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THEODORE ROOSEVELT
1919

CHAPTER 30
ESTIMATES  OF  REV.  DR.  LYMAN  ABBOTT AND OF A NEW YORK MERCHANT FRIEND
BY the courtesy of the Outlook we print the following  editorial  on  Theodore  Roosevelt  by Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  D.D.    Few  men  Mr, Roosevelt respected and loved more than Dr. Abbott and that affection was fully reciprocated.   The following estimate is of especial value:
Mr. Roosevelt was to me a wise counselor, a courageous comrade, an inspiring personality, and always a loyal and considerate friend. Writing on the day of his death and under the shadow of a great sorrow, I will not trust myself to give any expression to my personal feeling about him, who was the foremost statesman of his time, and, because of his sterling virtues, was at once the best beloved and the most bitterly execrated of America's public men. But I may perhaps do something to interpret to our readers the inspiration of his power and the secret of his extraordinary career. Modern democracy denies the assumption that the few must govern and the many must be governed and to Aristotle's three forms of government—government by the one, by the few, by the many—it is gradually adding a fourth: self-government. For in lieu of government by the best class in the community over the rest it is substituting government by the best in every man over the worser elements in every man.

In my judgment, no man in the history of America, not even Abraham Lincoln, did so much as Theodore Roosevelt to expedite the era of self-government. Entering politics at twenty-two resolved to make it his profession, Mr. Roosevelt assumed from the outset that politics is the science and practice of government, and that to succeed in the science and practice of government would require the best that was in him. He was ambitious, not to govern, but to lead. He brought to his earliest campaign a frankness and a courage which were novelties in American politics. He had a keen sense of moral values and a dominating faith in moral forces. With an inspired instinct which men call genius, he perceived that virtue and intelligence are characteristic of the American people, and to that virtue and that intelligence he habitually appealed—never to their prejudices or their passions, though he never lacked the courage to rebuke those prejudices and confront those passions. His methods of appeal were sometimes ingenious, but they were always courageous, and his aim was always the same. When he was Civil Service Commissioner and Congress attempted to thwart Civil Service reform by cutting down appropriations, he appealed to the people by abandoning examinations in those districts whose representatives had voted for reducing appropriations and continning examinations in those districts whose representatives had supported Civil Service reform. When he was Police Commissioner, by his fairness he won the loyal support of every honest policeman, and by the result proved that the rascals who had brought disrepute upon the police administration were in a minority. When he was elected Governor of the State of New York, he announced his intention to consult with both Mr. Low and Mr. Platt, and faced the hostility both of the Old Guard and of the radical reformers because he did not wish to govern the Republican party, but to lead it. When he became President, he was equally ready to confer with a cowboy or a college president, a labor leader or a millionaire. His tests of character were not conventional ; they were not learning, or culture, or social position, or political influence, or wealth. They were the common virtues—courage, frankness, political honesty, personal purity. His messages to Congress were messages to the American people, and it has been well said of them that they were "quite as often treatises on the moral principles of government as they were recommendations for specific legislation or administrative policies." "I am accused of preaching," he once said to a group of his friends; "but I have got such a bully pulpit."

This habit of appeal to the best in every man kept Mr. Roosevelt in what his critics sometimes called the "middle of the road." He denounced corruptionists, whatever their position or political party. He attacked, often in the same speech, "malefactors of great wealth" and "undesirable citizens." He urged on the Senate a general arbitration treaty more radical than it was willing to adopt, and at the same time insisted that until an International Supreme Court is firmly established the nation must have an army and navy adequate to protect the rights of its citizens; and when such a Court is established the nations must be prepared to maintain its decrees against any recalcitrant nation. The last-published letter he wrote illustrated the judicial poise of a nature always controlled by a passion for even-handed justice. "We should insist," he said, "that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else." At that time he also said: "There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also—he is not an American at all. We have- room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag."

This appeal of Mr. Roosevelt to the American people for justice, equal rights, and a fair opportunity for all gives symmetry and cohesion to his varied administrations as Civil Service Commissioner, Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army, Governor of New York, and President of the United States. It made him as bitter enemies in influential quarters as any public man in American politics has ever known; but it also made him the most widely admired and best-loved American of his time.

And it did more. It went far toward converting American politics from a trade to a profession; it inspired his colleagues and his party associates; it summoned into political activity followers in both parties and in all sections of the country. Men had thought of politics as a trafBc which no man could enter without dishonor. His life proved to them that the highest success is possible to honor, courage, and purity if mated to ability. It raised the ideals and the standards of public life for the entire American people. Its influence in creating the genuine and self-sacrificing patriotism which called the nation into this world war with a voice which love of ease and dread of war could not resist cannot be estimated. And it has done more than any other one influence, if not more than all other influences combined, to inspire the citizens of this country with a real faith in the intelligence and virtue of their fellowmen, and so in the practicability of that self-government which is the foundation of a true democracy because of a true brotherhood of man.
A  MERCHANT   FRIEND   DESCRIBES
ROOSEVELT

