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IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 By Lawrence F. Abbot

CHAPTER FOUR

STATESMANSHIP

  THEORETICALLY, the words "statesmanship" and "politics" are synonymous. The primary meaning of "politics" is given in the Century Dictionary as: "The art or science of government"; and the same authority defines "statesmanship" as: The qualifications of "a man who is versed in the art of government." But the development of democracy among English-speaking peoples has given rise to secondary meanings of the terms which involve a marked differentiation between them. The Century Dictionary adds to its first definition of "statesmanship" that it is: "Political skill in the higher sense" and asserts that "politics" usually means, in American practice at least, "the art or vocation of guiding or influencing the policy of a government through the organization of a party among its citizens; the art of influencing public opinion, attracting and marshalling voters; in an evil sense, the schemes and intrigues of political parties, or of cliques or individual politicians." The same lexicographers who tell us that the word "politics" is derived from the Greek word icoMTijs, citizen, emphasize the degraded side of politicians. Is this because of the instinctive distrust of democracy on the part of the French and English intellectuals who made our earliest dictionaries ?

For some reason or other, which it would be interesting to inquire into but which is not germane to my purpose, mankind has always looked somewhat superciliously upon the mechanics of any art. The poet is more highly honoured than the grammarian, the painter than the chemist, the violinist than the physicist, the aviator than the machinist. And yet we could not have the poetry of Keats without the men who have grubbed out the rules of syntax and prosody; the paintings of Monet without the workers who have toiled over the chemistry of colours and the laws of light; the music of Fritz Kreisler without those who have discovered in the workshop and laboratory the principles of harmonies and resonance; the heroic "aces" on the western front without the grimy artisans in overalls who adjusted and tuned up the engines of the battle-planes. So, too, we could not have statesmen if there were no politicians to create the machinery without which statesmanship would be inoperative. Nevertheless, it has long been the fashion to treat politics and politicians as if they were necessarily contemptible. James Russell Lowell once said: "I always hated politics in the ordinary sense of the word." James Bryce, in his classic and monumental "American Commonwealth," speaks of "the local and dirty work of politics," and gives one of his chapters the significant title: "Why the best men do not go into politics."

Now with this secondary—although, unfortunately, customary—interpretation of the terms "politics," "politicians," "political parties" Theodore Roosevelt had no sympathy whatever. He knew, of course, that politics is often corrupt; that politicians are often ignorant, selfish, and dishonourable; that political parties are often narrow, hide-bound, and short-sighted. But he did not believe that these evils are essential to and inseparable from politics any more than reactionary dogmatism and inquisitorial cruelty are essential and irremediable characteristics of the Church. He believed that politics and political activity in the administrative sense—in the machine sense, so to speak—are the very basis of democracy. Politics meant citizenship to him and he thought that every citizen should take some part in political activities. Moreover, he believed that delibeately to make politics a profession, a means of livelihood, is no more unworthy or undignified than to make a living from the practice of medicine or of law, provided that the professional politician puts service to the State as his main object. There are doubtless quacks among the doctors, pettifoggers among the lawyers, and hypocrites among the clergy, but we do not for that reason condemn all men who choose Law, Medicine, or the Church for their life work and are supported by the proper emoluments of their services.

It is necessary to understand this point of view in order properly to interpret Theodore Roosevelt's life-long attitude toward what is too often contemptuously called "practical politics." The very mainspring of his tireless activities was statesmanship—the framing, shaping, administering, and maintaining of those great policies of national and international relations that make civilized society a permanent, vital, and progressive organism. He lived, however, not in the clouds but with both feet on the ground, and he knew that great State policies cannot be obtained unless the political machine that produces them is kept in good running order. Statesmanship is like a valuable and beautifully patterned silk; politics is the intricate loom on which it is woven. Roosevelt's eye was always on the silk; that is what he was ultimately striving for; but he was never bored, or irritated, or disgusted, as statesmen of the highly sensitized type of James Russell Lowell or John Hay often are, by the necessity of tinkering with the loom, or of soiling his hands with the lubricating oil, or of spending tedious hours in replacing broken or worn-out parts. He felt a zest to the very last for this mechanical side of statesmanship.

Among my papers I find a letter written to my father by Mr. Roosevelt and dated the White House, February 23, 1906. It discloses, it seems to me in a way pertinent to what I am contending for in this chapter, Roosevelt's own attitude of mind toward the machinery of politics. The circumstances that prompted the letter are as follows:
In the November elections of 1905 the defeat of machine-made tickets in both the Republican and Democratic parties in various states was so marked that the Outlook gave a large amount of space to the phenomenon calling it: '"The Rout of the Bosses." Massachusetts was nearly lost to the Republican party. In commenting upon this surprising reversal of form in a banner Republican state, the Outlook said editorially:
Senator Lodge is a boss of agreeable personality—a gentleman of culture, a "scholar in politics"—against whose personal integrity no suspicion has ever been uttered, but he has undertaken to tell the people of Massachusetts what they ought to wish instead of asking them what they do wish, and every vote for Mr. Whitney was less a vote for reciprocity than a vote against the spirit and methods of a political dictator.
This drew from Mr. Roosevelt the letter above referred to, in which he said:
You would be surprised to know how many men have spoken to me about the article on Lodge. 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, in any article. 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 do not live in New England.    But he is an eminently fit successor of Webster and Sumner in the senatorship from Massachusetts.
In other words, Roosevelt believed in political organizations; he believed that those organizations must have managers, often miscalled "bosses," just as every business man of common sense knows that factories and ranches and railroads must have foremen or bosses. The political manager, however, must exercise his function in order to get the best product out of the machine, which is the general welfare not merely of the party but of all the citizens.

