CHAPTER 15 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE   ESTABLISHES   HIMSELF   AND   HIS   COUNTRY  AS   A WORLD  POWER

The President returned to Washington early in A June and plunged once more into the turmoil of his administrative duties.  Corruption had been brought to light in the Post Office Department, and the Postmaster-General, though eager to end it, was nervous about the effect the exposure might have on the fortunes of the Republican party.  Roosevelt insisted on absolute publicity and relentless justice wherever the trail might lead.  The trail happened to lead to high quarters.  Politicians appealed frantically to Roosevelt to keep the scandals quiet.  The President made it clear that if he were going to preach clean government he would have a clean house of his own. 

Affairs at home and abroad alternately demanded his attention.  Not only in the Post Office Department was corruption revealed.  He discovered that frauds on a huge scale had been practised in the distribution of public lands and in the execution of the immigration laws, and set the wheels of justice moving
 
Meanwhile, early in July, a report reached him that the American vice-consul at Beirut, Turkey, had been murdered.  Instantly, he sent a squadron to the scene of the supposed crime, to support the American minister in his demand for satisfaction.  Europe gasped and timid folk in America shuddered.  The consul, as it turned out, had been attacked, but not killed.  The Turkish government was profuse in its expressions of regret, and suddenly showed a willingness to accede to certain long-standing requests concerning American missionaries.  The squadron sailed away.  No blood had been shed, but Europe had a new respect for American citizenship.  Straightforward, vigorous, unafraid toward the nations without and the conflicting groups within, Roosevelt appeared to the critical gaze of the Old World like some hero out of legendry, slashing with his broadsword and ringed by the bodies of his foes.  He was a storm-center always.  He appointed a negro to office in Charleston, and the South raged, while Boston applauded in pious horror at narrow-minded Carolina; he appointed a negro, thereupon, to office in Boston, and Boston fumed, while the South shook in boisterous delight.  He reinstated in a government place a non-union man discharged at the request of a union, and stood firm while labor leaders vociferously protested; he rebuked the heads of corporations with stinging words and gritted his teeth grimly while the ensuing editorial tempest passed over his head. 

On the 2oth of October the Alaska Commission, sitting in London, gave its verdict in favor of America, the British member having voted with the Americans against the two Canadians on every important issue.  The result completely justified Roosevelt's brusque assertions in January. 

Less than two weeks later he was confronted overnight with an international issue of far greater significance. 

For years negotiations had been pending regarding an interoceanic canal in Nicaragua or Panama.  The political complications in the way were huge, for not only the Central American republics of Colombia and Nicaragua, through whose territory the canal might run, were involved, but France and England likewise; for a French company had spent hundreds of millions in a vain attempt to construct a canal at Panama, and had on the spot some forty million dollars' worth of concessions and machinery for which it wanted three times the value; and England had an old treaty with the United States for the joint construction of a canal.  After years of wise diplomacy and fierce and discouraging struggles with the Senate, Secretary Hay had ironed out most of the difficulties.  The French company had agreed to sell out at $40,000,000; England had consented to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer treaty.  Congress, after endless wrangles, had eliminated consideration of -the Nicaragua route and decided on a canal through the Isthmus of Panama. 

Nothing now remained but to make the necessary treaty with Colombia. 

But here the real difficulty arose, for Colombia was in a chronic state of revolution, passing from the control of one set of bandits only to fall into the hands of another. 

"You could no more make an agreement with the Colombian rulers," exclaimed Roosevelt later, "than you could nail currant jelly to a wall-and the failure to nail currant jelly to a wall is not due to the nail; it is due to the currant jelly. "

During 1903 Colombia was under the dictatorship of an adventurer named Marroquin, who, as Vice-President, had succeeded to the Presidency by clapping the President into jail and then announcing that "in the absence of the President he would fulfil his constitutional duties. " Marroquin and his friends saw in the desire of the United States to construct a canal at Panama a dazzling prospect of enormous loot.  Marroquin proposed a treaty more than favorable to Colombia.  Secretary Hay accepted it for the United States and during the summer presented it to Colombia for ratification.  But Marroquin had meanwhile devised a scheme for putting off the settlement of the Panama question until 1904, when the French concessions and machinery would revert to Colombia, and, instead of ten millions, fifty millions would be due from '' the nation of sordid dollar-chasers" to the north.  Believing the United States irrevocably committed to the Panama route, he now repudiated the agreement he had himself proposed; and under his direction the Colombian Senate unanimously rejected the treaty. 

