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THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1919

CHAPTER 16

THEODORE ROOSEVELT A HERCULES—BIG STICK—NATURALIST—AUTHOR

IN Theodore Roosevelt we have so many great men combined in one that ordinary words and measurements do not justly describe him.   Looking backward to find a parallel for him, we must go to the earliest history of Greece, to the mythical man called Hercules, son of the gods, powerful alike in body, mind and soul, the mightiest that Greece or the world could produce.   Their classic poets pictured him as the symbol of power, wisdom and virtue.

The similarity between the Hercules of classic story and Roosevelt, our modern Hercules, is thus seen. The ancient hero was a noted pugilist; he was taught fighting by Castor; he was the best shot of the nation, and defeated in archery his teacher, Eurytus, and his three sons, who held the record up to that time. He was taught driving by Autolycus and surpassed all'other charioteers. A fine scholar, he learned wisdom from Minerva. He was the most famous of hunters and was happiest when he was killing lions and other man-eating beasts. He was a great patriot, slaying a hostile king and delivering the nation from a heavy annual tribute. He was a benevolent man and busied himself in protecting the people of his country from wild beasts and other dangers. He carried a big stick, sometimes of brass, but usually a large wooden stick, with a big knot on the upper end of it, which he himself cut out of the forest.

In most of the figures which we have preserved to this day Hercules holds that big stick in his hand. He was the symbol of the Greeks' most powerful man. His weapon was strong enough and ever ready toi hammer down the wrong and to protect the right. The parallel is not only in the equipment, but also in the marvelous deeds of the hero.

The king of Argus and Mycenaa was so jealous of the rising popularity of this great hero that he imposed upon him twelve tasks, each of which was supposed to be impossible. These are celebrated in mythology as the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The gods compelled him to undertake these twelve tasks, impossible to mortals, but equipped him for the performance of the miraculous deeds. He received from Minerva a coat of arms and helmet, from Mercury a sword, from Neptune a horse, from Jupiter a shield, from Apollo a bow and arrows, and the big stick.

The following are the twelve labors imposed upon Hercules: 1, He killed the lion of Nemffia. 2, He killed the Hydra. 3, He caught the swift stag with golden horns and brazen feet that haunted the neighborhood of Oenoe. 4, He brought alive to the king the wild boar which ravaged his realm, and destroyed the Centauri. 5, He cleaned the Augean stables. 6, He killed the carnivorous birds of Lake Stymphalus.
7,	He captured the wild bull that laid waste Crete.
8,	He captured the man-eating mares of Diomedes.
9,	He obtained the girdle of Queen Hippolyte.   10, He killed the monster Geryon and set up the Pillars of Hercules at Gibraltar.   11, He secured the golden apples of the Hesperides.   12, He dragged on earth from Hades the three-headed dog Cerberus. There are more than twelve miraculous labors of our modern Hercules, but twelve stand out most prominently.

fiRst—Our Hercules became the head of the nation. The ancient hero never did so great a thing as to become the ruler of the greatest nation of the world. With all his power, it is not recorded that he had any political favor or that he ruled any kingdom.

second—He killed the spoils system, which threatened to overthrow the nation. The ancient hero turned the river into the Augean stables and cleaned them, but that was not as great a wonder as the cleansing of American politics by Theodore Roosevelt.

third—He used the big stick in crushing the illegal combinations of wealth which menaced the republic.

fourth—He dug the Panama Canal—a greater wonder than all the twelve labors of Hercules, and equal to the seven wonders of the world.

fifth—He settled the coal miners' strike. The miners in the anthracite district of Pennsylvania went on a strike which threatened to tie up the industries of the nation. Grievances on the part of employees and employers were deeply cherished and apparently irreconcilable. Passions were stirred to the highest degree and bloodshed was feared. President Roosevelt had no governmental commissions that he could use in the settlement. He had to take the matter up personally with the workmen, the proprietors and everybody concerned, and by his magnetism and powerful will he brought the two factions together, averted a tie-up in the nation and gave peace to the coal industry for years.

sixth—He secured the settlement of the war between Russia and Japan. While the desperate war was raging between Russia and Japan in 1905, President Roosevelt addressed through John Hay, his Secretary of State, a letter to the Emperor of Japan, and another to the Czar of Russia, suggesting that their interests as individual nations and the good of the world could be best served by closing the war, and suggested that peace commissions be appointed by each country, and that he himself would lend his kind offices in bringing about an amicable settlement.

That peace commission began its conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on August 10th. After about a week's conference the commission came to a dead-lock and President Roosevelt used his great personal influence on the home governments and broke it. For this service in securing peace, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, which was $40,000 in cash, which he gave to a society for aiding our American soldiers.