Nowhere else in his writings, so far as I know, has Roosevelt expressed so clearly his buoyant enjoyment of his work, of its very obstacles and rebuffs, as he did spontaneously in an address to the students of the University of Cambridge on May 26, 1910, when he received the honorary degree of LL.D. His discourse on this occasion, as I have said in a preface of his collected "African and European Addresses" published by the Putnams, was not like his Romanes lecture at Oxford, part of the academic ceremony connected with the conferring of the honorary degree. It was spoken to an audience of undergraduates when, after the academic exercises in the Senate House, he was elected to honorary membership in the Union Society, the well-known Cambridge debating club which has trained some of the best public speakers of England. At Oxford the doctors and dignitaries cracked the jokes—in Latin—while the undergraduates were highly decorous. At Cambridge, on the other hand, the students indulged in the traditional pranks which often lend a colour of gayety to University ceremonies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Roosevelt entered heartily into the spirit of the undergraduates, and it was evident that they, quite as heartily, liked his understanding of the fact that the best university and college life consists in a judicious mixture of the grave and the gay. The honour that these undergraduates paid to their guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned, and its genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note of pleasantry.

Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to university students and what he said—although brief, extemporaneous, and even unpremeditated— was the genuine expression of his philosophy of life. The speech was frequently interrupted by the laughter and applause of the audience, and the theory that Mr. Roosevelt propounded, namely, that any man in any walk of life may achieve genuine success simply by developing ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree, was widely quoted and discussed by the press of Great Britain. I quote the following passage from that speech because it confirms the point I am endeavouring to make.
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We have in the United States an organization composed of the men who forty-five years ago fought to a finish the great Civil War. One thing that has always appealed to me in that organization is that all of the men admitted are on a perfect equality, provided the records show that their duty was well done. Whether a man served as a lieutenant-general or an eighteen-year-old recruit, so long as he was able to serve for six months and did his duty in his appointed place, then he is called Comrade, and stands on an exact equality with the other men. The same principle should shape our association in ordinary civil life.

I am not speaking cant to you. I remember once sitting at a table with six or eight other public officials, and each was explaining how he regarded being in public life—how only the sternest sense of duty prevented him from resigning his office, and how the strain of working for a thankless constituency was telling upon him—and that nothing but the fact that he felt he ought to sacrifice his comfort to the welfare of his country kept him in the arduous life of statesmanship. It went round the table until it came to my turn. This was during my first term of office as President of the United States. I said: "Now, gentlemen, I do not wish there to be any misunderstanding. I like my job, and I want to keep it for four years longer." [Loud laughter and applause.] I don't think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more. I have enjoyed my life and my work because I thoroughly believe that success—the real success—does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position. There is no man here to-day who has not the chance so to shape his life after he leaves this university that he shall have the right to feel, when his life ends, that he has made a real success of it; and his making a real success of it does not in the least depend upon the prominence of the position he holds.
The spirit lying back of these words explains, it seems to me, the real joy he had in his rows with the United States Senate—rows which almost drove Secretary John Hay to his grave—or in contests with political bosses like Senator "Tom" Platt.

I remember an occasion when I was one of a luncheon party at the White House—one of those never-to-be-forgotten luncheons at which President Roosevelt was in the habit of collecting all sorts of interesting guests from all parts of the world. The place of honour was filled by an official of the British Government who was visiting the United States for the first time. I was seated two or three places away from the President, next to Governor Curry of New Mexico, who had been a member of Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" in the Spanish War, had lived a somewhat tempestuous career on the western frontier (where he had shot and killed one or two desperadoes in pursuance of his duty as sheriff), and was now filling honourably and admirably the high office to which the President had appointed him. Roosevelt was then engaged in one of his periodical contests with the Senate over some important legislation of reform connected with the "Predatory Trusts" or Conservation—I forget which—and, being much interested in the contest, I had that morning visited the Senate Chamber, where I had happened especially to notice Senator Platt of New York, the arch-enemy of all progressive Republicans, sitting inert like a death's head, with sunken eyes, and appearing to be in the last stages of physical decay.

Soon after we sat down at the table the President leaned over and said: "Lawrence, I want you to know Governor Curry; he's well worth knowing in spite of his homicidal tendencies!"

"I have already introduced myself to Governor Curry, Mr. President," I replied, " and I wish you would persuade him to go over to the Senate Chamber, from which I have just come, and exercise his homicidal skill upon the senators from my state!"

"A good suggestion!" was the President's retort. "In fact," he added, showing his teeth in a characteristic smile, "he could take a pot shot at the whole lot of them without doing a great amount of harm to the country!"
The undisguised amazement of the British guest of honour showed that he did not understand, as everyone else at the table did, that this was merely a symptom of that high good humour in which Roosevelt gave and took political blows in contests the like of which completely embittered President Andrew Johnson, led President Cleveland to make serious protests, and even upset the equanimity of so philosophical a temperament as that of Washington. Roosevelt, however, was not a philosopher; he was simply human. He took the hard knocks of life, not with resignation but with a kind of boyish zest and joy. When attacked he hit hard in return, but without bitterness or rancour. And, in spite of his not-infrequent conflicts with Congress, his opponents had a kind of subconscious fondness for him even when they were exchanging blows.

E. L. Godkin—the brilliant editor of the New York Evening Post and founder of the Nation (the present character of which must almost make him turn in his grave)—and Theodore Roosevelt were at swords' points for many years. Godkin, the older man of the two, who professed and doubtless did have a faith in theoretical democracy but actually detested democratic affiliations and associations, deplored in "young Theodore" the tendencies which he thought he saw toward jingoism and "practical politics"; above all, he could not tolerate Roosevelt's perfectly open and frank conferences with "Boss" Platt of New York State. On the other hand, Roosevelt regarded Godkin as the archetype of the uncompromising mugwump and unpractical idealist who thought that the seven or eight million citizens of New York could be governed exactly as he governed the subscribers to his newspapers, that is by admirably written messages and semi-satirical essays composed in the seclusion of a private sanctum. I am a little dubious, therefore, as to what Theodore Roosevelt's comment would be if he could hear me say, as I now proceed to, that 'I think Mr. Godkin, without knowing it of course, denned Theodore Roosevelt's philosophy as well as it could possibly be denned in so brief a compass. In an essay entitled "Criminal Politics," first printed in 1890 in the North American Review, Mr. Godkin says:
Politics is a practical art. It deals with men as they are, and not as we wish them to be. There is hardly one of us who, if he had the power of peopling New York anew, would not make an immense number of changes among its present inhabitants. But the problem before the wise and good is simply how to give the present inhabitants, such as they are, with all their imperfections on their heads, the best attainable government.
Theodore Roosevelt never made any claim to be either wise or good—although the universal testimony of his fellow citizens, now that he is gone, is that he was both. But he did profoundly believe in dealing with men as they are and he strove for the best attainable government that imperfect mankind is capable of organizing in a democracy where the good, the bad, and the indifferent must somehow manage to work together.