The eyes of American statesmen now turned again toward Nicaragua; and Panama, which had more than once been an independent republic and in the past fifty-three years had suffered exactly fifty-three revolutions, began to fear the canal would be lost to her. 

Early in October Roosevelt heard that a fifty-fourth revolution was imminent there.  He shed no tears over the prospect, but he gave the rebel agents who came to Washington no encouragement.  He merely sent the cruiser Nashville to the general neighborhood to protect American interests in Panama as he had protected American interests in Turkey, and to keep open the isthmian railroad, as the United States government was by treaty bound to do. 

On November 3d four Colombian generals landed at Colon with four hundred and fifty men and proceeded at once to Panama, giving orders for the soldiers to follow.  But the railroad refused to transport the soldiers, and two of the Colombian gunboats declared in favor of the revolutionists.  The Nashville now landed marines to protect the railway and a day later word came from Washington that the United States would prevent the landing of Colombian troops within fifty miles of Panama.  That settled the matter. 

Two days later the American government recognized the Republic of Panama, and two weeks thereafter concluded a treaty with the new nation, which was immediately ratified.  The Canal Zone was secured to the United States in perpetuity.  By swift and decisive action in the face of a bandit's blackmail, Roosevelt had brought to a successful conclusion the unavailing efforts of a century. 

The American people applauded the act, but Roosevelt's old enemies, the "timid good," while not recommending the return of the Canal Zone to Colombia, protested loudly against the manner of its acquisition. 

Roosevelt, conscious that from a moral as well as a legal standpoint he had acted in the only way possible under the circumstances, defied his critics, accepting the full responsibility. 
The people of Panama were a unit in desiring the Canal and in wishing to overthrow the rule of Colombia [he wrote years after to William Roscoe Thayer].  If they had not revolted I should have recommended Congress to take possession of the Isthmus by force of arms.  . . .  I had actually written the first draft of my message to this effect.  When they revolted I promptly used the navy to prevent the bandits, who had tried to hold us up, from spending months of futile bloodshed in conquering or endeavoring to conquer the Isthmus, to the lasting damage of the Isthmus, of us, and of the world.  I did not consult Hay, or Root, or any one else as to what I did, because a council of war does not fight, and I intended to do the job once and for all. 

The controversy continued to rage.     But while the talking went on the President set about to make  the Canal Zone a sanitary place to live in, appointed a committee of engineers to decide on the type of canal to be constructed, and started Congress on the long wrangle he knew it would insist on having before the work could start. 

For Congress, in those first months of 1904, beginning to try his patience.  It blocked him at every turn; it seemed, indeed, to take a peculiar delight in blocking him.  Congress was conservative.  Congress believed firmly in the sacredness of big business, being less enlightened on the subject than the people it was supposed to represent.  A special session, called to ratify the Cuban reciprocity treaty, spent its energies in petty quarrels. 

The national election now began to absorb the whole interest of the country.  Santo Domingo was making trouble to the South, Japan and Russia were coming to death-grips in the Far East, but neither struggle could compete in interest with the Presidential campaign.  Roosevelt's nomination by the Republicans was definitely assured when his only possible rival, Senator Hanna, died in February.  The convention met in Chicago in June and was the scene of the wildest enthusiasm. 

While the convention was in session Roosevelt was involved in a delicate international situation which incidentally involved all the great Powers of Europe.  An American citizen, Ion Perdicaris, had been captured by bandits in Morocco under the leadership of a notorious chieftain named Raizuli, who had succeeded in terrorizing the Foreign Offices of most of the Powers.  Roosevelt demanded his release.  The Sultan of Morocco made promises, but Perdicaris was not set free.  Roosevelt thereupon sent an American warship to Tangier. 

Again Europe gasped, and again the "timid good" shuddered and talked about the swashbuckler who was throwing matches into the powder-magazine of Europe.  But Roosevelt knew, what the majority of the American people did not know, that the United States, having no possible territorial desires in Morocco, could maintain a standpoint there which no European nation could possibly take. 

