in this country, but if we really believe in world righteousness and in our duty as a nation to do something for international decency, then we are not to be excused if we fail to protest against such action as that by Germany in regard to Belgium. I felt it was my duty to act, although I very sincerely regret that I had to do so."
January 16, 1915.
To Rudyard Kipling, England: "I do not like to bother the men who are at the helm, and I kept silent as long as I thought there was any chance that Wilson was really developing a worthy policy. I came to the conclusion that he had no policy whatever; that what he did was mischievous; and that the bulk of my fellow citizens were inclined to support him in his actions. Therefore, it seemed to me well that some man should speak to them frankly and as only one of their own countrymen should speak to them. I do not believe I have spoken intemperately; but I have put the emphasis with all clearness where I thought it ought to be put. If this country is going to take the position of China, then I at least desire that the bulk of the citizens shall understand what they are doing, and I also wish it understood that I will not be a party to the transaction.''
January 22, 1915.
To Sir Edward Grey, England: "To me the crux of the situation has been Belgium. If England or France had acted toward Belgium as Germany has acted I should have opposed them, exactly as I now oppose Germany. I have emphatically approved your action as a model for what should be done by those who believe that treaties should be observed in good faith and that there is such a thing as international morality. I take this position as an American who is no more an Englishman than he is a German, who endeavors loyally to serve the interests of his own country, but who also endeavors to do what he can for justice and decency as regards mankind at large, and who therefore feels obliged to judge all other nations by their conduct on any given occasion."
February 6, 1915.
To Sir George Otto Trevelyan, England: "Have you seen a copy of the little book I have published, called 'America and the World War?' I believe that you will like the stands I there take. I am sick at heart over the actions of Wilson and Bryan. Tell your son George that I have been quoting again and again the extracts he gives of John Bright's letters to Sumner when Palmerston and Gladstone went wrong in our Civil War and am doing all that I can now to preach the same doctrine that John Bright did at that time. Of course, if I had been President, I would have gone to any extreme necessary to put the United States on the side of justice and humanity and civilization in this contest."
April 2, 1915.
To His Excellency, Jules J. Jusserand, Washington, D. C.: "Will you present my very warm thanks to M. Renault for the essay of 'War and International Law,' which he has sent me ? I entirely agree with his thesis that neutrals who sign conventions have a duty to stand up for them. I shall never accept the view that neutrality between right and wrong is proper. I shall never accept the view that all wars are to be condemned alike, or that all kinds of peace are to be glorified. I put righteousness as the end. Usually peace is the means to righteousness; but occasionally war offers the only means by which righteousness can be achieved."
April 6, 1915.
To F. W. Whitridge, New York: "It is all I can do to control myself in writing. Of course what ought to have been done by this Administration was to have taken the Eitel Frederick and announced that we would hold her until we were ourselves satisfied with the reparation for the sinking of the Frye; and when Germany torpedoed these steamers and the passengers were drowned by the scores, we should have notified Germany that as a neutral power and a signatory of The Hague Conventions we would decline longer to tolerate a return to the crimes of warfare which we had supposed outgrown since the days of the sacks of Drogheda and Magdeburg; and then of course, if Germany refused at once to yield to the protest, we should have made our words good by actions. But inasmuch as I cannot act and as my aim is to get my fellow-countrymen into the proper mental attitude, I continually strive to keep myself in such shape that I won't alienate good uninformed people of slightly timid or sluggish mind, who simply are utterly unable to face the new questions. These people I would tend to lose by a proper violence of statement!"
The news of the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, reached Roosevelt while he was engaged in the Barnes trial at Syracuse. The news came to him first in the court room and was in the form of a telegram saying merely that the Lusitania had been sunk by a submarine, giving no details. He was visibly disturbed by it, and, on the adjournment of the court, he went to the house of his friend, Horace, Wilkinson, whose guest he was during the trial. To comprehend fully the courage of his subsequent deliverance it is necessary to take into account the situation at the moment. As I have said in the preceding chapter, the testimony in the suit was practically all in and the case was ready for submission to the jury. In the opinion of Roosevelt's counsel, the jury was an assured unit for a verdict in his favor. There were two, possibly three, men of German birth upon it. During the trial Roosevelt had received evidence of a growing German antagonism to him in the country. Several photographs of himself, with his autograph, that he had sent to German admirers, had been returned to him with bitter words of repudiation because of his condemnation of Germany for sinking with submarines American merchant vessels. If he were to denounce Germany anew for the Lusitania sinking, the chances were strong that he would alienate the German jurors and lose the suit.
I am indebted to Mr. Wilkinson for an account of what occurred after the arrival at the house. Roosevelt walked up and down in much agitation, going over with his host the points of the situation. Finally he exclaimed: "Well, it doesn't make any difference. It is more important that I be right than to win this suit. I've got to be right in this matter.''
He went to his room early, reading as usual before going to bed. About midnight a telephone call came to the house from New York saying that a newspaper reporter wished to get from Roosevelt a statement of his views upon the sinking of the Lusitania. Mr. Wilkinson went to his room and aroused him from sleep, telling him what was wanted. "All right," he said. "I'll speak to him. I always talk with the boys." As details of the outrage came to him over the telephone, he exclaimed: "That's murder! Will I make a statement! Yes, yes. I'll make it now. Just take this." And he dictated the following:
"This represents not merely piracy, but piracy on a vaster scale of murder than old-time pirates ever practised. This is the warfare which destroyed Louvain and Dinant and hundreds of men, women and children in Belgium. It is warfare against innocent men, women and children, traveling on the ocean, and our own fellow-countrymen and country-women, who are among the sufferers. It seems inconceivable that we can refrain from taking action in this matter, for we owe it not only to humanity but to our own self-respect.''
On the morning on which this statement was published, May 8,1915, Roosevelt walked into the room where his chief counsel, John M. Bowers, was seated with his son, Spots-wood D. Bowers, who was associated with his father in the case, and said, as the son quotes his words to me:
"Gentlemen, I am afraid that I have made the winning of this case impossible. I appreciate, of course, that we have two German-American jurors, whose sympathies I have likely alienated by the utterances I gave to the press last night concerning the sinking of the Lusitania, but I cannot help it if we lose the case. There is a principle here at stake which is far more vital to the American people than my personal welfare is to me."
He had not consulted his counsel on the subject for the reason, as he explained subsequently, that he had decided on his course and did not wish to be in the position of having to go counter to their advice in case they recommended silence. The self-sacrificing patriotism of his utterances needs no comment. His counsel spoke of it ever afterwards as the most courageous act they had ever known—the supreme revelation of Roosevelt's character.
To his first condemnation of Germany's conduct he added others, day by day, steadily increasing in vigor. On May 8,1915, he prepared a fuller statement which was published as follows on May 9:
"On the night of the day that the disaster occurred I called the attention of our people to the fact that the sinking of the Lusitania was not only an act of piracy, but that it represented piracy accompanied by murder on a vaster scale than any old-time pirate had ever practiced before being hung for his misdeeds.
"I called attention to the fact that this was merely the application on the high seas, and, at our expense, of the principles which when applied on land had produced the innumerable hideous tragedies that have occurred in Belgium and in Northern France.
"I said that not only our duty to humanity at large, but our duty to preserve our own national self-respect demanded instant action on our part and forbade all delay. I can do little more than reiterate what I then said.
'' When the German decree establishing the war zone was issued, and of course plainly threatened exactly the type of tragedy which has occurred, our Government notified Germany that in the event of any such wrongdoing at the expense of our citizens we would hold the German Government to 'a strict accountability.'
"The use of this phrase, 'strict accountability,' of course, must mean, and can only mean, that action will be taken by us without an hour's unnecessary delay. It was emiently proper to use the exact phrase that was used, and having used it our own self-respect demands that we forthwith abide by it.''
On May 9, also, he gave out to the press advance copies of an editorial article, entitled "Murder on the High Seas," that he had written for the Metropolitan Magazine, with which he was associated, in which, after enumerating the outrages committed by Germany on American vessels, culminating with the Lusitcmia, he said:
"In the teeth of these things, we earn as a nation measureless scorn and contempt if we follow the lead of those who exalt peace above righteousness, if we heed the voice of those feeble folk who bleat to high Heaven for peace when there is no peace. For many months our Government has preserved between right and wrong a neutrality which would have excited the emulous admiration of Pontius Pilate—the arch-typical neutral of all time. . . . Unless we act with immediate decision and vigor we shall have failed in the duty demanded by humanity at large and demanded even more clearly by the self-respect of the American Republic."
On the same day that these publications appeared in the press, May 9, there appeared side by side with them this statement which had been issued from the White House on the previous evening:
"Of course the President feels the distress and the gravity of the situation to the utmost, and is considering very earnestly, but very calmly, the right course of action to pursue. He knows that the people of the country expect him to act with deliberation as well as with firmness."
One day later, May 10, 1915, President Wilson, addressing an audience of 15,000 naturalized citizens in Philadelphia, uttered the famous phrase which immediately became immortal:
"There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right."
These utterances of the two men at this supreme moment in the life of the nation show very clearly how far apart they were in regard to the course which the national Government should pursue, and why it was that Roosevelt was fairly compelled to enter the lists as the open critic of the President's policies and acts. He said to me at the time: "I would have thrown up my hat for Wilson if only he had given me the chance by acting in the Presidency as a sound American of rugged strength and patriotism. When he trailed the honor of the United States in the dust, I, as a good American, had no alternative but to oppose him."
No one was more surprised than Roosevelt was, when, in spite of his utterances, the jury agreed upon a verdict in his favor. His remarks to the jury at the close of the trial, quoted in the preceding chapter, show how deeply he was touched by it. Yet important as the verdict was to him, it occupied only slight place in his mind at the time. I have searched his letters in vain for any except casual reference to it. He had no thought for anything except the nation and its attitude .toward the European war.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN 
STRONG CONDEMNATION OF PRESIDENT WILSON
roosevelt's patriotic indignation because of the sinking of the Lusitania and President Wilson's course in regard to it found expression in many private letters that he wrote at the time, as well as in articles that he wrote for the Metropolitan Magazine, and in public addresses and newspaper interviews. He felt at the time that he was foot-free politically and could speak his mind without restraint. "There is great comfort,'" he wrote on March 2, 1915, to his intimate and highly-valued friend, E. A. Van Valken-berg of the Philadelphia North American, "in being no longer responsible for the welfare of a party, so that I can tell needed truths without regard to their reacting politically upon any organization with which I am connected."
Writing to Judge Charles F. Amidon, of Fargo, North Dakota, on May 29, 1915, he said:
"As for the Lwsitania, of course I agree with you to the last point. President Wilson has failed, and has caused the American people to fail, in performing national and international duty in a world crisis. There was not the slightest occasion for diplomacy or meditation. The facts were un-controverted. Germany did what she said she intended to do and what President Wilson has informed her he would hold her to a 'strict accountability' for doing. What was needed was not thought or words but action. The time for thought or for words had passed. The thought should have come in before we sent the 'strict accountability' letter. If the President had acted at that time, then, as you say, Germany would have stood before the civilized world, not as a warrior, but as a murderer. I do not think it is an opportune time to talk.   I have expressed myself as clearly as I know how."
His profound dissatisfaction with President Wilson's course and his conviction that what he was saying publicly in criticism of it was unpopular, is revealed in many other letters, one of which was the following to John St. Loe Strachey, London, on May 29, 1915:
"You are mistaken entirely in believing that the American public will ever turn to me for leadership again, in the sense of acknowledging me to be the leader. Nevertheless, I think that things that I have said will finally influence them and that they will in the end have to acknowledge that my position has been right. Our people are ill-informed and I think they took these statements of mine in bad part. Certainly they were not popular, at the moment, and they are not popular now. But in the end, just as sure as fate, Americans will realize that what I have said was true, and this even though they entirely forget that it was I who said it."
The natural effect of Roosevelt's open opposition to President Wilson's war policy was to restore him at once to the leadership of his party. He became immediately its spokesman on all questions relating to the war and the conduct of the national administration. No other member of the party could speak with such authority, and few had the courage to speak as freely as he did. The result was that his devoted followers began to press him forward as the inevitable candidate of his party in 1916. That he had no sympathy with their efforts, or belief in their success, his letters plainly show. In a letter written on June 3, 1915, he said:
"My feeling is that harm and not good would come if I should again be a candidate. In the (Barnes) libel suit that has just ended, the thing that to me was painfully evident was that at least nine-tenths of the men of light and leading, and very marked majority of the people as a whole desired my defeat. They did not like Barnes or believe in him; but above all things they wished my defeat. The particular twelve men whose judgment was vital to me were, I think, on the whole against me at the start; but after both Barnes and I had been before them for many days they stood for me against Barnes. This was because I could reach them personally. But it is of course impossible for me to reach more than the smallest fraction of our people in such fashion. The others have made up their minds; and they are against me."
"I have been like an engine bucking a snow-drift. My progress was slower and slower; and finally I accumulated so much snow that I came to a halt and could not get through. I believe that there are some men who would support me against Wilson, for instance, or against a reactionary Republican, who would not support any one else. But I believe that there are a far larger number of men who would at once sink every other purpose, no matter what their convictions might be, for the purpose of smashing me once for all. According to the information at present before me, I believe that the bulk of our people would accept my candidacy as a proof of greedy personal ambition on my part, and would be bitterly hostile to me in consequence, and bitterly hostile therefore to the cause for which I stood.
"I have felt as regards the Lusitania business that as an honorable man I could not keep silent, although I thoroughly realized that what I said would offend the pacificists, would offend the good, short-sighted men who do not fully understand international relations, and would make envenomed enemies of the great bulk of these Americans of German descent or birth from whom in the past I have had rather more than my normal proportion of support. This was to me a matter of principle, a matter of national duty, of duty which I owed my country; and I did not think that I was warranted in considering my own personal fortune in the matter. But I do most emphatically think that when it comes to choosing a candidate the very men who agree with me in what I have done ought to realize that it often becomes impossible to nominate a man even though the very things which make it impossible to nominate him are things where he was right and where he is entitled to our respect and admiration.
"I have felt that this libel suit which has just ended was really as much a fight for those who have fought with me during the last three years as for myself. It has justified in court by legal evidence all we said about boss rule and crooked business three years ago. I do not grudge the money it has cost me, but I think the service was really worth rendering; but I do very strongly feel that in a way it excuses me from doing too much more. There is an anecdote that has long been proverbial in our family which bears on the point. Doctor Polk, of New York, now an old man, was Inspector-General of the Confederate Artillery fifty years ago. Just before Appomattox, Lee sent him to the rear to hurry up the stragglers. He was sitting on a rail fence, with his horse-bridle over his arm when a lank, frowning, half-starved North Carolinian Infantryman trooped by, his feet going 'muck-murh' as he ploughed through the mud. Polk said in a perfunctory way, "Hurry up, my man, hurry up." Whereupon the North Carolinian looked gloomy at him, shook his head, and remarked as he walked by, 'if I ever love another country, damn me!'
"Now, you must not take this anecdote too literally. Of course, if it was a duty impossible to avoid, I would fight in future as I have fought in the past. But I feel I have done my share; and, what is infinitely more important, I do not feel that I can be of use in a leading position any more. I think the people have made up their minds that they have had all they want of me, and that my championship of a cause or an individual, say in exceptional cases, is a damage rather than a benefit."
That he was eager to improve every opportunity to support President Wilson Roosevelt showed by his action when Mr. Bryan resigned as Secretary of State on June 8, 1915. A statement of his reasons for resigning was made by Mr. Bryan on June 9 and published on June 10. As soon as he saw it, Roosevelt who was in Louisiana at the time, gave out the following from Breton Island, on June 11, 1915:
"According to Mr. Bryan's statement, he has left the Cabinet because President Wilson, as regards the matters at issue with Germany, refuses to follow the precedent set in the thirty all-inclusive arbitration commission treaties recently negotiated, and declines to suspend action for a year, while a neutral commission investigates the admitted murder of American men, women and children on the high seas, and further declines to forbid American citizens to travel on neutral ships in accordance with the conditions guaranteed to us by Germany herself in solemn treaty.
"Of course I heartily applaud the decision of the President, and in common with all other Americans who are loyal to the traditions handed down by the men who served under Washington, and by the others who followed Grant and Lee in the days of Lincoln, I pledged him my heartiest support in all the steps he takes to uphold the honor and the interests of this great Republic which are bound up with the maintenance of democratic liberty and of a wise spirit of humanity among all the nations of mankind."
To one of the younger generation of earnest and able writers in whom he took a warm personal interest, Julian Street, he wrote on June 23, 1915:
"Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln and Grant have occupied exactly the right position as regards our duty in international affairs; and Jefferson, Buchanan and Wilson exactly the wrong position. The way to help us in the concrete to do what is right is to point out in the concrete the men at the head of affairs who do what is wrong. The War of 1812 was for us at best a draw and was fulfilled with humiliation and disgrace because of Jefferson's attitude and above all because Jefferson's attitude represented the American attitude. If men like Washington had been in charge of this government for the first sixteen years of the nineteenth century the War of 1812 would have been an overwhelming victory and probably would have been closed in 1812. Wilson and Bryan at the present day are contending for the proud preeminence of doing everything in their power in the last two years and a half to bring this nation to both impotence and infamy in its international relations—and Taft by his universal arbitration treaties and his Mexican policy ably paved the way for them. Wilson is the one man now alive most responsible for present day unpreparedness."
On the same date, June 23, 1915, he wrote to his life-long friend Owen Wister:
"Your friend, the English pacifist, turned up. He seems an amiable, fuzzy-brained creature; but I could not resist telling him that I thought that in the first place Englishmen were better at home doing their duty just at present, and in the next place, as regards both Englishmen and Americans, that the prime duty now was not to talk about dim and rosy Utopias but, as regards both of them, to make up their minds to prepare against disaster and, as regards our nation, to quit making promises which we do not keep. Taft, second only to Wilson and Bryan, is the most distinguished exponent of what is worst in our political character at the present day as regards international affairs; and a universal peace league meeting which has him as its most prominent leader, is found on the whole to do mischief and not good.
"I was immensely pleased and amused with your last Atlantic article ('Quack Novels and Democracy') and I think it will do good. I wish you had included Wilson when you spoke of Bryan, and Pulitzer when you spoke of Hearst. Pulitzer and his successors have been on the whole an even greater detriment than Hearst, and Wilson is considerably more dangerous to the American people than Bryan. I was very glad to see you treat Thomas Jefferson as you did. Wilson is in his class. Bryan is not attractive to the average college bred man; but The Evening Post, Springfield Republican, and Atlantic Monthly creatures, who claim to represent all that is highest and most cultivated and to give the tone to the best college thought, are all ultra-supporters of Wilson, are all much damaged by him, and join with him to inculcate flabbiness of moral fiber among the very men, and especially the young men, who should stand for what is best in American life. Therefore to the men who read your writings Wilson is more dangerous than Bryan. Nothing is more sickening than the continual praise of Wilson's English, of Wilson's style. He is a true logothete, a real sophist; and he firmly believes, and has had no inconsiderable effect in making our people believe, that elocution is an admirable substitute for and improvement on action. I feel particularly bitter toward him at the moment because when Bryan left I supposed that meant that Wilson really had decided to be a man and I prepared myself to stand wholeheartedly by him. But in reality the point at issue between them was merely as to the proper point of dilution of tepid milk and water."
His views at this time about an international peace league were set forth on June 29, 1915, in a letter to E. A. Van Valkenberg:
'' There is one point about those gentlemen who support a League for International World Peace that is worthwhile considering. Six months ago or more I outlined that program which they announced they had just discovered the other day. But I then very emphatically stated that it was a program for the future and that our first business was to make good the promises we had already made and to put ourselves in position to defend our own rights. These gentlemen declined to say a word in favor of our fitting ourselves to go into defensive war in our own interest; and yet they actually wish to make us at this time promise to undertake offensive war in the interests of other people! It is a striking illustration of the recklessness with which the average American is willing to make any kind of a promise without any thought of how it can be carried out. Taken concretely, they propose that we shall pledge our selves in the future to coerce Germany if it acts, say toward Switzerland, or Holland or Denmark, as it has acted toward Belgium. Either such a promise is an empty nullity or it means that we undertake to prepare in such event to send an army of a. couple of million men to Europe. Yet these same individuals praise Wilson for shirking his duty under the moderate Hague Conventions we have already signed and for failure to prepare either to protect our own citizens when murdered on the high seas or to protect them when murdered in Mexico. They won't advocate preparedness for defensive war in our own behalf but are willing to make utterly reckless promises that we will undertake offensive war in behalf of others."
Writing to Julian Street, on July 8, 1915, he said: "It is difficult to explore the hidden domain of motive. Personally, I do not believe that President Wilson's motives have been one whit better than those of Senator Hale (life-long opponent to a large navy). This is a mere matter of belief on my part; but it is a matter not of belief but of knowledge that Wilson in his very great position has done far more damage to the army and navy and has been a far greater foe to efficient preparedness than Hale was in his smaller position. I would not attack either unless it were necessary from the standpoint of the country; and it is of course a thousand times more necessary (although more disagreeable) to attack Wilson, the popular pacifist hero, than Hale, who is really dead. The excuse that can be made for one is the excuse that can be made for the other. Hale's constituents demanded, most of them doubtless sincerely, that he should see that the Portsmouth Navy Yard was kept up. Wilson's constituents who have been most active in speaking about preparedness have been the German-Americans and other hyphenated Americans, the professional pacifists, the flubdubs and the mollycoddles, all of whom have united in screaming against preparedness and in applauding him; just as their spiritual ancestors applauded Thomas Jefferson over a century ago when he announced that 'our passion was peace,' and reduced the regular army to nothing and laid up the navy and refused to continue building it and stated that the nation in arms, the militia without any training or trial, would be fit to defend us.
"For a President to announce that our passion is peace and therefore to refuse to prepare is bad. But it is not quite so bad as to announce that the nation is 'too proud to fight,' and to put men like Daniels at the head of the Navy Department and to keep him there and have the navy kept in the Gulf of Mexico under conditions that almost ruin its efficiency, and to use the army under circumstances deeply detrimental to the morale of both the officers and the enlisted men, and finally to make speeches and write an Annual Message, such as he wrote last December, which are deliberate and direct arguments against all efficiency and all preparedness. It was an elaborate argument against preparedness, excellently calculated to puzzle our people and to keep them from trying to get ready.
"Every army officer in the country who is trying to prepare is doing it against the feeling of the President and knows he has to be cautious so as not to arouse the hostility of the President, a hostility which has been incurred by every man in either the army or the navy who has fearlessly done his duty during the last year. Until we are willing to tell the truth about history, until we are willing to admit what humiliation and loss the War of 1812 (which was for us a defeat or at least a draw) caused us, and how this humiliation and loss were directly due to the action of the American people themselves, through the leaders whom they adored, Jefferson and Madison, and until we are willing to make our present-day politicians know that there is an active sentiment which will hold them responsible for failure to prepare, I am afraid we shall not make much headway.''
To Owen Wister he wrote again on July 7, 1915: "All the earlier part of your article on 'The Pentecost of Calamity' is so admirable and I feel so very strongly the service you have rendered that I cannot help feeling regret that you fail to draw the conclusion that in my view is the only conclusion to be drawn. You first of all show how dreadfully Germany has behaved, how incumbent it is upon the civilized world that she should not be allowed to succeed, that action should be taken upon her. You then say with equal truth that you 'want no better photograph of any individual man than his opinion on this war.'
"But America as a whole could speak only through the Administration at Washington; and the real test, the real photograph, of any individual is whether he does or does not keep neutral about the action of the Administration in itself preserving a thoroughly base neutrality. You praise the New York Times for its stand. The New York Times has consistently supported Wilson and is supporting him now; and that makes all that it says on behalf of the Allies and against Germany mere beating of wind, a mere added discredit. When President Eliot denounces Germany and also upholds President Wilson and says that we must not prepare for war, President Eliot is occupying the worst position that can be occupied. To denounce Germany in words and not prepare to make our words good is merely to add to our offense.
"You say that it would have been an act of 'unprecedented folly' if we had not been politically neutral. On the contrary, in my view, the really unprecedented folly was in exercising our loose tongues in a way thoroughly to irritate Germany and yet to do nothing whatever to back up these aforesaid tongues by governmental action. If it was our duty to remain neutral politically, it was emphatically our duty to remain morally neutral. Any political neutrality not based on moral reasons is no more and no less admirable than the neutrality of Pontius Pilate or of the backwoodsman who saw his wife fighting the bear. Either The Hague Conventions meant something or they did not mean something. Either they can be construed according to their spirit, or by legalistic device the letter can be twisted so as to give a faint shadow of justification for violating the spirit. If they meant nothing, then it was idiocy for us to have gone into them. If they meant anything, Wilson and Bryan are not to be excused for failure to try to make them good by whatever action was necessary; and political neutrality when they were violated was a crime against the world and a thoroughly base and dishonorable thing on our part. As for the Lusitania matter, failure to act within twenty-four hours following her sinking was an offense that is literally inexcusable and inexplicable. Of course, our people are now all confused and weakened and incapable of giving any coherent support to our own rights or the rights of others in the teeth of Germany's ruthless and cruel efficiency. This is directly due to the action of Wilson— the worst President we have had since Buchanan, an even worse President than Taft, a considerably worse President than Andrew Johnson—and he has been able to do this because papers like the Times have shown such ambidextrous morality in cordially supporting him while at the same time taking positions that were justifiable only on the theory that he had acted outrageously and should be denounced.
"This people is no worse than it was in the days of Washington and Lincoln. We were still in the gristle; and, thanks largely to the immense immigration, we have continued to be in the gristle. When we had them as Presidents or as national leaders, the people would follow them. But if, after firing on Sumter, Lincoln had made a speech in which he said that the North was 'too proud to fight,' and if he had then spent sixty days in writing polished epistles to Jefferson Davis, and if Seward had resigned because these utterly futile epistles were not even more futile, why, by July the whole heart would have been out of the Union party and most people in the North would have been following Horace Greeley in saying that the erring sisters should be permitted to depart in peace! Wilson has not had to face anything like as great a crisis; but he has faced it exactly as Buchanan faced his crisis, in exactly the spirit that Lincoln would have shown if Lincoln had acted in such fashion.
"I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds. I have a perfect horror of denunciation that ends in froth. All denunciations of Germany, all ardent expressions of sympathy for the Allies amount to precisely and exactly nothing if we are right in preserving a complete political neutrality between right and wrong. If Wilson is not wrong in his action, or rather inaction, about the Lusitanm and Belgium, then wise and proper thing for our people is to keep their mouths shut about both deeds. The loose tongue and the unready hand make a poor combination. We are justified in denouncing the action of Germany only if we make it clearly evident that Wilson has shamelessly and scandalously misinterpreted us. I don't think that the American people believe that he has misrepresented us; I think they are behind him. I think they are behind him largely because their leaders have felt that in this crisis the easy thing to do was to minister to our angered souls by words of frothy denunciation and minister to our soft bodies by taking precious good care that there was no chance of our having to turn these words into deeds."