This was the constant political background-steadily growing more distinct as his life developed —of his statesmanship. Only in the reflection and perspective of that background may the achievements of his genius as a statesman be intelligently measured and estimated.
What were some of those achievements? I shall try to interpret the most important in the following categorical fashion.
NATIONALISM.—The basic doctrine of Roosevelt's philosophy of statesmanship, the doctrine that ran like an always-visible golden thread through the entire fabric of his words and acts as a citizen and publicist, was Nationalism. His belief in a strong and virile development of national character and national action will be found in his very earliest utterances. It is sometimes thought that his urgency of what, during the last four years of his life, he called " one hundred-per-cent Americanism." was suggested to him by the dangers that threatened the unity if not the very existence of the American people during the dark days of the European war. But he had given expression to the same creed in almost the same words in the first book he ever published. When he was twenty-two years old he wrote his "Naval History of the War of 1812." It is so sound and fair a piece of historical writing that it has been adopted, I believe, by the British Admiralty as a standard authority on the naval battles of the first struggle of the English-speaking people to establish free-dom of the seas. Take the following passage for example from that naval history:
They [certain aspects of the War of 1812] teach nothing new; it is the old, old lesson, that a miserly economy in preparation may in the end involve a lavish outlay of men and money, which, after all, comes too late to more than offset partially the evils produced by the original shortsighted parsimony. , . . The necessity for an efficient navy is so evident that only our almost incredible shortsightedness prevents our at once preparing one.
Does this not sound as if Roosevelt had written it in 1915 when, as a man nearly sixty years of age, he was laboriously endeavouring to arouse his fellow countrymen to the paramount duty and necessity of national preparedness ?
This same doctrine was expressed to me in a letter which he wrote from the White House in January, 1903. It was in reply to one I had written about the judicial settlement of international disputes, saying that I believed that, in the last analysis, they must rest on the physical power of the court to make them effective. He wrote as follows :
Good for you! Important though it is that we should get the Hague Tribunal to act in this case, where it can properly act, it is very much more important that we have a first-class navy and an efficient, though small, army. No Hague Court will save us if we come short in these respects.
While I was talking over the war situation with Roosevelt one evening in the summer of 1917 in the north room at Sagamore Hill he said two things which seemed to me worth jotting down at the time as typical expressions of his belief in the necessity of a strong physical basis for both the individual and the nation.

The first was a reply which he said he once made to a boy who expressed the fear that he might be taken for a "goody-goody" if he followed a certain course that seemed to be called for by ethical principles. " Be always ready to fight if necessary. If you are ready to fight, you can be as good as you please and nobody is likely to complain."

The second was this succinct statement with regard to national vigour: 
  
"A race must do something else besides work, fight, and breed; but if it does not do these three it will never live to do anything else."

It was this conviction of the righteousness of national vigour and of national self-defense that led him, when Assistant Secretary of the Navy— in opposition to the wishes and almost in violation of the definite orders of his chief, Secretary Long-to prepare the American Navy for the hostilities with Spain which he foresaw more clearly than most of his superiors in office. He did this by framing an important Personnel Bill, by accumulating ammunition, by encouraging the Navy in gunnery practice, and by distributing ships and supplies in such a way that the decisive victories of Admirals Dewey and Sampson were assured. It was this conviction that led him, when President, to send the Battle Fleet around the world in 1907, a feat of naval seamanship unparalleled before or since. The foreign experts said that it could not be done; that to send a Battle Fleet across the high seas, with all the attendant ships necessary for its maintenance, and to manoeuvre it through distant straits and into unaccustomed harbours, would inevitably end in disaster. The dramatic and complete success of this unprecedented adventure did more to convince the European nations of the possibilities of efficiency in a self-governing democracy than untold volumes of blue books and state papers.

I speak with some confidence of Roosevelt's purpose in sending the Battle Fleet round the world because he talked somewhat fully to me about it—as will be seen from a passage in a letter which he wrote to me from Oyster Bay on August 29, 1907. It is proper, by the way, to interpolate the fact that the New York Sun, in those days, was under a different proprietorship and policy from those under which it is published to-day. Its present proprietor is Frank Munsey, a friend and supporter of Roosevelt, who bought the paper several years after the following letter was written:
There has been one extraordinary development during the last few days. I had not supposed that the Sun could surprise me. I know that there was no form of attack upon me which it would hesitate to make, and I also know that there was no type of corruption which would cause it even to turn a hair. But even corrupt men sometimes have other virtues and I had supposed that the Sun would remain loyal to its past in supporting the Navy and in refusing to sanction an attack upon the Administration which would cause the country discredit in foreign eyes. But the Wall Street campaign (I hate the term but I do not know what other to use) is so violent that it really looks as if they would go to almost any length. Upon my word I have never seen labour leaders go to greater extremes. They have actually taken to as sailing the plan for sending the Battleship Fleet to the Pacific. Would it be of sufficient interest to have your brother and you come out here for lunch any day that suits you so that I can put before you in full all the reasons for the step? They have developed very rapidly.
It is hardly necessary to say that this invitation was promptly accepted. The reasons that Roosevelt gave me for his great naval venture were three in number:

First: As has already been intimated, he believed that the Navy is our first line of defence. He wished to have it not only powerful but maintained in a constant state of the highest efficiency. He wished both officers and men to have as nearly as possible the experience which they would undergo in fighting and manoeuvring on the high seas. He felt that such a voyage would produce a spirit of confidence and of practical skill such as could be developed in no other way.

Second: He wanted to impress the country with the virtues and the capacities of a great navy. He knew that the best way to get American public opinion to support his policies for a strong navy was to arrest the attention and arouse the enthusiasm of the country in a dramatic fashion.

Third, and perhaps most important of all: He profoundly desired to maintain peace between Japan and the United States whose relations at that time were strained, owing to the situation in California. He had insisted that the real rights of the Japanese in California should be respected, but he was equally determined to insist that the Japanese should respect the United States. "It is," he said, "rightly considered a great compliment for a naval fleet to visit a foreign country. For that reason, as a token of American friendliness for the Japanese people, I have directed the fleet to make its first important call upon Japan. I hope in this way to give the Japanese a visible sign of our friendship. At the same time, I want to impress upon them the fact that if the United States should ever be compelled to fight at sea its naval power is one to be respected."