At a dinner given by the Japanese Club to Baron Makino, Ambassador with the Japanese Peace Mission, just after Mr. Roosevelt's death, the Baron said: "Mr. Roosevelt materially aided in the settlement of the issues raised by the Russo-Japanese War and in the amicable adjustment of international difficulties growing out of California's action regarding Japanese residents. When Japan had proved herself and the prowess of her soldiers and her navy," said the Baron, in reference to the conflict with Russia, "the convention was called and the conclusion of the terms which brought about an honorable peace was due greatly to the broad, straightforward, generous and even noble attitude taken by President Roosevelt. The death of Colonel Roosevelt leaves a gap in the ranks of men who have made the history of the world. As the friend of Japan he had been consistent in rendering our country valuable service which will always be appreciated."

None of the twelve labors of Hercules can compare with this act of seizing two powerful nations at war with each other, pulling them apart and persuading them to live at peace with one another.

seventh—He wrote thirty-five books. Minerva taught Hercules; Roosevelt's wisdom was God-given. In spite of his supremely busy life, beside many other writings, he produced books which have an important place in the libraries of our country and in those of some other countries. The most important are as follows: Winning of the West, 1889-96; History of the Naval War of 1812, 1882; Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, 1885; Life of Thomas Hart Benton, 1886; Life of Gouveneur Morris, 1887; Ranch Life and Hunting Trail, 1888; History of New York, 1890; The Wilderness Hunter, 1893; American Ideals and Other Essays, 1897 ;• The Rough Riders, 1899; Life of Oliver Cromwell, 1900; The Strenuous Life, 1900; Works (8 vols.), 1902; The Deer Family, 1902; Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, 1906; American Ideals and Other Essays; Good Hunting, 1907; True Americanism; African and European Addresses, 1910; African Game Trails, 1910; The New Nationalism, 1910; Realizable Ideals (the Earl lectures), 1912; Conservation of Womanhood, and Childhood, 1912; History as Literature, and Other Essays, 1913; Theodore Roosevelt, an Autobiography, 1913; Life Histories of African Game Animals (2 vols.), 1914; Through the Brazilian Wilderness, 1914; America and the World War, 1915; A Booklover's Holidays in the Open, 1916; Fear God, and Take Your Own Part, 1916; Foes of Our Own Household, 1917; National Strength and International Duty (Stafford Little lectures, Princeton Univ.), 1917. Of all his writing the Winning of the West is the most ambitious of his efforts and the one that will have the longest life. 

While Police Commissioner we asked him to give us a lecture for the reduction of the church debt. He said he was just finishing a book on which he had been working for years, on the winning of the West, a quotation from which he could give as a lecture. He gave the lecture.. In it he began with the moral and mental elements in the making of the new civilization and then spent the rest of the hour on the tremendous importance of the moral and religious elements in the Winning of the West. He paid the highest tribute to the pioneer ministers of all denominations. He said that their movement westward kept pace with the movement of the frontier, that they shared all the hardships in the life of the frontiersman, at the same time ministering to that frontiersman's spiritual needs, and seeing that his pressing material cares and the hard and grinding poverty of his life did not wholly extinguish the divine fire within his soul.

eighth—He achieved wonders in nature study. His knowledge of plant life was miraculous. Theodore Roosevelt knew the name of about every tree in the forest, the kind of bark, stem and leaf that each possessed; the name of every plant and flower, its feature and habit in this country and in others. Almost no hand in the nation spared the woodsman's axe in the destruction of our forests like his. Knowing the value of trees in the preservation of the rivers and fertility of the soil, and protection to wild life; knowing also the value of trees as a source of health companionship and moral training to the people, he set apart one hundred and fifty national forests with an area of three hundred thousand square miles, five great National Parks, four reservations for big game and twenty-two reservations of American antiquities. The land which during his administration was set apart, to the perpetual happiness and mental and moral benefit of the people, amounted to an area greater than all of Germany. It was but natural that Congress should name one of the greatest National Parks of the world after him. Some of the charming passages in literature are Roosevelt's descriptions of the beauty, the fragrance and the value of flowers.

His knowledge of animal life was just as marvelous as that of the vegetable kingdom. He tells a story himself in his autobiography that when a small boy he saw the head of a seal at the meat market near his house and that he secured it and made it the object of study and basis of the Roosevelt museum, which he and his cousins established with the specimens which they found near at hand. He knew the name, family and habit of nearly all insects, reptiles, fishes, domestic and wild animals, of birds and other creatures in our land and in some other lands. His world-wide travels were largely to increase his knowledge of the plant and animal life that God has created.