A letter that he wrote on August 7,1915, to Baron Rosen, former Russian Ambassador at Washington and one of the Russian envoys to the Portsmouth Peace Conference, is worthy of record as containing an outline of what he would have done to bring the war to a close had he been President when Germany invaded Belgium in 1914. Baron Rosen had sent to him a copy of a published interview with himself in which he had declared that it was "in the interest of all concerned to bring the war to conclusion as soon as possible," and had added:
"The surest way of reaching such a result would be to bring about a general coalition such as crushed the power of the first Napoleon, still leaving France intact and an honored member of the family of nations. Failing this, how ever, a large league of neutrals, especially if headed by the United States, might bring to bear upon Germany moral pressure sufficient to make her realize the futility of continuing a struggle that could certainly never lead to a realization of her ambitions."
To this Roosevelt replied:
"How I wish I were President at this moment! That won't strike you, I know, as an expression of personal ambition. I would be quite willing to accept the Presidency now with a guaranty of being removed from it at the very instant I had succeeded in doing what I had started out to accomplish; and the first thing I would like to do, aside from the subordinate incident of aiding civilization and decency in Mexico, would be to interfere in the world war on the side of justice and honesty, by exactly such a league 4as you mention. I do not believe in neutrality between right and wrong. I believe in justice.
"When I had the great pleasure and honor of being associated with you and other men whom I highly regarded in the effort to bring about peace between Russia and Japan, I could in good faith act as a neutral. But neutrality in the present war is a crime against humanity and against the future of the race. . . . As you probably know, if I had had the power I would have made this nation actively interfere, if possible at the head of all neutral nations, on the ground of the violation of The Hague Conventions as regards Belgium. I had been preaching preparedness for years; but for the last year I have been earnestly advocating that we prepare in such fashion as to make ourselves able to count decisively if we do have to interfere."
As shown in early chapters of this history, Theodore Roosevelt had been a persistent and earnest advocate of national preparedness from the moment of his entrance upon public life. Indeed, in the preface to his history of the War of 1812, written while he was still a student in Harvard University, he had taken his position in favor of it, and he adhered to it unvaringly throughout his life. While he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in June 1897, as I have shown in the chapters upon that portion of his career, he defined his attitude on this and other questions of national policy with great clearness and force. While he was President, in every annual message that he sent to Congress, he urged adherence to the same policy. In his annual message of December 1906 he called attention to the universal military service system of Switzerland as a model for the United States to follow. As soon as it became likely that the United States would be drawn into the European war he began to advocate the immediate adoption of measures of preparedness which should enable the country to defend itself and meet with military force any assaults of Germany on its rights and the rights of its citizens. He shared with General Leonard Wood the honor of originating military training camps, and with General Wood took the lead in arousing public interest in them as a necessary step in national preparedness. For many months the Wilson Administration not only refused financial support for these camps, but openly opposed them. The boys and men who went to them paid the expenses. Later an association of business men paid for their support.
The hostility of the Wilson Administration to both Roosevelt and General Wood was openly disclosed by an incident that occurred in the summer of 1915. An officers' training camp, the first of several, had been established at Plattsburg, N. Y., and was in operation under General Wood's direction. By invitation from General Wood, on August 25, 1915, Roosevelt visited the camp and made an address to its members who, with visitors from the neighborhood, made up an audience of several thousand persons. The address was confined to an earnest appeal for national preparedness along the lines that Roosevelt had followed for many years. He made no mention of the President or of the national administration in it, but dwelt upon the subject as a great national need which was being perilously neglected. After leaving the camp, Roosevelt made a statement to the reporters who had been present which he asked them to publish. In this he said:
"I wish to make one comment on the statement so frequently made that we must stand by the President. I heartily subscribe to this on condition and only on condition that it is followed by the statement so long as the President stands by the country.
"It is defensible to state that we stand by the country, right or wrong; it is not defensible for any free man in a free republic to state that he will stand by any official right or wrong, or any ex-official.
'' The President has the right to have said of him nothing but what is true; he should have sufficient time to make his policy clear; but as regards supporting him in all public policy, and above all in international policy, the right of any President is only to demand public support because he does well; because he serves the public well, and not merely because he is President.
"To treat elocution as a substitute for action, to rely upon high-sounding words unbacked by deeds, is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of shame."
On the following day, the Secretary of War published a formal rebuke to General Wood for permitting Roosevelt to make an address, declaring that its effect was certain to be harmful rather than helpful to the training camp project. The assumption of the rebuke was that the address had been an attack on the national administration, and the newspapers that were regular supporters of the President took this view. Roosevelt replied sharply to the Secretary, saying that in his address he had not mentioned the President or the national administration, and that if calling attention to the fact that for thirteen months no steps had been taken in the direction of national preparedness was regarded by the national administration as an attack upon itself, it was a confession of guilt on its part.
    In a letter that he wrote to Dr. Henry S. Drinker, President of Lehigh University, on September 1,1915, he said in justification of Ms address:
"Of course you have absolutely the right to send me the letter you have just sent me. . . . But let me ask you if you are sure that you have seen my address. I can hardly believe it. I think that you must have seen an account of what I am alleged to have said or else an account of some article of mine or interview of mine not given in the camp. You say first that you 'heartily agree with and endorse all (I) say in support of the need, the great immediate need, of national preparedness and in condemnation of the folly and worse, of those young and old who favor a supine action.' You then say that you greatly disapprove of my 'attack on the Administration.' But, my dear Sir, I never mentioned the Administration or the President, and the only way of construing what I said into an attack is by construing the attack I made upon the nation because it did not 'favor a policy of supine action,' as an attack on the Administration.
"Now the prime reason why we are at present unprepared, is that you, my dear Mr. President, and the men like you, from the highest motives, persists in making general statements in favor of preparedness in the abstract, and then utterly undoing everything you say by repudiation of these principles when applied in the concrete; and even, as now appears, by repudiation of abstract statements if, as in the present instance, the Administration shows sensitiveness when they are made. In your letter, for instance, you say, as I have quoted above, that you utterly condemn the folly and worse of those who favor a policy of supine action. By far the most conspicuous man who has favored it is the President himself. The whole weight of his Message to Congress last year, when the war had lasted four months, was put in the demand that there should be no preparation. He actively discouraged Congress doing anything last year. He, chiefly, positively but partly without directness, discouraged even such activities of General Wood as were included in the formation of the American Legion, and then in the assembling of these camps. But I did not directly or indirectly refer to all this in my speech. I merely said that during these last thirteen months we as a nation had absolutely failed to prepare. I said that the results of our weakness had been evident in the murder of our women and children on the high seas.
"Now, either these camps are justified or they are not. If we are utterly unprepared, then they are justified and required. Otherwise they are not, for of course they are only makeshifts, adopted because of the lack of proper governmental action. This improper failure of the government to act may be due either to the Administration leading the people wrong or to the people not permitting the Administration to lead it right. In my speech I was most careful to put the responsibility on the people, on the nation. As a matter of fact, I do not think that that is where it primarily belongs. I think it primarily rests on the shoulders of Mr. Wilson; but I agreed with the view you expressed, that the camp was not the place to say so.
''However, if there is to be any speechmaking at all at the camp, then that speechmaking should be truthful and to the point. To support the great immediate need of national preparedness is of course by implication to condemn the Administration to whose supine action we owe our present utter unpreparedness. To condemn the folly and worse of those who favor this policy of supine action is of course to condemn the Administration. You say you approve of both. Then you approve of all that I have done. If it is not proper to say these things which should be said to all patriotic Americans, to such a camp, then in my judgment it is wholly improper to hold these camps at all, and the sooner they are abandoned the better."
A rather despairing note is discernible in this letter, August 28, 1915, to Frederick Palmer, then with the British Expeditionary Force in France:
"I am sick at heart about Wilson, and therefore about the American people. The only thing to say in defense of the people is that a bad colonel always makes a bad regiment. If, the day after the firing on Sumter, Lincoln had stated that he was too proud to fight and if he had then carried on a four-months' correspondence with Jefferson Davis, well written from the rhetorical standpoint but without a deed to back any word, and if Seward had resigned because these notes were too stiff, by midsummer of '61 the northerners as a whole would have said that Greeley was quite right and they would let the erring sisters go. Yet even then I think somebody would have roused them in the end. I have done everything I can to rouse them. I have the skeleton of a division already outlined, with acceptances from my Chief of Staff, my brigade commanders, colonels, etc. My three sons have been in camp at Plattsburg under General Wood this summer."
That he believed sincerely at this time that the course he was taking was unpopular because of the anti-war sentiment of the country at large, is shown in his letters, a few of which are appended:
September 3, 1915.
To George W. Perkins, New York City: "It is my deliberate judgment that if the Republicans ever come to entertain the thought of nominating me next year, it will be because they know they will be defeated under me and intend that I shall receive the heaviest defeat they can give me, and they will nominate me with this purpose in view, thereby not only crushing the Progressives but definitely getting rid of me and enthroning the standpatters in the Republican party.
"It is perfectly evident to me that this people have made up their minds not only against the policies in which I believe but finally against me personally. The bulk of them are convinced that I am actuated by motives of personal ambition and that I am selfishly desirous of hurting Taft and Wilson and have not the good of the country at heart. Anything that you or any of my other close friends do that can be construed into putting me forward for the Presidency will absolutely confirm this opinion and will do me real and grave damage. My experience with the libel suit convinced me that nine-tenths of the people of leadership and influence, big and little, in New York are utterly against me."
October 9, 1915.
To John St. Loe Strachey, London: "Don't get it into your head that there is the slightest possibility of my returning to public life. Even the men who on the whole agree with me in my position, would be almost a unit against me if I again was a candidate for public office. It is against our traditions as a nation; and, while I myself think these traditions are foolish, yet they exist, and that is all there is to it. I intend to continue writing and now and then speaking until this war is through; but after that I believe that I shall probably stop both speaking and writing, for I do not think I can get any audience or do good to the country."
December 7, 1915.
To Senator Lodge: "As you know, I feel that the course I have followed about Hyphenated-Americanism, and especially the German-American vote, is such as absolutely to preclude the possibility of nominating me as a candidate, even though there had been such a possibility before, which in my judgment was not the case. I have followed the course I have followed in the last year, because I thought someone ought to say the kind of things I have said, and that without regard to his own future, and I was the man peculiarly blocked out for the task."
January 29, 1916.
To Wayne MacVeagh: "I am a strong believer in being practical and working with your fellows, which is another way of saying of working with the organization. But now and then the time comes when it is quite impossible to compromise and do your duty to the nation, and now and then the time comes when a man must hoist the black flag and sink or swim, without regard to what his fellows think, for the cause in which he with all his heart believes. In my judgment we are in a great world crisis. No other public man has ventured to tell the truth of Germany, of the pacifists, of the German-Americans, of Wilson. I have told it and shall tell it as strongly as I know how and without regard to its effect upon me. When I adopted this course I did it deliberately, believing that in all human probability it would render me unavailable for any office. I did not wish any office; but it is a man's duty, before he takes a position, to consider whether or not his taking it renders it impossible for him to be run for a position where he could do good service. I did consider this. I felt that the pacifists, the professional German-Americans, the shortsighted and uninformed and ease-loving people generally, needed to be told what their duty was and that it would have to be told in ways that would make it impossible for the man telling it to avoid incurring their bitter animosity. I have followed this course, believing that it would in all probability render it out of the question to nominate me for the Presidency. It would be quite impossible to nominate and elect me unless this nation were in heroic mood and it were possible to appeal to that mood. I see no signs of such possibility."
January 29, 1916.
To Henry Ford, Detroit, Michigan: "I thank you for your kind letter of January 20th. If I get to Detroit it will be a great pleasure to accept your invitation to look at the work you are doing. As I have so frequently stated, I believe that you are one of the men, the successful business men, who can do far more than any outsiders like myself in bringing about the right relations between the men who work with their hands and those who supply the capital or the management in the business.
"But, my dear Mr. Ford, I trust you have not extended this invitation in ignorance of the position I have publicly taken about your attitude on behalf of pacifism. If you did not know my attitude when you wrote, I shall of course understand absolutely if you withdraw the invitation, for, as I supposed you knew, I am emphatically out of sympathy with you (just as I am radically out of sympathy with my friend, Miss Addams), as regards this pacifist agitation. If you do know my attitude and have sent the invitation knowing it, I wish you would give me the chance when I see you to make a very earnest appeal to you to use your good influence, not on behalf of a peace that will not bring righteousness, but on behalf of righteousness; for if that is obtained the peace worth having comes with it."
February 4, 1916.
To Mrs. Mary T. Bays, Ellisville, III: "It does me good to hear from an American woman who is a real patriot. You say you are 'only an old, ignorant country woman.' I wish to heaven that all wealthy and cultivated people had your good sense and courage and devotion to the country. It is right that you should feel as you do, when your husband fought gallantly throughout the Civil "War and came home wounded and broken in health. You tell me that last Sunday, at church, you heard the preacher speak for 'Peace at any Price,' and that he said that if our flag was insulted or spat upon it did not matter, and that the church was full of men and boys and that not one protested.
"Such a preacher is a foe of this country, and a foe of humanity, and a foe of Christianity. He represents the type which, if he had lived in Judea during the life-time of the Saviour, would have attacked the Saviour for breaking the peace by driving the money-changers from the Temple. The men and boys who listened to him without protest are no better than he is."
February 4, 1916.
To Rev. Gustavus E. Hitter, Pastor, First German Methodist Episcopal Church, Indianapolis, Indiana: "I thank you for your personal kindness toward me, but, my dear sir, I am not a candidate, and if I were I would most emphatically refuse to receive the votes of those whom you speak of as ' German-Americans, who are getting ready to throw their solid support to one or the other candidate, something that has never occurred before.' I do not want any man's support if it comes because that man is acting as a German-American, or an English-American, or an Irish-American, or a Jewish-American, or a native American. If he cannot act as a plain United States citizen, then he has no business to vote in our country at all. There is no room for a 'solid German-American vote' in this country, or a solid English-American vote, if we are to conduct things on a really healthy basis. I have in me German, French and English blood, as well as Dutch blood, but I am an American and nothing else. I can only refer you to my published statements and to the enclosed pamphlet 'Americanism,' to give my position. I believe the. Americans of German blood have formed a peculiarly valuable element in this country. In the great crisis of the Civil War, a greater proportion went right than was the case with the Americans of old Colonial stock. But they must vote as Americans and nothing else, or they will be positive sources of danger and detriment to the community.
"It is exceedingly unlikely that I shall ever again be a candidate for office, but, if I am, no man will be wise who votes for me under the idea that I am anything but a straight-cut American. I care nothing for a man's creed, or his birthplace, or descent! but I regard him as an unworthy citizen unless he is an American and nothing else."
In commenting upon President Wilson's address to Congress, in December 1915, Roosevelt aroused much curiosity and caused an active searching of dictionaries by saying: "His (Wilson's) elocution is that of a Byzantine logothete —and Byzantine logothetes were not men of action."
In the early part of 1916 a subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the Authors' League of America, of which Colonel Roosevelt was honorary vice-president, brought in a report advocating affiliation with the American Federation of Labor. Colonel Roosevelt was asked to approve the report, but refused to do so. So strong was the feeling in the League upon this matter that the organization itself was threatened with disruption. In answer to the report of the subcommittee, some of the more conservative members of the League issued a protest against affiliation. The protest was sent by Julian Street to Colonel Roosevelt with a request that he sign it if he saw fit to do so. Instead of signing, Roosevelt sent to Mr. Street a letter addressed to the subcommittee, authorizing him to make any use of it he thought best.
The letter was as follows:
sagamore hill,
July 28, 1916. To the Subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the
Authors' League, gentlemen :
Since our correspondence I have carefully considered the matter, and I have now read the "protest" against the proposed action.
Not only does this protest contain some very strong arguments against your proposed action, but the mere fact that so many of our leading members sign it makes it in my view inadvisable and improper to take the proposed action.
The Authors' League should be kept a united body and not required to deal with burning questions remote from its proper interests, and as to which its membership would be bitterly divided, and in view of the facts as they now appear, I would regard the proposed action as equivalent to the disruption of the Authors' League, and I therefore most earnestly hope that it will not be taken.
theodore Roosevelt.
Mr. Street decided, after some reflection, not to send the letter because he thought it might tend to antagonize organized labor. He announced his decision to Roosevelt and received the following reply on August 4,1916:
"I don't care a rap whether the Federation of Labor does or does not understand my position. I am getting to be too old to count in the cost of such matters! If that letter is of service to you you are welcome to use it, and in any event you had better send it now to the subcommittee, even although you do not publish it until later—so that they may not claim that they were under any misapprehension as to my attitude."
Mr. Street sent the letter and soon afterwards the affiliation scheme was dropped.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
REFUSAL TO BE A THIRD PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
IN 1916
in March 1916, Roosevelt went with his wife on a trip to the West Indies. The most devoted of his Progressive followers were pressing him forward as a Presidential candidate and he was firmly opposing their efforts, as he had no desire for another nomination. They were convinced that they could persuade the Republican leaders to nominate him by showing that he was the strongest possible candidate for them, the only one, in fact, that they could hope to elect.
He himself had no faith in the success of their efforts. "I do not believe," he wrote to Julian Street on April 24, 1916, "there is any real chance of nominating me. I am just one of Abraham Lincoln's 'splashed and battered pioneers.' "
He insisted that no effort whatever should be made by his advocates to secure delegates for him for the Republican nomination, and no such effort was made. His advocates confined themselves to placing his merits as a candidate before the country and by arranging to hold a Progressive National Convention. On his way home from the West Indies he prepared for publication a statement of his position and it was telegraphed from Trinidad by Mr. Henry L. Stoddard, editor of the New York Evening Mail, who had gone there to meet him. In this statement, which he had written in his own hand for Mr. Stoddard, he said:
"I do not wish the nomination. I am not the least interested in the political fortunes either of myself or any other man.
"I am interested in awakening my fellow countrymen to the need of facing unpleasant facts. I am interested in the triumph of the great principles for which, with all my heart and soul, I have striven and shall continue to strive.
"I will not enter into any fight for the nomination, and I will not permit any factional fight to be made in my behalf. Indeed, I will go further and say that it would be a mistake to nominate me unless the country has in its mood something of the heroic, unless it feels not only like devoting itself to ideals, but to the purpose measurably to realize those ideals in action.
"This is one of those rare times which come only at long intervals in a nation's history, when the action taken determines the basis of the life of the generations that follow. Such times were those from 1776 to 1789, in the days of Washington, and from 1858 to 1865, in the days of Lincoln.
"It is for us to-day to grapple with the tremendous national and international problems of our own hour in the spirit and with the ability shown by those who upheld the hands of Washington and Lincoln."
This deliverance was in direct opposition to the earnest appeals of many of his followers that he keep silent on the question of a nomination and thereby avoid giving offense to the large pacifist element in the Western States; but a policy of silence never had attractions for him. Although he consented to allow his most ardent supporters to advocate his nomination by exhibiting his record to the public in various ways, because by so doing he secured attention for his views, he had little share in their faith that the Republicans could be induced to nominate him. The one thing that he was determined upon was that there should be no concealment of his views, that a nomination should not be secured by any misunderstandings as to his principles, and that under no circumstances would he run again as a third candidate. His attitude was defined clearly in a letter that he wrote to one of his most zealous Progressive followers, Matthew Hale, of Boston, on April 3, 1916:
"I meant literally and exactly every word of my Trinidad statement. Not only do I desire that no kind of faction fight be made to secure my nomination but I feel that it would be worse than worthless to have the nomination unless it comes of their own accord from the Republicans, because they feel they need me, and because they feel that the country is ripe for the kind of campaign which is the only campaign I would consent to make. After Lincoln became President the question of retaining the Union was of such absorbing consequence that for the next eighteen months he declined to consider even such a tremendous question as Slavery. He subordinated everything else to the question of the Union. There are certain tremendous national questions affecting our attitude as regards the primary duties of a nation, affecting perhaps the questions whether we are to continue as a nation, which transcend infinitely in importance any question of whether or not the Crane machine or any other machine is to be hurt, is to be opposed, or is to be made an issue in any way. I must not be used in any local fight for any local objects. . . .
"My sole usefulness at present must lie in my continuing to preach nationally the kind of doctrines that I have been preaching for the last eighteen months. Conscientiously and with infinite labor a year ago last Summer and Fall I fought in every kind of locality for local triumph along the lines of Progressive principles. I not only did no good but I am not at all certain that I did not do damage. The effort for me to mix in local affairs and the effort to mix me in local affairs simply did harm. Very possibly no use can be made of me nationally, but most emphatically it is only nationally that any use can be made of me, and the effort to win anything for me by a faction fight anywhere will do me damage and cannot from any standpoint do good.
"Understand me, I would not care whether it would do me damage or not if it would do any good to the nation; but it won't do any good to the nation. If this nation is to be helped in the least by me, it is to be helped by my teachings in national and international matters. If the nation gets the slightest idea that I am acquiescing in faction fights in my own interests, there is the end of my accomplishing anything whatever."
To Frederick Scott Oliver, in England, author of the 'Life of Hamilton' and, later of 'The Ordeal of Battle,' he wrote on April 7, 1916:
"To chasten one's own side is an absolute necessity (one of the chief sources of our trouble here in the United States has been the persistent refusal to chasten our own side, even in dealing with past history), and yet in a crisis it exposes one to the charge of assisting one's enemies. To a very much less degree I have myself been having this difficulty for the last twenty months. French, English and Canadian editors of newspapers and reviews have kept asking me to write for them, as I have been writing and speaking in the United States, and they have apparently been unable to understand my response that the very fact that I was speaking unpleasantly of my countrymen meant that these unpleasant words must be spoken directly to them and not in some other land about them.
"I suppose each man tends to feel a particular animosity toward his tribal enemies, so to speak. I have never expected anything from the frank materialists. "When they play the part of frankly selfish swine and say that they do not care what happens to Belgium as long as they can keep their own four feet in the trough, I merely try to appeal to any possible far-sightedness in their selfishness by pointing out that, if they do not make ready, they will ultimately themselves be shouldered out of the trough by the German boar or by some other equally warlike and competent competitor. But the men who really do arouse my anger are those who have been for years claiming to be idealists, claiming to be for peace and for justice and for virtue, and who have usually denounced me as not having sufficiently lofty ideals and as not being sufficiently altruistic.
"I wish to Heaven there was a better chance of developing some strong candidate against Wilson. There is a real movement to nominate me, simply because I am the only man who has stood openly against him in a way to show that I meant it. But I have had to be the pioneer in this movement and as Lincoln, with his homely common sense said, the trouble with pioneers is that they necessarily get so battered and splashed that they cannot be used at subsequent stages of the movement. It would be just as hard to elect me this year as it would have been to have elected Hamilton against Jefferson in 1808. If it had been possible to run Pinckney against Jefferson, with Hamilton and Adams heartily backing him, Jefferson might have been beaten. I wish to Heaven we could develop some Pinckney now who would be put forward."
In order to bring pressure on the Republican National Convention by a demonstration of their popular strength, the Progressive managers called a national convention of their party to meet in Chicago on the same date that the Republican convention was to meet. Roosevelt had no faith in the success of this proceeding, as is shown in a letter that he wrote to C. S. Thompson, of New York City, on May 4, 1916: "I do not for a moment believe that the Chicago convention is going to nominate me. I think they are inclined to 'pussy-foot' and it is worse than useless for them to nominate me, unless they are prepared for an entirely straightforward and open campaign."
He left no possibility for any one to doubt his position during the months that preceded the assembling of the two conventions, for he continued to speak and write with un-diminished force and frankness on the subjects which he considered of supreme importance—national preparedness and righteous peace. His denunciations of German outrages and atrocities were as vigorous as ever and made it absolutely certain that if nominated he would have the entire German vote of the country arrayed against him. His strongest and most outspoken addresses were made in Western cities in which the German elements of the population were most numerous, and where pacifists most abounded. In April and May he spoke to great throngs in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit and other similar centers on such subjects as "Righteous Peace and National Preparedness," "National Duty" and "International Ideals." In none of these did he speak as a Presidential candidate, but as an American devoted heart and soul to the honor and welfare of his country, and deeply stirred by the slowness of the national administration in the work of preparedness for the great war in which he believed we were destined soon to be involved.
This was peculiarly the case in his speeches in St. Louis on May 31, 1916, only a week before the two conventions, Republican and Progressive, were to assemble at Chicago. In fact the delegates to both conventions- were already either in Chicago or on their way there. St. Louis had a larger number of German-born inhabitants than any other American city except Milwaukee, and it was known at the time to be a stronghold of German war sympathy. Roosevelt's first speech of the several that he made during his visit showed that he was not a Presidential aspirant who was seeking support from German-born citizens. He declared that there was no room in the United States for German-Americans, or Irish-Americans or any other hyphenated citizens, but room only for those who were "Americans and nothing else." In fact, he declared, there could be no such person as a German-American; he had the authority of the Kaiser himself for the statement, since the Kaiser had said that he knew what a German was and what an American was but he did not know what a German-American was. "Whatever else may be said of me," declared Roosevelt to a great audience that had assembled to hear him, "I am no pussy-footer." That was a notification not only to his audience but to the delegates to the Republican National Convention that if he were to be made a candidate there must be no angling for German-American votes.
It is interesting to note that the sentiments of this speech were not new with Roosevelt, were not the outcome of the European war. Like his views on preparedness, he had avowed them many years earlier. In the Preface to a 'History of New York City' which he wrote in 1890 he used these words:
"In speaking to my own countrymen there is one point upon which I wish to lay especial stress; that is, the necessity for a feeling of broad, radical, and intense Americanism, if good work is to be done in any direction. Above all, the one essential for success in every political movement which is to do lasting good, is that our citizens should act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualification;—not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Native Americans,—but as Americans pure and simple."
In his book on 'True Americanism,' published in 1894, he uttered similar sentiments:
"We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans and nothing else."
I In one of his St. Louis speeches on May 31, 1916, Roosevelt used his subsequently famous phrase, "weasel words." On the preceding day, President Wilson had made a Memorial Day address, and in criticizing it, Roosevelt said: '' The President said that he was for universal voluntary training, but that America did not wish anything but the compulsion of the spirit of Americanism. Now, universal voluntary training is an expression precisely similar to that which you would use if you said, in speaking of a truant law for the schools, that you believed in universal obligatory attendance at the public schools for every child that did not wish to stay away.
"In connection with the word 'training' the words 'universal voluntary' have exactly the same effect an acid has on an alkali—a neutralizing effect. One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called 'weasel words,' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a 'weasel word' after another there is nothing left of the other. Now, you can have universal training, or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word 'voluntary' to qualify the word 'universal' you are using a 'weasel word'; it has sucked all the meaning out of 'universal.' The two words flatly contradict one another."
It was subsequently shown that Roosevelt got the term "weasel words" from a story by Stewart Chaplin that was published in the Century Magazine in June 1900, in which this passage occurred:
"Why, weasel words are words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell. If you heft the egg afterwards it's as light as a feather, and not very filling when you are hungry, but a basketful of them would make quite a show, and would bamboozle the unwary.
"I know them well, and mighty useful they are, too. Although the gentleman couldn't write much of a platform, he's an expert on weasling. I've seen him take his pen and go through a proposed plank or resolution and weasel every flat-footed word in it. Then the weasel word pleases one man, and the word that's been weasled pleases another."
In his universal reading, Roosevelt had encountered this magazine story and his marvelous memory had retained the phrase and its meaning for sixteen years, holding it ready for usage when the opportune moment arrived.
In prefacing his speech in which the phrase was used Roosevelt gave this delicious thrust at two noted pacifists:
"I don't have to deal with Mr. Bryan and Mr. Ford. I regard them both as nice, amiable men, and I like them in private life; but I decline to take part in any such wild mental joy rides as would be necessary if I had to discuss seriously their attitude."
The two conventions assembled in separate halls in Chicago on June 7, 1916. From the first, the Republican body refused to give any sign of yielding to the demand of the Progressive assemblage for the nomination of Roosevelt. Conference committees were appointed and conferences were held by them without result. A great majority of the delegates were solidly and surely pledged against Roosevelt and could not be moved a particle from their fixed position. Their convention nominated Justice Charles E. Hughes, of the United States Supreme Court, on the third ballot, on June 10. The Progressive convention nominated Roosevelt by acclamation on the same day, but with little hope that he would consent to run. The news of his nomination was telegraphed to him at Oyster Bay. He responded at once by telegraph expressing gratitude for the honor, and saying that he could not consent to accept at this time, adding: " I do not know the attitude of the candidate of the Republican party toward the vital questions of the day. Therefore, if you desire an immediate decision, I must decline the nomination. But if you prefer it, I suggest that my conditional refusal be placed in the hands of the Progressive National Committee." It was so placed by vote of the convention. On June 26, Mr. Hughes having in the meantime defined his views on the vital questions of the day, Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Progressive National Committee announcing his satisfaction with Mr. Hughes as a candidate and his intention to support him, at the same time urging his Progressive followers to do the same. This action marked the final dissolution of the Progressive party. The great bulk of its members followed Roosevelt's lead and supported Mr. Hughes, thereby returning to the Republican fold. A few went over to the Democratic side and supported President Wilson for reelection.
Writing to James Bryce, in England, on June 19, 1916, Roosevelt said:
"You have, of course, seen the result of the Presidential nominations here. I am having my own troubles with my fellow Progressives. They are wild to have me run on a third ticket. They feel that the Republican Convention was a peculiarly sordid body, a feeling with which I heartily sympathize. They feel that Mr. Hughes was nominated largely in consequence of the German-Americans who were against me, and largely also for the very reason that nobody knew anything of his views on living subjects of the day,—and a nomination made for such a cause is in my own judgment evidence of profound political immorality on the part of those making it. But Hughes is an able, up-right man whose instincts are right, and I believe in international matters he will learn with comparative quickness, especially as I hope he will put Root into office as Secretary of State. Under these circumstances there is in my mind no alternative but to support him. At his worst he will be better than Wilson, and there is always the chance that he will do very well indeed."
A letter to Mr. Van Valkenberg, on September 5, 1916, is of value as showing Roosevelt's own estimate of the scope and usefulness of his public services:
"Of course, we can never be absolutely certain, but my usefulness to this country depended so largely upon conditions of national and international politics that its real need of me has probably passed. My great usefulness as President came in connection with the Anthracite Coal Strike, the voyage of the battle fleet around the world, the taking of Panama, the handling of Germany in the Venezuela business, England in the Alaska boundary matter, the irrigation business in the West, and finally, I think, the toning up of the Government service generally.
'' Any decent and forceful man could handle the irrigation business, and could tone up the Government service, and build up our navy and regular army. But, as to the other matters I am less sure. My usefulness in 1912 and again this year would have been because we were facing a period when there was need of vision in both national and international matters. I would have done my best work in connection with the European war, the Mexican situation, and the Japanese and Chinese situation; and also in connection with universal military service, which would not only be of prime military consequence, but of prime consequence to us socially and industrially. I would, moreover, have fought for the industrial regeneration of this country along the lines of the 1912 platform, and would have fought hard and, I think, effectively for that wise and farsighted justice which no more fears organized labor than it fears Wall Street. But when 1920 arrives no human being can tell what the issues will be. I am already an old man, and the chances are very small that I will ever again grow into touch with the people of this country to the degree that will make me useful as a leader; and a man who has been a leader, is very rarely useful as an adviser when the period of his leadership has passed.
"People always used to say of me that I was an astonishingly good politician and divined what the people were going to think. This really was not an accurate way of stating the case. I did not 'divine' how the people were going to think; I simply made up my mind what they ought to think, and then did my best to get them to think it. Sometimes I failed, and then my critics said that 'my ambition had overleaped itself.' Sometimes I succeeded; and then they said that I was an uncommonly astute creature to have detected what the people were going to think and to pose as their leader in thinking it."
In the campaign of 1916 Roosevelt took the stump for Hughes and made vigorous speeches in his behalf in various parts of the country, laying stress upon the issues which he had been advocating for two years previous—namely national preparedness, loyal Americanism—and criticizing severely the policy of the Wilson Administration, both in regard to Mexico and in regard to Germany and the European war.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
RENEWED OPPOSITION TO WILSON'S PEACE POLICY-ROOSEVELT WAR DIVISION—APPEAL FROM CLEMENCEAU,.
foe a short time after the election in November, 1916, Roosevelt was silent on the course pursued by the Wilson Administration, but in December he renewed his open criticism. He had now a very large audience throughout the country. In addition to writing editorial articles each month for the Metropolitan Magazine he was making similar contributions almost daily to the Kansas City Star. At the same time he was making frequent speeches in various parts of the country, thus coming in contact with many thousands of people. The demand from all quarters for his services was overwhelming. More than ever he was the accepted leader of the opposition to the dilatory and pacifist tendencies of the Wilson Administration, and the foremost champion of vigorous, militant and unadulterated Americanism. His views found expression in editorial articles and speeches as well as in private letters, and from all of these I shall quote.
His first utterance was a protest against the note which the Secretary of State, Mr. Lansing, had sent to the belligerent nations, on December 18, 1916, in which the Secretary had said in behalf of the President: "He takes the liberty of calling attention to the fact that the objects, which the statesmen of the belligerent nations on both sides have in mind in this war, are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world." The note suggested that all the nations at war make an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future, as would make it possible frankly to compare them.
Commenting on this note, on January 3, 1917, Roosevelt said in a published statement:
"The note takes positions so profoundly immoral and misleading that high-minded and right-thinking American citizens, whose country this note places in a thoroughly false light, are in honor bound to protest. For example, the note says that thus far both sides seem to be fighting for the same thing. This is palpably false. Nor is this all. It is wickedly false."
On January 25, 1917, President Wilson made an address before the two Houses of Congress in joint session in which he advocated a League of Nations and freedom of the seas and used his famous phrase, "Peace without victory." In his address the President said concerning the utterances of the statesmen of both groups of nations engaged in the war:
"They imply first of all that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. . . . Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms forced upon the vanquished. . . . Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit."
Commenting on this address on the evening of the day on which it was delivered, Roosevelt issued a statement which appeared side by side with the text of the address in the morning papers of January 28, 1917, in which he said, speaking first of a league of peace for all nations:
"Unless the Government can bring the peace of justice to Mexico, it had better not talk of securing the peace of justice throughout the world.
"As regards freedom of the seas, the most important element in it is freedom from murder, and until this Government has taken an effective stand to prevent the murder of its citizens by submarines on the high seas, it makes itself an object of derision by asking for the freedom of the seas. Interfering with life is worse than interfering with property.
"As for the statement there can be no real peace with victory. So far as Belgium is concerned the statement stands on a par with a similar statement, had there been such, after Bunker Hill and Lexington, that there could be no real peace if victory came to the forces of General Washington.
"If President Wilson's statement had been made by the Emperor Napoleon III, or by Lord John Russell in 1864, I doubt if it would have won any enthusiastic support from Abraham Lincoln, although it would have been applauded by the pacifists."
A day later, January 29, 1917, when a declaration by President Wilson against universal military service was published, Roosevelt said:
"President Wilson has announced himself in favor of peace without victory, and now he has declared himself against universal service—that is, against all efficient preparedness by the United States.
"Peace without victory is the natural ideal of the man who is too proud to fight.
"When fear of the German submarine next moves Mr. Wilson to declare for 'peace without victory' between the tortured Belgians and their cruel oppressors and taskmasters ; when such fear next moves him to utter the shameful untruth that each side is fighting for the same things, and to declare for neutrality between wrong and right; let him think of the prophetess Deborah, who, when Sisera mightily oppressed the children of Israel with his chariots of iron, and when the people of Meroz stood neutral between the oppressed and the oppressor, sang of them:
Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord against the wrongdoings of the mighty.
"President Wilson has earned for the nation the curse of Meroz for he has not dared to stand on the side of the Lord against the wrongdoings of the mighty.''
When, on February 3, 1917, President Wilson addressed Congress again, announcing the severing of diplomatic relations with Germany and the handing of his passports to Bernstorff, Roosevelt said:
"Of course I shall in every way support the President in all that he does to uphold the honor of the United States and to safeguard the lives of American citizens. Yesterday I wrote to the War Department asking permission to raise a division if war is declared and there is a call for volunteers. In such event I and my four sons will go."
He abandoned a proposed trip to the West Indies, and began at once to agitate for speedy preparation for war. On March 1, 1917, in a speech at Hartford, Conn., he said: "If we go to war, we are not to be excused if we do not prepare instantly and to the utmost of all our strength. . . . We must strike hard at Germany with the most formidable expeditionary force that can be raised."
At a great mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, on the evening of March 5,1917, he said:
"The time has come when it is unpardonable for us as a nation to fail to act immediately for the full and effective defense of American rights and performance of American duties."
The inaction of the Wilson Administration disturbed and alarmed him, and he sought earnestly to move it to action. In a published statement on March 19, 1917, he said:
"The news this morning of the sinking of our three ships —City of Memphis, Vigilancia and Illinois—with loss of American life, makes it imperative that every self-respecting American should speak out and demand that we hit hard and effectively. Words are wasted on Germany. What we need is effective and thorough-going action.
'' Seven weeks have passed since Germany renewed with the utmost ruthlessness her never-wholly abandoned submarine war against neutrals and noncombatants. She then notified our Government of her intention. This notification was itself a declaration of war and should have been treated as such. During the seven weeks that have since elapsed she has steadily waged war upon us. It has been a war of murder upon us; she has killed American women and children as well as American men upon the high seas. She has sunk our ships, our ports have been put under blockade. She has asked Mexico and Japan to join her in dismembering this country. If these are not overt acts of war, then Lexington and Bunker Hill were not overt acts of war.
"Seven weeks ago we broke relations with Germany. This was eminently proper. But it amounted to nothing, it was an empty gesture, unless it was followed by vigorous and efficient action. Yet during the seven weeks (a time as long as the entire duration of the war between Prussia and Austria in 1866) we have done nothing. We have not even prepared.
"Under existing conditions armed neutrality is only another name for timid war; and Germany despises timidity as she despises all other forms of feebleness. She does not wage timid war herself, and she neither respects nor understands it in others.
"Seemingly her submarine warfare has failed and is less menacing now than it was seven weeks ago. We are profiting and shall profit by this failure. But we have done nothing to bring it about. It has been due solely to the efficiency of the British Navy. We have done nothing to help ourselves. We have done nothing to secure our own safety or to vindicate our own honor. We have been content to shelter ourselves behind the fleet of a foreign power.
"Such a position is intolerable to all self-respecting Americans who are proud of the great heritage handed down to them by their fathers and their fathers' fathers. Let us dare to look the truth in the face. Let us dare to use our own strength in our own defense and strike hard for our national interest and honor. There is no question about 'going to war.' Germany is already at war with us. The only question for us to decide is whether we shall make war nobly or ignobly. Let us face the accomplished fact, admit that Germany is at war with us, wage war on Germany with all our energy and courage, and regain the right to look the whole world in the eyes without flinching."
In March, 1917, John J. Richeson, dean of Ohio University, sent to Roosevelt a set of resolutions that had been adopted by the faculty of that institution upholding President Wilson's policy. Replying on March 21, 1917, Roosevelt wrote:
"I thank you for your kind letter. I am very glad that the University and you yourself favor universal military training.
"You say that on many subjects our opinions have not been the same. One of these subjects includes the first 'resolved' of the paper you inclosed. In my judgment nothing has done more to damage our country than this writing blank checks in support of President Wilson's foreign policy, when, as a matter of fact, it has been in the highest degree disgraceful to this country. This resolution puts you down as ' strongly approving and supporting his policy in the controversy with Germany.' As good Americans, you ought unqualifiedly to condemn at least 99 per cent of that policy. His first note, 'the strict accountability note,' would have been excellent if he had lived up to it, but as he has for two years failed to live up to it, it becomes infamous. We then had two years of note writing, of tame submission to brutal wrong-doing, and of utter failure to prepare. Then he broke relations. This was excellent, but only if he meant to follow it up; it amounts to nothing whatever by itself. Seven weeks have gone by, and he has done not one thing. He is himself responsible for the growth of the pacifist and pro-German party in Congress. He never asked for any real action, and the little action he did ask for, was asked for so late that he must have known perfectly well any small group of Senators could prevent its being taken. Congress has been summoned to meet in April. By that time, either the submarine warfare against England will have succeeded, in which case what Mr. Wilson does is of no earthly consequence, or, what is far more probable, it will have failed, in which case, he will have put us in the ignoble position of sheltering our selves behind the British Navy until all danger is past. Indeed, he has already put us in such a position. The twelve Senators were slightly worse than Mr. Wilson; but the difference was not material. The difference between Mr. Wilson's conduct and proper patriotic conduct, however, is abysmal. Under such circumstances, a general 'strong support' of Mr. Wilson's conduct stands on an exact level with 'strong support' of President Buchanan's conduct as regards slavery and secession."
For several weeks Roosevelt had been in active correspondence with men in all parts of the country who had applied for service in the military division he had asked the Government for permission to take to France. Everything that could be done without such permission was completed in March, and on the 23rd of that month he went to Florida, on invitation of his friend, Russell J. Coles, to hunt for devil fish. While in Florida he made a brief speech at Punta Gorda, on April 1, 1917, in which he denounced pacifists and said:
'' There are only two classes in this country now. There are Americans and anti-Americans. We have got to handle this situation right now, and to do it right we have got to send an army to France."
In an editorial article in the Metropolitan Magazine, entitled "Now We Must Fight," advance sheets of which were given out to the press on April 2, 1917, he said:
"We love life, but there are things we love even more than life, and we feel that we are loyal to all that is highest in America's past when we act on the belief that those only are fit to live who are not afraid to die."
President Wilson went before Congress in joint session on April 2, 1917, and asked for a declaration of war against Germany. Roosevelt, who was on his way back from Florida, stopped at Washington and called upon the President for the purpose of congratulating him on his address, but the President was at a Cabinet meeting and Roosevelt, being unable to wait for the meeting to adjourn, did not see him. He published a statement on the same day, in which he said:
"The President's message is a great state paper which will rank in history with the great state papers of which Americans in future years will be proud. It now rests with the people of the country to see that we put in practice the policy that the President has outlined and that we strike as hard, as soon, and as efficiently as possible in aggressive war against the Government of Germany.
"We must send troops to the firing line as rapidly as possible. Defensive war is hopeless. We must by vigorous offensive warfare win the right to have our voice count for civilization and justice when the time for peace comes.
"I, of course, very earnestly hope that I may be allowed to raise a division for immediate service at the front."
In a statement which was published on April 5, 1917, Roosevelt said:
"The American people believe that we owe it to ourselves and to the national honor to send a fighting force of at least an army corps under the American flag to the front at the earliest moment. This army corps should be commanded by one of our first-class Major Generals. It might consist of three or perhaps only two divisions. I have asked permission to raise a division which would be in this army and under its commander.''
On April 9,1917, Roosevelt went to Washington and had an interview with the President by appointment. In a statement which he made to the reporters from the steps of the White House after the interview, he said he had sought to see the President personally to reiterate what he had said about his address and to lay before him in detail his plans for raising a military division to go to France. He added that the President had received him with the utmost courtesy and consideration and doubtless would, in his own good time, come to a decision. "I am," he continued, "heart and soul for the proposal of the Administration for universal obligatory military training and service. I would favor it for 3,000,000 men. You can call it conscription if you wish, and I would say yes. The division that I ask permission to raise would be raised exclusively among men who would not be taken under the conscription system. They would either be over 25 or of the exempted class, and they would eagerly enlist to go to the front."
Applications to enlist in his division poured in in such volume that on May 7, 1917, Roosevelt announced that they were coming in at the rate of over 2,000 a day, and that he was confident he could offer the Government the services of 250,000 men within a short time. In a speech in Brooklyn on May 8, 1917, he said: "I ask only that I be given a chance to render a service which I know I can render, and nine out of ten of those who oppose my rendering it do so because they believe I will render it too well."
The news of the proposed Roosevelt Division reached France and aroused general enthusiasm. Whitney Warren, an eminent American architect who was in Paris at the time, sent a cable message to the New York Times, on May 9, saying:
"The presence of an ex-President of the United States will send a thrill through the fighting line of the allies. He is known here as a leader of men, as was Kitchener, and it is he whom France awaits.''
The proposal received quite general support in Congress and on May 16 the first bill providing for a draft, with a clause permitting the raising of volunteer divisions which was understood to authorize Roosevelt to raise his division, was passed by large majorities in both houses, in spite of the open opposition of the Administration. The bill went to the President and was approved by him on May 18, 1917. In giving his approval the President made public a statement in which he said of this clause that it was understood that its object was to provide an independent command for Roosevelt, but that he should not avail himself at the present stage of the war of the authorization conferred. He added:
"It would be very agreeable to me to pay Mr. Roosevelt this compliment and the Allies the compliment of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, an ex-President who has rendered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would no doubt have a very fine effect and make a profound impression. But this is not the time or the occasion for compliment or for any action not calculated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now in hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision."
On receipt of this refusal, Roosevelt issued, under date of May 25,1917, an address to the men who had volunteered for service under him, in-which he said:
"As good American citizens we loyally obey the decision of the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army and Navy. The men who have volunteered will now consider themselves absolved from all further connection with this movement. . . . Our sole aim is to help in every way in the successful prosecution of the war and we most heartily feel that no individual's personal interest should for one moment be considered save as it serves the general public interest. We rejoice that a division composed of our fine regular soldiers and marines under so gallant and efficient a leader as Gen. Pershing is to be sent abroad. We have a right to a certain satisfaction in connection therewith.
"I wish respectfully to point out certain errors into which the President has been led in his announcement. He states that the purpose was to give me an 'independent' command. In my last letter to the Secretary of War I respectfully stated that if I were given permission to raise an army corps of two divisions, to be put under the command of some General like Wood or Pershing or Barry or Kuhn, I desired for myself only the position of junior among the eight brigade commanders. My position would have been exactly the same as theirs, except that I would have ranked after and have been subordinate to the rest of them.
"The President alludes to our proffered action as one that would have an effect 'politically,' but as not contributing to the 'success of the war,' and as representing a 'policy of personal gratification or advantage.' I wish respectfully but emphatically to deny that any political consideration whatever or any desire for personal gratification or advantage entered into our calculations. Our undivided purpose was to contribute effectively to the success of the war.
"The President condemns our proposal on the ground that 'undramatic' action is needed, action that is 'practical and of scientific definiteness and precision.' There was nothing dramatic in our proposal save as all proposals indicating eagerness or willingness to sacrifice life for an ideal are dramatic. It is true that our division would have contained the sons or grandsons of men who in the Civil War wore the blue or the gray; for instance, the sons or grandsons of Phil Sheridan, Fitzhugh Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James A. Garfield, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Adna K. Chaffee, Nathan Bedford Forest; but these men would have served either with commissions or in the ranks, precisely like the rest of us; and all alike would have been judged solely by the efficiency—including the 'scientific definiteness'—with which they did their work and served the flag of their loyal devotion."
The full text of Roosevelt's address to the volunteers and of correspondence that he held with the Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker, on the subject of his military division, was published at the time in the Metropolitan Magazine and subsequently included in the appendix of a volume of his writings and addresses entitled "The Foes of Our Own Household." (The George H. Doran Company, 1917.)
Two days after the President's action was announced, the veteran statesman of France, Georges Clemenceau, addressed to him through the press on May 27,1917, this open letter of appeal to reconsider his decision:
"If I have the temerity of addressing you it is because it may be permitted me to throw light on certain aspects which perhaps are not sufficiently clear to you. Allow me to say, in all candor, that at the present moment there is in France one name which sums up the beauty of American intervention. It is the name Roosevelt, your predecessor, even your rival, but with whom there can now be no other rivalry than heartening success. I saw Roosevelt only once in my life. It was just after I left office and he returned from his lion hunt. He is an idealist, imbued with simple, vital idealism. Hence his influence on the crowd, his prestige to use the right expression. It is possible that your own mind, inclosed in its austere legal frontiers, which has been the source of many noble actions, has failed to be impressed by the vital hold which personalities like Roosevelt have on popular imagination. But you are too much of a philosopher to ignore that the influence on the people of great leaders of men often exceeded their personal merits, thanks to the legendary halo surrounding them. The name of Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time and in my opinion it would be a great error to ignore the force which everything counsels us to make use of as quickly as possible.
"Roosevelt was one of the greatest craftsmen in the great laborious work which will constitute your glory. It cannot displease you that your two names are coupled in our minds. He, moreover, followed your idea. He wished to raise four volunteer divisions of infantry to be incorporated in our armies. The Senate and Congress did not withhold consent. If the law has charged you, Mr. President, with all the practical issues of the undertaking, it is no less true that Roosevelt represents a vast potential factor which a statesman is unable to overlook. Roosevelt cannot come alone, for his prestige on our battlefields demands that he come with prestige conferred on him by his countrymen. I claim for Roosevelt only what he claims for himself—the right to appear on the battlefield surrounded by his comrades.
"We have just heard of the arrival of the first American unit on the front. All our hearts beat. With what joy our soldiers greeted the starry banner! Yet you must know, Mr. President, more than one of our poilus asked his comrade: 'But where is Roosevelt? I don't see him.' It is to convey this remark to you, not knowing whether my mission will reach you, that I have written this letter. You will forgive me for this rule in democracies that each at his hour tries to make himself heard. No other impulse impels me but the idea of what occupies your mind.
"Eminent Americans have consulted our military leaders on the problems of our common campaign. It is not for me to dispute technical questions. My ambition is more modest. I have not consulted our soldiers, but it was not necessary, for I have seen them work and know them well. The cause of humanity, which is also your cause, will owe to them something approaching a miracle. Since it is in your power to give them before the supreme decision the promise of reward, believe me—send them Roosevelt. I tell you because I know it will gladden their hearts."
Commenting on this appeal from Clemenceau, Roosevelt said on May 28, 1917: "I am very grateful for the kind expressions in the letter, and, of course, it is a matter of the greatest sorrow and regret to me that I am not to have this opportunity to serve."
In a speech on May 28, 1917, he said:
"No American has the right to hold up his head if he has not sought with all his strength and ingenuity to get into this war. If a man is conscientious in not wanting to fight, I am equally conscientious in not wanting him to .vote. The man who is not willing to fight for his country is not fit to work. I'd take him to the front anyway. I would not interfere with his conscience. If it does not permit him to shoot at the enemy, I would not make him shoot, but I would place him in a position where he would be shot at. I would put him at work digging kitchen sinks and doing other labor which would set other men of better fibre free for service which the unworthy manhood of the conscientious objector does not permit him to perform."
In May, 1917, Roosevelt received a letter from Captain de Rochambeau, of the Fifth Regiment of French Infantry at the front in France, congratulating him on the vote in Congress in favor of his proposed Roosevelt Division, and expressing the hope that he would be one of the first to salute him with the title of "My General" on the battlefields of France. In reply Roosevelt wrote under date of June 1, 1917:
"Your letter touched and pleased me very greatly. I remember well your elder brother, and I need hardly say that your name is one familiar to every American. My dear sir, you have nobly upheld your family tradition in this war; you say you were the sole survivor of the three Rochambeaus who have fought in the army during it; this is a record worthy of the ancient valor of France.
"I bitterly regret to say that my Government has refused to allow me to raise troops and take them to France. The reasons were not connected with patriotism, or with military efficiency, and so there is no use of my trying to get the decision altered. My four sons and one of my sons-in-law are now in the army that is being trained, and I hope that all five of them will not too long hence go to your country.''