This visit of the Fleet to Japan was not in the slightest degree a threat, nor did Roosevelt so regard it. It was a visit of friendship—but made under such conditions as to strengthen the dignity of the United States and Japan's respect for the power and determination of the American people. In a word, it put into visible form the doctrine which he expressed in one of those aphorisms that have become inseparably connected with his name: " Speak softly, but carry a big stick."

   At the same time he was somewhat anxious about the Japanese situation. There was and is a chauvinist or jingo party in Japan just as there is a chauvinist or jingo faction in the United States. If Japan intended to make war, Roosevelt intended to be prepared for it and he told me that his instructions were that the Fleet was always to be prepared for action no matter where it was. He did not propose to have anybody "pull a gun" on him and tell him to throw up his hands. He said that in an official speech privately addressed to a group of higher officers of the Fleet he had told them if war came and any commander lost a ship because he was surprised or unprepared he might just as well never come home himself.

What the effect of this voyage was upon the Japanese Government I do not of my own knowledge know, but I can testify that the Germans were particularly impressed. In 1910, during Roosevelt's memorable tour through Europe, I was present at a reception given to him jointly by our naval and our military attaches in Berlin. The guests, with three or four exceptions, were distinguished officers of the Kaiser's army and navy. The naval men in particular did not conceal their eagerness to meet the man who had performed a military deed at sea which they had regarded, when it was undertaken, as the fool hardy venture of an inexperienced braggart. More than one of them said to me that such an achievement was a stroke of genius and they literally crowded about Roosevelt eager to shake his hand as if he had been a kind of modern Neptune. It was perfectly manifest that their respect for him, and for the country which he represented, had been enormously increased by the fact that he had done what they, confident in their own skill as seamen, had predicted that neither he nor they nor any one else could do. It is no detraction from the heroic and splendid performance of the American Navy in the European war to believe, as I do, that if Mr. Roosevelt had been President in 1914, and had notified the Kaiser—as he certainly would have done—that he would throw the American Navy into the struggle the moment the foot of an invading German soldier was set upon the soil of Belgium the world would have been spared much of the bloodshed of the past four years and much of the chaos of the present day.

But Theodore Roosevelt's nationalism was not exclusive of internationalism; it was, rather, complementary to it. He believed that the nations of the earth could not and should not live together as members of one family like a gigantic Brook Farm or a Oneida Community but as independent and strongly developed families in a well-organized neighbourhood. He used to say that a man who professes to love all other families as much as he loves his own is likely not only to be a failure as a husband and father but also to be an undesirable neighbour. "Keep your eye on such a man," he once remarked to me; " he is not only foolish but he is liable to be dangerous." Roosevelt had no patience with the communistic vagaries of the French revolutionary philosophers. While socially and economically he was much more democratic than Hamilton or even, I venture to think, than Washington, he liked them better and trusted them more than Jefferson because of Jefferson's flirtations with the unpractical and closet idealists of the First French Republic.

In trying to interpret Mr. Roosevelt's nationalism I do not know how I can do better than to quote a passage from his "Life of Gouverneur Morris," in the American Statesmen Series. It was written when he was twenty-nine years old:
Jefferson led the Democrats to victory only when he had learned to acquiesce thoroughly in some of the fundamental principles of Federalism, and the government of himself and his successors was good chiefly in so far as it followed out the theories of the Hamiltonians; while Hamilton and the Federalists fell from power because they could not learn the one great truth taught by Jefferson—that in America a statesman should trust the people, and should endeavour to secure to each man all possible individual liberty, confident that he will use it aright. The old-school Jeffersonian theorists believed in a "strong people and a weak government." Lincoln was the first who showed how a strong people might have a strong government and yet remain the freest on earth. He seized—half unwittingly—all that was best and wisest in the traditions of Federalism; he was the true successor of the Federalist leaders; but he grafted on their system a profound belief that the great heart of the nation beat for truth, honour, and liberty.
This estimate of Lincoln, made before Roosevelt was thirty years old, became stronger and stronger during his life. He had a kind of divine reverence for Lincoln. He once told me that whenever he was facing a puzzling problem of action he would ask himself: "What would Lincoln have done in such a case ?"—and would then try to shape his course according to what he believed would have been Lincoln's example.

During the Progressive campaign in 1912 Roosevelt made a speech entitled "The New Nationalism" which he later expounded by other speeches afterward collected and published in a fairly good-sized volume. These pronouncements at once attracted the attention of the country and created almost a furore of public discussion. It was said by his opponents that the theories and proposals in these speeches were subversive of the Constitution, that Roosevelt wished to alter the very structure of our government. His proposals, however, except in some minor details, were not at all new or radical when measured by his utterances and acts over a long period of years. They were simply a restatement, in more elaborate form, of the thought expressed in the foregoing quotation from the Life of Morris. He wished to show that a strong centralized government is not only compatible with but necessary to the protection of popular rights and even-handed justice in a representative democracy. Provided that the people have the free and untrammelled right to select their representatives at the ballot box, their best protection, he believed, lies not in the diffusion but in the concentration of power coupled with direct responsibility to the people for the exercise of that power. This brings me logically to what I believe was the next most important article in his creed of statesmanship:
POLITICAL, INDUSTRIAL, AND SOCIAL REFORM.—While he was an ardent Nationalist and believed in a centralized government in which the ablest men were given great responsibilities and held to strict accountability, he recognized that as efficiency is a greater power for good so corruption is a greater power for evil in a strongly centralized government. He therefore endeavoured not only to improve the standards and personnel of government officials but, by what was literally preaching and exhorting, to arouse a sense of civic responsibility among the great body of citizens. No President, probably, has issued more or longer Messages to Congress, but while these papers were technically addressed to Congress they were really addressed to the whole country. He often spoke of his public and official speeches as "preaching," and he more than once said that he put what he had to say in the form of sermons because he had such a "bully pulpit." The result was that he attracted to his side and surrounded himself with official colleagues and associates who had the same enthusiasm and the same high standards that he himself had.

