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TALKS WITH T.  R.

PREFACE

Riding across Indiana shortly before his death, Colonel Roosevelt began a brief discussion of the manner in which tradition and some historians had treated Washington and Lincoln.

The talk was predicated on Barnard's statue of the emancipator, then the subject of much discussion.  The paper he held in his hand referred to the controversy and he voiced annoyance that any person could think of portraying "Lincoln as a clod."

"Lincoln to me," said he, "has always been a living person, an inspiration and a help.  I have always felt that if I could do as he would have done were he in my place, I would not be far from right.  And at times when I have been troubled by some public question, I have tried to imagine Lincoln in my position and to do as he would have done.

"I do not understand," he went on, "why some persons like to portray Lincoln as rude and uncouth — to suggest that he was a lineal descendant of the Pithecanthropus, always telling funny stories.  It is as bad as the refining process Washington has gone through.  Washington was a very human sort of person with a fair share of the weakness of man.  He is presented to us as possessing all of the virtues and lacking all suggestion of sin, original and acquired.  As a matter of fact, he was a strong man, with all of a strong man's virtues and many of a strong man's faults, who lived in an age when it was not bad form to offer the minister a drink.

"Lincoln was not a handsome man — he did not have very much on me in that respect — but he was by no means first cousin to the cave man in appearance any more than he was always slapping strangers on the back and telling them funny stories.  He did have the saving grace of humor, but he was no clown.

"In my office in the White House there was a splendid portrait of Lincoln.  Ofttimes, when I had some matter to decide, something involved and difficult to dispose of, where there were conflicting rights and all that sort of thing, I would look up at that splendid face and try to imagine him in my place and try to figure out what he would do in the circumstances.

" It may sound odd to you, but, frankly, it seemed to make my troubles easier of solution.  Yes, to me, Lincoln has ever been a living person, an inspiration and a help.  If I ever envied any man, it was John Hay, who had the wonderful privilege of knowing Lincoln so intimately.

"Lincoln must be — will be always — a living thing to our people, an inspiration and a landmark, to the living and to those yet to live.  Our danger lies in the fact that at times our public men are inclined to stray from the path he blazed, if, indeed, some of them ever trod it."

It had been my habit to transcribe carefully in my notebooks these informal talks with the Colonel.  Until this little talk, through which ran a note almost wistful and that all but expressed the hope that he, in turn, would not be caricatured or whitewashed, my idea as to what I would do with them was vague.  Eventually, I half thought, the notebooks and their contents might find a resting place, perhaps, in Harvard College Library, where in after years the student, seeking material for theme or thesis, might find something of value.

After Colonel Roosevelt's death a year ago, in the days that followed, my thoughts recurred to that day in the Pullman diner riding across Indiana.  It then became clear that, instead of trusting to chance and the years that these talks might be given the public after the Roosevelt tradition had become fixed, the time is now while the tradition is in a state of flux.

Hence this little book, offered to the public in the hope that it will help those who were not privileged above their fellows in knowing him in the flesh, to visualize and know the real Theodore Roosevelt.

JOHN J.  LEARY, JR., NEW YORK CITY, January 1,1920
 
The following is a transcribed hand written letter by TR of recommendation.

Sagamore Hill 
November 10th  1917
Lt.   Colonel R. H. Van Deuran, 
General Staff Chief Military Intelligence Section 
War Dept.

Dear Sir, 
I have long known Mr. John J. Leary Jr. well and intimately. I vouch for him absolutely. He is a man of exceptional intelligence and energy, of entire discretion, of excellent judgment; a dead game man, and absolutely straight; and a through and tough American, of the best type in character and in single-minded loyalty. I would put him in any confidential position under me if I were given command.

Very Respectfully
Theodore Roosevelt

Topic 1
ROOSEVELT AND 1920

All that is near to me in the male line is in France.  If they do not come back, what is the Presidency to me?

" If they do come back, and the Republican Party wants me, and I can see where, by accepting the nomination, I can advance the ideals for which I stand, I will be a candidate.  But I will not lift my finger to secure the nomination."

That was Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's position as expressed to me in June of 1918, when it began to appear that nothing could prevent his nomination.  It was his position in December, when, convalescing from rheumatism, he talked politics with me in Roosevelt Hospital.  I had remarked that it had begun to look as though he would be nominated by acclamation.

"That may be," said he, " but if I am, I will accept only because I see where as President I can do things, can advance those ideals for which all right-thinking Americans stand.  And if I accept, it will be because the platform is one hundred per cent American.  Nothing less would induce me to consider the nomination for a single minute.

"To be President is an honorable and commendable ambition in any man.  I have been President.  Per se it would mean nothing to me to be President again.  Its only value would be in what I could do, what I could accomplish."

This was substantially his position in 1916 when, it will be remembered, the issue at the Republican Convention in Chicago was Roosevelt or Hughes, and the Republican Convention deadlocked with the Progressives on this point; a deadlock broken by Colonel Roosevelt's declination to run as a Progressive and his declaration that he believed it his duty and the duty of all Americans, who felt as he did, to support Justice Hughes.

With Judge Hughes's nomination, Colonel Roosevelt abandoned, temporarily at least, any thought of again running for the Presidency.  Two days before the decision of the voters for Mr.  Wilson over Mr.  Hughes, my notebook says, he declared he would be out of it in four years.

"We can," I remarked, after he had bemoaned the probable reelection of Mr.  Wilson, " look forward to 1920.  There will be nothing to it then but Roosevelt.  No one can stop it."

"You are wrong there," he answered.  "This was my year — 1916 was my high twelve.  In four years I will be out of it.  This was my year to run.  I did not want to run in 1912.  Circumstances compelled me to run then.  This year it was different.  This was my year."

" Colonel," said I, " I know that many things may happen in four years, but I also know that everywhere I go it is the one thing: 'If they had only named Roosevelt.''

"True," he countered, "but don't you see that you are merely proving what I say — this was my year to run.  I have no doubt the mass of the people wanted me to run.  The gang did not.  To beat me they had to take Hughes — they hated him only in a lesser degree than they hated me."

Following the defeat of Judge Hughes he made no effort toward securing the 1920 nomination, for himself or any other man.  His efforts were directed first, last, and all of the time to bringing the Republican Party and its leaders around to what he believed to be the real American ideals and needs of the hour, and to make the party the instrument through which the real will of the American people might be registered and the ancient landmarks defended.

If, in doing this, the party should nominate him, well and good.  If the nomination went to another, well and good, provided that other was one hundred per cent American and dependable in his Americanism.

" It was," he said to me early in 1916, " the necessity of saving the Union that called the Republican Party into being.  It accomplished that purpose, and for many years governed the country wisely and well.  Then it became fat, and soft, and lazy.  It ceased to be the party of all of the people and it has been punished for its sins.

" Now another crisis is at hand.  The danger to our institutions is as great today as it was in 1861.  Then we faced disunion.  Now we face disgrace and worse.  The party now in power is the same party the people, acting through the Republican Party, hurled from power in 1860.  It is as unfit to govern this country now as it was then; it is just as sectional and it is fully as inefficient.  The only difference is this: in 1860 the country was facing war and the Democrats deliberately and criminally did their best to so arrange matters that it would not be ready for war, while now, with the country facing war, it is doing nothing to prepare for war.

"In the one case it was criminal intent, in the other it is congenital inefficiency; in one instance they were crooked, in the present case they are foolish.  The results to the country will be the same.

"The Democratic Party cannot wreck the country, but it can do damage that a generation won't be able to repair.  Under Mr.  Wilson's leadership it is backing us into war stern foremost.  There are men in his party that see the danger, that feel as we do, but they are helpless.  There is no hope for the country in that party.

"If, when we finally get into the war, formally and officially as we now are unofficially, and the Democratic Party happens to be in power, it will be just as inefficient in war as it is in peace.

"The hope of the country is in the Republican Party.  Through it the mass of the people will have to work, will express their real opinions.

"The mass of the people are all right.  Just now they are suffering from a false sense of security into which they have been lulled by sweet words and beautiful phrases.  They will be, they must be awakened.  And when they are awake they must turn to the Republican Party for leadership, for there is none in the other party.  They will turn to it when they realize the needs of real preparedness and the plight they face through false leadership.

"For that reason, and that reason only, I am interested in party politics.  I would not give a snap of my finger for the nomination.  I would take the nomination only because of the chance to do things, were I again President, that must be done."

With this background it is easy to see why, following the defeat of Justice Hughes in 1916 he began a campaign to bring all wings of the Republican Party together.

This campaign began the last Saturday of the 1916 campaign.  It began in Bridgeport where the Colonel closed his speaking tour, with a wholehearted appeal for the election of Mr.  Hughes.  Incidentally it is worth noting here that it was Bridgeport's big vote (Bridgeport is the chief city of Fairfield County) which saved Connecticut to the Republicans and made California's vote so all-important.

After this meeting Colonel Roosevelt went to the Stratfield Hotel where John T.  King, the Republican National Committeeman, had a light supper waiting.  King had been anti-Roosevelt, but had come around to Mr.  Roosevelt's way of thinking, and between bites of supper the two talked organization.

"I am not against the organization and never have been against it because it was a party organization," he declared, "but I have been against it because it was an organization for private plunder.  That is what I am against.

"You have the right idea here — taking the working-men into the organization and making it a popular institution in which the idea of social justice for all is uppermost.  It is a splendid idea, that of insisting that the man who takes a place in the organization must quit drinking and start a savings bank account.

" I want to see that sort of an organization everywhere — an organization where the workers and the small farmers sit in and really belong.  That sort of an organization will not stand for plunder.  It will stand for what is right and decent in public life.  You can call such an organization a machine if you will and I'll still approve of it.  Calling it a machine will not make it offensive to me.  A machine is just as necessary for successful party work, for a party to serve the public, as organization is in the army or in a bank.

" I have no quarrel with any man who has been in the organization for what he has done in the past if he's straight now.  There are a good many things everybody sees are improper now that only a few thought were improper a short time back.  It's like the lottery — Harvard College and many of your old churches about here were financed by lotteries in the old days.  Times have changed.

"If the organization is straight, runs straight, if its leaders and the men in it run straight, I have no objection to it.  I will work with it just so long as it is straight and I won't worry over the possibility that some of its members have not always held as high views as they do now."

"Well," laughed King, "that would let Barnes
in."

"By Godfrey!" exclaimed the Colonel, "I'll work even with Barnes if he's working for the public good.  Yes, I'll even take Barnes in when he is ready to run straight and so long as he is working for the party and the people, and not for Barnes."

"If we had known you as well before Chicago as we do now," remarked King, "Connecticut would have been in a different position there."

The Colonel laughed, asked more questions about King's methods which had made Bridgeport a banner Republican city, and the local situation generally.

"I like King," he told me afterwards.  "He has the right idea of organization — clean men, close to the people, with the working men well up to the front and in front if they have the ability to get there.  Organizations like that won't go wrong."

This conversation not long after resulted by Mr.  King becoming the closest of Colonel Roosevelt's political advisers.  Through King he worked for the reorganization of the Republican National Committee which made Will H.  Hays, of Indiana, National Chairman.  King was his choice for that place, but when on the eve of the St.  Louis meeting of February, 1918, at which Hays was chosen, it became evident King would have to fight for the place, the Colonel advised him to keep out.

"The place is not worth a fight," he advised, " especially where there is so much at stake."

This was his last political act before the serious operations which brought him to the doors of death that winter.  He was semi convalescent when he was told of Hays's election and insisted on wiring him immediately.  He saw Hays before he was out of bed and he was much impressed with him.

"Hays," he told me before leaving the hospital, "is a trump.  He is all right.  He may make mistakes, but he won't make many.  The party seems to be united on him and that's something well worth while.  Now we've got to back him up.  With Hays at work and on the job, I think we'll get results.  For one thing, there's only one party now.  Most of the Progressives have come back.  Most of the others will follow.  Those that won't return would sooner or later have quit even the Progressive Party — they 're just natural born Mavericks who won't stay long in any herd, and won't stay branded.

"Hays will, I'm sure, weld the party firmly together.  The day of factions has gone.  But we have all got to help him."

Colonel Roosevelt's desire to help sent him to Maine a few weeks after he left the hospital to address the state convention.  He had bullied his doctors into a reluctant consent, had a "bully time," and came back confident the trip was worth while.

"It looks more and more like Roosevelt in 1920," I told him on his return.

"I'm not so sure about that," said he.  "I don't know that Roosevelt will care to be a candidate in 1920.  He certainly will not be if he has to scramble for it, and he won't take the nomination if it's handed him on a silver platter, unless he sees where by accepting he can be of real service, can do real things.

"Otherwise — you couldn't drag me into an acceptance."

"I don't believe you'll have to scramble for it; there will be a chance to do things and there won't be any doubt as to the platform — all of your conditions will be met," I replied.

"In that case," he replied, "I'll have to run, but remember this: almost anything can happen between now and 1920."

Topic 2
DEWEY AND FIGHTING BOB

TWO of the brightest chapters in America's brilliant naval history deal with Dewey in Manila Bay and the battleship cruise around the world.  For Dewey's presence in Manila Bay, Roosevelt was responsible — he had, in fact, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to battle with bureau chiefs to send him there — thereby breaking precedent much as he did later in sending Rear Admiral "Fighting Bob" Evans on the famous battleship cruise.

Dewey he sent to Asia on the chance that he would have to fight, and Evans, prepared to fight, left with President Roosevelt his pledge that were there a fight he would come home as Dewey did—or not at all.

There has been much mystery and some dispute as to the orders under which Evans sailed.  What his written orders may have been I do not know.  But here is Colonel Roosevelt's story of his last interview with Evans before "he shoved off" on that memorable voyage.

"I said to Evans," said Colonel Roosevelt in discussing the matter, "' Admiral, I am very fond of you, but if you or your ships are surprised in port or at sea, don't come back to me.

'"You are going on a mission of peace, to see that the peace is kept, but from the time that you lift anchor in the roads until you return, guard your ships as though you were at war.

'"Seek no trouble; take no chances; don't be surprised.'

"Evans stood looking me straight in the eye while I was talking.

"'Mr.  President,' said he, 'Mr.  President, if I am surprised, I won't come back.'

"And I don't believe he would have.

"The situation was serious and Evans knew it nearly if not quite as well as I.  There was one chance in ten that the trip would end in war.  I decided to take the nine chances that it would prevent the war that seemed certain, was certain, if strong measures were not taken to prevent it.

"I was talking softly to Japan and, in the fleet, was letting it see my big stick.

"Evans was the man to handle the fleet.  He was worth a couple of battleships both for the moral effect on his men and the knowledge of the rest of the world that he was not called ' Fighting Bob' for nothing.  I knew that he did not want to fight — your first class fighting man never looks for fight — I knew that he could be depended upon not to pick a fight, but, by George! I knew, and Japan knew, that if occasion demanded he could fight and would fight.

"Can you imagine Mr.  Wilson taking such a course?"

Of Dewey as a fighting man Colonel Roosevelt had the very highest regard, but he also realized that like most other mortals, Dewey had his limitations.

"As a fighting man, as a man on the bridge or in the conning tower, Dewey had no superior," he once told me.  "He was everything the traditions demand an American sailor man shall be.  But take him off his quarter deck and set him in a swivel chair and he was lost — he was only slightly better than Crown inshield.

" Crowninshield, you know, did not wish Dewey sent to command the Asiatic squadron.  He insisted that it was not Dewey's turn — that some one else should go, because, in the course of ordinary routine, the other man should go.  I knew what Dewey was — a fighting man of the Farragut type and just as capable as his old commander of saying, ' Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.' He proved it by cutting the cable after he had done his main job.

"It was because I believed he was the right man for the job that I sent him to the East over the bureau's protest, and it was because I knew he was a first class man in a fight that I sent him to Southern waters when it looked as though we might have to mix it up with Germany a few years later.  When Germany realized that I meant business, she quit, but if she had n't, Dewey would have given as good an account of himself there as he had in Manila Bay.

"Between ourselves, the old man was rather keen for the chance at Germany.  He recognized, as did few men of his time, what Germany and German policies really were and what Germany meant to try and do to the world.

"On the other hand, I saw his limitations when a dispute arose between him and General Wood as to the place where fortifications should be built to defend Manila.  Wood objected that the place favored by the navy, and, of course, by Dewey, could not be defended by the army.  I sent for the admiral and put the thing up to him.  He listened, shrugged his shoulders, and, in effect asked, ' What of it?'

"So long as it could be defended by the navy and fitted in with the navy's scheme of things, he did not care.  He lacked the necessary breadth, the necessary imagination to size the entire problem — to get the other fellow's viewpoint.

"However, as things developed, both were wrong, for the Japs before long had guns that would have made the place picked by the army untenable."

Topic 3
WHY ALGER ESCAPED CRITICISM

STUDENTS of Spanish War history may recall that however much Colonel Roosevelt may have criticized other War Department officials at that time, General Russell A.  Alger, then Secretary of War, was one of those who escaped.  There was a reason for this — the T.  R.  policy of a lifetime of sticking, wherever it was humanly possible, to a friend.

"Some persons may have wondered," he remarked one day, "why it was I never criticized General Alger.  The explanation is simple: whenever I found myself up against some foolish bureau chief whose love for red tape would block me in fitting out my regiment, I’d go to Alger and he’d give me what I wanted.  Thus, I wanted modern rifles using smokeless powder.  The then chief of ordnance advised that I take the old fashioned Springfield using black powder.  He said the smoke would hide us from the enemy.