The Sultan was impressed, but his own position in regard to Raizuli was none too safe.  Raizuli threatened to kill Perdicaris unless the ransom he demanded was paid.  The Sultan made helpless gestures. 

There upon, on June 22d, through Secretary Hay, Roosevelt sent a thunderbolt, "We want Perdicaris alive or Raizuli dead. "

The news of the ultimatum reached the convention at Chicago on the morning on which the nominations were to be made, and symbolizing, as it did, the President's attitude toward his opponents abroad and at home, kindled the delegates to flaming enthusiasm.  He was nominated without a dissenting vote. 

John Hay's diary tells succinctly the effect of the ultimatum in Morocco:
June 23d.   My telegram to Gummere [the American consul] had an uncalled-for success.  It is curious how a concise impropriety hits the public. 
June 24th.  Gummere telegraphs that he expects Perdicaris tonight. 
June 27th.  Perdicaris wires his thanks. 

The incident was comparatively slight; but it had a deep effect on the great body of American citizens.  They began to cherish more highly a citizenship on which their President set such store and to feel proudly conscious of their place in the world.  Sectional prejudice diminished in a new pride in the greatness of the whole. 

The Presidential campaign was unexciting.  To most people the result was a foregone conclusion, for Judge Parker, the Democratic nominee, had neither an inspiring personality himself nor a united and enthusiastic party behind him, while the President had both.  Roosevelt himself, however, was not at all certain of his election, for while the capitalists accused him of being a revolutionist, certain New York newspapers, pretending to champion the cause of the people, were printing elaborate and completely false stories showing how he had secretly "sold out" to J.  P.  Morgan.  Roosevelt underrated his own popularity.  His enemies accused him of overweening self-confidence, of immeasurable conceit; and the defiance he hurled at his opponents, great and small, lent some color to the charge.  But at heart he was humble, with a boyish humility in the presence of great tasks of which only his most intimate friends suspected the existence. 

It was that spring, Hay records in his diary, that he came on Roosevelt one day reading Emerson's '' Days. " He read the wonderful closing lines aloud:
"I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn. "
"I fancy," Hay remarked, "you do not know what that means. 

"Oh, do I not?" the President exclaimed.  "Perhaps the greatest men do not, but I in my soul know I am but the average man, and that only marvelous good fortune has brought me where I am. "

Three weeks before the election he wrote:
On Election night . . .  we intend to have a little feast which can be turned into a festival of rejoicing or into a wake, as circumstances warrant!

The feast was held and was not turned into a wake, for Roosevelt was elected by the greatest majority any President had ever received. 

"I am glad," he said to Hay that evening, "to be President in my own right. "

The sense that he was no longer President by accident, but President by the overwhelming desire of his fellow-citizens, gave Roosevelt at the beginning of his second term new confidence and vigor in his dealings with Congress.  The House reflected the popular approval of the President and sought to cooperate, but the Senate, under the control of Aldrich of Rhode Island and Hale of Maine, opposed him with increasing bitterness.  The majority of the members were either themselves rich men or pliant tools of the financial groups which had secured their election.  They formed the bulwark of the "interests" and opposed Roosevelt with savage bitterness, holding him responsible for the social unrest beginning to make itself manifest.  When Roosevelt declared that all he wanted was to give justice to both capital and labor, they refused to believe what he said.  They accused him of desiring to overturn American institutions, failing utterly to comprehend that the President was seeking to conserve those institutions by adapting them to the swiftly changing conditions. 

They were, like King Canute, bellowing at the oncoming tide, and they called Roosevelt a revolutionist because he implored them to convert their throne into a raft. 

Roosevelt saw vividly what he had seen as far back as 1899, and which they could not even now perceive, that the old era of capital unrestricted was gone forever.  He saw the social forces seething all over the world, he saw the smoldering discontent, the growing consciousness among the masses that the relations between capital and labor were unevenly balanced and unfair.  The rumblings of social revolution in Europe were not lost to him.  He was aware of the sinister effect of the sinister exploitation of the aliens who sought on these shores a liberty which they failed to find.  He noted the beginning of an insurgent movement in the very stronghold of conservatism, the Republican party.  The significance of the election of Democratic so-called "reform" Governors in five of the states which had given him their electoral vote was not lost to him.  There had been revolution in the air at the time of the coal strike, in the autumn of 1902.  The peril had for the moment been averted, but the fundamental causes remained.  Roosevelt knew that the overturn of the existing order was sooner later inevitable unless the forces of capital and the forces of labor met on the common ground of governmental regulation and control.     And because he knew that such an overturn would bring anarchy to the country and misery to the working-man as well as to the capitalist, he sought with all his energies to prevent it.  He was assailed on every side with inconceivable bitterness.      But he was   a   valiant fighter   and    the people as a whole were    with   him, though capitalists accused    him harshly   of   pandering   to   labor, and labor leaders accused    him   of yielding   to  capital.    He sought  to give justice to both sides and .  both sides accused him of temporizing. 