Political service in office took on a different meaning under the inspiration of his theory and practice. I think it not unfair to say that forty years ago a man in public office, particularly of a subordinate character, was generally regarded with some suspicion by the so-called "better citizens" until he had proved himself innocent. It was not an uncommon assumption that every man in public office took the position because he could get his hands and feet in the public trough. This at least is my recollection of the political atmosphere in 1880 when I cast my first presidential vote for Garfield. It was at this date that Roosevelt was elected to the New York Legislature. Roosevelt did more than any other American, in my judg-m£nt, to modify this attitude completely. At the close of his administration the public began to feel, as it ought always to feel, that the badge of public office is a badge of respect; it began to regard Federal officials as well as Federal clerks as it regards the officers and enlisted men in the Army and the Navy. ,

Certainly this was what Mr. Roosevelt wanted to accomplish. He believed that a man or a woman who works for the Government in any civil capacity ought to be actuated by the same patriotic motives and regard the service with the same patriotic respect that prevail in the Army and the Navy. No President has done more than did Roosevelt to discredit and put out of joint the old Jacksonian theory of party government that "To the victors belong the spoils."

Along with this work of political reform he undertook, in the face of the most overwhelming difficulties, the reform of the industrial corporations. He did not believe, to quote the words of President Wilson, that "the American people are living a life of economic serfdom," but he was convinced that there was altogether too much secret and corrupt meddling with politics by the corporations for their own selfish benefit. He was a believer in the corporation as an instrument of industry. He did not at all think that badness is an essential element of bigness. He had not the slightest objection to the corporations doing a business on a gigantic scale, provided that these operations were honest, above-board, visible, subject to proper government control, and based on a just, fair, and civilized treatment both of employees and of the small investor. As a matter of fact, he cordially disliked the attitude of the extremists who seemed to feel that the corporations were enemies of society with whom there could be no possible basis of association.
In February, 1903, while he was struggling to obtain Federal legislation to put an end to railway rebates, he wrote me a long letter from the White House which contained the following paragraph:
No respectable railroad or respectable shipping business can openly object to the Rebate Bill; and the Nelson amendment and the bill to expedite legislation, to both of which there has been most violent opposition, have now been rather sullenly acquiesced in. But as soon as the business interests showed any symptoms of acquiescence, certain individuals at once asserted that the legislation was bad, because they did not want it unless it frightened the corporations.
He was not trying to destroy the corporations; he was not even trying to frighten them; he was trying to cooperate with them in making them real servants of society. His differentiation between "good" trusts and "bad" trusts was ridiculed at the time, but the European war has demonstrated the soundness of the principle. Tremendous organization is needed to accomplish tremendous tasks. The organization is to be judged by its spirit, its aims, and its accomplishments—not by its size.
His successful attacks upon the Standard Oil Company and the Sugar Trust were not made because these organizations were big, but because of certain pernicious practices. He could not tolerate what one of his colleagues, Senator Beveridge, has defined as "invisible government"—that secret partnership between "big business" and pliable politicians which grew to such huge proportions after the Civil War and reached its climax just about the time that Mr. Roosevelt became President. Under his administration the Federal Department of Commerce and Labour was established and the policy of government regulation of railways was greatly strengthened. He was one of the first public men in this country to espouse the doctrine of industrial democracy, that is to say, the doctrine that the workers and toilers shall not only have their proper share of the profits of industry but also some voice in the management of industry. In this connection it may not be out of place for me to quote from a letter that Mr. Roosevelt wrote to me in the summer of 1907:
I continually get points from the Outlook. If you do not object, I am going to work into one of my speeches your admirable little thesis on adding democracy in industry to democracy in political rights, education, and religion. You have exactly hit upon my purpose, but you phrase my purpose better than I have ever phrased it myself.
What the Outlook had said, eliciting this comment, was that as the Reformation and the emigration of the Puritans to the Western Hemisphere had established the equal rights or freedom of men in their religious activities; as the American Revolution and the Civil War had established the equal rights or freedom of men in politics; and as the establishment of the American public school system had established equal rights or freedom in education; so the American people, perhaps haltingly but with evident purpose, were entering upon a movement to establish equal rights or freedom in industry. Equal rights in religion of course does not mean that every man shall be a bishop; in politics, that every man shall be a United States senator; or in education, that every man shall be a college president. But it does mean that every man shall have some kind of a voice in choosing his bishop, his senator, or the head of his educational system. So the workers who constitute what is called labour are not merely to be paid their real share of the total product of labour, but they are to have some opportunity to determine and regulate the conditions under which they shall work. It should never be forgotten, I think, that Mr. Roosevelt was one of the foremost pioneers in the movement, now rapidly accelerating, to establish Industrial Democracy, where all men shall have equal rights under the law and where there shall be no privileged or special interests exempt from the operations of the law.
CONSERVATION OF NATIONAL RESOURCES.—The old theory with regard to the natural wealth of the United States was that the forests and lumber, the water power, the oil wells, the coal, and other minerals belong to the private owner of the land to exploit and sell as he pleases for private profit. Along with this theory ran the policy of the Government, undoubtedly desirable and beneficial within proper limits, of giving away vast tracts of public land to the pioneer who would develop the natural wealth and so contribute to the general welfare of the country.

This system led not only to the concentration of riches in private hands but to the rapid exhaustion of certain forms of national wealth, especially lumber-bearing forests. The natural desire for quick profits was proving to be more powerful than the cautionary motive of preserving our capital resources for future generations. If Mr. Roosevelt did not invent the term "Conservation of National Resources," he was the first great leader in this country to espouse and establish the new theory with regard to our national wealth. This theory is that the Government—acting for the people, who are the real owners of public property—shall permanently retain the fee in public lands, leaving their products to be developed by private capital under leases, which are limited in their duration and which give the Government complete power to regulate the industrial operations of the lessees.