CHAPTER THIRTY
MESSAGE TO SOLDIERS LEAVING FOK FRANCE—FAITH IN GEN. LEONARD WOOD—REBUKE TO GOMPERS
when the first detachment of American troops were ready to sail for France in June, 1917, the American Bible Society, which was supplying them with Pocket Testaments, asked Roosevelt to write a message in them. In compliance with the request he wrote:
"The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.'
"Do justice; and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth.
"Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; treat every woman as if she were your sister; care for the little children, and be tender with the old and helpless.
"Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Savior.
"May the God of Justice and Mercy have you in His keeping.''
Soon after Gen. Leonard Wood had arrived at his station in the Southeastern Department of the army, to which he had been ordered, in June, 1917, he wrote a letter to Roosevelt in which he said he had met with a very cordial reception from the Southern people, and that if he were given a free hand he could have 100,000 men ready for final training in Europe by November, adding:
'' The old fighting spirit of the South is waking up, and, 
under proper leadership, they are going to give a splendid account of themselves."
Replying on June 22, 1917, Roosevelt wrote:
"I was immensely pleased with your note. I cannot help grinning over the way in which the attempt to exile you has turned out. You have had a really wonderful reception in the South, and have made a wonderful impression there. To my great amusement a British General, who is rather taking the Administration view, told me that the President had informed him that he had purposely sent you to the South, because of the great work he knew you would be doing down there! I asked him if that was the reason the President had tried to get you to go to the Hawaiian Islands. He expressed doubt whether our volunteers would have done well, and to my immense amusement, gave as a justification of the doubt the fact that he did not think the Australians and Canadians were as good as the British tommies, and expressed disapproval of their discipline.
"I am absolutely certain that if you were given a free hand, not merely in the South, but in the country at large, you would have instead of 100,000, 500,000 men ready for training in Europe by November. But, as you say, there never has been such effort as now to keep concentration and control in Washington, and the wooden-headed way in which they do this makes the situation one fraught with ugly possibilities of delay and disaster.
"I feel exactly as you do—I am trying to do the best that can be done. I have not criticized the President since April 2nd, but neither do I lie about him. I intend to tell the truth and point out the criminal folly of our having failed to prepare, and to speak plainly of the dangers ahead."
Roosevelt's strong disapproval of the use of violence and rioting in labor strikes found expression in a somewhat startling but eminently characteristic manner in the summer of 1917. The Russian Republic had been declared and a commission from its government to the United States, accompanied by a new Russian Ambassador, had arrived in New York. A public meeting for their reception was held in Carnegie Hall on the evening of July 6, 1917. Roosevelt was present as the chief speaker. For several days previous there had been race riots in progress in East St. Louis, Illinois. The town was a large manufacturing center and there were several thousand laborers, white and black, employed in the mills. Several thousand white laborers went on strike and to take their places additional blacks were brought in from the South. The strikers assaulted these and started riots which included attacks upon all black laborers, burning their quarters and killing and wounding many of them, including their wives and children. The local authorities had not exerted themselves effectively to quell the disturbance. Referring to the riots Roosevelt said:
"Before we speak of justice for others it behooves us to do justice within our own household. Within the week there has been an appalling outbreak of savagery in a race riot in East St. Louis, a race riot for which, as far as we can see, there was no real provocation, and which, whether there was provocation or not, was waged with such an access of appalling brutality as to leave a stain on the American name.
"Now, friends, the longer I live the more I grow to abhor rhetoric that isn't based on facts, words that are not translated into deeds. And when we applaud the birth of democracy in another people, the spirit which insists on treating each man on the basis of his right as a man, refusing to deny the humblest the rights that are his, when we present such a greeting to the representatives of a foreign nation, it behooves us to express our deep condemnation of acts that give the lie to our words within our own country."
Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, followed Roosevelt, saying he approved the "general sentiments" of Roosevelt, and adding: "But I want to explain a feature of the East St. Louis riots with which the general public is unacquainted. ... I wish I had brought with me a copy of a telegram received to-day from Victor Hollander, secretary of the Illinois Federation of Labor. I can tell you that not only labor men but a member of the Chamber of Commerce of East St. Louis warned the men engaged in luring negroes from the South that they were to be used in undermining the conditions of the laborer in East St. Louis. The luring of these colored men to East St. Louis is on a par with the behavior of the brutal, reactionary, and tyrannous forces that existed in Old Rome.''
The audience which contained a large number of Russian Socialists applauded Gompers vigorously. Roosevelt, visibly indignant, asked the chairman for permission to say a word in response, and moving to the front of the platform, said with great earnestness:
"I am not willing that a meeting called to commemorate the birth of democracy and justice in Russia shall seem to have given any approval of or apology for the infamous brutalities that have been committed on negroes at East St. Louis. Justice with me is not a mere phrase or form of words. How can we praise the people of Russia for doing justice to the men within their boundaries if we in any way apologize for murder committed on the helpless? In the past I have listened to the same form of excuse advanced on behalf of the Russian autocracy for pogroms of Jews. Not for a moment shall I acquiesce in any apology for the murder of women and children in our own country. I am a democrat of democrats. I will do anything for the laboring man except what is wrong."
Striding over to Mr. Gompers, who was seated, he shook his clenched fist close to his face and said: "I don't care a snap of my finger for any telegram from the head of the strongest labor union in Illinois. This took place in a Northern State, where the whites outrank the negroe’s twenty to one. And if in that State the white men cannot protect their rights by their votes against an insignificant minority, and have to protect them by the murder of women and children, then the people of the State which sent Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency must bow their heads."
Mr. Gompers arose from his chair and said: "Investigations afterward, not before—" Shaking his fist again in Mr. (rompers' face Roosevelt shouted:
"I'd put down the murderers first and investigate afterwards." A great tumult arose in the audience, hisses and hooting mingling with cheers. Standing over Mr. Gompers, Roosevelt continued: "I will go to any extreme necessary to bring justice to the laboring man, to insure him his economic place, but when there is murder I'll put it down and I'll never surrender." (Howls of disapproval drowned by applause.) "Oh, friends, we have gathered to greet the men and women of new Russia, a republic founded on the principles of justice to all, equity to all. On such an evening never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is made for the murder of the helpless."
There was some criticism of Roosevelt's conduct on the ground that while Mr. Gompers might have deserved rebuke the occasion was not a suitable one on which to administer it, and that Roosevelt had been guilty of a breach of good manners. This criticism betrayed a lack of knowledge of Roosevelt's character. There was a question at issue which in his mind far transcended in importance any question of etiquette. He saw the evil influence of the specious words of Mr. Gompers upon an audience of such a character, and he did not hesitate a second as to his duty in the premises. If the rebuke was to be made at all, it must be made then and there. Furthermore, the effect of it under such conditions called immediate and widespread attention to the insidious nature of the defense of disorder that Mr. Gompers was making and revealed it as no other treatment could have done.
During the remaining months of the year 1917 he continued to speak and write constantly in favor of vigorous prosecution of the war and in condemnation of all persons and influences that-in any way opposed it. In a speech at Forest Hills, Long Island, on July 4, 1917, he said: '' Any man who now announces that although he favors the United States against Germany, yet he favors Germany against England, is a traitor to America." On August 10, 1917, he published a statement in which he said: "I trust that Congress will pass a law refusing to allow a newspaper to be published in German or in the language of any other of our opponents while this war lasts, so that we shall know just what they are saying and doing.''
When street orators in New York City were condemning the war openly and violently assailing any one who rebuked them, he wrote to the Commissioner of Police on August 17: "We are in this war to a finish and the man is a traitor to this nation who directly or indirectly upholds Germany or attacks any of our allies while this war is pending. The newspaper that follows such a course should be promptly suppressed by the National Government, and any failure so to suppress any newspaper is a dereliction of duty. The street orator who takes such a course is preaching sedition and the police should take summary action about it."
On September 5, 1917, he gave out for publication an address entitled, "The Children of the Crucible," which was signed by himself and 38 other persons representing ancestry in the allied nations, neutral countries, and Germany, giving reasons for united action in support of the war by all Americans of whatever national lineage. In it this passage occurred:
"We are Americans and nothing else. We are the true children of the crucible. This is a new nation. It is a melting pot of the old world nationalities that come hither. The new type is different from all other types. But the mold into which the crucible pours its contents was fixed in the days of Washington and the Revolution. All the children of the crucible must be loyal to the American tradition as established by the men of Washington's day, as preserved by the men of Lincoln's day. Otherwise they are not true Americans. Unless we come out as one people, and unless that people is the American people, true to the old ideals, then the crucible has failed to do its work. "We must have one flag, and only one flag; and we must tolerate no divided loyalty. "We must have one language, the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington's farewell address, and Lincoln's great speeches."
On September 20, 1917, he started on a tour of the West making a series of speeches on "Americanism and the War." As he was leaving he said to the press reporters: "Whatever may have been our judgment in normal times we are convinced that to-day our most dangerous foe is the foreign language press. Professional pacifists should be regarded as traitors to the great cause of justice and humanity. The only peace is the peace of overwhelming victory.''
Speaking at Johnstown, Pa., on September 30, 1917, he said:
"We did not go to war to make democracy safe, and we did go to war because we had a special grievance. We went to war, because, after two years, with utter contempt of our protests, she had habitually and continually murdered our noncombatant men, women and children on the high seas, Germany formally announced that she intended to pursue this course more ruthlessly and vigorously than ever. This was the special grievance because of which we went to war, and it was far more than an empty justification for going to war. As you know, my own belief is that we should have acted immediately after the sinking of the Lusitania."
In his addresses on this western tour he denounced repeatedly the "shadow Huns who sit in our national legislature and serve the Kaiser." In all of his speeches he urged support of the Liberty Loan, and of the Y. M. C. A., the Bed Cross and other agencies that were engaged in relief work abroad. Speaking at Hartford, Conn., on November 7,1917, he said:
"Do not forget, that not only do we owe to England and France our safety for two and one-half years before we went to war, but we have owed to them our safety for the months since when we have been preparing to begin to get ready to go in.
"There is a two-fold lesson from that; first let us resolve that never again will we be caught so unprepared, and next let us remember that the strain has not come to us yet; that the strain, when our men begin to be killed by the scores and thousands, when the pressure comes upon us, will be felt some time next year. Then, friends, you will have the chance to show the stuff that is in you. Then the weakling, the coward, the fool, the short-sighted one, all-will join together to clamor for a patched-up peace, to pray for something that will give temporary respite at the cost of future damnation."
He gave warm support to the candidacy of John Purroy Mitchel for reelection as Mayor of New York City, making several speeches in behalf of that able and upright public official, whom the city did not appreciate till he met his death while fitting himself for airplane service in France. His fellow citizens, who had failed to reelect him, united in giving him a public funeral, Roosevelt walking as a private citizen in the procession, which was one of the most impressive the city had ever known.
After returning from the West, Roosevelt made many speeches in the various military training camps and other places, insisting upon the vital need of universal military service, of constructive criticism of war measures, and of the speeding up of war preparations.
In January, 1918, he visited Washington and held conference with Senators and Congressmen on matters connected with the war. While there he made an address before the National Press Club, on January 24, in which he said:
'' Our rule should be the same for the nation as for the individual. Do not get into a fight if you can possibly avoid it. If you get in, see it through. Don't hit if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft. Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.
" It is our duty to tell the truth. If conditions are good, tell the truth. If they are bad, tell the truth. If they have been bad and become good, tell the truth. We are told now and then that the truth would frighten our people so that they would not go on with the war. If they are such a set of weaklings and cowards, then nothing can save us. On the contrary, I believe that the full telling of the truth will wake the American people up to a sterner realization of the task that is before them, and therefore to a sterner resolve that, cost what it may, every deficiency shall be remedied, every wrong undone, every failure of Government officials turned into an achievement and a success, so that as speedily as possible we may harden our giant but soft and lazy strength, and exert it to the fullest degree necessary to bring the peace of liberty in this mighty conflict for civilization and the welfare of mankind."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
SERIOUS ILLNESS IN HOSPITAL—VIEWS ON THE FUTURE OF HIMSELF AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
on February 5,1918, Roosevelt went to a hospital in New York for treatment of an abcess on his thigh and subsidiary abcesses in his ears which were due to the poisoning of his system by the equatorial fever that he had incurred while on his Brazilian trip. His condition was so serious at the time that on February 8 an unfounded rumor of his death was circulated.
While in the hospital, on February 21, 1918, he wrote a long letter to his friend Sir Arthur Lee, member of the British Parliament, in which he said in regard to American feeling about England's course in the war:
"I think that this country now as a whole believes England has been making and is making a great effort. The trouble is that it believes it in an aloof way, and, what is much worse, it looks with similar aloofness upon its own effort. In my judgment, the way to render help to the Allies is primarily to wake America to its own shortcomings as regards its own effort, to enlighten it as to the need of making that effort quickly and formidably felt; or in other words, to struggle as hard as possible to increase our weight in the war. It would be a far more difficult thing for me to get our country speeded to action by knowledge of England's effort than to get it speeded to action by knowledge of its own shortcomings and duties.
"Almost without exception in every speech, I speak of the tremendous nature of the British effort, as well of course as of the French effort, and say that we owe our safety purely to the British fleet and the French and British armies, that this ignoble position must end, and that, to use my exact expression, we must not be in the position of the substitute who goes into the game only as the referee blows his whistle. . . . We are still, after a year of war, much in the condition in which England was after two or three months of war. I believe that the only way by which we can get our people thoroughly aroused is by telling them the truth about their own effort, explaining to them fearlessly their shortcomings and exciting and appealing to their pride."
Roosevelt remained in the hospital till March 4, when he left in excellent condition, but with the hearing of his left ear destroyed. It was announced about this time that several years previous he had lost the sight of one eye, due to a blow that he had received during a boxing bout in the White House. In spite of these two afflictions he went about with his usual activity and energy so apparently undiminished that no observer, who was unaware of these injuries, would suspect their existence. Writing to H. Eider Haggard in England on March 12, 1918, he said of his condition and future activities:
"I am now on the high road to recovery. I feel that in my case, as you say is the case with you, age will hereafter forbid my doing certain things that I have done in the past; but there yet remains very much work of a less exposed type that I can do rather better than ever before. I am, of course, devoutly thankful that America is in the war and I bitterly regret that she did not go into the war two years previously, in which case it would be over now. We are doing much slower work than I like."
His first public speech after his recovery was made before the Republican State Convention in Maine, at Portland, on March 28, 1918. There was no perceptible lack of his former vigor in this. He announced at the outset that it had been written three weeks earlier while he was in the hospital. It was the most outspoken of all his utterances up to this time in its assertion of the right to criticize the National Administration in so far as its conduct deserved criticism, and it commanded wide attention. A few of its more notable passages should be cited as a necessary part of his record:
"This is the people's war. It is not the President's war. It is not Congress' war. It is the war of the people of the United States for the honor and welfare of America and of mankind. It is the bounden duty of the Republican party to support every public servant, from the President down, in so far as he does good and efficient work in waging the war or helping wage the war, and to oppose him exactly to the extent of his failure to do such work; for our loyalty is to the people of the United States, and to every public servant, in exact accordance with the way in which he serves the public. It is the duty of the Republican party to stand like a rock against inefficiency, incompetence, hesitation and delay no less than against any lukewarmness in serving the common cause of ourselves and our allies. Sixty odd years ago Abraham Lincoln set our duty before us when he said: 'Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. In both cases you are right. To desert such ground is to be less than a man, less than an American.'
"If we are men and not children, if we have the right stuff of manhood in us, we will look facts in the face, however ugly they be, and profit by them. We must face the fact of our shameful unpreparedness before this war, and of the inefficiency with which for the first year and two months this war has been waged by us. Many of our state governments have done extraordinarily good work; but the mismanagement at Washington has been such as to cause all good parties grave concern. The policy of unpreparedness, of watchful waiting, has borne most evil fruit. For two and a half years before we drifted stern foremost into the war we were given such warning as never before in history was given a great nation. Yet we failed in the smallest degree to profit by the warning, and we drifted into war unarmed and helpless, without having taken the smallest step to harden our huge but soft and lazy strength. In consequence, although over a year has passed, we are still in a military sense impotent to render real aid to the allies or be a real menace to Germany."
In the same speech he took up the problems which would arise for solution after the war and stated his views on social and industrial reforms—views which had been undergoing development in his mind for more than 35 years, for these questions had been steadily occupying more serious consideration from him as time advanced. The substance of what he published at the time, was embodied in his book, "The Foes of Our Own Household," already alluded to.
His chief desire at the time was to bring the Republican party back to the standard that he had set for it while he was President and from which it had lapsed under President Taft. This condition of mind found expression in a letter that he wrote to William Allen White, of Kansas, on April 4, 1918, which contains also an interesting account of his experiences during his visit to Washington in January, 1918, to which allusion was made in the preceding chapter:
"I wish to do everything in my power to make the Republican party the party of sane, constructive radicalism, just as it was under Lincoln. If it is not that, then of course I have no place in it. And while I might very probably vote for its candidate as the least unattractive course open, I would not attempt any serious championship of it, or expect to have any share in guiding it. If the Romanoffs of our social and industrial world are kept at the head of our Government the result will be Bolshevism, and Bolshevism means disaster to liberty, writ large across the face of this continent.
"A couple of months ago I went to Washington, being originally asked to go by Smoot and Madden. I saw a great many Senators and Congressmen. Three of the Senators, two of them were old friends of mine and whose names I really don't think I shall write down even to you, struck me as hopelessly reactionary, as hopelessly blind, to the conditions ahead. I felt their hopelessness all the more because I am inclined to think their attitude was sincere. But the great majority of men in the Lower House and at least the large minority of the Senators either were or appeared to be sincerely desirous of accepting the fact that we were about to face a changed world and that mere negation and obstruction and attempts to revive the dead past spelled ruin. They were all of them anxious to have me take some position of leadership, and equally anxious that I should not think that this committed them to definitely following_ me, and above all that I should not think it committed them to making me the candidate in 1920. After a little thought I came to the conclusion that it was better for me to talk openly to them and I speedily devised my formula, used over and over again, to this effect, 'I am not in the least concerned with your supporting me either now or at any future time; all I am concerned with is that you should so act that 7 can support you.' ''
When in the spring of 1918, a movement was started to add 3,700 volunteers to the Twenty-seventh New York Volunteer Division, U. S. A., in order to bring it up to war strength, the enlisted men detailed for the task wrote to Roosevelt asking him to make an appeal in aid of their work. He replied at once on April 6, 1918, as follows:
"Your letter should stir the patriotism of every true American in more ways than one, and every man in New York State fit to go to the war and outside the draft limits should respond to your appeal, if by any possibility he can do so. I like what you say about the fact that 90 per cent of the officers in the division have risen from the ranks, and that Major General O'Ryan himself began his service as a private in one of the regiments now under him. This represents the true American spirit; and when we get our universal service every officer in the army and the navy will have served for a year as an enlisted man before he is eligible for appointment as an officer.
"I most earnestly hope that your appeal will be successful. Every effort is now being made to hurry our army divisions across the ocean. You inform me that you have strong hopes of being sent over within sixty days. The volunteers who come into your division will be associated with veterans, so that they will speedily learn their duties and will have the prospect of immediate service overseas in front of them. Moreover they will go in with the men of their own State, and in most cases their own friends and kinsfolk will be in the division.
"I not only respect the men who are going to the front, but I envy them! I am proud beyond measure that all my own kinsfolk of military age are at the front with the forces —sons, son-in-law, nephews, cousins. This is the greatest war in history. America must do her full duty in it. It will be a mighty sight pleasanter hereafter for the young men of to-day to explain why they did go into the army instead of how they stayed out of the army. I envy every young man physically fit and above or below the draft age who now has the chance to join your division; and unless he is conclusively able to show good reason why he does not do so he will have a whole lot to explain to his children in the future, unless he comes in."
In explanation of his course in criticizing the Wilson Administration, he wrote to Alfred Holman, Editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, on April 19, 1918:
"In this present crisis it really seemed to me that somebody had to hoist the black flag and refuse to take or give quarter; and there was nobody but myself quite in the position to do it. I need hardly tell you that I now have numerous good friends who nervously beg me not needlessly to continue offending the German-Americans, or the Sinn Feiners or the Pacifists, or the Bolshevists, or the I. "W. W., etc., etc., etc. They assure me that I will jeopardize my influence and my future by so doing. The answer is simple. As for my future these good people doubtless do not believe me when I tell them the truth, which is that I have absolutely no concern with my future unless it is conditioned upon being one of the kind of activities in which I believe; and as for my influence, the same thing applies—I don't value it in the least unless I can use it for the things in which I believe. The times are too big to warrant small motives 1"
It sometimes happened that the newspapers to which he sent his contributions objected to them as too violent in tone and asked him to modify them. He declined to yield to such requests, withdrawing the articles, but not blaming the editors for their objections. "Writing on this subject to his friend, E. A. Van Valkenberg, of the Philadelphia North American, on April 23,1918, he said:
"I appreciate to the full the reasons why they are reluctant to publish them and I am sure that they are correct in their judgment as regards themselves. On the other hand, as you know my whole concern at this time is practically the same concern that Amos and Micah and Isaiah had for Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago! In those days a prophet was very apt to get himself stoned. Nowadays he merely excites the ire of the persons who would otherwise read the magazines or newspapers in which his prophecies appear. But he hasn't any business to damage his magazine or newspaper. I am not dead sure that the prophet business can be combined with keeping up circulation, and moreover I know that when a man with strong feelings and intense convictions reaches a certain age he is apt to get cat-a-cornered as regards the surrounding world and therefore his usefulness ceases, and I am quite prepared to feel that now that I am in my sixtieth year it would be to the interest of everybody that I should cease being a prophet and become that far pleasanter and more innocuous person, a sage. But as long as I am in the prophet business I wish to prophesy.''
A letter that he wrote to Will H. Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, on May 16, 1918, is quite remarkable for its prophetic insight, in view of what happened in mining and other labor disturbances in 1919:
May 15, 1918.
"You are in a position to do great good in the reorganization of the party. The Progressives believe you to be an open-minded and fearless-hearted man, and that you are willing to stand by absolutely what a majority of the party may decide upon as public policy. The whole trouble seems to have been that the Progressives felt that no matter how much of a majority they had in the primaries in Republican States, the Republican organization would not permit the Republican party to become the kind of party which the majority in the Republican States felt it should be. We are only interested in the organization in so far as that organization gives us a free play to make the Republican party a constructive forward moving party and we are only interested in the Republican party in so far as it is just that.
'' There is no use in trying to rally around the past. This war has buried the past. New issues are going to force themselves into American politics and those issues are going to require a party which believes in a strong centralized government that shall be strong for the purpose of construction and not for the purpose of checking the progress of things. The new issues which will require a strongly centralized government are going to revolve about:
"Transportation; price fixing; rigid public control if not ownership of mines, forests and waterways.
"And if the Republican party takes the ground that the world must be the same old world, the Republican party is lost. There can be no doubt but that labor must have a new voice in the management of industrial affairs. The right of labor to collective bargaining, and in that right, the further right to know exactly how the books stand in every industrial concern is going to be a vital political question and the Republican party should take a constructive stand. It cannot afford to talk about constitutional rights of capital and try to dam the moving current of the times. I am satisfied that many Republicans who did not believe these things three and six years ago, are going to believe them now. And I feel the t if you will give the Republican organization a free opportunity for development it will develop into a constructive liberal party."
In May, 1918, Roosevelt went on a speaking tour in the West, dwelling in all his speeches upon Americanism and loyalty to the nation. At Springfield, Ohio, on May 25, he uttered sentiments which appeared in other addresses and which may be cited as typical:
"The first essential here in the United States is that we shall be one nation and that the American nation. We are a new nation, by blood akin to but different from every one of the nations of Europe. We have our own glorious past, we are a nation with a future such as no other nation in the world has before it, if only we, the men and women of to-day, do our full duty and bring up our sons and daughters to do their full duty, as Americans, and as nothing else.
"In such a nation there can be no fifty-fifty allegiance. There is no such thing as being loyal to the United States, and also loyal to any other Power. It is just as impossible as for a man to be loyal to his wife and also equally loyal to some other woman.
"We must have but one flag—the American flag, and but one language—the English language."
On the same day, May 25, 1918, he met ex-President Taf t in Chicago and a public reconciliation took place between the two.
Two letters that Roosevelt wrote at this period to the French author, Henry Bordeaux, show how deeply he had been stirred by the events of the war and the participation of his sons in it:
May 27, 1918. My dear M. Bordeaux:
I am glad indeed to get your volume on '' The Great Hero of the Air." It seems a strange thing to say, for I suppose one ought not to take pride in the fact that another who is very dear has been wounded; but I cannot help feeling pride that one of my boys has been severely wounded in fighting for civilization and humanity beside your troops in France, and was given the Oroix de Guerre by one of your Generals. One arm and one leg were shattered. We hope he will recover entirely. His only anxiety is to recover at once so that he can get back to the trenches. Another of my sons is at this moment in the great drive, and may be dead or wounded before this letter reaches you. My other two sons have been at the front but are not now. They will, I presume, be there in three or four weeks. With very high regards,
Faithfully yours,
theodobe eoosevblt. M. Henry Bordeaux, 44, Eue de Eanelagh, Paris, France.
June 27, 1918. My dear M. Bordeaux:
I count the American people fortunate in reading any book of yours; I count them fortunate in reading any biography of that great hero of the air, Guynemer; and thrice over I count them fortunate to have such a book written by you on such a subject.
You, sir, have for many years been writing books peculiarly fitted to instill into your countrymen the qualities which during the last forty-eight months have made France the wonder of the world. You have written with such power and charm, with such mastery of manner and of matter that the lessons you taught have been learned unconsciously by your readers—and this is the only way in which most readers will learn lessons at all. The value of your teachings would be as great for my countrymen as for yours. You have held up as an ideal for men and for women that high courage which shirks no danger, when the danger is the inevitable accompaniment of duty. You have preached the essential virtues, the duty to be both brave and tender, the duty of courage for the man and courage for the woman. You have inculcated stern horror of the baseness which finds expression in refusal to perform those essential duties without which not merely the usefulness, but the very existence, of any nation will come to an end.
Under such conditions it is eminently appropriate that you should write the biography of that soldier-son of France, whose splendid daring has made him stand as arch typical of the soul of the French people through these terrible four years. In this great war France has suffered more and has achieved more than any other power. To her, more than to any other power, the final victory will be due. Civilization has in the past for immemorial centuries owed an incalculable debt to France; but for no single feat or achievement of the past does civilization owe as much to France as to what her sons and daughters have done in the world war now being waged by the free peoples against the powers of the Pit.
Modern war makes terrible demands upon those who fight. To an infinitely greater degree than ever before the outcome depends upon long preparation in advance, and upon the skillful and unified use of the nation's entire social and industrial no less than military power. The work of the general staff is infinitely more important than any work of the kind in times past. The actual machinery of battle is so vast, delicate and complicated that years are needed to complete it. At all points we see the immense need of thorough organization and machinery ready far in advance of the day of trial. But this does not mean that there is any less need than before of those qualities of endurance and hardihood, of daring and resolution, which in their sum make up the stern and enduring valor which has been and ever will be the mark of mighty victorious armies.
The air service in particular is one of such peril that membership in it is of itself a high distinction. Physical address, high training, entire fearlessness, iron nerve and fertile resourcefulness are needed in a combination and to a degree hitherto unparalleled in war. The ordinary air fighter is an extraordinary man; and the extraordinary air fighter stands as one in a million among his fellows. Guynemer was one of these.    More than that, he was the foremost among all these extraordinary fighters of all the nations who in this war have made the skies their battlefield.   We are fortunate indeed in having you write his biography. Very faithfully yours,
theodoee roosevelt. M. Henry Bordeaux, 44 Rue du Ranelagh, Paris, France.
[This letter was reproduced as a Preface in an English translation of Mr. Bordeaux's biography of Guynemer published by the Yale University Press in 1918.]