I called on a New York City merchant and said to him, "I am writing a book on Theodore Roosevelt, as a tribute of love for him. Remembering what opportunities you had to know him, and what mutual affection there was between you, I have come to ask as a favor that you give me a brief pen sketch of him as you saw him, to go into my volume." He replied, "You know I am a business man and not an author. Besides, I am just starting on a long ocean voyage and have every moment of time on shipboard full of business laid out for me. And yet how happy I should be if I were able to do what you ask, and put my little tribute of love in with yours. I will see; if the spirit should move me, you may hear from me.'' Sure enough, about three weeks after, I received a letter from him on shipboard, in which he enclosed the following description of our hero friend:
Roosevelt's character was so many sided, his activities and accomplishments were so diverse, that an analysis of him is very difficult. Roosevelt can be best understood by saying that he was a symbol of America. He had all of the qualities of the American nation; all of the qualities developed to almost ideal form, and if he had weaknesses, they were ones that were in common with those of America. The national characteristics, such as love of right or justice, of liberty, the nation's virility, and its great spirit of progress, were all expressed in this typical American. It was natural that Roosevelt should be an emblem of America, as he was a product of American ideals and at the same time the greatest producer of American ideals for a generation.

Roosevelt had the courage to do what he felt was right, always, and entirely oblivious of consequences. He never said anything for effect. Whatever he said, he said because it was in him to say it. Whatever he did, he did because he could not help doing it. His thought, his spirit had to have full expression, and it burst from him in every word and every action.

He had a quality which was so peculiarly one of the American nation that we call special attention to it. It is the great power of assimilation. America, as no other nation, has the power to assimilate whatever comes in contact with it. Men come from every nation of the world and are almost immediately absorbed and assimilated. They take her ideals, adopt her mode of thought, her language, and after a time even assume her facial and physical traits. Roosevelt had this same great faculty. He molded the thought, he affected the character, he uplifted the spirit of almost everyone that he touched. No one who approached him with an open mind went away without consciously or unconsciously taking with him something of Roosevelt. I believe that he gave more to the individual men of America than any man in its history. I was very much impressed by this assimilating power one day at his home at lunch. He had asked to his home a Spanish poet, a Catholic philosopher, and a Southern lady, a widow of one of his old friends. What widely divergent views of life the three had, but before lunch. was over all had caught Roosevelt's spirit and they were all thinking with Roosevelt, and all feeling that they had found something in common with him that must bind them permanently to him. During the luncheon the Spanish poet brought up the subject of classical and modern Spanish literature; the thought occurred to me that the Colonel would not be prepared to discuss this subject. On the contrary, however, he knew Spanish literature thoroughly and discussed it with ease and with clearly defined opinions that showed that he had not only read, but had studied it comprehensively. There was something so sincere in his approach to a subject, something so fair In its discussion, and something so deeply human in his whole attitude to it that one could not help falling in with the harmony of bis thought and of his spirit.

The atmosphere of his home was so intimate and fully laden with his deepest feeling that one treats it with some hesitation. He lived simply but with dignity, without formality but with the forms that are part of good manners and refinement. His home at Oyster Bay, on a hill overlooking the waters of the Sound, had the form of a Long Island cottage but the feeling of a palace. The main room of the house was a large living-room or library, where Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt received, and the Colonel told me that he tried to keep in this room only the things of which he was fondest. Its walls were lined with shelves that contained books that were his constant companions. He was a voracious reader and from the thousands of books that he read he selected for this room only those from which he did not want to be separated, and with these books he had a familiarity that was remarkable. In a conversation or discussion on any subject he would say, "That reminds
me of a character in	," or "Let us see what 	says
of that," and would go to one of the long rows of books, select the one that he wanted and turn directly to a page and read the passage to which he had referred. With a remarkable memory he seemed to carry in his mind the contents of all of these books.

Besides his books he had about him in his living room a few objects that he prized, especially among which I remember a bronze by Frederick Remington, which was presented to him by the Rough Riders, which he never tired of admiring. In other rooms of the house he had his trophies and gifts, the things that recalled to him varied experiences from Ills hunting expeditions in Central Africa, to his visits to the Courts of Europe. Among his trophies the one that especially attracted my attention was the butt of one of his rifles that was shredded by the teeth of a mountain lion with whom he had had some dealings at close quarters. Among his gifts he enjoyed showing an old edition of the Niebelungenlied, which was sent to him toy William of Germany. It was a very large book and scrawled over the whole flyleaf was an original autograph verse signed by the Kaiser. This the Colonel would delight in reading aloud to his friends, adding that it wa3 perfect doggerel, which in deed it was.

Bach of the hundreds of relics bore a vivid memory to him and suggested anecdotes that he would tell with indescribable humor, and one marveled as he did, at the diverse experiences that had been recorded in his life. From each experience he seemed to have acquired knowledge, and not only this, but had laid it away in the storehouse of his memory to be picked out and used at the opportune moment.

In seeing the -Colonel meet people of all nationalities and of all stations in life, his versatility was simply marvellous. I shall never cease to be grateful that this great and good man ever came into my life and love.
This portrait so life-like, beside being the tribute of a friend, fairly expresses the opinion of the business men of the United States with reference to Mr. Roosevelt.