On June 8, 1908, Mr. Roosevelt, then President, appointed a National Conservation Commission. This commission made an inventory of our naional wealth, which was published in 1909. It was the first inventory of its kind in history. Gif-ford Pinchot, an intimate personal friend and official colleague of President Roosevelt's, was chairman of the Commission and Mr. Pinchot, with the approval and support of Roosevelt, rapidly became the public representative of the Conservation movement. The country has by no means yet succeeded in putting an end to the extraordinary waste of its public wealth. In the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1919, Mr. Arthur D. Little, an accomplished and able chemical engineer of Boston, writes as follows:
The wastes in lumbering are proverbial, and, as Mark Twain said about the weather, we all talk about it, but nothing is done. With a total annual cut of forty billion feet, board-measure, of merchantable lumber, another seventy billion feet are wasted in the field and at the mill. In the yellow-pine belt the values in rosin, turpentine, ethyl alcohol, pine oil, tar, charcoal, and paper-stock lost in the waste are three or four times the value of the lumber produced. Enough yellow-pine pulp-wood is consumed in burners, or left to rot, to make double the total tonnage of paper produced in the United States. Meanwhile, our paper-makers memorialize the community on the scarcity of paper-stock, and pay $18 a cord for pulp-wood which they might buy for $3. It takes many years to produce a crop of wood, and wood-waste, which now constitutes from one-half to two-thirds of the entire tree, is too valuable a raw material to be longer regarded merely as an encumbrance, except by an improvident management.

    But the wastes in lumbering, colossal though they are in absolute amount, are trivial compared to the losses which our estate has suffered, and still endures, from forest fires. The French properly regard as a national calamity the destruction of perhaps a thousand square miles of their fine forests by German shells. And yet the photographs that they show of this wreck and utter demolition may be reproduced indefinitely on ten million acres of our forest lands, swept each year by equally devastating fire for which our own people are responsible. You have doubtless already forgotten that forest fire which last autumn, in Minnesota, burned over an area half as large again as Massachusetts, destroying more than twenty-five towns, killing four hundred people, and leaving thirteen thousand homeless.
Mr. Little is somewhat beside the mark in saying: "We all talk about it but nothing is done." Something has been done. The most important work of President Roosevelt in domestic statesmanship, next to his injection of moral ideas and moral impetus into administrative politics, was his inauguration and fostering of Conservation. I have space only to state that opinion here. The reader who is interested will find in the New International Encyclopaedia under the title "Conservation" the best brief account, which has come under my eye, of the results and purposes of the Conservation movement inaugurated by Roosevelt with the aid of Gifford Pinchot.

Roosevelt was never greatly interested in mere questions of finance, nor in economics on its merely statistical side. But the moment that he perceived the human relationships of an economic question he threw himself into the problem with his fullest energies. It was the human aspect of Conservation that aroused his championship. Some other things that he did, as President, were so much more spectacular that there is danger of his leadership in Conservation being lost sight of. On the contrary, it deserves the fullest study of future historians.

The abject pacifism and the wasteful folly of the Chinese with regard to their natural resources stirred him about equally and he often referred to the lack of patriotic nationalism on the one hand, and to private greed in exploiting our national resources on the other as tendencies which, if persisted in, would "Chinafy" the United States. He believed that the incentives of private profit and of brave and virile pioneering are important factors in developing American character and American citizenship. But he also believed that they should be directed not by the whims of individuals but by the common and united determination of all the people.
COLONIAL POLICY.—Ky determining, at the close of the Spanish War, that Cuba should not be taken over by the United States—as all Europe expected, and as an influential section of his party hoped that it would be—but should be given every opportunity to govern itself, he established the precedent for the colonial policy which the Peace Conference of Paris has now embodied in the so-called "mandatory" principle, namely, that colonies should be administered as a trust for the benefit of the inhabitants. It is true that Cuba was set on her own feet during the Presidency of McKinley, but when under the Platt Amendment the United States intervened in Cuba during the Roosevelt Administration there would have been every political and many moral justifications for our annexation of the island. This Roosevelt would not consent to. In his autobiography he refers to his Cuban policy as follows:
We made the promise to give Cuba independence; and we kept the promise. Leonard Wood was left in as governor for two or three years, and evolved order out of chaos, raising the administration of the island to a level, moral and material, which it had never before achieved. We also, by treaty, gave the Cubans substantial advantages in our markets. Then we left the island, turning the government over to its own people. After four or five years a revolution broke out, during my administration, and we again had to intervene to restore order. We promptly sent thither a small army of pacification. Under General Barry, order was restored and kept, and absolute justice was done. The American troops were then withdrawn and the Cubans reestablished in complete possession of their own beautiful island, and they are in possession of it now. There are plenty of occasions in our history when we have shown weakness or inefficiency, and some occasions when we have not been as scrupulous as we should have been as regards the rights of others. But I know of no action by any other government in relation to a weaker power which showed such disinterested efficiency in rendering service as was true in connection with our intervention in Cuba.
In numerous speeches and addresses he expressed his belief in a strong and efficient colonial government, but a government which should be administered for the benefit of the colonial people and not for the profit of the people at home. It is worth while to quote on this subject from a speech which Mr. Roosevelt made in Christiania, Norway, on May 5, 1910. The occasion was a public dinner given in his honour on the evening of the day when the celebration was held in recognition of the award to him of the Nobel Peace Prize. He had made his set and carefully prepared speech in the afternoon. At this dinner he spoke unexpectedly and wholly extemporaneously, but the address was taken down stenographically. In the course of it he said:
I was particularly pleased by what you said about our course, the course of the American people, in connection with the Philippines and Cuba. I believe that we have the Cuban Minister here with us to-night? [A voice: "Yes."] Well, then, we have a friend who can check off what I am going to say. At the close of the war of '98 we found our army in possession of Cuba, and man after man among the European diplomats of the old school said to me: "Oh, you will never go out of Cuba. You said you would, of course, but that is quite understood; nations don't expect promises like that to be kept."

As soon as I became President, I said: "Now you will see that the promise will be kept." We appointed a day when we would leave Cuba. On that day Cuba began its existence as an independent republic.

Later there came a disaster, there came a revolution, and we were obliged to land troops again, while I was President, and then the same gentlemen with whom I had conversed before said: "Now you are relieved from your promise; your promise has been kept, and now you will stay in Cuba." I answered: "No, we shall not. We will keep the promise not only in the letter but in the spirit. We will stay in Cuba to help it on its feet, and then we will leave the island in better shape to maintain its permanent independent existence." And before I left the Presidency Cuba resumed its career as a separate republic, holding its head erect as a sovereign state among the other nations of the earth.