" I could not convince him this was bad judgment, so I went to Alger.  He fixed us up immediately.  That is why you never heard of my saying anything against the old General.

"Anyway, others said quite enough."

Topic 4
THE CHARLEY THOMPSON CLUB

SO far as I know, Colonel Roosevelt never indulged in cards.  He did not, however, object to others doing so.  "I am not bigoted in the matter" was his way of putting it.  One of his standing jokes had to do with the proneness of some of his newspaper friends to "kill" a little time playing poker.

Frequently a local committeeman boarding the Colonel's train before his city was reached, would, after the social amenities had been attended to, ask where the newspaper men were, or for some individual correspondent.

"I do not know," the Colonel would say, "but I suspect they are attending a meeting of the Charley Thompson Finger Club."

"And what is that?" the committeeman would ask.

" It is," the Colonel would answer, "a very exclusive organization devoted to the study of financial problems, psychology, and the relative and varying values of certain pieces of paper.  In a word, it is a poker club.  At least they say they play poker.  Some say they only play at poker.

"It had its start in this way.  On one of my trips some years ago, Charley Thompson, of the Times (New York), cut a finger rather badly opening a bottle of mucilage.  That evening after dinner the boys sat around talking over the events of the day.  After a while one arose, stretched himself, and said he guessed he’d go back to see how Charley Thompson's finger was getting along.  Soon another, then another, went back to see about Thompson's finger, until I was left alone.  By this time I had become a bit sympathetic and decided that I, too, should look in on the invalid.

"They were all there playing poker — Charley Thompson included.  Thereafter when the boys all disappeared and remained quiet for any considerable period, I always felt it safe to assume the Charley Thompson Finger Club was in session, though its founder might be hundreds of miles away."

Sometimes the Colonel would look in on a "meeting" to joke the boys about their progress or to extend mock sympathy to the stranger they might have taken in.  There was no rule as to the size of the game, nothing approaching a dictum from the Colonel as to what the limit should or should not be, but it was always small.  For this, there was a reason.  Instinctively the boys knew that the Colonel would not like to hear of a large limit game—of anything approaching real gambling by any of his party.  So they refrained from high play just as they refrained from carrying liquor with them.

Once, I believe, some one, more venturesome, or less well acquainted with the Colonel than the rest, did arrange for a liberal stock of stimulants being placed aboard the train.  The Colonel did not say very much.  That little, I believe, he said to one man.  The balance of the trip was " dry " so far as the train, at least, was concerned.

The Colonel would not quarrel with or attempt to say to any of his party that he should not take a drink if he felt so inclined, or pack a flask in his luggage, but he did object to anything that by twist of the imagination might be considered a drinking orgy or the making of one.  It was.  not his idea of the thing to do.

Topic 5
HOW I LOST MY EYE

I DID not realize it was news until I saw the papers yesterday.  I rather supposed most people knew I had lost the sight of one eye."

Colonel Roosevelt was a bit amazed and somewhat puzzled by the prominence given this fact one Monday morning after he had talked with a group of reporters at Jack Cooper's health farm, near Stamford, Connecticut, where he had gone to take off some surplus weight.  The reporters he had bidden there more, I am sure, to do something for his friend Cooper by securing him a lot of publicity than anything else, though he had, as a matter of fact, half promised that he would have something to say before leaving the place when he went there.

"You knew it, did you not?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," I answered; "you told me about it one night on a train going West.  Yoder (of the U.  P.) and Reggie Post were in the party."

"I thought so," said he.

My notebook tells me that his story as to how he lost the use of the left eye was led up to by a question of the Colonel's as to a rumor about his being in poor health then going the rounds.
"What do they say I have?" he inquired.

'' Arterio sclerosis.''

"Just what is that?"

"A hardening of the walls of the arteries — a loss of elasticity in the blood vessels."

"Well, on that definition they are right.  I have had arterio sclerosis for a long time.  Ever since I was about forty, I have had to cut out violent exercises one after the other until now there is nothing left except what a grandfather might expect.

"When I was Governor it was delightful to note the refusal of the Comptroller to audit a bill for a wrestling mat for the Executive Mansion.  He could understand perfectly why a gentleman should wish a billiard table, but a wrestling mat for a Governor! It was inconceivable.

"I did not wrestle so much after that.  My first man, a middle weight champion, knew enough to take care of himself and me, too.  I forget his name.  He had to quit and his successor was an oarsman who could neither look out for himself nor for me.  The result was that one bout ended with the smashing of one of his knees and I had a loose rib or two.

"I used to like to box, but I had to stop when I hurt my left eye in the White House.  You know it is blind; a loss, but not nearly as bad as if it were the right one.  It happened this way: I was boxing with a naval officer, a husky chap and a cousin of Mrs.  Roosevelt.  He countered a hot one on the side of the head — right over the eye.  One of the hardening arteries ruptured.  Then the eye gradually began to film over.  Soon all the sight was gone.  That's how I lost it.

"So far as I know the officer never learned the result of his blow.  To have told him would have only caused him to feel badly."

After the publicity following his statement at Jack Cooper's, Colonel Roosevelt again referred to the fact that he had kept the extent of his injury secret from his boxing partner.

"The only man I ever tried to keep that story away from was the young officer.  It would have worried him to death.

"By the way," he added, with a laugh, "did you notice how quickly it is announced that Mr.  Wilson, too, has but one eye.  Of course, he did not lose it in any such vulgar way as boxing; that would never do.  He had to lose his in the more ladylike and refined bookworm way — too much reading."

Topic 6
THE DRINK STORY

FEW things in Colonel Roosevelt's later life are fresher in the public memory than his suit against a Michigan editor who accused him of drunkenness.  The unfortunate editor, unable to produce a scintilla of proof, admitted his fault, and so far as the records go, the matter was disposed of.  There was nothing developed, however, to show where the tale started or what foundation, if any, it might have had.

Colonel Roosevelt had an explanation.  He gave it to us one afternoon in the trophy room in Oyster Bay, when passing the cigars around, he remarked that he would vouch for the quality.  "They must be good," he remarked, "for they're some of Leonard Wood's.  I never smoke myself, so I have to rely on the judgment of others."

"Did you ever smoke?" some one asked.

"There is where that story of my drinking started," he continued, not hearing the question or ignoring it.
"You see, when I would decline a cigar, saying I did not smoke, folks would often ask, in a joking way, 'What are your bad habits?' In the same spirit I would reply, ' Prize fighting and strong drink.'
"Now it so happens that the Lord in His infinite wisdom elected to create some persons with whom it is never safe to joke — solemn asses who lack a sense of humor.  I am very fond of that story of Sidney Smith's, who, playing with his children, stopped suddenly, saying, ' Children, we must now be serious — here comes a fool.' You know the kind he meant — those poor unfortunates who must take everything said to them literally.

"One of these to whom I made that remark said, 'Roosevelt, I hear, drinks hard.' The other fool replied, 'Yes, that's true.  He told me so himself.'

"And so the story went on its travels.

"That is all there ever was to the talk of my drinking.  From that start, it spread and spread until, in selfdefence, I was compelled to take action to stop it.  Some folks have said I went out of my way to find a little editor of small means and few sources of evidence who could not well defend himself.  The fact is, he was the one editor I could hold to account.  There were and are editors nearer New York I gladly would have sued under like circumstances, but they knew better than to print what they knew was untrue.  Had any of them done so, I would have hauled them up short, and with much more glee than I did the Michigan man, for the men I have in mind have real malice toward me, and he, I am satisfied, had none.

"We parted good friends.  I certainly had nothing against him.  In his zeal to do things, he put in print what shrewder and really malicious men who would harm me if they could, dare not print.  I believe he was honestly sorry when he found his error.

"However, the thing had its value.  We're never too old to learn and I learned to be careful with whom I cracked the simplest joke.  Thank God, there are many you can joke with in safety.  If we could n't laugh once in a while, what a world this would be! It would n't be a world — it would be a madhouse."

Topic 7
THE BREAK WITH TAFT

THERE never has been any formal explanation as to what caused the break between Colonel Roosevelt and Judge William H.  Taft.  Here is Colonel Roosevelt's explanation, made, my notebook tells me, at Sagamore Hill, April 8,1916.  It was made in the course of a discussion as to the possibility of a reconciliation which some mutual friends had taken upon themselves to try to arrange.

At the time, the Colonel did not venture an opinion as to whether they would get together, but he did seem anxious to make it clear that, whatever he may have thought about Taft's backers in "1912, he had no real feeling against Taft personally.

"The break in our relations," said he, "was due to no one thing, but to the cumulative effect of many things — the abandonment of everything my Administration had stood for, and other things.

"Taft changed greatly between the time he was elected and the time he took office.

"The first friction came in the matter of his Cabinet.  When he was nominated I went to him and asked whom he wished to have take his place as Secretary of War.  I told him I considered it as much his appointment as mine, and that I would appoint no one not acceptable to him, though I had a good man in mind.  I told him the man was Luke E.  Wright.

"He said Wright was absolutely the man he would have chosen himself.  Wright, he recalled, had been with him in the Philippines and was the man for the place.

"After he was elected he came to me and told me he wished to retain my Cabinet and would like to have me tell the members so.  I realized at once that this was a rather delicate matter, believing he might and probably would change his mind later; that his wishes in November might not be his wishes in March; and I asked him if he really desired the message delivered.

"'How about Cortelyou?' I asked.’do you want him? You know he thought he was your rival.'

"He allowed this was so, and that he would not want Cortelyou.

"'How about Bonaparte?' I asked.  'You know you do not think much of him as a lawyer.'

"He agreed that he would wish another in the place, but he insisted that he wanted the others to stay, and on his definite insistence I delivered the message.  More than that, those thus assured thanked Taft for the offer in my presence.

"Wright was among those so assured; in fact, the assurance that he was the joint choice of myself and Taft was, he said, the impelling reason for his acceptance of the place when I offered it to him.

"By inauguration time, however, Mr.  Taft had changed his mind, just as I had feared he would, and it made a great deal of feeling.  Some had made very definite plans on the strength of his offer, renewing leases of houses and that sort of thing, and it was bad all around.

"That was the first bit of friction — the beginning.

"In office, his militancy evaporated and he at once set about undoing all my Administration had done.  Conservation went by the board, Newell of the Reclamation Service had to quit, and things went from bad to worse.  They had reached such a pass that, when I got to Rome on my way home from Africa, I found Gifford Pinchot awaiting me.  He wanted me to attack Taft then and there.  Others were in the same mood.

"But I said, 'No,' we should do nothing of the sort.  I wanted to do nothing to injure Mr.  Taft or his Administration.

"Thus things went, one thing after another, until finally the Rural Welfare Commission, one of the best things we had, was abandoned.  That was the last straw.  The break came on that, but it was not because of that.  It was because of the many things of which that was the capstone, the climax.  By the way, the Government never even printed the report of that Commission.  We finally had it done at the expense of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.

"There you have the real story of our break.

"Of course there were other things.  We had a perfectly good treaty with Japan, under which we had the right to pass exclusion laws.  Japan asked that we not do so, offering to make a gentlemen's agreement to keep her folks at home if we would not pass such a law.  The agreement was made and kept, but we had the right to enforce exclusion under the treaty if Japan did not keep her promise.  Mr.  Taft, however, went to work and made a new treaty, in which that right to exclude was waived, we relying on their gentlemen's agreement, which they may or may not live up to, as circumstances may seem best to them.

"That was a mistake, and how California ever let that treaty go through is beyond me.  Now, as matters stand, Japan can do as she pleases.  The part of wisdom was to have retained that provision ofj the old treaty as a club.

"Then there was messing about with treaties guaranteeing the peace of Latin America by which we committed ourselves to raise an army of at least 300,000 men when just now we are showing we cannot raise an army large enough to take care of Mexico.
"All in all, you can see there were many differences, none in itself serious enough to cause any break in our cordial relations, but taken together, very serious.

"I never regretted anything more in my life.  I have never questioned Taft's honesty in any or all of the things I have mentioned.  Some were mistakes, such as the Cabinet matters.  In other things he was very much imposed upon.  When Taft led me to believe he was going to come out for the policies agreed upon, he honestly intended to do so.  His militancy just evaporated."

Topic 8
THE ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE

THE fellow who shot me was cracked, and the doctors found him to be insane, so they put him into an insane asylum for the balance of his days.  It was the best way to dispose of his case."

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the attempt made on his life in Milwaukee during the campaign of 1912.

"The man was cracked.  He had been interested in a saloon that was in trouble while I was Police Commissioner, and, brooding on the thing, his poor brain gave away altogether.

"I had no special reason for thinking that I was in danger during that campaign, certainly much less than I had in the time I was in the White House or at other times since.  Of course, when I was in the White House a rather careful watch was kept upon those who might wish to destroy me, and persons approaching me too closely were scrutinized, but I was never very much worried about that sort of thing or gave it much thought.

" More to save the nerves of the secret service men and some of my friends than anything else, I tried to be as little careless as I could consistent with a reasonable degree of freedom of action, but I was something of a fatalist in the thing, and I realized that however careful a man might be, there was bound to be some risk at all times.  I have, I believe, been in more danger from friendly crowds that seemed anxious to crush me to death in their welcome, and to committees that would kill me with indigestion and overwork, than from anarchists or other cranks.

"I was in the automobile when this fellow shot me; he reached over the edge like, and the next thing I knew was a flash and a fearful blow.  It seemed as though I had been hit with a sledgehammer.  I went through with my engagement to speak, as you know, but it was somewhat difficult.  Otherwise, you know, members of my family and my friends would be frightened half to death.  After the shooting my side was as black as your hat.

"The bullet, you know, was never removed.  It passed through a rib and through the outer case of the lungs.  It was thought best not to try and remove it as it did not seem to be doing any damage.  This dry bronchitis I have been known to suffer from, I believe, may be a result of that wound."

Topic 9
WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED

TO those resident away from New York, as well as to many resident within, the defeat of Mayor John Purroy Mitchel for reelection and the failure of Governor Charles S.  Whitman to make a better showing than he did, are mysteries.

There are those who cite both failures as proof that New York City, at least, does not want good government, for Whitman, like Mitchel, was beaten by New York City votes.

Colonel Roosevelt held no such opinion.  To him Mitchel failed because he got out of touch with the public, while Whitman, he declared, might well have been President had he attended strictly to the business of being Governor of the State of New York.  Whitman was no prime favorite of his, but he believed Whitman might easily have duplicated Cleveland's feat in jumping from the Executive Mansion in Albany to the White House had he not been badly stung by the presidential bee early in his term of office.

"If," said the Colonel, as I was leaving Oyster Bay for the Chicago Convention of 1916, "Whitman had had the sense just to have been Governor of New York these two years, it would n't be a question of Hughes or Roosevelt in Chicago.  It would have been Whitman.

"Just think of the chance he had! Elected Governor of the State of New York on a highly moral issue by an enormous majority, with a legislature friendly and the people sympathetic; all he had to do was be Governor of New York, a real Governor, and make his administration stick out just as Arthur Woods has stood out as a Police Commissioner, and the nomination would have been his without the asking.  He had every chance, and more, that Cleveland had.

"But it was not in him to think of these things.  He had his eyes on the Presidency from the moment he was elected; he has not made the record he could have made by attending strictly to the job in hand, and he has lost the Presidency.  It is too bad."

Colonel Roosevelt went into the Mitchel campaign with no delusions as to the probable result.  There was, however, a chance that Tammany might lose, and he felt that no hope of beating Tammany was too forlorn to be abandoned.  To him duty spelled a drive at Tammany whenever the opportunity offered.

Mayor Mitchel's failure, the Colonel believed, was due entirely to his getting out of step with the electorate.

"There is," he went on to say, "no doubt that Mitchel has on the whole given New York the best administration the city has ever had.  There is every reason why his administration should be continued.  Another four years and Tammany will be starved to death.  If Tammany gets back now, it means another lease of life for it.

"Furthermore, the weaknesses of Mitchel as Mayor are temperamental rather than otherwise.  He has been a good Mayor and the work now begun should be carried on.  To elect Hylan or any other man with the Tammany tag on him is to give the cause of good government in America a decided setback."

"Yet," said I, "he has made his election impossible by his arrogance and, what you have noted, his being out of touch with the man in the street.  Almost anything may develop in the campaign.  Personally I feel sure it will develop into quite the dirtiest mud slinging affair we have known in years.  For that reason, and the additional fact that I do not like to see you identified with a loser, I am sorry you are in it.  You cannot hope to win."

"Being with a loser, so long as what the loser stands for is right, has no terrors for me," he replied.

"The weakness of Mitchel and his fight is that he has failed utterly to keep in touch with the people.

Three years ago, after Mitchel had been in office nearly a year, I told him he was in danger of making his a 'swallowtail' administration; that he was putting too many men into office the people did not know, and some that they knew and did not like.

" I told him he would do well to put some man into responsible office who was really in touch with the best in the labor unions; that an occasional appointment of a clean cut young Irishman would be wise, warning him at the same time that he was surrounding himself with men not in touch with the people and who would surely isolate him from the masses.

"It was not enough, I told him, to give the people a good administration — he must not give the people the impression that he was not one of them, that he was a man aloof.