Roosevelt was determined to enlarge the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission over rail-road rates, and under his direction the Hepburn Rate bill was introduced.  The Senate rejected it, as it had rejected certain arbitration treaties he had presented for ratification, as a personal rebuke and in fear of increasing his power. 

Roosevelt once more turned to the people.     During that spring of 1905 he made another speech-making tour through the country, preaching the doctrines he had always preached with stubborn, unwearying insistence.  Congress granted him not half of what he asked, though a year later it passed the Hepburn bill and consented reluctantly to investigations of the Standard Oil Company, the American Tobacco Company, and the Beef Trust.  

Roosevelt had, however, familiarized the American people, meanwhile, with the problems he was seeking to solve, and even while he was meeting defeat again and again in Congress he was creating in the people a desire for reform.  His old genius for advertising good causes had never served the country better.  He was not always altogether adroit as a politician, and crafty Senators, playing their deep games, deliberately angered him to the point of fury, in order to discredit and defeat him.  But among the people he was steadily successful.  Never did the fact that, as he himself said, he was merely an average man with average capabilities developed to the full, stand him in better stead.  Being an average man, he understood the average man.  No wall of abnormally acute intellectuality stood between them.  Highly intellectual folk, in those days, took to smiling at the President a little patronizingly, calling him "platitudinous. " They recalled what Speaker Reed had said about Roosevelt "What I admire most about Theodore is his discovery of the Ten Commandments. " Roosevelt grinned and admitted that it was the common, everyday things that interested him above all, and went on preaching the evangel of public service and business regulation. 

Everywhere the people responded.  But the great newspapers, controlled by the "interests," took to calling him a "demagogue. "

His campaign for the regulation of "big business" went on steadily, with many setbacks, but without interruption.  Meanwhile, he was striking at the irresponsible power of the few from another angle, *without any great blaring of trumpets, but with visible success.  The Reclamation bill had, by judicious cutting of red tape, been put into immediate effect under the direction of Newell and Pinchot, and by 1906 projects were already under way for the irrigation of more than three million acres.  Parallel with this activity went the movement, likewise directed by Pinchot, for the preservation and extension of the national forests, the regulation and control of water-power, and the protection everywhere of public lands in the public interests.  The area of the national forests was increased from 43 to 194 million acres, the water-power resources of the national forests put under the control of the government, to prevent speculation and monopoly, and cattle-raisers grazing their herds on the reserves were forced to pay for what they got. 

This steadily expanding policy incurred the wrath of men who had always regarded the natural resources of the nation as the divinely appointed field of private exploitation.  Unrestricted enterprise had done much to open the Western country; the country was now open; but the resources of it were being rapidly exhausted. 

'' The rights of the public to the natural resources,'' Roosevelt contended, "outweigh private rights. "

The fight raged in Congress, where again and again efforts were made to abolish the Forest Service.  Land speculators, gamblers in water rights, timber-slashers, sheep-owners, coal barons, and the politicians, local and national, who served their interests, howled about "executive usurpation. " Roosevelt went on, not serenely for serenity was never a conspicuous quality of his but with the dash and fire he had shown on the day of Las Guasimas, when, not knowing which way he was supposed to go, he had decided to press on in the direction of the guns. 

Out of the forest movement grew the general conservation movement which applied to the other natural resources of the nation the principle there laid down, that the executive is the steward of the public welfare.  In March, 1907, Roosevelt created the Inland Waterways Commission.  In October he took a trip down the Mississippi as guest of the commission, skilfully using the dramatic news-value of the incidents of the trip to call the attention of the country through the newspapers, day after day, to the question of conservation.  He announced his intention of calling a conference on conservation at the White House the following spring.  The Governors of all the states were invited to attend it. 