All that our people want is just exactly what the Cuban people themselves want—that is, a continuance of order within the island, and peace and prosperity, so that there shall be no shadow of an excuse for any outside intervention.
We have in the Philippines a people mainly Asiatic in blood, but with a streak of European blood and with the traditions of European culture, so that their ideals are largely the ideals of Europe. At the moment when we entered the islands the people were hopelessly unable to stand alone. If we had abandoned the islands, we should have left them a prey to anarchy for some months, and then they would have been seized by some other Power ready to perform the task that we had not been able to perform.
Now I hold that it is not worth while being a big nation if you cannot do a big task; I care not whether that task is digging the Panama Canal or handling the Philippines. In the Philippines I feel that the day will ultimately come when the Philippine people must settle for themselves whether they wish to be entirely independent, or in some shape to keep up a connection with us. The day has not yet come; it may not come for a generation or two.

One of the greatest friends that liberty has ever had, the great British statesman, Burke, said on one occasion that there must always be government, and that if there is not government from within, then it must be supplied from without. A child has to be governed from without, because it has not yet grown to a point when it can govern itself from within; and a people that shows itself totally unable to govern itself from within must expect to submit to more or less of government from without, because it cannot continue to exist on other terms—indeed, it cannot be permitted permanently to exist as a source of danger to other nations.

Our aim in the Philippines is to train the people so that they may govern themselves from within. Until they have reached this point they cannot have self-government. I will never advocate self-government for a people so long as their self-government means crime, violence, and extortion, corruption within, lawlessness among themselves and toward others. If that is what self-government means to any people, then they ought to be governed by others until they can do better.
In respect to the facts that I have stated and the views that I have quoted from Mr. Roosevelt himself, is it not a reasonable conclusion to say that for the seven years of his administration as President he developed a policy of statesmanship quite new in the history of the United States ?
THE RUSSO-JAPANESE PEACE.—The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Theodore Roosevelt for his acts as a mediator between Russia and Japan, which resulted in the Treaty of Portsmouth and the ending of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. The prize consisted of a gold medal and forty thousand dollars. He acknowledged this award in the formal address in 1910 at Christiania already referred to. Officially it was delivered before the Nobel Prize Committee, but actually, it was a public oration spoken in the National Theatre of Christiania before an audience of two or three thousand people. His subject was: "International Peace." At the outset he said:
The gold medal which formed part of the prize I shall always keep, and I shall hand it on to my children as a precious heirloom. The sum of money provided as part of the prize, by the wise generosity of the illustrious founder of this world-famous prize system, I did not, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, feel at liberty to keep. I think it eminently just and proper that in most cases the recipient of the prize should keep, for his own use, the prize in its entirety. But in this case, while I did not act officially as President of the United States, it was nevertheless only because I was President that I was enabled to act at all; and I felt that the money must be considered as having been given me in trust for the United States. I therefore used it as a nucleus for a foundation to forward the cause of industrial peace, as being well within the general purpose of your committee; for, in our complex industrial civilization of to-day, the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessary in the industrial world as it is among nations.
Like most of Mr. Roosevelt's acts of statesmanship his course in the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War was widely, and sometimes acrimoniously, discussed at the time. As a matter of fact, what he did was a great and, in some respects, a complicated achievement, but the principles that he followed were simple, natural, and based upon common sense.

In September, 1908, I wrote an editorial of more than ordinary length which endeavoured to interpret the genesis and results of the Russo-Japanese peace treaty. This editorial was questioned at the time. As a matter of fact, it was based upon personal statements made tome by President Roosevelt, and I think it had his entire approval. The Springfield Republican, an avowed opponent of President Roosevelt's foreign policy, had published an article in which it said that skilful Russian diplomacy had cunningly manipulated Roosevelt so that he had become "Russia's strongest ally in forcing the Japanese to accept what were virtually the Russian terms of peace." In the course of my own editorial comment the following phrases were employed:
Our version of President Roosevelt's intervention in behalf of peace is exactly contrary to the Kovalevsky-Republicaa version. The desire for peace was not imposed upon Japan, it came from Japan; Russia did not at once see an opportunity of employing a conference for the purpose of turning military disaster into a diplomatic and financial victory; on the contrary, the idea that peace was essential to Russia's future welfare was driven into the minds of an obstinate bureaucracy only by the patient arguments of the President. This view of the Portsmouth Treaty, in our judgment, has been established by public records and by the processes of simple logic; it will be confirmed, we believe, when the time comes for the publication of the diplomatic correspondence and state papers. By the intervention of the President not only did Japan receive what it was wholly wise for her to accept and what she really desired to obtain, but Russia was protected from the further disaster into which the folly of her bureaucrats and the double dealing of her diplomacy would have plunged her.
On October first, the President, having read my editorial, wrote me a letter from the White House in which he said:
Properly speaking, there are no "state papers" about the Portsmouth Treaty on this side of the water. It was done on my private initiative, but there is no reason why you should not specifically say that you had access to all the original documents with which the President had any connection, and that you speak with full knowledge.
In talking with me, afterward, Roosevelt said: "As a matter of fact, in spite of their great naval and military victories, the Japanese statesmen— not the Japanese people—were sagacious and far-seeing enough to know that they were approaching the end of their resources of both men and material while Russia's resources were unlimited. The Japanese came to me privately and, with some reluctance, expressed this point of view and asked me if I could not do something. I said I would try. I went to the Russians and pointed out the economic and political folly of continuing the war and asked if they would not join in a peace conference with the Japanese if I arranged it. They finally said: 'Yes, if the Japanese will consent, but we do not believe they will. We will come, however, if you can persuade them/ I replied that I would see what I could do, and [this with his characteristic chuckle] all the time I had the Japanese request in my breeches' pocket!"

A characteristic incident happened at the first meeting of the Russo-Japanese conference in this country. At the luncheon, to which President Roosevelt invited the representatives of both nations, on board the presidential yacht Mayflower, at Oyster Bay, Mr. Roosevelt told me that he was somewhat puzzled what to do about the delicate question of precedence. "If I took in Count Witte," he said, "the Japanese would be offended; on the other hand, if I took in Baron Komura it would displease the Russians, so when luncheon was announced I simply said 'Gentlemen, shall we go into luncheon?'; and we all walked in together, pell-mell. I dare say both Russians and Japanese were somewhat astounded at this informality, but they probably put it down to my American inexperience in social matters!"