"Again, a year later, I told him he would be wise if he took an occasional night away from Fifth Avenue and went east two or three blocks and got acquainted, say, with Second Avenue, and that he might with pleasure and profit hire a chauffeur who knew the way to Brooklyn.  He would, I told him, have a lot of fun at a ball in, say, the Third Assembly District; a better time, perhaps, than he ever had in Fifth Avenue, find the girls just as good if not better dancers, and be a better Mayor for having the fun.  But he did not see things that way.

"The worst things that this fellow Hearst is saying against him, that he is a little brother of the rich, a sycophant at rich men's tables, a social climber, is due chiefly to himself.  His constant appearance in the papers as being at this, that, or the other weekend party has lent foundation and color for these things.

"No man seriously questions John Mitchel's honesty.  But many do insist that instead of buying his influence with cash, the so called interests secure it with invitations to tea or dinner.  In the public mind he is, I 'm sorry to say, a social climber.  He has only himself to blame for this.

"He made a fearful tactical blunder when the Vanderbilt car was in an accident and he insisted upon the chauffeur of the other car being arrested.  If it had been his own or John Smith's car that he was in at the time of the accident, that might have been the correct course to have taken, but the Vanderbilt car — never.

"He has blundered, too, in his very efficiency.  The so called Gary School System has become a liability, where, properly handled, it would have been an enormous asset.

"I believe it really solves the part-time, school problem.  That is a problem of the tenements, of the immigrants very largely.  Naturally it is so — they have the large families, there are more of them, they live in the crowded sections.

"You and I know the psychology of the immigrant, of the man who works with his hands.  With them, education for their children is almost an obsession.  The Irishman wants a priest in the family, or a lawyer; the Jew, a student, a doctor, or a rabbi, and so on.  It's understandable and commendable.  They want their children to be better off than they have been.  Lacking much of the higher education, they appraise it at a better value than many of us who have it.

'If Mr.  Mitchel had gone to them when this plan was decided upon, shown them where it would give their children more and better education, they would have been with him — they’d have called him blessed.  That would have been more than a politic thing to do — it would have been the decent thing to do; for, after all's said and done, the parent has the right to be consulted on anything so vital as his child's schooling.

"Instead, having agreed that the doctors had fixed up medicine that would be good for the school patient, he decided to let the doctors jam it down the patient's throat, whether the patient liked it or not.

"It's too late now, but we cannot blame the parents of the ninety thousand children on halftime if they are offended, or if they resent what has been made (and by one of the Gary School defenders) to appear as an effort to keep their children in the places of hewers of wood and carriers of water.

"No man in public office, in justice to himself, his office, and the public, can allow the impression to gain ground among the people that he is no longer one of themselves, that he is a man apart."

Later, while he was recuperating at Cooper's place in Stamford, having made the speeches for Mitchel that he had promised to make, Mr.  Mitchel went to him to ask for more aid.  Mitchel then felt that he was down, as a remark made while waiting to see the Colonel indicated.

"We are reelecting you, Mr.  Mayor," Miss Zoe Beckley had declared in answer to his question as to what she was doing there.

"That," said the Mayor, "is more than I seem to be able to do myself."

After he had talked with Mitchel, Colonel Roosevelt said he had agreed to make "half a dozen more speeches."

"They have put it up to me pretty hard," he said, "and I do not see but that it is up to me to do what I can.  The campaign, however, is being fearfully mismanaged.  The cry, 'A vote against me is a vote for the Kaiser,' is a mistake.  It is unfair and it will react.

" If Mitchel could be made to see it his only hope is to stand on his record and challenge Hylan to say what reforms he will undo.  He should stand pat on Arthur Woods's record in the police department and ask Hylan if he will bring the red lights back, the old days of Devery and police corruption and all these involve.

"He has a dozen such chances if he will only use them."

Later the Colonel, who really was very fond of Mitchel personally, expressed regret at the position in which defeat would probably leave him.

"If," said he, "this young man is defeated — and it looks as though he will be — he personally will be in a most unfortunate plight.  He will have to start fresh with the handicap of having been Mayor and he will then find that his society friends will have very little use for him.  They will, beyond the shadow of a doubt, drop him, and he will realize then, what he does not realize now, that it is the Mayor of New York to whom these attentions have been paid and not to Purroy Mitchel.

"The great weakness of Mitchel as Mayor is that he has had no popular appeal — he has not gripped the imagination of the masses."

Topic 10
CLASHES WITH THE KAISER

IT is not generally known that on at least three occasions — twice before the Great War and once since — Colonel Roosevelt and the Kaiser clashed.  The Venezuela incident is more or less widely known, largely through Mr.  Thayer's excellent book.  But the clash of wills at the time of Colonel Roosevelt's visit to Berlin, and his refusal to take the Kaiser's part in 1914, are not at all well known.

The Colonel told of the clash in Berlin en route for Boston one Sunday in 1916.

" It is," said he, "not generally known that I had a little friction with the Kaiser when I visited Germany.

"When I reached Berlin I found an invitation for ' Mr.  Roosevelt' to be the Kaiser's guest at Potsdam.  Mrs.  Roosevelt was travelling with me.  I asked at the Embassy what the invitation meant — if it included her.  When I found it did not, I declined, and said I was stopping at the Embassy.

"The invitation was repeated.  My answer was that Mrs.  Roosevelt and I were to be the guests of the Embassy.  I was travelling as any American gentleman might travel with his wife and I did not propose to go any place where she would not be welcomed or could not go.  The next day ' Colonel and Mrs.  Roosevelt' were invited.  By maintaining my point I had made it.

"While I was his guest, Wilhelm, a delightful host, was very frank in telling what he thought of other Americans who had visited him — Andrew Carnegie and others.  Later he sent me photographs he had taken of some of them with bits of his opinions of them written on the backs.  They were not opinions calculated to please the subjects of the pictures.

" I suppose he was advised that he should not have done this, for the return of the photographs was requested.  I said, 'Oh, no, His Majesty the Kaiser gave the photographs to me and I propose to retain them.' I suppose I was the one man in the Empire at the time who could refuse to obey his wishes.

"Anyway, I kept the photographs.  They have been mounted on glass so one can read the inscriptions.

" I clashed again with the Kaiser directly the War broke out," the Colonel went on.

"Then I was called upon by a young member of the German Embassy staff in Washington — a count — I cannot recall his name now.

"'I am instructed by His Majesty the Kaiser,' said he, ' to present his compliments to Colonel Roosevelt, to say to him that he has very pleasant recollections of his visit to Berlin and Potsdam and to say that he hopes Colonel Roosevelt will appreciate Germany's position and can be relied upon to see the justice of it.'

' You will please present my compliments to His Majesty the Kaiser,' I answered; 'say to him that I, too, have very pleasant recollections of my stay in Berlin and Potsdam, and his many courtesies to me, his guest, but that I also have a very lively recollection of courtesies extended to me by His Majesty, the King of Belgium, whose guest I also was.'

"He clicked his heels together, saluted and left.  I have not heard from him or the Kaiser since.

" I imagine the Kaiser also had recollections of the Venezuela matter.  He was convinced that I was bluffing when he was told I would maintain the Monroe Doctrine.  Von Holleben, then Ambassador, told him so; so reported to the Foreign Office.  I insisted on our rights, and finally told the Ambassador that Admiral Dewey and his ships would be ordered to sail for Venezuelan waters within twenty-four hours if in the meantime I did not receive definite assurances that Germany had abandoned its intentions.  Dewey was then in West Indian waters.

"Von Holleben then concluded that I was not bluffing, and his cable reversing himself caused a panic in the German Foreign Office.  Soon after this he was recalled in disgrace.  He was in so bad only one German official was at the ship to see him off.  On his return to Germany he dropped out of sight completely.

"The one man who sized me right and who put Berlin on the right track was Carl Buenz, then Consul General in New York.  He lived out Long Island way and had visited me at Sagamore Hill.  He was shrewd enough to size up the situation accurately.  He told the Embassy it was in error and warned it to beware, that I was not bluffing.

"Lately, you will recall, Buenz has been indicted for plotting to put bombs on English ships — some of those German war plots.

" Dewey at that time had instructions to be ready to move on a moment's notice."

Subsequent to this conversation Henry A.  Wise Wood, noting that the accuracy of some of Colonel Roosevelt's published utterances on the Venezuela matter had been challenged, wrote to Admiral Dewey.  Dewey's reply, published at the time, corroborated fully all that the Colonel had said about holding his ships in readiness for action.

"That, gentlemen," said the Colonel, calling attention to the Dewey letters, "is another of those instances where proof of things you know to be so comes to you when you need it from unexpected quarters.  It is passing strange how, somehow or other, truth will out."

Once, later, Colonel Roosevelt mentioned Carl Buenz.  Buenz, who was out on bail on the plot charges, was old and, as it proved, hopelessly ill.  He wished permission to return to Germany in the hope that he might there get relief, or, failing that, die in his old home.  To get this permission he asked the Colonel's assistance.

" I surely shall do all that I can for him," he said, " but I fear that all won't be much.  He is entitled to consideration, not because he plotted, as I assume he did, but for the really valuable service he did this country as well as his own in the Venezuela matter.  Whatever else he may have done, this should not be forgotten.  I hope he gets what he asks, but I am afraid he won't."

The Colonel's fears proved true, and Buenz, later convicted, died in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta.

Topic 11
THAT GARY DINNER

IT is not known to many that, in 1915, Colonel Roosevelt threatened, in the event that certain contingencies became facts, to support President Wilson for reelection against the Republican nominee.

The threat was made at a luncheon given at the Harvard Club in December of that year by the late Robert J.  Collier.  Later, in explaining the famous Gary dinner to me, Colonel Roosevelt repeated the threat.
The Gary dinner may well be described as the mystery of the 1916 campaign.  Exactly what it meant, few knew then, and, publicly it has never been authoritatively explained.

The facts are that it was but an incident in the Colonel's campaign for preparedness — he attended it that he might explain so that "big business men, who have not been my friends, but who now know that I am right, might see the situation exactly as it is, and be in a position to help."

"There is," said he immediately after the dinner, "no politics in this.  We have come to a situation where all Americans must stand together — big business men and little business men, farmer and banker, artisan and longshoreman.  I have not gone to the big business men — they have come to me."

That the Gary dinner threw the politicians into a flutter and sent such "Old Guardsmen" as Boies Penrose and Murray Crane flying to New York to find out what it was all about, was entirely due to the fact that Mrs.  Harold Vivian, wife of a political writer on the New York World, had an engagement to attend a concert on the night of the dinner.

The next morning, Vivian, in the course of breakfast small talk, asked how she enjoyed the entertainment.

"I did not go," said she.  "You see" (naming the young woman with whom she was to have gone) "had to sing at the big dinner Judge Gary gave Colonel Roosevelt last night."

Vivian lost interest in the grapefruit then and there.  He knew of the Colonel's rule about attending private dinners except in his own home or in the homes of his immediate friends as well as the Colonel's horror of large private dinners anywhere.  It appealed to him as a story, and the next day the fact that there had been such a dinner, together with the names of the guests, was made public.  What happened, what was said at the dinner, was not.  In consequence, political editors and the public jumped at the conclusion that Colonel Roosevelt was preparing to run for the Presidency again.  For some days there was considerable speculation as to what it really meant, until Robert E.  MacAlarney, then city editor of the New York Tribune, suggested I see Colonel Roosevelt and end the mystery.

My reception by the Colonel was characteristic.

"I certainly will not give any interview on that dinner," he declared.  "Neither will I authorize any statement.  I will, however, tell you just what it means and what happened there, and then, if you wish, you can explain in your own way and on your own responsibility.

"It is absolutely nonsensical to assume, as some have assumed, that this dinner had anything to do with my being a candidate for President.  I am not thinking of anything of that sort now.

"All that was discussed at that dinner was what you might, for want of a better term, call' the greater Americanism.' If that is politics, then we talked politics.

"Now, let us sit down and discuss this thing.  When I am through you can tell me what you think you want to do.  You can have all the facts; you need all the facts to write of the thing intelligently.  But whatever you write, it must be understood that I must not be quoted and it must not be made to appear that I am the source of information." "How was it," I asked, "that Judge Gary, whom I know to be interested in, and an advocate of, preparedness, happened to ask you to meet the people who were at that dinner?"

" It is not my practice," said he, "to cross examine those who invite me to dine as to their motives for so doing.  But if I were to guess, I would say that one actuating motive was a feeling of ' I told you so.'

"Gary, as you probably know, has always been friendly to me.  I do not know that he voted for me in 1912, but I would not be surprised to learn that he did.  All but two or three of his guests that night were anti-Roosevelt men eighteen months ago.  They were very much opposed to my work for preparedness.  The few that were not anti-Roosevelt men were of the opinion that I was committing political hara-kiri.  The others said I was rocking the boat.

"Now they say that in preaching preparedness, I was right and am right.  And I think that Mr.  Gary had in a way a sort of desire to say to his friends in important business;

"' Come and have a look at this fellow you thought so terrible; notice that he does not shoot at the musicians; that he eats in a normal way and prefers his food cooked; that when he talks he talks sanely as you and I talk, and talks nothing but the soundest kind of Americanism.'

"That is only a guess, however.  In any event it could not have been the big motive.  Behind it all, I believe, was a desire of these men — all Americans, men who have done things and are doing big things, men who have a stake in the country — to take counsel together on the big problem of national preparedness.  Under the circumstances, was it not natural that I should be asked to attend and submit my views? I was glad to go, glad that these men were seeing the light.  That's all there was to that.

"What did I tell them? Exactly what I have been telling others for months past, ever since the war in Europe began, and what I propose to tell everybody who will listen to me — the need of preparation.

"But with all of this talk about the Gary dinner why is the luncheon Bobby Collier gave at the Harvard Club overlooked? There were politics there in plenty.  Mr.  Collier, I suspect, also, had something of the 'I told you so' idea in his head when he planned the luncheon, for, in the movement for preparedness, he was in much the same position as Judge Gary — with me, but lonesome so far as his everyday associates were concerned.

"All but one or two of the men he had at the luncheon were anti-Roosevelt men three years ago.  They were anti-Roosevelt men when I began talking preparedness eighteen months ago.  Then they said, as Judge Gary's friends had said,' Roosevelt is rocking the boat.' Three fourths of them — most of the party were writers—agreed with me before they left.

"We did talk politics there — the straightest kind of politics.  The political discussion was started by Frank Simonds referring to an editorial in the New York Tribune calling attention to the way party leaders were dodging the real issue and asking, ' Do they want Roosevelt?' meaning, as you know, for President in 1916.  That editorial was strong meat.  It appealed to me immensely.

"In the discussion that followed, I said that, much as I dislike Mr.  Wilson and despise his policies, in the event of the Republicans nominating any man on a hyphen platform or on hyphenated promises, I would support President Wilson for reelection with all of the strength at my command.

"And, by Godfrey, I mean it! If there's a mongrel platform adopted by the Republican Convention, much as I dislike Wilson, I'll stump the country for him from one end of it to the other and I won't ask his permission to do so either.

"No platform and no man who swerves in the slightest degree from absolute loyalty to the greater Americanism can have my support.  I will not be neutral if such a.  candidate is named or such platform adopted.  There is no such thing as being neutral between right and wrong.  Neutral! I do not care who the man is or who his friends are or who comes to me in his behalf, if such a candidate is named, I will fight him with every weapon at my command.

"But at neither place did I say anything to advance either my own candidacy or that of any other man.  I am not interested in candidates.  I am interested in principles.  My sole interest at these two affairs was to try and arouse the American people, to urge them and ultimately, through them, compel Congress to take the proper attitude on the question of greater Americanism and national preparedness.  If you say that I am working not for a nomination, but as every American should work to secure the peace and prosperity of the United States, you will have hit the nail on the head.

"And don't overlook the fact that any Republican who seeks President Wilson's place by pandering to the hyphens will find that he is fighting Roosevelt as well as Wilson.

"I dislike Wilson, I dislike his policies almost to the point of hate, but I am too good an American to stand idly by and see him beaten by a mongrel American or by one professing mongrel principles."

Topic 12
THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES

THROUGH the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt was careful, even with his intimates, to say nothing that would in any way reflect upon Judge Hughes.  Hughes was the candidate of the party, he preferred him over Mr.  Wilson, but he was not the type T.  R.  favored.  More than that, in their personal relations the Colonel felt that Judge Hughes had not treated him quite fairly.  This was in connection with the Barnes libel suit in which the Colonel had hoped Judge Hughes would be one of his most important witnesses.

Occasionally during the campaign a scornful reference to the "bearded lady" advised whoever of the inner circle was addressed that it was Mr.  Hughes who was in the Colonel's mind.  Such occasions were rare, and developed only when the Colonel, who, with all his heart and soul prayed for Republican success, was piqued by the lack of "pep" in the Hughes canvass and the failure of the candidate to take a definite position on Germany.

He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with the innermost details of the Hughes campaign, more so, some folks thought, than the candidate himself.  These details came to him from many and widely scattered sources.  For example, there was hardly a reporter on the Hughes trains or at the national headquarters but that was cold toward the candidate.  The more seasoned of them were of the T.  R.  " Old Guard," members of the " Roosevelt newspaper cabinet," and as loyal to the Colonel as the bull pup he sometimes referred to as a standard of loyalty.  These did not hesitate to tell the Colonel whenever they saw him — and they made it their business to meet him whenever possible — the inside news of the trips.