The conference was held in May, 1908.  The fact that it was the first national conference of state Governors on any subject attracted enormous attention.  Overnight conservation became a great national issue.  A National Conservation Commission was appointed to prepare an inventory, the first ever made for any nation, of all the natural resources which underlay its property.  The inventory was completed in six months.  A Joint Conservation Congress, meeting in December, suggested the holding of a North American Conservation Conference to which representatives of Canada and Mexico were invited; this conference, meeting in February, 1909, recommended that all nations should be invited to join together in conference on the subject of world resources, and their inventory, conservation, and wise utilization.  The invitation was sent to forty-five nations. 

From a conference of three men in Captain Cowles's house in September, 1901, a small reclamation project had, through the vision and persistence of Theodore Roosevelt,  expanded into an international  movement   for   the   conservation   of   all natural resources.  Roosevelt's second term was not rich in legislative accomplishment, for the Senate was consistently hostile, and gradually even the House turned against him, accusing him of overweening ambition and dictatorial methods.  His repute with the people, meanwhile, grew, and his influence with them deepened.  They exulted, in the face of cynical Europe, that during the first year of Roosevelt's administration the United States had kept her promise to Cuba and withdrawn her troops; they exulted that, amid the sordid orgy of the continental Powers in China, the United States had returned for educational purposes in China half of the indemnity paid to the United States by China after the Boxer outrages.  They took pride in the decisive action that had won them Panama, and the persistence which, after endless wrangling and administrative difficulties, resulted in the beginning on firm basis of the construction of the Canal; they respected themselves and their neighbors more because the person of an American citizen was safe in any part of the world and because his government thought him worth fighting for against any Power.  Above all, they were proud that they were part of a government which fearlessly and impartially executed justice within its own borders. 

During that first decade of the twentieth century to be an American citizen meant what it had meant during the first century to be a citizen of Rome. 

During the summer of 1905 President Roosevelt once more made Europe aware of the changed position of America in world affairs, by suddenly offering his services to end the Russo-Japanese War. 

The war had been proceeding a year and a half, with terrible bloodshed on both sides.  Roosevelt sent identical notes to both belligerents, asking whether his mediation would be acceptable.  Both replies were in the affirmative, and in August the peace commissioners arrived and began their sessions at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

The American people watched the conference with mingled feelings of pride and apprehension.  The President's enemies screamed loudly that he was riding for a fall; that, to satisfy his vanity, he had undertaken an impossible task which could result only in failure and a lamentable loss of prestige for the country. 

Indeed, failure seemed for a time inevitable.  The commissioners themselves expected nothing else Japan demanded an indemnity.  Russia refused absolutely to pay it.  There the matter hung. 

Roosevelt conferred with the commissioners at Sagamore Hill and on the Mayflower again and again.  With dogged persistence he clung to hope after all others had abandoned it, advised this, recommended that, suggested this other. 

Early in September a treaty was signed.  The war was over. 

Roosevelt's part in the negotiations was immediately recognized on all sides, and had an extraordinary influence both abroad and at home.  America's place in world affairs was, by it, definitely established, and Roosevelt's own position in the eyes of his countrymen gained a new security.  The least enlightened began to realize that in Roosevelt they had a President who was an international force. 

Roosevelt was meanwhile endeavoring to establish closer relations with the Spanish-American states by so dealing with the weak and helpless among those states that America's position as the dominant nation in the Western' Hemisphere would become to all the source of confidence and satisfaction, instead of apprehension.  He protected the weaker peoples, threatened by foreign nations or by the misrule of adventurers, but at the same time he sought to cooperate with those Central and South American governments with whom dealing on terms of equality was possible.  He helped to establish a Central American Court of Arbitration, and in 1906 sent Elihu Root, Secretary of State in succession to Hay, who had died the previous year, on a tour through South America.  Root was extraordinarily successful, for he knew the Latin mind, and established among the statesmen of South America a confidence in the great neighbor to the north which they had never before felt. 

"Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far. "

Roosevelt had preached this motto for ten years or more.  As President, he practised it without and within.  In his diplomacy he was cordial, sympathetic, fair-minded, but at the same time unmistakably firm.  He made no threats which he did not intend, if necessary, to put into effect.  He never blustered.  The words he spoke were clear, unambiguous.  Every one knew exactly what they meant.  Every one knew, likewise, that behind them was an indomitable will, a stiff spine, and the utmost force of the United States. 