From his earliest recollection to the day of his death Theodore Roosevelt was passionately fond of the birds, and for forty years of his life they had no such true and efficient friend as he. President Roosevelt thus paid a tribute to the friendly service rendered by the birds to man: '' The cotton boll-weevil, which has recently overspread the cotton belt of Texas and is steadily extending its range, is said to cause an annual loss of about $3,000,000. The Biological Survey has ascertained and given wide publicity to the fact that at least 43 kinds of birds prey upon this destructive insect. It has discovered that 57 species of birds feed upon scale-insects—dreaded enemies of the fruit grower. It has shown that woodpeckers as a class, by destroying the larvas of wood-boring insects, are so essential to tree life that it is doubtful if our forests could exist without them. It has shown that cuckoos and orioles are the natural enemies of the leaf-eating caterpillars that destroy our shade and fruit trees; that our quails and sparrows consume annually hundreds of tons of seeds of noxious weeds; that hawks and owls as a class (excepting the few that kill poultry and game birds) are markedly beneficial, spending their lives in catching grasshoppers, mice, and other pests that prey upon the products of husbandry." He secured fifty-one reservations where the wild birds on the wing might find a refuge.

Governor Roosevelt, in a letter to Mr. Frank H. Chapman of the Audubon Society, who had thanked him for signing a bill protecting birds, thus expressed1 his value of them:
Half, and more than half, the beauty of the woods and fields Is gone when they lose the harmless wild things, while if we could only ever get our people to the point of taking a universal and thoroughly intelligent interest in the preservation of game birds 'and flsh, the result would be an important addition to our food supply. Ultimately, people are sure to realize that to kill off all game birds and net out all fish streams is not much more sensible than it would be to kill off all our milch cows and brood mares.

As for the birds whose preservation is the special object of your Society, we should keep them just as we keep trees. They add indispensably to the wholesome beauty of life. I would like to see all harmless wild things, but especially all birds, protected in every way. I do not understand how any man or woman who really loves nature can fail to try to exert all influence in support of such objects as those of the Audubon Society. Spring would not be spring without bird songs, any more than it would be spring without buds and flowers, and I only wish that besides protecting the songsters, the birds of the grove, the orchard, the garden and the meadow, we could also protect the birds of the seashore and of the wilderness.

The loon ought to be, and, under wise legislation, could be a feature of every Adirondack lake; ospreys, as every one knows, can be made the tamest of the tame, and terns should be as plentiful along our shores as swallows around our .barns. A tanager or a cardinal makes a point of glowing beauty in the green woods and the cardinal among the white snows. When the bluebirds were so nearly destroyed by the severe winter a few seasons ago, it was like the loss of an old friend, or at least like the burning down ot a familiar and dearly loved house. How immensely it would add to our forests if only the logcock were still found among them!

The destruction of the wild pigeon and the Carolina paroquet has meant a loss as severe as if the Catskills or the Palisades were taken away. When I hear of the destruction of a species I feel just as if all the works of some great writer had perished; as if we had lost all instead of only part of Polybius or Livy.
At my request, Mr. John M. Parker, a manufacturer of New Orleans, himself a passionate lover of birds, wrote for me the following:
It has been my privilege to know Colonel Theodore Roosevelt intimately for a great many years, not only in Washington, at his home at Sagamore Hill, but on hunting trips in Louisiana and Mississippi, and on investigation trips of the bird islands in the Gulf of Mexico. No more versatile man ever lived. There was hardly a subject of discussion on which he was not well posted, and on the numerous railroad and other trips made with him, his tireless energy and activity were shown by the fact that he was never idle and that when he read he remembered with that wonderful mind of his which seemed instantly to grasp essentials and never forgot. He was a most omnivorous reader.

   As a naturalist and lover of animals, his intimate knowledge was a surprise to all of those who were thrown In close contact with him. Time after time have I seen this illustrated, and never more strikingly than at my home at Pass Christian, where we found twenty-seven different varieties of bird nests in the yard, among which was that of a crested flycatcher. This bird had already hatched and with its young was in the yard. The Colonel asked whether I had ever made a careful examination of the nest of this bird, as he had never failed to find a snake skin In the hollow which they invariably select for their nest. My reply was, "No, but let's look at this one and see what's in it," and to his great delight when I pulled out the straws and feather, there were two snake skins.

When he made his trip around the various bird islands, men who were naturalists and who had known bird life for years were amazed at his intimate knowledge, not only of every species of birds which we found, but as to their nests, their habits, and even the number of eggs they laid.

He was a splendid woodsman, had an excellent knowledge of direction and was at his best in camp. There was not a single trip on which he did not endear himself to every one, and his thoroughly democratic manner made these trips a pleasure to him and a delight to those who had the privilege of being a member of the party.

In every sense of the word he was one of the cleanest men I ever knew. He was utterly incapable of a dishonest thought; he was an American to the core, and his splendid patriotic life should be an inspiration for generations to come.