"Feeling as you do," he remarked to one of these, "you are going to find it difficult to vote for Mr.  Hughes."

"Hughes, hell," replied William Hoster, the man addressed; "I desire to save a fragment of my self-respect."

After Hoster had gone, I remarked that he seemed "to feel rather keenly on the subject of Hughes."

"I am afraid," said the Colonel, "that there are a great many like him.  Hughes is not an attractive personality at best.  Close contact with him does not make him more attractive, for he is a very selfish, very self centred man.  Those boys would like to be his friends, but he won't let them and his namby pamby policy or lack of real policy disgusts them.

"They have, as the boys would themselves say, taken his measure.

"You know as well as I do that some of the boys on that train and at Bridgehampton (Hughes's summer home) are among the shrewdest judges of politics in this country.  They see — they must see — many things on a trip any candidate will overlook however shrewd he is.  They know the psychology of crowds and the newspapers and are valuable advisers in a campaign.  Does Mr.  Hughes take advantage of all this? No, he just withdraws into his whiskers, and their advice, when they manage to force it upon him, is ignored.

"What these men hate is his cowardice — his refusal to say anything, however right, that might jeopardize his chances.  If he had consulted these men and taken their advice he would never have trafficked with Jerry O'Leary."

With the verdict of the Chicago Convention, Colonel Roosevelt never quarreled.  He accepted it loyally and whole heartedly, though, it should be said, with misgivings as to the result, and prepared to efface himself as much as possible, lest by unduly remaining in the limelight he injure the candidate's chances.  His fear was that Hughes would not make the right sort of a campaign.

"Hughes's danger," he then said, "is that he will not carry the fight to Wilson."

The declaration that Hughes would have to fight to win was made immediately after the convention and before the public at large knew what position he would take in the canvass.  He was not at all confident of the result, not wholly satisfied with Hughes as a candidate, but he never hesitated about supporting him.

When he made this declaration he had prepared his letter declining the Progressive nomination and was awaiting the meeting of the Progressive National Committee in Chicago before making public his position.  Judge Hughes knew this; so did the leaders of the Republican and what was left of the Progressive Party.

His own programme was definite.  It provided for such speeches for Hughes as might be called for, but otherwise none of the limelight for him.

"The truth is," said he, "and a fellow does not like to speak as I am going to, I have done my share.  Let some one else carry the load for a while.

"After tomorrow's meeting in Chicago I hope to be let alone.  The Committee will agree with me — there will be nothing more for me to say.  I have said it all in my letter.  Mr.  Hughes has seen it and is satisfied.  There is nothing more for me to do or say.

"Don't you see that as things are working out I took the only course open? If Burton or Harding had been named, I would have to support the nominee against Wilson.  Imagine Hughes at his very possible worst, and he cannot do worse than Wilson has done or is doing.  It is impossible.  Any change is bound to be a good one.  Hughes will develop all right if he is elected.  I can do nothing but support him.

"Hughes won't come out here.  I don't believe he will.  What will probably happen is this: I will meet Mr.  Hughes in town at dinner; speeches will come later — if they come at all.  Whatever I do depends on Mr.  Hughes.

" I cannot make his fight for him or tell him how to fight.  He must do his own battling, make his own plans.  His danger is that he will not carry the fight to Wilson.  If he does that he is safe.  But if he allows Wilson to get the jump on him he is beaten.  Wilson will do it with him if he does not watch out.  As matters stand, and if the election were held tomorrow, Hughes is beaten.

"Here is the cruelty of this nomination of Hughes: For years he has been out of touch with real things; he knows nothing of the great things the Progressive Party movement stood for and did; he is out of touch with the man in the street; out of touch with national and world politics.  He is nominated at a time when we needed an advocate — not a judge.

"I cannot but support Hughes.  You see that as clearly as I do.  It is the only thing for me to do because it is the right thing to do."

A few days later, June 28, to be exact, Colonel Roosevelt motored into New York to dine with Mr.  Hughes — just as the Colonel had said some days before they probably would meet.  The two dined alone with, the Colonel told me, Mr.  Hughes doing most of the talking.

" It was," he told me the next day, " not my night to talk.  When I had pledged him my support to the limit, there was little for me to say.  As I have said to you and to others, I cannot make his fight or plan it.

"I did tell him, though, that he'd have to make an aggressive fight of it, to keep Wilson on the jump every blessed minute, and not to be any more afraid of hurting the feelings of pro-Germans, real Germans, and Pacifists than he was of hurting the feelings of race-track gamblers when he was Governor; that he must hit and hit hard."

"Will he do it, Colonel?" I asked.

" I don't know," he replied.  "A term on the bench takes the punch out of many men; it slows them up.  It may be that way with Hughes; I don't know.  But I do know that he must fight to win."

At this talk he reiterated a hope, expressed immediately after Mr.  Hughes was nominated, that the newspapers allow him to drop out of the limelight.

"There won't be a thing doing out here," he said ("here" being Sagamore Hill).  "You see I have simply got to stay out of the limelight.  These fools who want me to jump into the middle of the campaign do not know what they are talking about.

" It would lick Hughes sure.

"It could not help but make him a tail of the Roosevelt kite.  It would not be fair to him or to me.  You see that.  The most I can do is to make two or three prepared addresses.

"Furthermore, unless you boys (the reporters) keep me to the rear, allow me to go to the rear, you'll beat Hughes sure as shooting —make no mistake about that."

In the Hughes campaign Colonel Roosevelt made one trip as far west as the Rockies, the original programme of going through to California being amended.  This change in the itinerary in all probability cost Mr.  Hughes the election.  Made by the National Committee, the Colonel's intimates believed the change was due to a desire that nothing be done which might help Hiram Johnson in his campaign for the Senate or offend Harrison Gray Otis, W.  W.  Crocker, and other "Old Guardsmen" who were opposed to him.

Even then, the trip came dangerously close to ending at Denver, where on his arrival the Colonel found a messenger awaiting to ask that he confine future addresses to the tariff and Mexico and let Germany and preparedness alone.  At first the Colonel agreed to this.  Then he wired the National Committee cancelling all his engagements east of Denver.  This the Committee apparently dared not do, for he was wired to proceed as he wished.

From this trip the Colonel returned rather depressed and worried as to the result.  It was to have been his only trip, but in the last week of the campaign the Republican National Committee called on him to go to Ohio.  There had been many calls for him from that quarter early in the contest, but it was not until November I when he was started on an admitted forlorn hope.

That night, speaking of the situation, he declared the Wilson tide was receding, but he doubted if it was receding fast enough.

"I doubt it," he said.  "I have no fears for New York, but I am afraid of the West.  If Hughes would only do something!

"Hughes has not made Wilson fight.  As matters are, the people do not know where Hughes does stand — they look upon him as another Wilson when they do not look upon him as a man without a policy.

" It is his own fault.  I tell you he would have won even German votes by preaching straight Americanism.

"The campaign has lacked definite direction.  It has been like Mr.  Hughes's speeches — it has lacked the punch.  It is a fact that a lot of the aged reactionaries who have had so much to say at headquarters really think this fight could have been won on the tariff."

Coming back East after speaking in Toledo and Cleveland, he returned to the subject, declaring that Ohio was gone, that even "poor Herrick is beaten with the rest — a victim of the cowardice of others."

" Herrick " was Myron T.  Herrick, our ambassador to France in the early days of the war, and a prime favorite of the Colonel's; he was the candidate for the United States Senate.

"The 'Old Guard' here is not awake yet," said he; "they have simply thrown the State away.

"I have been asked tonight why I did not come out earlier in the campaign when they asked for me instead of going into the sagebrush.  I told them I went where I was sent; that they should ask that question of the National Committee."

Sometime after the campaign was ended, a visitor at Sagamore Hill remarked: "Anyway, we have n't Hughes to worry about."

"Exactly," said the Colonel; "we did not elect Hughes and we are not responsible for Mr.  Wilson.

"Hughes would have been another Wilson in many respects, only he would have surrounded himself with men of a higher grade than Mr.  Wilson has about him.  He could not well get men inferior to those about Mr.  Wilson.  But he would have considered his election an act of God, and, in the Wilson way, been careless or contemptuous of the opinions of others."

Mr.  Hughes came up for discussion again at luncheon at Sagamore Hill just before Christmas of that year.  The Colonel was, as usual, to play Santa Claus at the Cove School, and the "newspaper cabinet" was down for the occasion.  In the luncheon party, in addition to Colonel and Mrs.  Roosevelt, were N.  A.  Jennings, Mrs.  Jennings, William Hoster, Rodney Bean, S.  L.  Bate, the then resident correspondent at Oyster Bay, and myself.  As it was the first time since election that so many members of the "cabinet" had met with the Colonel, there was much discussion of that event, but more of the statement of Secretary Lansing a few days previous to the effect that "we are on the edge of war," followed by the Secretary's explanation that he did not exactly mean what he seemed to say, the whole matter complicated by rumors of "leaks" to Wall Street and bad breaks in the market.

"The antics of the last few days," said the Colonel in this discussion, "have restored to me what selfrespect I lost supporting Mr.  Hughes.'

Months later Colonel Roosevelt told something of his relations with Judge Hughes prior to 1916 that partly explained the small opinion he held of him.

"Hughes," said he, "went plumb back on his words and on me when Barnes sued me for libel.  One of Barnes's grievances was my charge of bi-partisan management of the State of New York by him and Murphy.  Hughes himself made that charge to me when the direct primary fight was on.  Later, when I needed him, he denied all knowledge of it.

"It came about in this way: In his fight as Governor for good government, Mr.  Hughes complained that Murphy and Barnes were working together to defeat legislation; that there was evidence of a definite agreement and the two machines were working as one, not only in this, but in other matters affecting the public interest.

"When the Barnes suit came up, I wanted him as a witness.  He declared that he did not recall the conversation and that he had no recollection that such a state of affairs had existed.  Even when he was shown a printed statement coming from him, he had no recollection of the matter.  That is the way Mr.  Hughes stands up.

"It was his idea in this campaign to keep away as much as possible from all reference to the war in Europe or preparation for our inevitable part in it.  He wanted to make his fight on war with Mexico, as though people could be interested in that.  The real subject he dodged whenever he could.  More than that, he tried to make me dodge it.

"To do this Garfield was sent to meet me in Denver and ask that in my speeches, especially in Chicago, I omit preparedness and national defence.  It was feared that I would alienate the women voters.  I agreed to do so, but after sleeping on the matter, decided it was not the thing for me to do.  So I wired National Headquarters canceling all of my engagements.  The answer to this was advice to proceed as I had been, talking what was in me.

"Results in Chicago proved that was the correct course.  The honest course always is.  At the stock yards, I had a most wonderful meeting and the women were the most enthusiastic of the lot.  The idea of American manhood, willing and insistent on defending its women and children even to the point of going to war to avenge their murder, was not at all abhorrent to them.  On the contrary, they took no offence at my treatment of the Lusitania affair.

"That was Mr.  Hughes's work — his idea of the way a candidate should go, the way the advocates of a candidate should go, always dodging any real issue that might cost votes."

Again, in the Mitchel campaign, Colonel Roosevelt expressed an opinion of Judge Hughes.  It was at a meeting in Madison Square Garden over which the Judge presided.  To make it a go, every device of the political showman was resorted to.  Even the old fashioned torchlight parade, dead thirty or more years, was resurrected.  Colonel Roosevelt, who had been speaking in Schuetzen Park, Astoria, came in late.  I met him in the 27th Street entrance to the hall.

"How's the meeting going?" he asked, sotto wee.

"It's cold, freezing cold, Colonel," I answered.  "You'll need your overcoat."
The Colonel grinned.

"Hughes," he replied, "must have brought his ice with him."

Topic 13
HIS A SIMPLE CREED

DURING the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt had an attack of dry pleurisy which kept him away from church one Sunday.  Late that afternoon I called and remarked that the "boys thought it funny you did not go to church."

" Huh, they did, did they? Well, you just tell them that if they think dry pleurisy is a joke, they’d better try it.  I am just going to stay right in here the next four or five days.  Anyway, so far as church is concerned, I just had the Reverend Talmage up to look me over, the church came to me, and I've had the benefit of clergy.

"Speaking of church, you once told me you were heterodox.  That's right, isn't it? Well, do you know, I think — I wonder if you recall one verse of Micah that I am very fond of — 'to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God' — that to me is the essence of religion.  To be just with all men, to be merciful to those to whom mercy should be shown, to realize that there are some things that must always remain a mystery to us, and when the time comes for us to enter the great blackness, to go smiling and unafraid.

"That is my religion, my faith.  To me it sums up all religion, it is all the creed I need.  It seems simple and easy, but there is more in that verse than in the involved rituals and confessions of faith of many creeds we know.

"To love justice, to be merciful, to appreciate that the great mysteries shall not be known to us, and so living, face the beyond confident and without fear — that is life.

"That's too simple a creed for many of us, though.  Perhaps it is as well and that through more involved paths and mazes of theology the majority should seek the same result.

" I can quarrel with no man because of his religion.  The Roman Catholic, the Jew, the Protestant, the Mohammedan, the follower of Confucius — all are right so long as they seek to follow what their leaders have taught.  You have done much of prison work.  You know that the Roman Catholic is in prison, not because of his faith, but because he broke away from it; the Jew is there because he and the synagogue are no longer friends; the Protestant, because his religion has ceased to be a living thing and his soul has atrophied.

"You know that.

"My, but I have no patience with those who attack, who would destroy a man's belief in religion — no patience with those who would convert the Jew en masse, or the Catholic.  More likely than not, where they succeed at all they succeed only in destroying something — they take something real away and give nothing in return, leaving the victim bankrupt.  I am always sorry for the faithless man, just as I am sorry for the woman without virtue.

"I have found, though, that however they may appear outwardly, most men at bottom are religious, just as the preponderating majority of men are honest and of women virtuous.  Otherwise our civilization would end overnight.

" Most men, I believe, are good citizens according to their lights.  Take' Big Tim' Sullivan, for example.

"Tim came to me while I was in the White House to get a pardon for a friend.  The man was in Atlanta for blowing a post office safe, shooting the watchman, and I know not what.  Tim was insistent that he had reformed and that he’d go straight if he were pardoned.  The Post Office folk did not think so, neither did the Department of Justice.  They insisted the man must not be pardoned.  But Tim was so sure, so positive, however, that his friend had changed that I decided to favor him.

"I'll give you this pardon, Tim,' said I, 'on one condition.  You must take it to Atlanta yourself, see this man before he has a chance to see any of his old pals, and warn him that if he goes wrong again, he will not only be punished to the limit, but will have to finish out this sentence as well.  There will be no mercy for him.  And at the end of the year I want you to bring the fellow here and let me know how he's made out.'

"Tim agreed to this.  He would have agreed to anything and kept his agreement, too.  He got the pardon and went his way.  I forgot all about the thing until just one year after, I was told Tim was waiting to see me.  He had an appointment, he told the attendant.  I could not recall any, but I always liked the big fellow and I had him sent in.

"' Mr.  President,' said he, when he came in, ' I’ve come about that fellow Blank.  You know you told me to bring him here when he’d been out a year and let you know how he's been acting.  He's outside now.'

'"Yes, I remember,' I told him.  'How has he been doing?'

"'He's been perfect, Mr.  President,' said the big fellow.  'When I got him to New York I put him to work behind a wheel in a gambling house, and he's been doing fine ever since.'

"That was good behavior, as Big Tim saw it!"

The Colonel concluded, saying: "Well, you're getting the sermon you missed by not going to church, and I have been talking religion.  It's something I do very seldom.  After all, one's religion is a private thing and one is apt to be misunderstood.

"So — if I should say publicly or you should print one half of what we have said here today, some half baked ass of a preacher would attack me tomorrow for endorsing the Pope; another because I am a Mohammedan at heart; and another would see in my tolerance for the rabbi proof that my right name is Rosenfelt or Rosen thai."

This little "sermon" was delivered shortly after the 1916 convention.  Through the chat, of which it was a part, it was apparent that the Colonel was in an introspective mood.  He was making, it seemed, a brave effort to conceal the hurt received at Chicago.  During this talk I could not down the feeling that like many another, wounded in spirit, he was consciously or unconsciously turning to religion for comfort.

As we were parting, Hayes, his ex-soldier secretary, came up the drive with the news that President Wilson had called the National Guard for possible service in Mexico.  The Colonel looked far off over Long Island Sound in a thoughtful way, then shook his head.

" Can you say anything on that, Colonel? " I asked.

"No," said he, and his teeth clicked.  "Let Hughes talk.  It is his fight."

Topic 14
HIS HOLD ON THE PUBLIC

MANY have asked the secret of Roosevelt's wonderful hold on the public, and his ability to carry a crowd with him.  Presumably the question will be discussed long after those who heard him have crossed the Great Divide, and with as wide, if not as great, a difference of opinion as when he was in the flesh.

His own explanation may be given in one word: "Sincerity."

This, he maintained, was the real secret, though he admitted that other qualities in his speeches were contributing factors.

The discussion in which the Colonel declared himself on this point came one night when he and a party of three were returning to New York from a red hot Roosevelt meeting — two meetings, in fact, one in a hall, the other outside.