That force Roosevelt brought to a point of efficiency it had never known before.  The army he did not enlarge, though he increased greatly its practical usefulness.  The navy he doubled in size and more than doubled in effectiveness.  In season and out of season he preached preparedness against war.  He pleaded with Congress for a program of four battle-ships a year, but he pleaded in vain.  Reluctantly, Congress granted two.  His opponents in newspaper offices protested against the President's "militaristic" mind which could not realize that the era of war was over and that the world was entering on "the era of peace. "

California passed a number of vigorous anti-Japanese regulations. ' Japan protested, and Roosevelt wondered how secure the establishment of that "era of peace" really was. 

The feeling between Japan and the United States became suddenly tense.  The '' yellow press'' of both countries fanned the flames.  Japan, flushed from its victory over Russia, was self-confident; the American people, believing the Philippines, Hawaii, and the whole Pacific coast threatened, were ready, if necessary, to defend them with their blood Roosevelt kept his head and held a series of conferences with Baron Takahira, the Japanese ambassador.  He made clear the intention of the United States to limit Oriental immigration, but he made clear, at the same time, his desire in no way to humiliate Japan.  His tact, coupled with his great popularity, not only in California, but in Japan, carried the day.  A'' gentlemen's agreement" was arranged.  War between Japan and the United States was, for the time at least, averted. 

Roosevelt had taken a leading part in the movement for international arbitration, and had endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to persuade the Senate to ratify twenty or more treaties of limited arbitration.  But he knew that peace can be kept by no treaty, however sacred, unless that treaty is backed by force. 

Early in 1907 he announced, to the amazement of the country and the incredulity even of naval experts, that he intended to send the American battleship fleet on a trip around the world.  European experts declared flatly that the thing could not be done.  The timid folk asserted that it meant war.  Congress cried that it would cost too much money. 

The President stood firm.  He had two reasons for desiring to send the fleet on this long journey.  He wished, in the first place, in some dramatic way to call the attention of the American people to the navy and its needs; he wished, in the second place, to show other nations, including Japan, the power of the United States. 

It was a bold project, and, as in the Panama affair, Roosevelt took full responsibility for it, not even consulting the Cabinet. 

"In a crisis," he said, "the duty of a leader is to lead and not to take refuge behind the generally timid wisdom of a multitude of councilors. "

In October, 1907, the fleet set sail, accompanied by the torpedo flotilla.  It passed through the Straits of Magellan, then north to San Francisco, where the flotilla remained, then west to Japan and Australia.  Everywhere it was received with enthusiastic hospitality.  The ships of war proved to be the most potent ambassadors of peace.  The great Powers were deeply impressed.  The American people began to understand the mighty thing their navy was. 

Meanwhile, with all the energy at his command, Roosevelt was pushing ahead the construction of the Panama Canal.  While Congress was debating the relative merits of a sea-level and a lock canal, he sent a corps of sanitary engineers to the Isthmus to make what had been a strip of death into a healthy place where men might work in safety.  The effort was extraordinarily . successful.  When, therefore, early in 1907, the definite plans for the Canal were ready, he was ready to have the actual construction begin.  Congress put the work in charge of a civilian commission of engineers.  But dissension arose; construction lagged.  Roosevelt, thereupon, turned the work over to the Engineering Corps of the Army with Major George W.  Goethals in practically autocratic control.  The work proceeded with new vigor.  He himself went to Panama to the perturbation of finicky folk who said that it was against the rules for an American President to leave American soil and for three days of tropic rain and mud inspected the work of construction.  It was a vast project which might easily, under other leadership, have lost its momentum in graft and red tape, inefficiency and executive timidity, to become a national scandal at last, ending in ignominious failure.  It was Roosevelt who made such an outcome impossible at the very start.  With his own enthusiasm he kindled the enthusiasm alike of engineer and ditch-digger and woke in the American people a sense of the grandeur of the undertaking and a high determination that it should be greatly accomplished. 

Roosevelt's hold on affairs within the nation, meanwhile, did not for an instant slacken.  His battles with Congress increased in bitterness, and again and again he turned directly to the people for support against their blind and stubborn representatives.  He preached national righteousness, and the people, whose standards he himself had reshaped, rose to his summons. 