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
DEATH OF QUENTIN ROOSEVELT—REFUSAL TO BE A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK
eaRly  in July 1918 a movement was started, under the leadership of men who for years had been among Roosevelt's bitterest political enemies, to induce him to consent to become the Republican candidate for Governor of New York. The party was in desperate straits at the time. The Governor, who was a Republican and whose administration had been very unpopular, was a candidate for reelection and had such complete control of the party machinery that he was able to dictate his own renomination, unless Roosevelt would consent to enter the primaries against him. The shrewdest politicians of the party were convinced that without Roosevelt's candidacy defeat in the November elections was certain. They called a state conference of the party leaders, at Saratoga, since under the primary law there could be no convention, and invited Roosevelt, Root and Taft to deliver addresses before it. Roosevelt consented with the others. On the morning of the day, July 17, 1918, on which he was to make his address, word reached him that his son Quentin, an aviator in the army at the front in France, had been killed in an aerial battle. When the news was conveyed to him at Oyster Bay, as he was starting for New York, he said, after taking it to his wife:
" Quentin's mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had a chance to render some service to his country and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him."
He went to the city and when asked if he would go to the conference and make his address, he said: "I must go; it is my duty." He started immediately for Saratoga, and when he appeared in the conference hall, the entire assemblage arose and gave him a subdued and most impressive greeting. He delivered his address as he had prepared it in advance, and at its close added a passage which, inspired as it clearly was by the affliction that had befallen him, made a profound impression upon his auditors:
"I have something I want to say to you—with all my heart and soul I want you to be alert to act upon it. I speak to you women primarily, but to the men also.
"Surely in this great crisis where we are making sacrifices and making ready for sacrifices on a scale never before known, surely when we are demanding such fealty and idealism on the part of the young men sent abroad to die, surely we have the right to ask and expect an equal idealism in life from the men and women who stay at home.
"Our young men have gone to the other side, very many of them to give up in their joyous prime all the glory and all the beauty of life to pay the greatest price of death in battle for a lofty ideal. Now, when they are doing that, cannot we men and women at home make up our minds to try to insist upon a lofty idealism here at home!
"And remember, friends, when I speak of lofty idealism, I mean ideals to be realized. I abhor that mock idealism which finds expression only in phrase and vanishes when the phrase has been uttered. I am speaking of the idealism which will permit no man in public or private to say anything lofty as a cloak for base action. I am asking for the idealism which will demand that every promise expressed or implied be kept, that every profession of decency, of devotion that is lofty in words, should be made good by deeds. I am asking for an idealism which shall find expression beside the hearthstone and in the family and in the councils of the state and the nation, and I ask you men in this great crisis, and I ask you women who have now come into the political arena, to stand shoulder to shoulder with your husbands and brothers and sons. I ask you to see that when those who have gone abroad to endure every species of hardship, to risk their lives, to give their lives, when those of them who live come home, that they shall come home to a nation which they can be proud to have fought for or could be proud to have died for."
On the following day, Horace Wilkinson visited him at Oyster Bay as a messenger from the party leaders who wished him to be a candidate for Governor. When Mr. Wilkinson told him that all his former political enemies in the State wished him to run, and had signed an appeal to him to consent to do so, he expressed incredulity, asking if his chief enemy, William Barnes, was among them. When told that Mr. Barnes was, he was scarcely able to believe it. He went on to give what he thought would be a conclusive reason why Mr. Barnes and his associates would not favor him, saying that some of them were opposed to the prohibition amendment to the Constitution and that if he were the candidate he would certainly be asked by prohibition advocates where he stood on the question, and if asked he would say that he was in favor of it. He requested Mr. Wilkinson to report this to them. Mr. Wilkinson did this, and when Mr. Barnes heard the message, he said with much force: "I don't care a damn whether he is for prohibition or against prohibition. The people will vote for him because he is Theodore Roosevelt!" When asked if he would state publicly that he was in favor of Roosevelt's nomination, Mr. Barnes invited the reporters who were in an adjoining room to enter that in which the leaders were gathered, and dictated to them this statement which was published on the following day, July 19, 1918:
"I signed the call addressed to Theodore Roosevelt to enter the Republican primary as a candidate for Governor because I believe that Republican thought and activities in this State should be raised to the level confronting the United States. Such differences of opinion as I have had with Mr. Roosevelt are not germane, in the slightest degree, to the situation which exists at this moment. Every man should be able to put aside subjects that are closed, and act in any emergency which presents itself with an open mind and in such manner as he thinks for the best interests of the country.
"We require above all else, in the highest affairs of trust and power, not only men of integrity and character, but primarily men who can see into the future, and who will not be content with doing only those things which become obviously necessary. Had this nation been led by vision the war would have been already won.''
The call to Roosevelt which Mr. Barnes had signed bore the signatures also of all the other Republican leaders in the State, who had not only bitterly opposed Roosevelt in the past but had denounced him repeatedly as a man who could not be trusted with power because of his radical professions and tendencies. Like Mr. Barnes, they all by their appeal to Roosevelt made public profession of faith in his character and ability and, consequently, public confession of the untruth and injustice of their previous assertions. Like the verdict in the Barnes trial, the call was a vindication of Roosevelt at the hands of his political enemies.
But gratifying as this vindication was to him, he could not be persuaded by it to become a candidate. On July 22, 1918, he wrote a letter to Morton C. Lewis, that was published on the following day, in which he said:
"I cannot be a candidate nor accept the nomination for Governor of New York. For the past four years my whole being has been absorbed in the consideration of the tremendous problems, national and international, created by the war. I cannot turn from them with any heart to deal with any other subjects. . . . My work is for the men who are fighting in this war."
Innumerable letters and telegrams of sympathy reached him after Quentin's death was confirmed. He replied to only a few of these. Among his replies were the following:
July 23, 1918.
To Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour, London, England: "Both Mrs. Roosevelt and I were touched by your cabling me. Of my four sons, Quentin has been killed, Archie very badly wounded and Ted less seriously wounded. He is now in the hospital. My only regret is that I have not been beside him in the fighting."
July 25, 1918.
To M. Clemenceau, Paris: "I have received many messages from rulers of nations and leaders of people; but among these there is none I have valued quite as much as yours, because I have a peculiar admiration for you and feel that you have played a greater part than any man not a soldier has played, and a greater part than any soldier, except one or two, has played in this great world war. It is a very sad thing to see the young die when the old who are doing nothing, as I am doing nothing, are left alive. Therefore it is very bitter to me that I was not allowed to face the danger with my sons. But whatever may be their fate, I am glad and proud that my sons have done their part in this mighty war against despotism and barbarism. Of my four boys Quentin, as you know, has been killed, and two of the other three wounded and all three of these boys have been decorated for gallantry and efficiency in action.
'' Thank Heaven, it begins to look as if at last Germany has spent her strength, and I thank Heaven also that we now have at least a few hundred thousand Americans to fight beside the French."
August 15, 1918.
To Edith Wharton, Paris, France: "There is no use of my writing about Quentin; as I should break down if I tried. His death is heart breaking, but it would have been far worse if he had lived at the cost of the slightest failure to perform his duty."
August 19, 1918.
To Gen. John J. Pershing, American Expeditionary Forces, France: "I am immensely touched by your letter of July 27. I thank you for what you have said of Quentin. My dear fellow, you have suffered far more bitter sorrow than has befallen me. You bore it with splendid courage and I should be ashamed of myself if I did not try in a lesser way to emulate that courage.
"What admirable work our army under you has done! I congratulate you with all my heart. And what wonderful soldiers our men make! You, and those under you, have written your names forever on the highest honor roll of our nation.''
General Pershing's letter of July 27, alluded to by Roosevelt, contained the following passages:
"Quentin died as he had lived and served, nobly and unselfishly, in the full strength and vigor of his youth, fighting the enemy in clean combat. You may well be proud of your gift to the nation in his supreme sacrifice.
"Enclosed is a copy of his official record in the air service. The brevity and curtness of the official words paint clearly the picture of his service, which was an honor to all of us."
BECOBD:
"Lieut. Quentin Roosevelt, during his whole career in the air service, both as a cadet and as a flying officer, was a model of the best type of young American manhood. He was most courteous in his conduct, clean in his private life, and devoted in his duty.
"After completion of his training as a pilot he was selected on account of his efficiency as an instructor, and had charge of one of the most important flying instruction fields. His great desire and hope was to get to the front. This opportunity was not practicable for a comparatively long time on account of his expert services being more needed as an instructor.
"When the order assigning him with a squadron finally came, on June 24, he lost no time in reporting, and arrived just in time to take part in the last great enemy offensive, where the combat work by his squadron was most strenuous and aided materially in the success of the battle.
"Lieutenant Roosevelt had already brought down one enemy plane and had aided the squadron in a number of flights against large enemy air formations where the American units dispersed the enemy and brought down a number of their aircraft. His work during the combats was exceptionally good, his endeavor being the success of the squadron rather than to get individual airplanes to his personal credit.
"His loss was deeply felt by his flying comrades in the squadron as well as by all officers and soldiers with whom he had ever come in contact.''
In response Roosevelt wrote to Gen. Pershing on Sept. 27, 1918:
"We very much appreciate your letter of August 23 and the enclosures. Naturally, we value the photographs and the official report. It was most kind and considerate of you, my dear General, in the midst of your absorbing work, to think of us. Naturally, we are profoundly moved and profoundly pleased by the way in which Quentin's comrades, the soldiers of your army, have marked his grave and treated it, in a certain sense, as almost a place of pilgrimage.
• "And now I wish to thank you most heartily for the news about Ted's promotion to the Lieutenant Colonelcy, of which you notified me in your cable.
"Well, my dear General, you are the American most to be envied of all the Americans since the close of the Civil War. You have done the great deed in the great crisis, and you have made all of us debtors always. Of course, all the wars in which our nation has taken part, even in the Civil War itself, had nothing to show in any way resembling this war, or the fighting that you have yourself conducted."
The exaltation, the sublimity of Roosevelt's grief for Quentin, found expression in an editorial article which he wrote for the Metropolitan Magazine, under the title of "The Great Adventure." This was published in the newspapers on September 17, 1918, and created a profound impression everywhere. It was subsequently published, with some other articles of Roosevelt's on the war, in a volume with the same title (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918), and thus given a permanent place in literature. The universal verdict upon it was that in it Roosevelt struck a higher note than he had ever before reached. When I said as much to him, he replied: "Ah, that was Quentin!" I quote here the opening and closing passages:
"Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are part of the same Great Adventure. Never yet was worthy adventure worthily carried through by the man who put his personal safety first. Never yet was a country worth living in unless its sons and daughters were of that stern stuff which bade them die for it at need; and never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life not as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual but as a link in the great chain of creation and causation, so that each person is seen in his true relations as an essential part of the whole, whose life must be made to serve the larger and continuing life of the whole."
"In America to-day all our people are summoned to service and sacrifice. Pride is the portion only of those who know bitter sorrow or the foreboding of bitter sorrow. But all of us who give service, and stand ready for sacrifice, are the torch-bearers. We run with the torches until we fall, content if we can then pass them to the hands of other runners. The torches whose flame is brightest are borne by the gallant men at the front, and by the gallant women whose husbands and lovers, whose sons and brothers are at the front. These men are high of soul, as they face their fate on the shell-shattered earth, or in the skies above or in the waters beneath; and no less high of soul are the women with torn hearts and shining eyes; the girls whose boy lovers have been struck down in their golden morning, and the mothers and wives to whom word has been brought that henceforth they must walk in the shadow.
"These are the torch-bearers; these are they who have dared the Great Adventure."