It was precipitated by a remark by A.  Leonard Smith of the New York Times, to the effect that the Colonel "certainly had that crowd."

"What seemed to get them?" asked the Colonel.

It was a question none in the party could answer, for the crowd, like most Roosevelt crowds, was enthusiastic from the start, and one could not say that this, that, or the other point had been the most effective.  Smith ended this phase of the discussion' by declaring the Colonel "always got the crowd."

"My observation," said he, "has been that the result is the same whatever you talk upon — you get the crowd just the same."

"What," asked the Colonel, "is the explanation? It certainly is not because I am an orator — for I am not.  I have n't the voice to be an orator.  What Is it?"

Smith submitted, "Probably because your words always carry a punch," as his answer.  Another in the group thought it might be because the Colonel "always had something to say."

"Is n't it because the crowd always knows I am sincere?" asked the Colonel.  "I think it is.  Other wise— bah!" (this with a wave of his hand) "it surely must be that in the years I have been in public life, folks have always found me sincere.  Men do not always agree with me; in fact" (this whimsically) "many have been known to differ with me very seriously; but my worst enemies do not, I believe, question my sincerity.  Men who do not know me may doubt my sincerity, but no one who knows me does.  At bottom, I do not believe any of the "Old Guard," Bill Barnes included, would question my sincerity.  They know better.

"What you say about my having the punch is, perhaps, a factor; but my speeches would never get over if people did not believe I was sincere.  An orator, which I am not, would get a crowd, perhaps, but he could not hold them if he lacked sincerity, or if the people thought he did.

"We have all seen orators come and go, but none ever retained a hold on any perceptible part of the public who at least did not carry the impression of sincerity.

" I have never hesitated to say a thing because it might be unpopular any more than I have ever found it at all necessary to say things I did not believe merely because they might be popular.  In the end, as Emerson says, truth, however unpleasant, is the safest traveling companion.  I have never found it at all necessary to pussyfoot or indulge in pleasing sophistries to hold any crowd.

"On the other hand, I have never hesitated to tell folks unpleasant things I thought they should be told, any more than I have been afraid of hecklers."

Far from being afraid of hecklers, Colonel Roosevelt rejoiced in them.  Again and again, in the 1916 campaign, local leaders, fearful he might offend somebody, would ask that he go slow, lest hecklers disturb him.

Once, a United States Senator asked that he confine his talk to the tariff.

" My dear Senator," said he, "you will pardon me for saying I will do nothing of the kind.  I did not come here to talk tariff, the crowd did not come here to hear me talk tariff, and I’ll be hanged if I do talk tariff.  I'll talk what is in me."

"But, Colonel," persisted the local man, "we know that there is an organized plan to heckle you if you talk war and preparedness."

"So!" said the Colonel, "so?"

"Yes, Colonel, there will be many hecklers there."

Roosevelt, annoyed for an instant, suddenly broke into a grin.

"Jack," he called to me in much the same manner that a small boy would announce ice cream would be served at dinner, "did you hear that? The Senator here promises us that we'll have some hecklers tonight! Is n't that bully?"

There were hecklers that night — just two of them.  Their efforts served to emphasize the Colonel's points, both giving him openings he was quick to take advantage of to the delight of his audience.  On the way to the train I remarked that the dreaded questioners had not made much progress.

"Of course they did n't," he replied.  "They seldom if ever do.  A man with an honest question has no terrors for a speaker who is honest himself.  A dishonest heckler has no chance with an honest speaker.  "But if a man is sincere — he has nothing to fear.  If he is n't sincere — he has no business speaking.  In the long run, sincerity must be the test of any public man."

Topic 15
THAT GOLDEN SPECIAL

IN the year 1916 Colonel Roosevelt frequently crossed the trail of the famous "golden special" train carrying women from a non suffrage State to tell the women in suffrage States how to vote.  Weeks before the press told the real story of the special, of orders "furs on" or "furs off," "wear jewels" or "dress plainly," wired back from advance agents, he had it from twenty sources.

"That train cost $45,000," an indignant State Chairman told the Colonel.  "Why did the National Committee ever allow it to start out?"

"Well," said the Colonel dryly, " I do not pretend to speak for the National Committee, nor am I called upon to defend its idiosyncrasies, but if I were to guess I might say, somebody at headquarters thought it worth $45,000 to get some of those women as far away from headquarters as possible.  It is an example of the way things have been done in this campaign."

Topic 16
ON ELECTION EVE, 1916

THE day before election in 1916, I saw Colonel Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill.  I raised the question as to what would follow if Judge Hughes should by any chance be elected.

"I shall be out of it," said he.  "I shall ask for nothing from him and will recommend nobody.  He will not ask my advice.  So I will just be an elderly literary gentleman of quiet tastes and an interesting group of grandchildren.

"Make no mistake about Hughes.  The men who gave him the nomination will regret the day they did it.  Some of them have reason to regret it now.  He feels that he owes them nothing, that he owes the party nothing.  He will have trouble with the organization, but he will make a fair President.

"You see Mr.  Hughes is grateful to nobody but Almighty God, and I am not so sure he is over grateful to Him.  He truly believes he was chosen by God to be President, when as a matter of fact he was merely picked by the 'Old Guard' to beat Roosevelt."

"Suppose Mr.  Wilson wins, what then?"

"He will muddle along just as he has been, writing notes that are brave, but doing nothing to back them up until Germany decides it wants us in this war and kicks us into it.  Against that contingency he will do nothing and war will find us as unprepared as we were two years ago.

" I shall continue as I have been doing to advocate preparedness and to try to arouse the people to the need of universal military service.  I shall not make the headway I should because of Mr.  Wilson's attitude.  I have no delusions on that score.  But I shall continue, for whatever we do succeed in doing is that much gained.

"But whether it be Mr.  Hughes or Mr.  Wilson that is elected, the result will be that we will be in this war sooner or later unless Mr.  Hughes is much more fortunate than I fear he will be.

"If he is elected and is big enough, if he is strong enough to make an out-and-out declaration of pure Americanism — if he is big enough to serve notice that he will make Germany toe the mark, when and if he becomes President, he may keep us out.

"But Wilson, never! He will have secured his re-election and be in a position to do big things.  But he won't do them.  He'll simply write notes until something so audacious is done that he will wake up to the fact that Germany has been making war upon us while he has been writing."

True to his promise, Colonel Roosevelt issued on election night a declaration that he was in private life and would neither ask anything of Mr.  Hughes, who then appeared to have been elected, or to recommend any one for office.  Later when it appeared that California was in doubt and that Mr.  Wilson might be reelected, he expressed no surprise.

" I was not at all certain in my own mind that the confidence of the New York papers or of theNational Headquarters was fully justified when I gave out that statement," he said.  "But it is just as well I did so.  It certainly left the record straight."

Topic 17
PERKINS AND T.  R.

GEORGE W.  PERKINS, if the politicians who opposed Colonel Roosevelt in 1912 and again in 1916 are to be believed, was to have been the Mark Hanna of the Administration in the event of Colonel Roosevelt returning to the White House.  According to them, there was a perfect understanding.  On this they were unanimous.  They differed only when it came to naming the place Perkins would reserve for himself.

The truth, as I had it from Colonel Roosevelt on several occasions, was that Perkins asked for nothing and was promised nothing for himself or anybody else.

"Perkins," said the Colonel at Sagamore Hill one day, "has been mentioned many times as the probable recipient of some office were I reelected President, but there never has been any promise or understanding, direct or implied, and these predictions have been without any authority whatever from me.  The newspaper boys — have just been guessing.  They knew that nobody ever did anything for me that I did not repay if and when I properly could.

"Of course, I would have had to do something for Perkins.  I would have made him Secretary of the Treasury or of Commerce.  He would be entitled to something and would be an extremely valuable man in either place.  Perkins is eminently fitted for either of those places.  In either place he would have made a record hard to equal."

Mr.  Perkins ceased to be Colonel Roosevelt's political manager soon after the 1916 campaign, John T.  King, Republican National Committeeman from Connecticut, taking on the work formerly done by Perkins.  There was, however, no break in the intimate social relations of the two.  Nor was there any break politically.  There was need for none, for at the end of the 1916 campaign there was little or nothing "to do in a political way, and Perkins, in consequence, ceased to function as a politician.

In the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt had become well acquainted with King.  King had turned Bridgeport, which had been so hopelessly Democratic that the Republicans cast fewer votes than the Socialists, into a banner Republican community.  In 1916 it saved the State for Hughes.  Alone of the National Committee early that year he sensed the party danger in California, but was unable to make those in charge of the campaign see things as he did.  As the campaign ended, he and Colonel Roosevelt agreed something must be done to bring the party together.  Colonel Roosevelt had been much impressed by King's personality and the method by which he had built up the party in Bridgeport.  The organization there, he found, was made up largely of men who worked in the factories; it was close to the people and it was clean.  The well-to-do and the wealthy were represented on, but did not dominate, it, and campaign funds were not welcomed from questionable sources.  Moreover, King was persona grata to all elements in the party, and, a tireless worker himself, he had the faculty of making others work.

Perkins, on the other hand, was persona non grata with many.  Those who had stuck with the " Old Guard" resented his prominence in party affairs, and ex-Progressives who had returned to the party frankly distrusted him.  Most of the "Old Guardsmen" were willing to forget everything connected with 1912 but Perkins, and the ex-Progressives everything in 1916 but Perkins.

This was the situation in February, 1917, when the time came for the National Committee to select a successor to Chairman Wilcox, who had resigned.  King, as the representative of Connecticut, was going to the meeting in St.  Louis, and was, in fact, Colonel Roosevelt's first choice for Chairman.  Perkins was also going, against the wishes of Colonel Roosevelt.  Better than Perkins he realized that as a peacemaker, Perkins would be about as useful as an orange flag at an outing of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.  In consequence, he said, he made it clear to Perkins that, while he could not prevent his attending the conference, he must go there representing no one but himself.

At the same time, as a means of satisfying any doubting Thomas, he gave King a letter designating him as the only person authorized to speak for him in St.  Louis.  This document was the last he signed, by the way, before entering St.  Luke's Hospital for the operations that so nearly proved fatal.

" I am," he told me, "giving John King credentials that I think will satisfy anybody as to who's who in our set.  This I believe a wise precaution, for Perkins insists on going out there, and there are sure to be some doubting Thomas’s.  Perkins won't misrepresent the situation, but others may; there are some who will insist on misunderstanding the exact status of things, and others who may misrepresent matters.  You know" — this with a laugh — "there are some persons who dislike Perkins even more than they dislike Roosevelt, and there are others who seem to lack faith in all George says.

" I have tried to make him see things as I see them but he insists on going there."

Before the St.  Louis conference was under way, Colonel Roosevelt was in the hospital a very sick man.  Through it all he was in ignorance of what was developing, and the conference was a closed incident before he was sufficiently recovered to be told the result.  He at once wired congratulations to Will H.  Hays, the new Chairman of the Committee, an invitation to call accompanying the congratulations.  Hays called within a few days, as did King and Perkjns.

All this time the replacement of Perkins by King had escaped popular notice.  Inadvertently, a reporter for a news agency was the cause of its becoming public.  In a ten line story he described Mr.  King as "the Colonel's personal representative at St.  Louis" without a thought of, and in fact without knowing, the significance of this statement to persons whose habit it is to read their papers closely.

The description impressed John H.  Gavin, city editor of the New York World, as something worth looking into.  If, as seemed likely, there was a real break between the Colonel and Perkins, it was page I news, particularly for a Democratic organ that for years had had its own private feud with the Colonel.  Those in possession of all the facts were too close lipped to allow them to escape, so the best that could be done was an elaboration of the original statement plus King's admission that he had been "the Colonel's representative at St.  Louis."

Perkins, on his part, avoided the real issue by declaring he knew "of no man less in need of a political manager than Colonel Roosevelt."

Colonel Roosevelt chuckled when he heard of the World's attempt to develop the story, at the same time recognizing Gavin's astuteness in smelling it out.

"Wouldn't the World just enjoy a real knock-down-and-drag-out fight between Perkins and me!" he said.  "Well, there will be none.

"Perkins does not like John King.  I am sorry for that, but his opposition to King cannot change my relations with him.  There is no change in the social relations with Perkins and myself.  I look for none.  But as a matter of fact, he has not represented me politically since 1916.  So that, so far as he is concerned, there really is no change in our relations.  They remain the same as ever, and they will so remain if I have anything to say about it.

"Those who know of our relations know that George Perkins never asked anything of me and was never promised anything, directly or indirectly.  Had I been elected in 1912, I would have made him Secretary of the Treasury or Commerce, if he would have taken a place.  In either place he'd reflect credit on any Administration.

" Many foolish persons — mainly politicians, who at times are the most foolish people on earth — imagined Perkins planned to play Mark Hanna to my McKinley.  Perkins had no such thought.  He knew better."

Topic 18
A CABINET THAT NEVER WAS

ONCE in a retrospective mood, Colonel Roosevelt talked of the Cabinet he would have named had he returned to the White House on March 4, 1917.

"I should," said he, "have made Perkins Secretary of the Treasury or of Commerce.  He would have been entitled to something and could be an extremely valuable man in either place.

"I should have made John King of Connecticut Postmaster General.

"Of course there is only one man for Secretary of War — General Goethals.  I should have made Raymond Robins, of Illinois, Secretary of Labor, and Meyer Lissner, Secretary of the Interior.  That would be a well balanced and highly efficient organization."

"You have left the Navy, State, and Justice portfolios vacant," I remarked.

"Well, for Navy, Admiral Winslow if I had had to draft him.  I don't know who I’d get for State, but I know who I would like — Lodge, if I could drag him out of the Senate.  For the Department of Justice, the west coast would have supplied a man — just who I never quite decided."

King, I remarked, would probably not care for the Post Office Department.

"Then he should have something else.  King is no ordinary citizen.  He is a very able man and honest.  I like King and his wonderful method of organization.  I shall have to tell' Ted' Robinson to look into it."

Topic 19
SENATOR LODGE'S FIST FIGHT

YOU do not mean that? Why that is even better than I thought! You know the papers said the pacifist struck the first blow?"

I had returned to Oyster Bay from Washington via Boston, and had the "inside" story of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's fist fight with a pacifist, and the effect it had had on the Senator's constituents.

"The folks down Massachusetts way are amazed and pleased," I told the Colonel.  "If Lodge were a candidate for anything tomorrow, he'd carry even South Boston — and that, normally, is six to one Democratic."

"That is splendid," said the Colonel.  "Now, do I understand you right — Lodge hit this fellow immediately he called him a coward? Is that right?"

"Yes, sir, as I get it, and I'm sure of my facts; he got in the first wallop.  That is why he refused to prosecute the man.

"The funniest thing is Lodge's home paper, the Lynn Item.  This has always been a sort of organ of his, treating him with respect, almost to the point of awe.  It's been picturing him in ring togs as 'the Nahant Kid,' with huskies removing his victim by head and heels.  Everybody is tickled silly with the idea of the Senator developing a wallop in his old age."

"I must say that I share their sentiments, though I am not exactly surprised at his resenting an insult," said the Colonel.  "He's not like some men you and I know.  I’ll admit, however, it is a bit unusual for him to appear in such a role.  I 'm not exactly surprised, and I 'm sure his people would n't be if they knew Lodge as well as they think they do.  If they did, to use your irreverent phrase, they'd know him to be 'a regular fellow' in pretty much everything.  I know you've used that term 'the Colonel was in a bantering mood' — I've heard you.

"His constituents, like most other people, think of Lodge as 'the scholar in politics,' and it never occurred to them that a scholar could or would fight.  In the light of recent performances I do not know that I blame them much.

"Lodge, you know, has always rather cultivated that 'scholar in polities' tradition.  He's been the scholar and he's been in politics, but he's a mighty practical man at that.  Of course I know they have never seen Lodge when he did look the scholar part.  If there was any fault in his make up, he was too well groomed.  He has, however, been, to once more use your irreverent description, a 'regular fellow,' and he has taken good care of his physical self.  He does not look the athlete, but he's more powerful physically than he looks.

"Of course Lodge will fight.  He's never had real occasion to do so until this fellow came along.  Then he did as he always did — a first class job.  Of course he did not knock him out, but he did a good job just the same.

"The 'scholar' tradition about Lodge has always amused me.  He's no bookworm.  He is the student, yes, but he's also the Senator from Massachusetts — do not forget that.  I do not suppose your friends in Boston ever think of Lodge running about on errands for his constituents as other Senators and Representatives have to.  Well, he does as much of that as any man I know.

"When I was President he'd come to me on all sorts of errands for Democrats and Republicans alike.  I once asked him why it was that he had all the unpleasant things to take care of for Massachusetts, pardons and that sort of thing.  He told me he supposed it was because the persons bringing them to him could not be sure others would attend to them.  It involved a lot of hard work, much of it for people who would probably be out fighting him the next day, but that did not matter; at least it did not seem to.

"Lodge and I were friends long before he went to the Senate or I to the White House.  He was helpful to me before I was President, but more so after I became President.  I could depend on him to think clearly and to give me of his best — he was absolutely unselfish about it, too.

"Some persons were foolish enough to think we would break because he supported Taft in 1912.  There never was the remotest chance for that.  I knew where Lodge stood and respected his position; he knew my situation and respected it.  There never was a chance of a personal falling out.  Placed as he was, Lodge could not have acted differently, and I 'm glad that he did n't.

