Topic 52 
ON REMEMBERING FRIEND AND FOE

IT was no part of Colonel Roosevelt's philosophy to turn the other cheek to the smiter.  On the contrary, he very much favored payment in kind — if the party of the other part was worthy of attention.

In a word, his philosophy forbade him to forget friends or foes, and it was his regret that he had not had time to attend to all of the latter.

This I learned one day when meeting him at the Grand Central Terminal he invited me to ride up town with him.

"I have something to tell you," he said.  " I wanted you to know that I have just given Julian Street a statement for use in Collier's endorsing Purroy Mitchel for reelection.  I thought you would be glad to know it."

"On the contrary, I am sorry," I replied.

"Why?"

"First, because you are binding yourself to a sure loser, and I don't like to see you with a loser.  Second, and less important, I cannot be with you on this."

"You surprise me," said the Colonel.  "Why can't you be with me?"

"Colonel," I replied, "I am sorry.  If this were anything to you personally, I’d follow you anywhere, but it is n't.  On the other hand, this man and I are not friends, for he went out of his way to try and do me an injury.  No man of his position can do that to me.  A little fellow I’d ignore, but a man in his high position I won't."

"What did he do?" asked the Colonel.

I explained at some length, concluding by saying that I would not have cared much had the man not rewarded my taking much trouble to play square with him by misrepresenting my position.

"I can't forget that sort of thing," I said, just a wee bit fearful that my defection might offend him.

"Jack," he said, hitting his right fist in his left palm, "you are absolutely right, absolutely right.  A man has no more right to forget an enemy than he has to forget a friend.

"God knows," he went on after a pause, "I have always tried to do something for everybody who ever did anything for me, and I have been fortunate in that I have usually been successful in this respect, but the regret of my life is that I have been unable to take proper care of all my enemies — I have had a million of them, too many of them for any man, however lucky, to attend to in an ordinary lifetime." Every word the Colonel bit off short in the way peculiar to him.

" I take an effort to do me a kindness as an obligation, and an injury or a.  thing that might naturally be expected to injure as an obligation.  No man can in justice to himself forget friend or foe.  In a public exigency one should for the moment forget a personal injury if so doing would let him work with the other person in the public interest, that as a matter of public duty, but only as a public duty.

"By this I do not mean that one should sit and nurse his wounds all the time.  Not at all.  But I'll pardon him if he remembers his scars when opportunity offers."

Colonel Roosevelt was himself the most punctilious of men in recognizing the claims of others upon him.  For this reason, if no other, not every one could do him a favor.

" I am," he remarked whimsically one day, "a bit particular in the matter of receiving favors.  If a man does anything for you, you are bound, if you can, to do something for him when occasion offers.  If it happens to be the right sort of a man, it won't matter much, but with the other kind it can be very, very embarrassing.  It's not everybody I care to be under obligation to."

The Colonel not long after this practised what he preached.  In a matter that was of grave importance to him, a politician whose standards were not of the highest, but who was in a position to assist, offered his aid.

" I shall have to decline with thanks," said he.  " If I allow him to do anything for me, I shall have to do something for him later on.  He knows that as well as I do, and I am simply not going to be under any obligation to him.  He's not the kind I want to be beholden to.

"A man should be as careful in accepting favors as he should be in making promises.  If he's careless in either, he soon finds he's in trouble of one sort or another.  There's where many a man in politics has wrecked himself, exactly as men m business have gone bankrupt endorsing notes for friends."