The Russo-Japanese Peace, which was effected almost solely by the strength of Roosevelt's influence and personality, was a boon to the two contestants, for it saved Russia from the inevitable consequences that continued persistence in stupidity and folly must have entailed while it strengthened Japan in her determination to preserve for herself the real fruits both of military victory and of a humane and sagacious statesmanship. Moreover, it put Roosevelt himself on record as an advocate of justice instead of belligerency in international relationships. In his address before the Nobel Prize Committee in Christiania on May 5, 1910, he said on this subject:
It is earnestly to be hoped that the various governments of Europe, working with those of America and Asia, shall set themselves seriously to the task of devising some method which will accomplish this result. [The establishment of an international supreme court of the world.] If I may venture the suggestion, it would be well for the statesmen of the world, in planning for the erection of this world court, to study what has been done in the United States by the Supreme Court. I cannot help thinking that the Constitution of the United States, notably in the establishment of the Supreme Court and in the methods adopted for securing peace and good relations among and between the different states, offers certain valuable analogies to what should be striven for in order to secure, through the Hague courts and conferences, a species of world federation for international peace and justice. . . .

Something should be done as soon as possible to check the growth of armaments, especially naval armaments, by international agreement. No one Power could or should act by itself; for it is eminently undesirable, from the standpoint of the peace of righteousness, that a Power which really does believe in peace should place itself at the mercy of some rival which may, at bottom, have no such belief and no intention of acting on it. But, granted sincerity of purpose, the Great Powers of the world should find no insurmountable difficulty in reaching an agreement which would put an end to the present costly and growing expenditure on naval armaments. . . .

It would be a master stroke if those Great Powers, honestly bent on peace, should form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. . . .

In new and wild communities, where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down violence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. . .

The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time, and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.
In this statement, made nine years ago, Roosevelt was the prophet and advocate of the international state of mind that has been produced by the World War.
THE PANAMA CANAL.—The greatest material contribution that Theodore Roosevelt made to his country, to his time, and to the world, was the Panama Canal. That canal will be his enduring monument, and its name, as has been suggested, might well be changed to "The Roosevelt Canal." It is not necessary here to enter into the details of its history. For five hundred years the project had been discussed. For one hundred years England had thought of—some time—undertaking it. The French did undertake it—and failed. If it had not been for Roosevelt, the world would have gone on debating and arguing about it for years to come.

In a previous chapter I have quoted his phrase, now known around the world: "I took Panama." In those three laconic words he means that he acted where others for years had failed to act. What he did was simply to seize with courage and vigour an opportunity that presented itself. The inhabitants of the State of Panama wanted the canal, and they seceded from the Republic of Colombia in order to give the United States an opportunity to build it. Everybody is satisfied, except the people of Colombia, who suffered from the greedy proclivities of some of their corrupt politicians. I must also except from the category of satisfied persons some members of the Wilson Administration who cannot bear to have the name of Roosevelt go down in history, in connection with the Panama Canal, unblotted and undimmed.

Roosevelt, I think, felt two great resentments against President Wilson. The first and most important was a patriotic one, arising from the fact that Mr. Wilson opposed by word and act the policy of preparedness which Roosevelt felt was essential to the safety of our national life during the first two years of the European war. The other resentment was personal. Mr. Wilson had proposed that the United States should pay the Republic of Colombia $25,000,000 as a reparation for the wrong which she alleged had been done her in the building of the Panama Canal. Mr. Roosevelt felt that such a payment would be nothing but blackmail; that either his course and that of his administration was just and right—in which case Colombia deserved nothing; or that Colombia had been robbed—and that the only just reparation, in logic, would be the entire cession of the canal to Colombia. Moreover, if the United States paid Colombia $25,000,000, it would be an acknowledgment of crime, and a petty and contemptible compounding of a felony. Of course, he did not for a moment believe that any crime had been committed. He never was more strenuous than when he was explaining and defending the action he took with regard to Colombia and the secession of Panama. He profoundly believed that he had performed not only an act of service to the world but an act of public justice.

In spite of his deep feeling, his irrepressible and buoyant humour enabled him often to see the comic side of the controversy. He once said to me that, in a Cabinet meeting, when he was reporting his executive action—which he describes briefly as "the taking of Panama"—and appealing for an endorsement of its legal and constitutional character, one of the secretaries—I think it was Attorney-General Knox—exclaimed ironically:" Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality!"

In 1914 I happened to be returning from Europe with a group of friends on the Imperator—the steamer in which Colonel Roosevelt was crossing after having been to Spain, to attend the wedding of his son Kermit, and to London, to deliver a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society on his South American explorations. The United States Minister to Colombia under the Taft Administration was on the steamer and he asked me to arrange that he might meet Mr. Roosevelt whom he (the Minister), with an incredible optimism, hoped to persuade to take a favourable view of the proposed 25,ooo,ooo-dollar payment to Colombia. Mr. Roosevelt consented to see the Minister. The interview, at which I was present, was a thoroughly lively one. The next day, in describing it to one of my steamer companions— Mr. William Hamlin Childs, later intimately associated with him in Liberal Republican politics-Roosevelt remarked: "You know, Childs, it is said that I started a revolution in Panama. The fact is there had been fifty revolutions in Panama from time to time, but while I was President I kept my foot on these revolutions; so that, when the Panama Canal situation arose, it was entirely unnecessary for me to start a revolution. I simply lifted my foot!"

In this chapter I have not tried to give a chronological history of Roosevelt's statesmanship nor to interpret it in the terms of the diplomatist or economist. I have simply attempted to show what I fully believe, that both the aims and the achievements of his statesmanship—some of them immortal so far as world history goes— had their source in his intense humanity. Pomposity, artificiality, cunning, secretiveness, and selfishness were totally foreign to him. He believed that statesmen and nations should meet and conduct their affairs on exactly the same plane as that upon which neighbours in a community stand in their relationship. He talked to ambassadors and kings as one man talks to another. That was the real secret of his power.