"I am glad he had this fight.  I suppose approval is what would be expected of so truculent a person as I am.  I 'm not surprised nor am I surprised at the way his constituents look at it.  Everybody admires manliness, just as every manly man despises the fellow who won't fight when he has due provocation.  Have you heard what Lodge thinks of the response at home?"

"Yes," said I.  "He has a roomful of letters and telegrams commending him.  Publicly he deprecates the affair; privately I think he is pleased.  However, here's what he said to one Boston man:

"'It's a remarkable commentary on American public opinion that after a lifetime spent in public service and about the time I am ready to pass on, satisfied that I have done some things my children won't be ashamed of, the public suddenly discovers I am a great man when I commit a breach of the peace.' "

"The dear old Brahmin," exclaimed the Colonel, laughing; "that's just like him.  The 'scholar in polities' simply could n't bring himself to saying he had indulged in a fist fight."

Topic 20
ROOSEVELT'S ONE TALK WITH MR.  WILSON

IF any other man in the world had talked to me as Mr.  Wilson did, I would say I was sure to go.  But it was Mr.  Wilson who was talking and I am not at all confident."

So Colonel Roosevelt summarized his visit to the White House April 7, 1917, to plead for permission to go abroad at the head of fighting troops.

It was the Colonel's first and only interview with Mr.  Wilson and followed an unsuccessful effort to find Mr.  Wilson in.  The first call was made as the Colonel was en route for home from a devil fishing trip in Florida waters, and the President was actually and not constructively absent from the White House.

Like the first call, the second was unannounced.  It was decided upon April 5, when the Colonel told a few intimates, including the members of the "newspaper cabinet," of his intention to leave for Washington the next day.

" I am," said he, " making no headway, and I won't so long as I try to do business with Mr.  Wilson by letter.  It's too easy to shunt me one side.  He won't find it so easy talking to me face to face.  I am not at all sure he'll give in to me then, but I’ll give him an argument anyway."

"Have you," I asked, "arranged for an appointment?"

" I have not and I won't," he replied.  "One of my friends has advised that I do so, as otherwise I invite a snub.  What do you think of that?"

"Foolishness," I answered.  "I do not believe Mr.  Wilson, however he may feel, can afford to refuse to see a former President of the United States calling to offer his aid in time of war.  I do not think there's a chance for a snub."

"Exactly.  I'll take my chances on his trying to snub me.  He can't do it! I'd like to see him try it!"

By arrangement, "the cabinet" made no mention of the Colonel's intentions or of his departure for Washington.  On his arrival in the Capital the fact that he was there was wired the outer world, but nothing definite was said of his intentions.

"If possible," he said, "I want to avoid any appearance of storming the White House."

Whatever the Colonel's intentions were as to "storming the White House," he did succeed in making the home of his daughter, Mrs.  Longworth, the real centre of life while he remained in the city.  From early morning until late at night there was a constant stream of visitors, not all of whom succeeded in getting an audience.

Among those who did were the Ambassadors of the Great Powers, led by Jusserand of the famous "Tennis Cabinet," Spring Rice, the Englishman, and little Sato from Japan; army officers of high rank, chancing the ill will of the Administration; naval officers; and men of both parties in House and Senate! — including, of course, Lodge of Massachusetts.

Secretary of War Baker also came — of his own instance, or, as the Colonel put it, "under his own steam."

Some of the earlier callers had a considerable wait while the Colonel was at the White House, whither he repaired alone, promptly after breakfast.  Mr.  Wilson, who had been advised of his presence in Washington, was waiting for him when he called, and, as the Colonel told me later, the interview was pleasant but inconclusive.

"He received me very pleasantly," said the Colonel, "and we had an hour's talk.  I congratulated him upon his war message and told him it would rank with the world's great state papers if it were made good.

"And I told him I wanted a chance to help him make it good.

"I found that, though I had written plainly enough, there was confusion in his mind as to what I wanted to do.  I explained everything to him.  He seemed to take it well, but — remember, I was talking to Mr.  Wilson.

"I gave out a statement to the newspaper boys at the White House.  I told him as I was about to leave that I knew I would be bombarded with questions and asked if he cared to allow me to say anything.  He outlined what he was willing to have told of our conversation and I asked that Tumulty, who was called in at this time, come along with me while I was making it so that there could be no mistake or dispute as to what I might say.

"Tumulty, by way of a half joke, said he might go to France with me.  I said, ' By Jove, you come right along! I’ll have a place for you.' I would, too, but it would n't be the place he thinks.  It is possible he might be sent along as sort of a watchdog to keep Wilson informed as to what was being done.  He would n't be, though.  He'd keep his distance from headquarters except when he was sent for."

"Did you see Baker?" some one asked.

"No, I have not.  I did send word to him that I would be glad to see him if he called.  He is coming here later."

The Colonel proceeded from this point to make it clear he did not expect to be allowed to go to France unless developments forced Mr.  Wilson into letting him go.

" He has promised me nothing definitely," said the Colonel;'' but as I have said, if any other man than he talked to me as he did I would feel assured.  If I talked to another man as he talked to me it would mean that that man was going to get permission to fight.

" But I was talking to Mr.  Wilson.  His words may mean much; they may mean little.  He has, however, left the door open.

"The talk was pleasant enough.  What I tried to do was to impress upon him the need of making our full weight felt at the earliest possible moment.

" I told him we should hit at once and hit hard.

"He raised the question of equipment.  I told him what he already knew — that the Allies would give me all the equipment needed from their ample stores.  They have the equipment.  They need men.  I told him it would be preferable to use the English or French rifle, first because they are ready, and again because to use a different type of rifle and ammunition would mean to complicate transport problems — might, in fact, leave men helpless in the midst of plenty through lack of American ammunition.

"I explained that all necessary expense could be provided for out of private funds.  I also explained to him that I would not take a man the draft might get.  The fact that I proposed to use material that other wise would be unavailable seemed new to him.

"He seemed interested and he asked many questions.  But I am not allowing myself to become overconfident.  I do not believe he'll let me go to France unless circumstances that may develop later compel him to let me go."

The circumstances the Colonel had in mind were the serious shortage of man power in France and the collapse of Russia, then unsuspected by the world at large, but which he then predicted as almost certain to soon occur.

"The imperative call," said he, "is for men.  France is bled white.  She has not men enough for another year.  England is doing her share, but she cannot do all.

"Russia is almost hopeless.

"There is more than a fair chance that Russia will go to pieces completely.  There is a chance she will make a separate peace.  This, of course, relieves Germany of pressure from Russia.  It means that the war will be prolonged — perhaps for five years.

"Any early peace must be a German peace — a German victory.

" If the people at large would only realize this, we would be all right.  As it is we are blundering along apparently hoping for a bloodless war.  If we do not wake up, Germany will have won this war, and then we will be up against it.

"I do not think that will be the result — it does not seem we are capable of allowing that contingency to become a fact, but we must wake up.

"I told the President that with his permission I would submit my plans to Senator Chamberlain and Representative Dent and I am going right home to do that now.  I am also going to send Baker a copy.

"I had a good talk with Baker — I could twist him about my finger could I have him about for a while.  But he does not realize what he is trying to do.

" He is exactly the type of man Mr.  Wilson wants about him.  He will do exactly what Mr.  Wilson tells him to do, he will think exactly as Mr.  Wilson wants him to think, and when Mr.  Wilson changes his mind, he will change with him.  If Mr.  Wilson should agree with me tomorrow, Mr.  Baker would be perfectly sure he always agreed with me.  He's a pleasant enough type socially, but impossible in his present place because he is inefficient and is unable to grasp the fact that he is inefficient.

"He has the blindest faith in the General Staff and the graduates of West Point.  He does not realize that a muttonhead, after an education at West Point or Harvard, is a muttonhead still."

Topic 21
"THE DIVISION"

THE day the Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine, Colonel Roosevelt decided war with Germany was inevitable and made his preparations accordingly.  These preparations consisted in laying the groundwork for the division (later an army corps) he asked permission to recruit and serve in.

Colonel Roosevelt told me that, when in June, 1916, war with Mexico seemed possible, he had quietly asked permission to put a division, modelled on the old "Rough Rider" idea, into the field.

"Winslow," said he, in discussing the Mexican offer, "came in on this thing more than a year ago.  He was one of the first to be considered when I decided to raise the organization.  That was at the time the Lusitania was sunk.

"Yes, that was when the thing was born.  It was planned for use against the Germans."

"Winslow" was Rear Admiral Cameron McR.  Winslow, then about to be retired from the navy because of the age limit.

From the day of its birth until the plan was finally abandoned, Colonel Roosevelt had the assistance of the ablest men in the military service of the United States.  The work was done quietly, so quietly that it was not until war threatened with Mexico that there was any public intimation that the warrior had smelled "the battle from afar." Even then there was no hint allowed to reach the public as to how nearly complete the plans were or that they were originally drawn for use against Germany.

In this work, the Colonel followed his practice of a lifetime — early and careful preparation with the utilization of the best brains available.  Whatever the impression among witlanders, those within the circle of Colonel Roosevelt's friendship knew that in military as in other matters he invariably relied on expert advice.  In so far as the army was concerned, this was always his.  Never popular with the "swivel chair" men, and disliked by others for the "big jump " he gave Pershing, he was at all times the ideal of the real fighting men in the army.  At the hint that he saw war coming and was preparing to take part in it, these besieged him at Oyster Bay and bombarded him with letters.  When finally the plan was given world wide publicity, appeals to be "counted in" came by cable from army men in isolated Siam and far distant Manila, as well as from nearer points in Europe.

In a sense the plan was the old story of the "big stick" again, for the central thought was to hit quickly and hit hard.

Contrary to a widely held belief, Colonel Roosevelt at no time asked or expected to be given command of the corps or even of a division.

" I shall be content," he told me, as he did others repeatedly, "if I am made the junior brigadier.

"What I would like to see is two divisions with two volunteer and one regular regiment in each brigade.  The regiment that I would raise would be on the model of the Rough Riders and the thirty regiments raised to put down the Philippine rebellion.  Most of those had young regulars as colonels and a sprinkling of regular officers elsewhere.  I have asked no man to join me who would be in the draft or the National Guard, or whose coming would in any way interfere with the Administration's plans.  My men would be of the solid business type, $2500 to $50,000 a year men.  The broncho buster type will be very much lacking.

"In asking a junior place for myself, I am doing what I did in the war with Spain.  McKinley offered me the colonelcy of the Rough Riders.  I declined it and asked that the command be given Wood.  It is worth remembering that my regiment then was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept two weeks on transports and put through a victorious aggressive fight in which one third of its officers and one fifth of its men were killed or wounded, all within sixty days from the time Wood and I were commissioned.

"Ever since war was declared, I have been urging that men be sent over at once — even a small force — for the vast moral effect it would have.  This, I know, is what General Joffre advises.  If we can get the necessary permission we will speed up on the lines followed in getting my old regiment into the field.  The type of men we will get and intensive training will enable us to land in France at a very early date.

"Some of you boys will wish to come and I will take you along, but remember, you'll then see a side of me you have n't seen.  It will be hard work."

Colonel Roosevelt's plan contemplated, as he explained, all the advantages of using Guard regiments as the first (after the few regulars available) to be sent across, and none of the unfairness that must result in taking the large percentage of men with dependents in the Guard from their families.  Use of the Guard regiments on foreign or semi-foreign, such as Mexican Border, work, he always opposed.

"Foolish"and "unjust" were his terms to describe the mobilizing of the National Guard on the Mexican Border in 1916, when he made application for service for himself and the division he had planned.

"Three fourths of the National Guardsmen have no business in this thing," he said.  "They are married men with families dependent upon them.  In the regiment of a cousin of mine, in his company, his top sergeant, an Irishman, a mechanic, quits $100 a month, and his family will have to try and live on $30.  Another chap has $85 a month, three children, and a wife.  They must live on $16 a month and his job is gone.

"Take a captain in this command, another Irishman, McCoy, who used to play football.  He's been very successful as a lawyer and is earning $18,000 or so a year.  On his docket are fifty-two cases.  Now the fifty-two cases must go elsewhere and Mrs.  McCoy will have $3500 to do on instead of $18,000.  It's a question whether or not he will ever get his practice back.  There are dozens, scores, hundreds of such cases.  It is all wrong — it throws too much of a load where it does not belong.

" Now if we had universal military service the men to go would be the unmarried fellows of eighteen to twenty-eight — poor man's son, rich man's son, the grocer's lad, and the millionaire's boy.  Quentin would be the representative of this family.  How much better that would be!

"A single man can always get along.  Loss of a job is nothing to him.  He can always get another start.

He won't be hurt, though he may be inconvenienced.  It is nonsense to send National Guardsmen of this type to guard the border — it is all wrong."

"That would be a splendid thing to let me print now," I suggested.

"No, no — I cannot say a word for publication now.  Later — perhaps.  If Wilson is wise he will give me a commission."

"How can he do that under the law?" I asked, the Colonel being past the age limit fixed in a statute he, as President, had aided in placing on the books.

"How? Has n't he got to have a new law before he can raise volunteers?"

The words were fairly snapped out.  It was the first intimation that he had found a door through which he might enter any army raised for service in Mexico or Europe with the division he had in contemplation.  Something had been printed about this — just enough to whet the public interest.

"We are getting reports from here and there, Colonel," I said, "indicating that something of this sort is expected of you.  We would like very much to be able to send out something definite."

"Impossible," said he.  "Don't you see that that would at once result in three things: flooding of my mail with letters from men wanting to join and importunities for commissions I would not have to give; all the cranks in the world sending me advice and more tangible but useless things; and every editorial wit with a two-by-four intellect writing 'near bright' editorials about 'Roosevelt Hogging the Lime Light' — 'T.  R.  Seeking the Front Page'? That is impossible!

" If there is a call for volunteers — and I think there will be — I shall do my duty to the fullest extent permitted me.  Until then I want to be allowed as large a measure of privacy as possible.  I want to be as free to come and go as you are."

For several days we sought to get permission to print the story of his proposed Mexican division.  The details — since printed — we knew.  We also knew, thanks to A.  Leonard Smith, of the "newspaper cabinet," who was born in the army, that it would not be formed on orthodox army lines, having an unusual preponderance of cavalry and artillery, and a minimum of infantry; that it would be, as an officer of engineers described it to Smith "a re-enforced division."

"Colonel Blank was at our place to dinner last night," said Smith.  "I told him what the Colonel had in mind.

"'Lord!' said he, 'that thing will have a punch like an army mule, and the speed of a cyclone.  If it ever gets under way, it won't stop this side of the canal.  Once started, the rest of the army won't see it for dust.  Its only weakness may be in supply."

"There will be no difficulty on that score," the Colonel said when this was repeated to him.  "Supplies will come through all right.  If not, the men I'll take along will see that they do.  I 've had some experience getting through Quartermaster's red tape in Cuba."

As the Colonel had anticipated, definite though anonymous statements of his intentions sent many persons looking for commissions.  Among those going to Oyster Bay was Roosevelt's one time Secretary of War, "Harry" Stimson, who arrived, unannounced, one Sunday afternoon.

"What is it you want, Harry?" the Colonel asked after exchanging the usual greetings.

"I read in the papers," said he, "that you were going to raise a division for service in Mexico.  I also read that it was a fake.  I came down to see if it was so."

"So!" snapped the Colonel; "of course it's so.  What about it; what do you want to do?"

"I came to see what I could do to help.  I'll do anything."

Thus Stimson, exSecretary of War, joined the list of men notable in many walks of life who were to have gone with Roosevelt to Mexico had he been permitted to go.  To Stimson, who knew nothing of the plan, he read the roll, as it were — "Bob" Bacon, millionaire banker and diplomatist; "Jack" Greenway, Yale athlete and best loved of the Rough Riders; Rear Admiral Cameron McR.  Winslow; Seth Bullock, exsheriff of Deadwood, when Deadwood was new; Thomas C.  Desmond, subway and ship builder; and Dan Collier, California miner, among those not on the regular army list.  As for those in the regular establishment, the list read like a rollcall of the Army Four Hundred — Sheridan, Fitz Lee, Young, Jackson, Chaffee, Mosby, and Forrest, to name a few of them.

"Are you going to arm your cavalry with sabers or lances?" Mr.  Stimson asked.

"Certainly not," replied the Colonel.  "I'll have no time to teach them the use of swords.  If they require any hand weapon of that sort, I'll give them hatchets.  They will at least know how to chop."

No public announcement was made of his plans by Colonel Roosevelt until July 4, when, speaking to "my fellow townsmen," he declared his purpose of taking some of them with him.  Any detailed statement he barred until after his formal application had been filed with the War Department.  Two days later he gave me, for the group of newspaper men assigned to Oyster Bay, permission to "let it drive."

"Use," said he, "no names of officers now in the regular establishment.  To print them now would be to embarrass them.  This is a pretty vicious Administration, you know.  Use the names of Stimson, Bullock, and the other civilians.  They cannot be damaged."

The Colonel's hope of doing anything with Mexico soon evaporated.  Less than a fortnight later, when he asked how soon the correspondents would leave Oyster Bay, I told him the division matter would hold them there awhile longer.

"It will not permit us to drop you," he was told.