A great change had come over the American people.  Thanks largely to him, men did not do in 1908 the things they had done in 1901.  Roosevelt had set the nation thinking.  He had awakened the social conscience.  Because of him the nation had nobler ideals, a deeper respect for law, a keener sense of the responsibilities of power.  Through his influence, the tone of public life had been noticeably raised.  In the Federal service, corruption, intrigue, and inefficiency had everywhere given place to a new devotion to the public good.  Men working under him felt that they were not his inferiors so much as coworkers with him in a great cause, standing with him on the same level of purpose and service.  He asked and took their advice "with that singular amiability and open-mindedness," as Hay recorded in his diary, "which form so striking a contrast with the general idea of his brusque and arbitrary character. "

The American people recognized the high quality of the Administration and watched its activities with deep satisfaction.  As far back as 1905 a movement had been started to nominate Roosevelt for a third term, but he had made a public declaration on the night of his election in 1904 that he would under no circumstances be a candidate for reelection, and in subsequent statements he made it clear that he had in no way changed his mind.  Meanwhile his popularity grew as his militant sincerity in dealing with domestic problems and his great international prestige impressed themselves on his fellow-citizens.  During those years Roosevelt was no longer merely a popular hero.  He became a national obsession.  Everywhere he was the topic of excited conversation.  His acts, his policies, his speeches, his virtues, his faults were thrashed through at every dinner-table.  Friendships of lifelong standing were shattered on the rock of his personality. 

Men adored him and men hated him as no man in American public life had ever been hated or adored.  If he had consented to be nominated, his reelection would have been assured. 

The panic of 1907, for which the newspapers attempted to hold him responsible, scarcely diminished his prestige, for his action in the crisis was swift and sure.  Without hesitation he took the only remedy possible to prevent a national disaster of incalculable dimensions, even though the remedy was presented by men who had consistently been his bitterest enemies and though he knew that his action would lay him open to subsequent charges of pandering to "the interests. " Faced by the overwhelming facts, he had the courage to make an exception to a rule he had himself insisted on, and to let the demagogues howl.  

The temptation to keep the enormous power he held in his hands and to carry through the great movements he had put under way was great.  He might have made himself virtually a dictator.  He put the temptation behind him, working harder to prevent a renomination than most Presidents have worked to achieve one. 

He was keeping a pledge he had made three years previous.  There was no glory in that.  No one commended him for it.  The • accusations of arrogant ambition continued as loud as before, and in the Senate and the House the men who had been held in check by the fear that he might be renominated and reelected began to howl and snarl in defiance. 

The Republican national convention was held in Chicago in June.  Roosevelt sent Senator Lodge as his special representative to prevent a possible stampede in his favor.  The man he had suggested as his successor, William Howard Taft, was nominated on the first ballot. 

Ten days later, Roosevelt was writing to Bill Sewall:

I have thoroly enjoyed the job.  I never felt more vigorous, so far as the work of the office is concerned, and if I had followed my own desires I should have been only too delighted to stay as President.  I had said that I would not accept another term, and I believe that the people think that my word is good, and I should be mighty sorry to have them think anything else.  Moreover, for the very reason that I believe in being a strong President and making the most of the office and using it without regard to the little, feeble, snarling men who yell about executive usurpation, I also believe that it is not a good thing that any one man should hold it too long.  Taft was triumphantly elected in November. 

The last months of Roosevelt's administration were full of savage warfare between the President and Congress.  It seemed as though the pent-up passions of years were being let loose in one final effort to even up old scores. 

Ten days before the inauguration of his successor, on February 22d, the battle-ship fleet he had sent out sixteen months previously, amid the protests and sneers of his enemies, steamed into Hampton Roads, having successfully circumnavigated the globe and in every port where it had touched having, by the behavior of officers and men, made friends for the American people. 

Once more Roosevelt had been justified.  America's place in the respect of nations was more firmly established because of his audacious and far-sighted act. 

There was a snow-storm in the air, but no cloud on the political horizon at home or abroad when, ten days later, the man whom the rich had called a "revolutionist" and the pacifists had called a ''war lord" drove to the Capitol with his successor and became once more a private citizen.