Topic 37 
ROOT, MOST VALUED OF COUNSELLORS

IN the traditions that have grown up about Colonel Roosevelt, none has been more persistently circulated by political foes than that which described him as being headstrong and impatient of advice or criticism.

This was the direct opposite of the truth.  He welcomed criticism even when he did not agree with it, and to make this clear to me when I one day apologized for having ventured to criticize something he had prepared for publication, he told why he held Elihu Root to have been the most valuable member of his Cabinet.

"That is exactly what I want," said he.  "It's exactly what I want.  That is why you are more valuable to me than I am to you, why I talk so freely to you.  I want your opinions and I want you to fight me when you think I am wrong.  I 'm not omniscient, and no one knows it better than I.

" It is because Root would not hesitate to express an opinion that he was immensely more valuable to me in the Cabinet than John Hay was.  Hay was a splendid character, likable and lovable, but he would never criticize.  He would n't fight for an opinion.

Root would, and he'd give persistent battle for his viewpoint.  He was a most dogged fighter.

"Sometimes I would accept his views, sometimes I would allow his opinion to modify my own; more often, perhaps, I would ignore him altogether and follow my own ideas.  But his frankness, his outspokenness, were of great help in making me see all sides of a question.

"It was his practice to analyze everything from the standpoint of the other fellow.  If there was a hole in an argument, he'd point it out.  If there was a place where the other fellow could kick a hole, he’d proceed to plug that point if he could.  Lord, I wish you could have seen the condition in which State papers came back to me after Root had gone over them! Sometimes I would not recognize my own child, and sometimes I was very thankful I could not.  On top of all that Root was honest and absolutely loyal.  It was his idea of loyalty to fight if necessary to make his friends see where they were about to err.

"John Hay had no such value.  He would approve en bloc anything I put before him.

"Now, there was, of course, a reason for this.  It lay in the different lives they led.  Hay, as you know, had led a quiet and rather sheltered life — he had never been in real contact with life, he'd never had to fight for anything.

"Root's life, you might say, was one long fight.  He had to fight for everything he ever got.  All his life he’d been doing business with big, domineering, strong bitted men like the elder Morgan, men in the habit of having their own way in all things.  With them, Root simply had to stand up and fight to get them to do things the way he saw they ought to be done.

"I have n't the slightest doubt that on many an occasion he had to become rather strenuous to make his points stick, but I'll wager he made them stick and that his employers were glad afterward that he had made them stick.  It was his idea of loyalty to give his associates the full benefit of everything he had in view, even if he had to fight to make them take it.

"These habits he brought into the Cabinet and these made him, as I've said, its most valuable member.

" I have been fortunate in having had a few such advisers as Root.  Leonard Wood is one of them.  Wood never took advantage of our friendship to ask for anything he was interested in personally, but in matters that concerned me and my personal fortunes, he has been the frankest of candid critics.  Jack Greenaway is another.  He was one of the most valuable men in my regiment.  In his own way, old Joe Murray has been invaluable.  Joe has always felt a paternal interest in me from the fact that he started me in politics.  He would be the last to presume, but if Joe thought he saw breakers ahead or had some bit of information he thought I should have, he was never bashful about presenting it.

"Murray has one trait developed to a remarkable degree — his ability to sense public feeling on any subject.  Repeatedly his reports on the drift of things have been right when men, supposed to be experts and who had every facility for getting the facts, were wrong.  Joe has only common sense and a faculty of detaching himself from his wishes.  More than once he's shown me where I was mistaken or had made a miscalculation.

" I have always been glad to have such men about.  I have, however, no use for the man who criticizes everything, who cuts in just because he thinks he has got to or because he wishes to air his superior wisdom.  These are as bad, almost, as those cautious souls who are always afraid of saying something that may cost votes.  I Ve known some who, had they lived in the days of Moses and had access to him, in all probability would have declared against the publication of the Decalogue on the ground that some persons would be offended and votes lost.

"The honest and intelligent critic I welcome, always welcomed, and always will welcome.

"The man who cannot stand to have his plans and ideas criticized is a fool.  The wise man will welcome criticism, so long as it is honest and intelligent.  I know, and you do, men who want no one about that does not agree with them, men who are afraid of being told unpleasant truths.  Such men are fools.  In a long journey, as Emerson says,' The truth, however unpleasant, is the safest travelling companion.' "