"For the present it will.  We won't have war with Mexico.  This man will never declare war on Mexico.  The only way that war will come will be by Mexico declaring war on us.

"Later on as election draws near he may do something, but — bah!

"He is impossible.  I never have any patience with the man who, after his toes have been tread upon, his nose tweaked, his face slapped and spat upon, turns on his tormentor and says: 'Beware, sir, lest you arouse the lion!''

As the Colonel anticipated, the Mexican affair fizzled out.  The division plans remained intact, however, preserved for use against the enemy for whose benefit they were first drawn.  From time to time changes were made, until, when early in 1917 it became apparent that our entrance into the war could not be much longer delayed, they were again brought out, and a new petition to the War Department for permission to raise and equip such a force was prepared.

Quietly the necessary "paper work" of a division, enormous in itself, was done under the direction of experts, money without limit was pledged from private purses to offset any delay that might accrue from temporary lack of government funds, and tentative arrangement made for such equipment as the War Department might lack.

"They have made ready for nothing; they will be short of everything," the Colonel said.  "We will, if we get the necessary permission, be ready to move quickly."

On February 2, 1917, two days after Germany announced her programme of "ruthless submarine warfare," Colonel Roosevelt sent a renewal of his offer to raise troops to Mr.  Baker.

When it was filed, the Colonel was scheduled for a trip to Jamaica to rest up a bit.  This trip he abandoned.

" I do not expect to get what I ask at this time," said he, "but I am determined to use every effort to get the necessary permission.  I shall not go away, for I feel that I should stand by.  Furthermore, my letter to Baker cannot be made public by me, and if I sailed it might look as though I were going away at a time when I should stay at home to be ready if wanted.  So I shall cancel my passage."

"I am going to keep at this thing," he said some days later when it became apparent the War Department would be in no haste to grant his request.  "While nothing may come of it so far as I am directly concerned, it may help the country.  It is helping the country by arousing the interest in preparedness.  But, oh, the pity of it! At war, and the President refuses to acknowledge the fact and make ready."

Meantime applications for permission to go along with the Colonel piled in from all sides, and from men in all walks of life.  In Congress, Senator Harding, of Ohio, offered an amendment tacked on the Army Bill which would permit the Colonel to raise a force.  This was adopted in the Senate, but hung fire in the House.

To get it through the House, it was suggested to the Colonel that the one hundred thousand or more men who had then asked to be enrolled, be told to write their Congressmen urging its adoption.

"I cannot write such letters," the Colonel said.  "It's out of the question."

This was admitted, but enough was thought of the idea to call "Bob" Bacon into consultation on it.  Bacon found a quieter way of getting the desired result.

In San Diego then lived Daniel C.  Collier, miner, banker, real estate operator, and all around organizer.  In competition with the Panama Fair in San Francisco, he had made a fair in San Diego a big success — his specialty seemed to be doing difficult things.  Collier was of those who were to have commissions in the division.  He was called East, told of the situation in Congress, and asked to "get busy."

He did.  He worked so quietly that none of the Washington correspondents noted him or his activities.  The night before the House voted, he left Washington, hopeful for the best, but fearing he had failed.  The day of the vote I met him en route to Oyster Bay.

"I've just heard the vote and am feeling pretty good," he said, "but I was n't at all sure we had the votes.  Just now I 'm not sure the President will act under it."

This also was Colonel Roosevelt's opinion.

"The vote," said he, "does not mean that I am commissioned, not by a jug-full.  It does open the door, but that might have been opened any time Mr.  Wilson wished it opened."

The adoption of the Harding amendment served to increase the flood of offers of men, and the offices, opened on Fifth Avenue to handle the correspondence, did a land office business.  Eventually, as is well known, the Colonel had enough volunteers to fit out an army corps.  At no time, however, was the Colonel or those closest to him over sanguine.

"I hope for the best, but fear the worst," the Colonel told me more than once as the days went on.  "I am still exchanging letters with Mr.  Baker.

"He has changed his position so rapidly he reminds one of the fly wheel of an engine.  But the dear little fellow is not to blame.  He's been trying to defend a bad case."

The National Government taking no action, Charles S.  Whitman, then Governor, offered to aid.  He offered to make the Colonel a Major General in the National Guard of New York, this on the theory that once he was in the Guard, President Wilson would permit him to go with it into the national service.  The Colonel did not think this practical — but went to Albany to talk it over with the Governor.  He returned practically convinced that the scheme was impracticable.

"We had a pleasant talk," he told me, "but I doubt if anything comes of it.  For one thing I do not wish to be under obligation to Whitman.  If he does anything for me, I shall have to do something for him and he's wise enough to realize that.  There is nothing very disinterested in Mr.  Whitman's offer, but I do appreciate it just the same."

Meanwhile men who had sought to go with the Colonel were beginning to despair.  Many wrote in asking what they should do.  Among these was one from "Tom" Desmond.  Desmond had lined up three thousand engineers, the pick of the thirty thousand subway diggers then working in New York, this thirty thousand in turn being the cream of the heavy construction men in the world.  The answer to Desmond's letter was the vehicle chosen by the Colonel to tell all that it was their duty to get "over there" any way they could.

As originally drafted, this letter, which now hangs on the wall of Mr.  Desmond's New York office, admitted final and complete defeat.  Slaght of the "newspaper cabinet" pointed this out.

"That phrase, ' It is to me a matter of the keenest regret that I cannot take you in a division to France,' is an admission you are beaten," he said.

"Very well," said the Colonel, "your point is well taken.  Let us see how we can avoid destroying the small hope you think may remain."

Consequently the letter, on the original of which the changes plainly show, as made public read: "It will be to me a matter of the keenest regret if I cannot take you in a division to France." The change did not affect the advice to get in.

This letter, dated May 9, 1917, was to all intents and purposes the end of the movement.  A few days later there were gatherings of the clan at Oyster Bay and in the New York offices of the division.  To these came among others Seth Bullock, Jack Greenway, John M.  Parker of Louisiana, " Bob" Carey of Wyoming, "Dan" Collier of California, Sloane Simpson of Texas, J.  L.  Reeves and H.  N.  Jackson, teachers in Norwich College, Vermont, where Dewey studied, Hamilton Fish, Dr.  William Jay Schieffelin, " Bill" Donovan of New York, "Dave" Goodrich, and others.  Never, except in a house of death, have I noticed a greater air of depression.  All except the Colonel showed it plainly.  He, it was apparent to those who knew him best, felt worse than any other.

"I feel like hell about the whole thing," is the way Bullock expressed himself, "and so do the rest of us.  The Colonel feels worst of all, only he's too proud to let on.  He may fool some of you boys, but he can't fool us.  We've tried to tell him there may be some way out, but he admits he's licked and I figure it that way too.  So I guess this is the end.  There is no way of getting around the President's announcement that he won't act under the Harding amendment."

"We must, as loyal American citizens, bow to the decision of the commander-in-chief of the army and navy, the President," said the Colonel, "so we are releasing everybody, returning the money that has been subscribed, and telling every one to get in as best he can."

The Colonel was far from thinking he had failed entirely.  He took immense satisfaction in a Washington despatch to the Brooklyn Eagle, describing the decision to send troops at once as "a compromise" between the original plans of the General Staff which called for no early movement of troops abroad, and the request of the Colonel to be permitted to take troops abroad.  The dispatch bore all the ear marks of being "inspired."

"If," said the Colonel, "the dispatch gives the real explanation of the matter, and I think it does, I can say we are all unselfishly pleased to have served this use, although, naturally, we regret not to have been allowed to go ourselves.  It is due the men that the full facts should be known.

" If my request had been granted the various units of the first division would begin to assemble tomorrow at whatever point the department designates.  Personally I would have preferred Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  We were prepared to make good any immediate lack of supplies.  In fifteen days the second division would have begun to mobilize.  At intervals of thirty days the others would have mobilized.  At intervals of thirty days thereafter the commands would have been ready to sail for intensive training in France.  All could have been on the firing line by September I, the time set for the first draft to become effective.

"Under the 'compromise' men go abroad earlier than Mr.  Baker had intended they should.  The 'compromise,' therefore, is that France gets men and Roosevelt stays at home.  That is not entirely satisfactory to Roosevelt, not by a long shot, but it is something.  We are not one hundred per cent loss, and we have not worked in vain."

In later talks, the Colonel insisted that "the division" had helped improve the war situation.

"We did n't get over," he would say, "but we did help.  Baker has had to do everything I wanted him to do and that he said could not be done; we have troops in France long ahead of the time they planned to send them; we have helped arouse the country.

"It is the regret of my life that I am not permitted to serve.  Had I been, they would have no fear of political glory to be reaped by me, for I would never have come back.  Had they sense, they would have known that."

Topic 22
THE COLONEL AND JOHN L.  SULLIVAN

OLD JOHN L.  has been a greater power for good in this country than many a highly respectable person who would scorn to meet him on terms of equality.  He has been my friend many years, and I am proud to be his."

That is where John L.  Sullivan, once champion pugilist of the world, stood in Colonel Roosevelt's estimation.

The old champion, who in his later years knew the pinch of need, had come to New York to see the Colonel and had an hour of his time while persons of real political and social importance waited in an anteroom.  His object in coming was to offer his aid in "getting over" the Colonel's division.  When he left, it was to return to Boston to hold a mass meeting in Faneuil Hall to protest against delay in the granting of the necessary permission to begin recruiting.

"I can't do much," he said, "but I guess we can rock old Faneuil Hall just to show that Boston's heart is still in the right place."

" It was mighty decent of old John L.  to come over to see me," said the Colonel after the meeting.  "He wants to help.  I more than half suspect he needs help himself, but I would not for the life of me insult him by even a hint of an offer.  Old John has many excellent qualities including a high degree of selfrespect.  He also has a large measure of native ability.  I know that his former profession is not a very exalted one, but he was a fair fighter, he never threw a fight, and, in his way, he did his best to uphold American supremacy.  Do you remember his little speech when Corbett defeated him — gratification that it was an American who whipped him?

"John's best fight, however, was made after he lost to Corbett.  I mean his whipping John Barleycorn.  That was a real victory, and I am proud of him for having made it.  Since then I believe he has been the most effective temperance lecturer I have known of.  He has been effective because he could appeal to classes of men and boys others, however gifted, could never hope to reach.  His hold on the public has been longer maintained than any other champion I ever heard of.  Men and boys would go to hear him, and the old fellow's honesty was convincing.  I like John for this contribution to good citizenship.

" I admired him in his prime.  He was a good fighter and clean.  I liked his willingness to meet all comers as fast as they came.  This marked the real champion and explains why, in defeat, he is still a popular idol.

"John is an old friend.  He used to call at the White House occasionally just as he sometimes calls at Sagamore Hill.  Once he called at the White House on a personal matter — he told my secretary it was personal and I saw him at once.  After we had shaken hands, he laid a heavy black cigar on the desk.

"'Have a cigar, Mr.  President,' he said.

"I told him I did not smoke.

"'Have another — give 'em to a friend,' he replied, laying another on the desk.

"The social amenities having been attended to, I asked what I could do for him.

"'I come to see you about a nephew,' said he, 'my favorite nephew.  He is in the navy and in trouble.'

"John explained that he had enlisted in the Marines, got into trouble of some sort, and deserted, for which he was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge.

"'Now, Colonel,' said he, 'that's something we can't have.  We don't want anything like that in our family.  He's a good boy, Colonel, just a trifle wild.  I wish you could have him in hand a little while.  You'd fix him.

"It's a tough case, too, Colonel,' he went on.  'Here's this boy, my favorite nephew; I've done everything for him, but he doesn't do anything for himself.  Why, he even went and took up music."

"John did not explain whether he had taken up violin or barrel organ, but he left no doubt that he felt this was beneath the Sullivan dignity."

"What became of the boy, Colonel?" I asked.

"The boy was all right.  I was glad to do what I could for John.  Since then he's told me the boy has done well.  I failed to ask, however, if he persisted in music."

On another occasion I called at the Harvard Club by appointment to get the news of the day as regarded the "division." The Colonel had none.

"I have had but two visitors today," he said, "Archbishop John Ireland and John L.  Sullivan, both, as you know, old friends.  And would you believe it, these young barbarians, fresh from the refining influences of my venerable Alma Mater, paid more attention to the pugilist than they did to the prelate! Had they known, that John Ireland had a record as a first class fighting man in the army and since, it might have been different.  As it was, to talk straight New York, they 'fell for the fighter, but could n't see' the man of the Church.

"It might interest you to know that old John and the Archbishop are rather good friends.  Their common interest is temperance, and they had a real good chat.  John thinks the Archbishop is all right, and the Archbishop respects John's good qualities.  Under other conditions the Archbishop thinks John might have made a splendid churchman.  I don't.  John was intended for a prize fighter, and it would have been too bad to spoil the best fighter of them all and make, perhaps, a second rate clergyman, with, probably, less real power for good than old John has exercised.  I told His Grace this, but of course he could not be expected to concede as much as that.  He does, however, think well of John.

" Of course it may be said that Sullivan was better than his profession.  This, in large measure, is true.  I liked old Bob Fitzsimmons, but as a man he was not to be compared to Sullivan — he had the fighting instinct all right, but he lacked Sullivan's brain.  Sullivan has had little more schooling than Fitz, but he has profited more by his travels and he is better informed on most matters than most men who have had no better opportunity in school work than he has had

"That, however, is not the secret of his holding his own with the public.  That's to be explained by his rugged honesty and the fact that he was a champion who was always willing to fight.

"After all, there is a lot of the primal man in most of us."

Topic 23
THE NEWSPAPER CABINET

All the world knows of the Roosevelt "Tennis Cabinet." Few, even in the larger newspaper offices, knew much if anything of the Roosevelt "Newspaper Cabinet."

Occasionally a visiting statesman or politician returning from Oyster Bay would have some mention to make of the group to which he had been introduced by the Colonel or marvel at the freedom with which the Colonel discussed matters of the gravest importance with what one Senator called "news hounds." Sometimes a managing or city editor, or a magazine editor, would hear something of it and try to get the story, but none ever succeeded.  Those within the circle would not write it, and those without could not.

Being refused a story is no novelty to most editors.  The "cabinet," however, was a real novelty to many of the Colonel's visitors.

"I can readily understand the Colonel or any other man having a man on a paper especially friendly to him from whom he would keep very little," said a member of Congress leaving "the hill" one afternoon, "but I cannot understand his talking so freely to so many reporters.  Of course I know T.  R.  knows his business, but —"

"These men you met today are all old friends of the Colonel; he knows they would not turn on him," I said.  "For that matter if one became inclined to do so, he would not dare break.  It would finish him professionally, or come so near to it, he would be most uncomfortable.  You see he'd have not only the Colonel to deal with, but his associates as well."

"I understand that," he answered, "but this is what I do not understand: In that group today there was a Hearst man (William Hoster) and a World man (John W, Slaght).  Hearst I know hates the thought of Roosevelt.  We all know the Colonel has been as bitter toward Mr.  Pulitzer as the World in turn has been against him.  Now, how can he feel safe with those men in what he calls 'the cabinet'?"

"That is easy to answer," I said.  " Hoster, of the American, is the one man in the Hearst organization who can always get to T.  R.  and whom he trusts implicitly.  Slaght, of the World, has been his friend since he was Police Commissioner or thereabouts.  In the bitterest days of the Panama Canal controversy, Slaght had his confidence, and was persona grata.  The World knew this, understood it perfectly, and never expected Slaght to do anything incompatible with his self respect.  Had he done so, it would have fired him.

"So Hoster sits in, and Slaght, as you saw today, is on the closest terms with the Colonel."

"But there were things said today that the World would give much for.  Is n't it Slaght's duty to turn that stuff in?"

"Not at all.  He's there as the Colonel's friend; what he knows, unless it is otherwise agreed, is not to be printed and that settles it."

"But," the Congressman persisted, "of what value is that to the World?"

"Of this value: Slaght at all times knows, or is in a position to know, the facts in any matter the Colonel may be interested in.  This enables it to avoid serious error that other papers sometimes fall into.  It also leaves it in a position to know what to look for.  In a word, it is insurance against error and a guarantee that it will be in a position to intelligently handle any story that may arise as well as prepare for things in the future.  The Colonel on his part does not object to this.  He would rather have the front page than the editorial page any day, and he'd rather have a friendly pen deal with him in a paper editorially unfriendly than one neutral or unfriendly."

"You say it well," said the Congressman, "but if you ever mention me to the Colonel, tell him I marvel at this arrangement.  To most men it would be suicidal."

I did mention the conversation to the Colonel the next day as we sat in the library.

"He means all right," he said, "but he does not understand.  He's not the first man to doubt the wisdom of having Jack Slaght about.  Jack is pure gold — a bit querulous at times, but always trustworthy.  I 've told Slaght many a thing he could have sold for ten thousand dollars, but I never thought he'd sell it and I'm sure he did not.  I have not held him responsible for what the World might say about me any more than Pulitzer held him responsible for what I said about the World.

"What our friend does not appreciate is that 'the cabinet' is a picked crew.  It's as valuable to me — more so — than I am to it."