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
UNDIMINISHBD  ACTIVITIES  OF  HIS  CLOSING YEARS
His grief at the death of Quentin did not permit Roosevelt to lessen his interest in the great war and the attitude of the nation toward it. He continued to write and speak with unabated zeal and undiminished force. When in the autumn news came of the deportation and enslavement of Belgians by Germany, he was among the first to utter a protest. In a letter that he wrote to Mr. F. W. Whitridge, the organizer of a great mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, on December 15, 1916, that had been called to express public indignation at Germany's conduct, he said:
"This action (by Germany) is paralleled by the action of the Assyrian conquerors of Syria and Palestine; but until the present war broke out it was supposed that such hideous infamies were effectively checked by the system of international law which has grown up under modern Christian civilization. But Germany has trampled under foot every device of international law for securing the protection of the weak and unoffending. She has shown an utter disregard of all considerations of pity, mercy, humanity and international morality. She has counted upon the terror inspired by her ruthless brutality to protect her from retaliation of interference.
"The outrages committed on our own people have been such as the United States has never before been forced to endure, and have included the repeated killing of our men, women and children. The sinking of the Marina and the Cheming the other day, with the attendant murder of six Americans, was but the most recent in an unbroken chain of injuries and insults, which by comparison make mere wrong to our property interests sink into absolute insignificance. 
"As long as neutrals keep silent, or speak apologetically, or take refuge in the futilities of the professional pacificists, there will be no cessation in these brutalities. But surely this last and crowning brutality, which amounts to the imposition of a cruel form of state-slavery on a helpless and unoffending conquered nation, must make our people realize that they peril their own souls, that they degrade their own manhood, if they do not bear emphatic testimony against the perpetration of such iniquity. I am glad to be one among the Americans who thus bear testimony."
To Mr. Charles W. Farnham, the organizer of a similar meeting in St. Paul, Minn., he wrote a letter on January 19, 1917, which contains a notable expression of his views on International peace movements:
"If the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill and Trenton were right, then the Belgians are right now; and when we tamely acquiesce in such infamies as have been committed in Belgium—of course still more when we tamely acquiesce in such infamies as have been committed against our own people in cases like that of the Lusitama—we show ourselves unworthy to be the heirs of the Americans who followed Washington and upheld the hands of Lincoln. Since the days of Pontius Pilate neutrality between right and wrong has been recognized by all high-minded men and women as itself immoral.
"What we need is not to promise action in the nebulous future but to act now in the living present. Any promise of ours about entering into international peace leagues or guaranteeing the peace of the world or protecting small nationalities hereafter is worse than worthless, is mischievous and hypocritical, unless we make our words good by action in the case that is uppermost in the present. Until we can and do guarantee peace in Mexico let us not talk loudly and make empty gestures about guaranteeing the peace of the world. Unless we are willing to run some risk and make some effort to right the wrongs of Belgium in the present let us refrain from indulging in insincere declamation about protecting small nations in similar cases in the future. And  let us make no absurd promises about 'enforcing' peace at some remote period in the future until by foresight and labor and service and self-sacrifice we have shown that we have spiritually prepared ourselves to make our words good and until materially we have made ready our vast but soft and lazy strength."
A letter that Roosevelt wrote on December 19, 1917, is quite worthy of record because of its accurate prediction of the strikes and general labor disturbances, fomented by the I. W. W. and other anarchistic organizations, which occurred in 1919. In July 1916, during a parade in San Francisco, in the interest of national preparedness for the war, a bomb was thrown among the crowd along the line of march, which exploded and killed ten men and women and maimed fifty persons including several children. One T. J. Mooney, a member of the I. W. W., was arrested on the charge of throwing the bomb, was tried and convicted, and on February 24, 1917, was sentenced to death. Another member, Billings, was convicted at the some time of complicity in the act. The I. W. W. organization took up the case and called mass meetings in various parts of the country denouncing the court and declaring the case against Mooney to be a conspiracy against him among the capitalistic interests of California. At the same time the I. W. W. demanded the recall or removal of Fickert, the District Attorney who had secured the conviction. President Wilson- was appealed to and interfered three separate times in behalf of Mooney, asking the Governor of California to pardon him.
In July 1917, during a series of strikes in the copper mines of Arizona, all of which were shown to have been instigated by the I. W. W., over a thousand members of that organization were seized by the enraged citizens of Bisbee and other Arizona towns in which strikes were existing, placed in cattle cars and deported outside State limits with orders not to return,
President Wilson appointed a Mediation Commission to investigate the matter, and named as legal adviser of this body the lawyer who had investigated the Mooney case. This lawyer made a report in both cases that was in favor of the I. W. W.'s contentions. To this man Roosevelt wrote the letter mentioned above, from which I quote:
"You have taken, and are taking, on behalf of the Administration an attitude which seems to me to be fundamentally that of Trotsky and the other Bolsheviki leaders in Russia; an attitude which may be fraught with mischief to this country.
"The question of granting a re-trial is one thing. The question ot the recall is entirely distinct. Even if a re-trial were proper this would not in the least justify a recall— any more than a single grave error on your part would justify your impeachment, or the impeachment of President Wilson for appointing you. The I. W. W. and the 'direct action' anarchists and apologists for anarchy are never concerned for justice. They are concerned solely in seeing one kind of criminal escape justice, precisely as certain big business men and certain corporation lawyers have in the past been concerned in seeing another kind of criminal escape justice. The guiding spirits in the movement for the recall of Fickert cared not a rap whether or not Mooney and Billings were guilty; probably they believed them guilty; all they were concerned with was seeing a rebuke administered to, and an evil lesson taught all public officials who might take action against crimes of violence committed by anarchists in the name of some foul and violent protest against social conditions. Murder is murder, and it is rather more evil, when committed in the name of a professed social movement. The reactionaries have in the past been a great menace to this republic; but at this moment it is the I. W. W., the Germanized Socialists, the Anarchists, the foolish creatures who always protest against the suppression of crime, the pacifists and the like, who are the really grave danger. These are the Bolsheviki of America, and the Bolsheviki are just as bad as the Romanoffs, and are at the moment a greater menace to orderly freedom. Robespierre and Danton and Marat and Hebert were just as evil as the worst tyrants of the old regime, and from 1791 to 1794 they were the most dangerous enemies to liberty that the world contained. When you, as representing President Wilson, find yourself obliged to champion men of this stamp you ought by unequivocal affirmative action to make it evident that you are sternly against their general and habitual line of conduct.
"I have just received your report on the Bisbee deportation. One of the prominent leaders in that deportation was my old friend, Jack Greenway, who has just been commissioned a Major in the Army by President Wilson. Your report is as thoroughly misleading a document as could be written on the subject. No official, writing on behalf of the President, is to be excused for failure to know, and clearly to set forth, that the I. W. W. is a criminal organization. To ignore the fact that a movement such as its members made into Bisbee is made with criminal intent is precisely as foolish as for a New York policeman to ignore the fact that when the Whyo gang assembles with guns and knives it is with criminal intent. The President is not to be excused if he ignores this fact, for of course he knows all about it. No human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder. If the President, through you or any one else, had any right to look into the matter, this very fact shows that he had been remiss in his clear duty to provide against the very grave danger in advance. When no efficient means are employed to guard honest, upright and well behaved citizens from the most brutal kind of lawlessness, it is inevitable that these citizens shall try to protect themselves; that is as true when the President fails to do his duty about the I. W. W. as when the police fail to do their duty about gangs like the Whyo gang; and when either the President or the police, personally or by representative, rebuke the men who defend themselves from criminal assault, it is necessary sharply to point out that far heavier blame whelming victory and accept no peace but unconditional surrender. Our whole effort must be to bring Germany to her knees and to put a stop once for all to her threat of world dominion; and to do this we must insist upon a unified citizenship at home. There is no room in this country for loyalty to but one flag—the American flag—and therefore no room for loyalty to any other flag, and still less the black or red flag."
He had promised to make one speech in New York City in support of the Republican ticket in the State election, and October 28 had been fixed as the date for this in Carnegie Hall. His speech had been prepared and advance copies of it sent to the press when, on October 26, President Wilson published an appeal to the voters of the country to elect a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress at the approaching November election. Roosevelt at once prepared an addendum to his address in which he discussed the appeal, thus increasing materially the length of his remarks. He spoke for two hours and a quarter and held the undivided and enthusiastic attention of his audience to the close. Never had his wonderful powers of mastery over a great audience been more signally displayed. From the beginning to the end, he did not for a moment lose his hold upon it. Never had he appeared to be in better physical condition, and rarely had his mental powers appeared to be more vigorous and alert. He began his speech by saying:
"I have been cautioned three times to-day not to be extreme in what I say to-night. The trouble is that my extremeness one year is another person's moderation later. But I won't be extreme to-night. By that I mean I won't go beyond the point I ought to go. There will be one advantage in what I say, however. You'll understand it and you won't need any key. You won't get a letter from me day after to-morrow explaining what I meant.''
When a voice from the gallery shouted: "Three cheers for the fighting man!" he instantly raised his hand and exclaimed: '' Don't cheer for me. I 'd have been in the fight if I had been allowed. Cheer for the fighting man at the front and let us see that his blood is not shed in vain."
In his appeal President Wilson had said: "The leaders of the minority in the present Congress have unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti-Administration. The return of a Republican majority in either House of Congress would be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership.'
In commenting on this Roosevelt quoted the words of Lincoln in March 1863, in favor of sending to Congress only "unconditional supporters of the war," and again in August 1863 appealing to "all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life." and then added:
"Lincoln made no party test. He appealed to all loyal men of all parties. He asked that the test of fitness for Congress be, not adherence to his personal administration, but unconditional support of the war. Mr. Wilson applies the most rigid party test. He explicitly repudiates loyalty to the war as a test. He demands the success of the Democratic party, and asks the defeat of all pro-war men if they have been anti-administration. He asks for the defeat of pro-war Republicans. He does not ask for the defeat of pro-war Democrats. On the contrary, he supports such mendf although anti-war they are pro-administration. He does not ask for loyalty to the Nation. He asks only for support of himself. There is not the slightest suggestion that he disapproves of disloyalty to the nation. I do not doubt that he does feel some disapproval of such disloyalty; but apparently this feeling on his part is so tepid that it slips from his mind when he contemplates what he regards as the far greater sin of failure in adherence to himself."
This was the keynote of his speech, which is too long to quote and quite impossible of condensation because every sentence of it is vital. It had a wide circulation throughout the country and unquestionably was a powerful factor in securing a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. ' It was the last great speech of his life. Even while making it he was feeling the first pangs of an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, which caused his return to the hospital on November 11, 1918, where he remained till December 25, suffering severely during the greater part of !the time, but maintaining complete cheerfulness and serenity of spirit and keen interest in the progress of events, seeing a few callers and keeping up the more personal portion of his correspondence. Writing to Eider Haggard, on December 6, 1918, he said: "I doubt if I ever again go back into public place. I have had to go into too much and too bitter truth telling. Like you, I am not at all sure about the future. I hope that Germany will suffer a change of heart, but I am anything but certain. I don't put much faith in the League of Nations, or any corresponding cure-all."
To a Southern correspondent, D. H. Clark, of Savannah, Georgia, he wrote on December 23, 1918: "It would be utter silliness for the Progressive Party, as such, to go into the next campaign. In spite of every effort of the leaders it died in 1914 and it is mere folly to keep it alive."
I saw him almost daily during this period, taking to him my first draft of the earlier chapters of this story of his life, which he read while sitting up in bed or in a chair. "We talked occasionally of politics. At the time his leadership of his party had become so universally recognized that there was an unbroken unanimity of opinion in favor of him as the choice of the party for the Presidential nomination in 1920. When I spoke of this to him only a short time before his death, he said rather sadly:
"I am indifferent to the subject. I would not lift a finger to get the nomination. Since Quentin's death the world seems to have shut down upon me. My other boys are on the other side of the water fighting, or being made ready to fight for their country. If they do not come back, what would the Presidency mean to me? At best I have only a few remaining years, and nothing could give me greater joy than to spend them with my family. I have been President for seven years and I am not eager to be President again. But if the leaders of the party come to me and say that they are convinced that I am the man the people want and the only man who can be elected, and that they are all for me, I don't see how I could refuse to run. If I do consent, it will be because as President I could accomplish some things that I should like to see accomplished before I die." This he had said quietly while lying back on his pillows. Then, sitting suddenly erect and clenching his fist, the old fighting Roosevelt reappeared in the declaration: "And by George, if they take me, they will take me without a single reservation or modification of the things I have always stood for!"
He left the hospital on the morning of Christmas, 1918, and went to his home in Oyster Bay. His physicians were confident of complete recovery and he shared their belief. Writing to his sister, Mrs. W. S. Cowles, on December 28, 1918, he said:

"It was very dear of you to keep writing me. I feel like a faker, because my troubles are not to be mentioned in the same breath with all you have gone through. Mine has just been a case of severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism, and a little sciatica, and while I won't be able to do much for a couple of months, I have every reason to think I shall in the end recover completely. I got out home Christmas morning, so that Edith and I, Ethel and Alice and Archie and Gracie, had Christmas dinner together. Richard and little Edie are the darlingest small souls you have ever seen. Little Edie is the busiest person imaginable, and runs around exactly as if she was a small mechanical toy."
To his friend Russell J. Coles, with whom he had gone devil fishing a few years earlier and with whom he had planned another expedition, he wrote on January 1, 1919:
"My doctors tell me that in all probability I shall be able to go with you on March 1st. There is, of course, however, the possibility that my convalescence may be slower than they suppose. At present I am utterly worthless. I hope you understand how deeply I appreciate your taking Archie along. My great desire is that he shall get a devil fish. He is a pretty good boy and of course crippling makes it hard for him to enjoy the kind of sports he loves and which you and I at his age enjoyed and I very deeply appreciate your giving him the chance as you have done."
On the same date, January 1, 1919, his profound distrust of President Wilson found expression in this outspoken letter to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, one of the last letters he ever wrote:
'' This is a grumble from a faithful Tribune reader, over an editorial in Sunday's Tribune. For Heaven's sake never allude to Wilson as an idealist or militaire or altruist. He is a doctrinaire when he can be so with safety to his personal ambition, and he is always utterly and coldly selfish. He hasn 't a touch of idealism in him. His advocacy of the League of Nations no more represents idealism on his part than his advocacy of peace without victory, or his statement that we had no concern with the origin or cause of the European war, or with his profoundly unethical refusal for two and a half years to express a particle of sympathy for poor Belgium. His opponents are cheered when we tell about him being a misguided idealist. He is not. He is a silly doctrinaire at times and an utterly selfish and coldblooded politician always."
After Roosevelt's death various zealous advocates of President Wilson's plan for a League of Nations asserted that Roosevelt had committed himself in its favor. Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the truth, for repeatedly he had committed himself against it. Speaking at the City Hall, New York, on September 6, 1918, at exercises on the anniversary of the birth of Lafayette and of the Battle of the Marne, he said:

"It is sometimes announced that part of the peace agreement must be a League of Nations which will avert all war for the future and put a stop to the need of this nation preparing its own strength for its own defense. Many of the adherents of this idea grandiloquently assert that they intend to supplant nationalism by internationalism.

"In deciding upon proposals of this nature it behooves our people to remember that competitive rhetoric is a poor substitute for the habit of resolutely looking facts in the-face. To substitute internationalism for nationalism means to do away with patriotism, and is as vicious and as profoundly demoralizing as to put promiscuous devotion to all other persons in the place of steadfast devotion to a man's own family. Either effort means the atrophy of robust morality. The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as the other."
The last formal utterance of his life on any public question was in an editorial article for the Kansas City Star which he dictated to his secretary on January 5, 1919, the day before his death. In this, which I reproduce in full in recognition of its historic value, he stated his attitude so clearly that no intelligent person can misunderstand it:

"It is of course a serious misfortune that President Wilson through Mr. Creel's misinformation bureau and the control exercised over the correspondents, should prevent our people from getting a clear idea of what is happening on the other side. For the moment the point as to which we are foggy is the League of Nations. We all of us earnestly desire such a League, only we wish to be sure that it will help and not hinder the cause of world peace and justice. There isn't a young man in this country who has fought, or an old man who has seen those dear to him fight, who does not wish to minimize the chance of future war. But there isn't a man of sense who does not know that in any such movement if too much is attempted the result is either failure or worse than failure.

   "The trouble with Mr. Wilson's utterances, so far as they are reported, and the utterances of acquiescence in them by European statesmen, is that they are still absolutely in the stage of rhetoric precisely like the Fourteen Points. Some of the Fourteen Points will probably have to be construed as having a mischievous significance, a smaller number might be construed as being harmless, and one or two /even as beneficial, but nobody knows what Mr. Wilson really means by them and so all talk of adopting them as basis for a peace or a League is nonsense, and if the talker is intelligent it is insincere nonsense to Root. So Mr. Wilson's recent utterances give us absolutely no clue as to whether he really intends that at this moment we shall admit Germany, Russia, with which incidentally we are still waging war, Turkey, China and Mexico into the League on a full equality with ourselves. Mr. Taft has recently defined the purposes of the League and the limitations under which it would act in a way that enables most of us to say we very heartily agree in principle with his theory and can without doubt come to an agreement under specific details. But President Wilson, seemingly in a spirit of jealousy, has condemned Mr. Taft's proposal, without advancing anything specific himself.

"Would it not be well to begin with the League which we actually have in existence, the League of the allies who have fought through this great war? Let us at the peace table see that real justice is done as among these allies and that while the sternest reparation is demanded from our foes for such horrors as those committed in Belgium, Northern France, Armenia and the sinking of the Lusitcmia, yet should anything be done in the spirit of mere vengeance? Then let us agree to extend the privileges of the League as rapidly as their conduct warrants it to other nations, doubtless discriminating between those who would have a guiding part of the League and the weak nations who would be entitled to the privileges of membership but who would not be entitled to a guiding voice in the councils. Let each nation reserve to itself and for its own decision to clearly set forth questions which are non-justiciable. Let nothing be done that will interfere with our preparing for our own defense by introducing a system of universal obligatory military training modeled on the Swiss plan. Finally, make it perfectly clear that we do not intend to take a position of an international 'Meddlesome Matty.' The American people don't wish to go into an overseas war unless for a very great cause and where the issue is absolutely plain. Therefore, we don't wish to undertake responsibility of sending our gallant young men to die in obscure fights in the Balkans or in Central Europe, or in a war we do not approve of. Moreover, the American people don't intend to give up the Monroe Doctrine. Let civilized Europe and Asia introduce some kind of police system in the weak and disorderly countries at their thresholds. But let the United States treat Mexico as our Balkan Peninsula and refuse to allow European or Asiatic powers to interfere on this continent in any way that implies permanent or semi-permanent possession. Every one of our allies will with delight grant this request if President Wilson chooses to make it and it will be a great misfortune if it is not made.
"I believe that such an effort made moderately and sanely but sincerely and with utter scorn for words that are not made good by deeds will be productive of real and lasting international good.''
This article was sent by telegraph to the Kansas City Star on January 5, 1919, but was not published till some days after his death. A letter that he wrote on January 3, 1919, two days earlier, both by its character and the circumstances of its publication, is entitled to rank as his final message to the American people. This was addressed to the President of the American Defense Society and was read at a great mass meeting under the auspices of that organization, in the Hippodrome in New York, on the evening of January 5. It was published on the morning of January 6, the day of his death. He had no thought when he was preparing this, as his letters at the time show, that it was to be his last appeal to the patriotism and loyalty of his countrymen, but had any such premonition influenced him, he could scarcely have made the appeal other than it is. In it speaks the soul of the man, who throughout his life had been "an American and nothing else." The message in full was as follows:

"I cannot be with you, and so all I can do is to wish you Godspeed. There must be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism merely because the war is over. There are plenty of persons who have already made the assertion that they believe the American people have a short memory and that they intend to revive all the foreign associations which most directly interfere with the complete Americanization of our people. Our principle in this matter should be absolutely simple. In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin.

"But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."

theodore Roosevelt died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Oyster Bay, at 4 o'clock in the morning of January 6,1919.	The cause of death was an embolus, or clot of blood in the heart.   He spent his last day, Sunday, with his family in full confidence that he was on the road to complete recovery of health.    His last literary work, in addition to the subjects mentioned in the preceding chapter, had been upon a review of a book by one of his cherished naturalist friends, William Beebe, and in correcting proofs of an editorial article on Labor that he had written for the Metropolitan Magazine.   He went to bed at 11 o'clock, and his last words were to his faithful colored servant, James Amos: "Please put out the light."   He sank at once into a quiet sleep and never awoke.

He died as he would have wished to, in the home that he loved, with his family about him, in the full possession of his faculties, in the midst of work that was nearest to his heart, and at the summit of his fame. Never during his life had his influence with his countrymen been greater, or his place in the hearts of the American people higher. At the moment of his death it could have been said of him with literal truth, in the language of the Proverbs: '' He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." He had become the acknowledged foremost leader of his party and its unanimous choice as its candidate for the Presidency in 1920.	More than that, he was recognized as the Great American of his time.   This was the unanimous verdict of the nation when the news of his unexpected death startled it into a full recognition of his worth and of its irreparable loss. 
In strict accord with, his known wishes, there was no pomp or display at his funeral. Simple services, without honorary pallbearers or music, were held in the little village church at which he was wont to attend service with his family, and he was buried in the country graveyard in the lot upon a hillock that he and his wife had selected soon after he retired from the Presidency.
A short time before his death he wrote to a friend who was sitting in the shadow of a supreme affliction:

"Well, friend, you and I are in the range of the rifle pits; from now on until we ourselves fall—and that date cannot be so many years distant—we shall see others whom we love fall. It is idle to complain or to rail at the inevitable; serene and high of heart we must face our fate and go down into the darkness."

The End

A concluding word from Robert J.  Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy 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.  Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies 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.  He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.  His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.  His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations. 

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”.  Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.  America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.  The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.  Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.