As the Colonel said, "the cabinet" was made up of picked men.  They were the survivors of the army of reporters who, beginning in the days when Oyster Bay sported one or two rickety horse cabs and only one telephone, had driven up the slope of Sagamore Hill.  Of these, many called but once or twice.  Others had gone into other callings — notably Robert E.  Livingston, of the Herald, and Edward G.  Riggs, of the Sun, dean of all political reporters; others had passed on.  Of the many, there were a few upon whom their papers depended for all Roosevelt matters, men who at various times, mainly during campaigns and in the summers when Oyster Bay was the National Capital, had been stationed there.  Gradually other newspaper men began to lean on these, the more so as in his later years the Colonel sought (in vain, to be sure) that private life he hoped would be his when he left the White House.

In these latter days not every reporter could see the Colonel.  This was due as much to the fact that many were sent to him on what he called "fool errands" as to the desire for a little privacy.  Many of those who did see him found him not at all responsive.  The exact truth is, popular opinion to the contrary, Colonel Roosevelt was not a publicity seeker.  When he had anything to say he said it, but he did not grant one in a thousand of the interviews sought from him.  In the closing years "no interviews" was his rule, a rule seldom broken.

Under these conditions, even in the last campaign (1916), the number of newspaper men persona grata at Sagamore Hill was limited.  In this group were Slaght and Hoster above mentioned; Rodney Bean, of the New York Times, whose place was later taken by A.  Leonard Smith; Phil Thompson, resident correspondent; Perry Arnold, of the United Press; Ed Moier, of the Associated Press; Napoleon Alexander Jennings, of the Herald, and Charles Divine of the Sun, whose place was later filled by Thoreau Cronyn.  These, with myself and with Colonel Michael E.  Hennessey, of the Boston Globe, as a nonresident member, made up the cabinet.  At times other newspaper men for whom some one or all of the group could vouch, or from other cities, would sit in, but always with the understanding that they would be guided in their writing by what the others would advise.

"These gentlemen understand me perfectly," he would say to the stranger, "and they know what is permissible to print.  Just consult with them and you will be all right.

"Now we will discuss this matter in cabinet," he would go on.  "When we are through we will decide what if anything can be printed.  I 'm not sure that we will want to print anything, but you want the facts for your guidance."

This would be the start of a discussion of some matter in the news or likely to be in the news.  In the course of this, the Colonel would be most frank, particularly if there were no strangers present whom he had not tested out.  On their part the correspondents would be equally frank in their criticisms and suggestions, and in offering bits of information bearing on the subject in hand.

"All right," the Colonel might say as the discussion ended, perhaps at the stroke of the dinner gong, " take this down and we will see how it sounds," and proceed to dictate a statement.

"This" might sound all right and it might not; changes of a word here and there would, as likely as not, be suggested, and when each had had his say, the Colonel would give his final assent to publication.  Or at his suggestion the matter would be held up indefinitely — the entire talk being held as "in cabinet."

The visiting reporter who really knew his business more often than not waited at the little Oyster Bay Inn for the "cabinet" to return, confident that a franker discussion might result if he were not present, and that, under the rules, he would get everything printable, though he might not get all that was said.

So far as I know but one man, who must be nameless in his shame, ever outraged this hospitality of the Colonel.  He did it once.  Before he could again visit "the hill," he was notified not to return.  The offence was flagrant and indefensible.  Not long after the man retired from newspaper work to write fiction.  His successor, an old friend of the Colonel, was heartily welcomed, but stopped abruptly when he started to apologize for what had happened.

"You need not apologize for your office and you cannot apologize for him," said the Colonel.  "You come in on the most favored nation basis.  While I 'm rather sorry for the poor fool — he's more fool than crook — I'm glad his going has sent you here."

The unexpected result of one cabinet meeting was the basis of the charge, oft repeated by men not in the newspaper world, or if in, not of it, that it was the Colonel's habit to repudiate interviews and statements if it was to his benefit to do so.  Such a practice could not long obtain with Colonel Roosevelt or any other public man, however dishonest, and Colonel Roosevelt was basically and intrinsically honest in all things.

At the meeting in question, attended by representatives of the morning papers, Colonel Roosevelt, then President, took up the question of the Philippine friars, at that time very much in the news.  To the men present the Colonel explained conditions in the islands as shown by reports from men in and out of office, making the point that the situation would clear up easier if the Roman Catholics of the United States, and for that matter the rest of the world, had competent knowledge of the facts.

These facts, he proceeded to develop, were that the Philippine friar as he then existed was at no time to be mentioned in the same breath as the Roman Catholic clergy in the United States.  Were this generally understood, even by the clergy here, he said, the situation would be easier to clear up to the satisfaction of all.  Illustrating these statements, Colonel Roosevelt cited various cases that showed the friars in some instances, at least, to be a highly undesirable lot.  At the same time he was careful to point out that not all of the Philippine clergy were "tarred with this stick," paying a high compliment to the Archbishop of Manila and others to whom the charges against the friars would not apply.

All this, it was stipulated, was not for publication.

That evening after dinner the morning paper men to whom the Colonel had made this story sat on the porch of the little Oyster Bay hotel and discussed the meeting of the afternoon.  First one statement, then another of the Colonel's was taken up; this point and that analyzed and emphasized; some of the Colonel's stories were repeated.  Unknown to these men, the local man for an evening paper was sitting near by in the shadow.  While they talked, he took mental notes, and when they retired for the evening card game, he retired to put the story on paper.  The next evening practically everything the Colonel had said was printed in interview form in his journal.

As might have been expected, the result was a sensation.  From one end of the country to the other came calls for a verification of the interview or more on the same lines.  The morning paper men had telephone calls for explanations.  They could, under the circumstances, do nothing but denounce the interview.

Meantime the Colonel was busy.  To Sagamore Hill the correspondent of the morning edition of the paper printing the story was called.  He explained that he knew nothing of the matter, that he had no connection with the evening edition and had not talked with any one on it.

" I am glad to know that," the Colonel told him; "it is as I thought.  I shall have to repudiate the interview, for I made no such talk to whoever wrote that article, and to nobody for publication.  It was, as you know, entirely in confidence.  I have talked this matter over with no one from that paper and I shall say so."
This he did, and when the full facts developed, there was neither resentment nor criticism in newspaper circles.  Nor was there any sympathy for the young man who found himself repudiated.  By eavesdropping he had placed himself in a position where he was entitled to neither courtesy nor consideration; he knew or should have known that he was listening to a discussion of a confidential matter.  So far as the Colonel was concerned, he was entirely within his rights and the truth in denying the authenticity of the interview.

I have in the course of many years tried to find the basis for the charge that Colonel Roosevelt was ever unfair to the interviewer.  The foregoing is the only incident I have been able to find.  On this slender foundation of fact the elaborate structure of misstatement was, I am sure, built.

There were times when, in order to keep out of the newspapers, Colonel Roosevelt gave orders that all newspaper men be barred from "the hill." The few to whom these orders did not apply came, not as newspaper men, but as friends.

One occasion on which such an order issued was immediately after Judge Hughes was nominated.  Calling the correspondents then on duty at Oyster Bay, including a majority of "the cabinet," the Colonel told them they must not call any more; that he was once more a private citizen and must be treated as such.  They protested that this could not be; that the public clamored for news of him, and their papers, anxious to meet the demand, would not consent to recalling them.

It was of no use for Colonel Roosevelt to explain that by remaining in the limelight he would injure Judge Hughes's chances; that he did not propose to do this, and that by remaining, the boys would only embarrass him.  An impasse developed, in consequence of which the correspondents, barred from "the hill," picketed the estate and the Oyster Bay station, planning in this way to get lines on the Colonel's political visitors and on what he was doing in a political way.

This was the situation when I arrived at Oyster Bay from Chicago.  The men at the station told me Sagamore Hill had been closed to them as reporters.

"T.  R.  was very nice about it," they said, "but he said that while he would welcome us older men as friends, he would have no welcome for us as reporters."

On the theory that being fresh from the convention, the Colonel would not object to my calling, I drove to Sagamore Hill.  As I arrived, James R.  Garfield, of the "Tennis Cabinet," and another friend were leaving.

"By George! this is fine," the Colonel exclaimed, introducing me to Garfield, whom I had met before, but who did not remember me.  "You can trust this man absolutely," he declared.  "He is one of the salt of the earth1, if salt can be considered plural.  I am glad you came.

"But," he added as Garfield left, "you know I am not seeing reporters.  Of course you did not know that.''

"Yes, I did, Colonel," I answered, "but I thought you might possibly wish to see me, and, anyway, I wished to tell you how sorry I am you were not named and to say good bye."

"That's splendid of you," he answered.  "Come into the library."

In the library John McGrath and Walter Hayes, his secretaries, were waiting with a mass of mail.  Hayes also had a wire from Mrs.  Douglas Robinson.

"Now what do you think of that?" the Colonel demanded.  "My sister, you know, the dearest girl in the world, but ignorant as a babe on politics.  Thinks, I suppose, the world's going to come to an end because I was not nominated.  Hayes, try and get her to come out with Mr.  Robinson.  She wants to console me, and I shall have to console her and explain that nothing awful has happened me."

I at once took up the matter of the embargo.

"The station is picketed," I explained.  " I am sorry to say, too, that some of the boys have elected to picket the foot of the hill.  It should be possible to make some arrangement more pleasant all around."
I mention this incident in answer to those who have pictured Colonel Roosevelt as stubborn and unreasonable and difficult to advise.

"I noticed the pickets," said he, "and I did not like to see them.  But really there is no use in their coming here for news.  I wish to be treated as any other private citizen."

"Yes, Colonel," said I, "you know and I know that, but the public refuses to consider you a private citizen and, frankly, you are not; at least not yet."

"All right, then, let us fix it this way.  Let one of you elder members of the cabinet come up here each evening.  I will tell him the news, but it must not be printed as coming from me.  There will be times when you will not wish to print the names of all my callers.

"For example, I was sorry yesterday to see that the boys said Leonard Wood called.  With this Administration lying awake nights for a chance to break him and deprive him of his livelihood — Wood is rather too old to start in another line now — it would be easy to get him into trouble.  You boys, I know, would regret that; you would not intentionally get any decent citizen into trouble.

"Will that arrangement be satisfactory?"

I said it would, and the new arrangement went into effect at once, the first call being planned for the next night when I was to meet him in the Hotel Langdon, his New York City home.

I found him there looking tired and flushed after a hard day in the city, and, I thought, reaction from the strain of the convention.  Of news he had none.  The next day we learned, when a physician was called to attend him on a pier whither he had gone to welcome Kermit home, that he was ill.  It was explained he had strained some tendons on his left side coughing.

On the following day several physicians looked him over and we learned he had a light attack of dry pleurisy.  At his request I called at the hotel that evening.

"I've sent for you," he told me, "because I know the boys have confidence in you and will take your word, your advice, on my condition.  I don't want alarming stories in the papers.  If you could fix it, I would prefer nothing be said, but I know you cannot, and perhaps total silence, any attempt to suppress, would be the worst thing I could do.  But I don't want any 'Roosevelt Critically Ill' headlines that will scare my friends to death.  I 'm not afraid of the boys' reports, but it's the headline fellows.

"All the trouble I ever have with the papers is of their making.  Friends come to me and say, 'Those reporters,' But it is n't the reporters.  Ninety nine times out of a hundred they are correct to a ‘T."

I explained that the boys understood perfectly; that Slaght had taken the trouble to consult one of the best physicians in New York, Dr.  Charles H.  Goodrich, of Brooklyn, and been told by him that pleurisy per se was annoying rather than serious.

"That's bully of Slaght.  Just like him.  Do you know he's a splendid fellow? Now his paper hates me, hates me bitterly.  But Slaght has ever been uniformly kind and courteous.  He's square all the way up.  I like him, he's my friend.  That's one thing lots of people can't understand, why I have anything to do with a man placed like Slaght.  They don't know that being decent is not dependent on one's particular position."

I told the Colonel that if he wished I would see every night editor in town — the boys would have gone home by the time I could get back downtown — but I advised against doing so.

"Ha, ha, 'methinks the lady doth protest too much,'" he quoted.  "You are right and I am sorry to have troubled you.  Truly, I will be glad when people will recognize me as a private citizen and the papers treat me as such."

"That time," I replied, "will never come in your life.  Twenty years from now if I am alive I expect to go to Oyster Bay now and then on a T.  R.  assignment.'

"That is just it — your city editors want that sort of thing.  But I do wish — and I say this in all sincerity — I wish to be as any other man — I am in private life, and sooner or later even your hard hearted bosses will recognize that."

Three days later the Colonel again asked when the correspondents would leave Oyster Bay.

"How much longer do you boys expect to be here?" he asked.

" On a guess, ten days — until after your letter to the Progressive National Committee is made public."

"Fine.  Then I shall be left alone."

"Colonel, I don't think so.  There's one thing you don't realize — the biggest tribute yet paid you, but unnoticed by you and about every one else.  It is the presence of these men."

"I don't understand you," and he looked as though he suspected I thought I was honoring him by calling.

" It is this.  Here you are a defeated man.  You are by your own word out of politics.  You ask to be left alone.  In the face of that, the New York papers and the great press associations are keeping here a stronger force than is with Mr.  Hughes.  That's not because our city editors are crazy or hero worshippers or particular friends of yours.  It is because they realize the hold you have on the American people.  It's the tribute of the people to the man, for, after all, we only give the public what it wants.

"I have never seen or heard of anything like it in my twenty-five years in the newspaper business.

The popular cry always is, 'The King is dead, long live the King.' This 'King' is not dead.  I tell you, the people are with you.  That is why we are here."

The Colonel listened to this, the longest speech I ever attempted on him, without an interruption — something unusual when one was tempted to be long winded.

"Leary, I thank you," this with every evidence of being touched.  "The people are with me because they know I am the one man in America who stands for a definite thing.  It's the thing and not the man."

Ten days later the boys began to leave one by one, only to return intermittently or call at his New York offices the days he would be due in town.  More often than not they secured nothing for publication, but they were glad to see him, and he them.  Between them there was that "common interest" he sometimes declared to be so necessary to enable men to work together.  All were his friends, and he theirs.

This affinity of the newspaper men for Colonel Roosevelt was not confined to New York members of the craft.  By that strange freemasonry obtaining in the profession, reporters in San Francisco, Portland, Maine, and way stations in between, knew they were sure, if the occasion ever offered, of a fair deal; that while he could not be depended upon for the desired interview, he would always see them, thereby protecting them against what every reporter, however blase, dreads — the necessity of reporting failure to see his man.

They also knew he would protect them in other ways; as, for example, at a dinner given him by the Illinois Bar Association.  To it journeyed several members of "the cabinet," only to be barred at the last moment.  The meal was partly served when the Colonel's secretary, McGrath, told him about it.  Immediately the Colonel arose as if to leave the table, declared the reporters were in and of his party, and he proposed to join them in the grill room below where they were dining a la carte.

Join them he did, returning to the banquet hall only after the spokesman for the Association apologized for the slight and arranged, not only for the reporters to be in for the speech making, but to have a special supper after their work was done.  To this half a score of Chicago reporters were bidden, and the Colonel sat at the head of the table.

Incidents of this sort made every reporter assigned to the Colonel a Roosevelt worshipper, a fact that unfriendly editors complained of time after time.  The mere changing of men did not suffice — in a few days the new man was as unable to write anti-Roosevelt stuff as his predecessor had been.

Which explains the dialogue overheard by a taxi-driver, taking two reporters from Sagamore Hill the day its master left it on his last journey.

"Brace up, Phil," said one; "we'll soon be in town.  Pull yourself together."

"Shut up, you damn fool!" blubbered the other; "you're crying just as hard as I am."

Topic 24
CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE

THERE must be radical changes in our immigration laws and in our treatment of the immigrant once he is admitted.  The "melting pot" has not proven a failure.  It has been overloaded and it has not had proper attention.  We have been too careless in admitting immigrants and we have not done our full duty by them.

"The fault is ours as much as theirs and the troubles we are now having are a consequence."

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the famous appeal, "Children of the Crucible," issued in September, 1917, at a time when pacifists, pro Germans, defeatists and propagandists of other types, all aiming to slow up our prosecution of the war, were making substantial progress among the newly arrived and the children of those who had arrived not much earlier.

"Jack," he asked by way of introducing the subject, "you are of immigrant stock, are you not?"

"Sure," said I; "I might be described as being of an early Cunard family."

"Quite so.  Then I wonder if you would object to my putting your name to an appeal to the foreign born and their children born here to get together under the flag and smash these agitators who are using them to play Germany's game? The idea is to have it issue in the name of men of all races and creeds."

"I'll sign anything you stand for," I said.

" I thought you would.  We will have a host of real names on it, that should carry some weight.  What we want is that everybody who can will get in and behind the Vigilantes — that anti-pacifist group of writers, artists, and other patriotic citizens who are real 'children of the crucible' and as such have a right to expect a hearing from their kind."

"There is an opportunity for real work there," I said.  " Between the anti-English agitators among the Irish and agitators of all sorts on the East Side, a nasty situation has been created that may spell serious trouble."

"That is exactly true.  It may well develop serious trouble just as it is now an embarrassment to those of us who wish to see this war speeded up.  It is part of the price we must pay for lax immigration laws and our failure — our cowardice, if you wish — in declining to adopt reasonable restrictions.  Nothing has happened or is likely to happen that we did not have a right to expect.

"It has, however, been impossible to make our people see this or to make the friends of the immigrant see that, by keeping too open a door, we were doing no real kindness to the mass of immigrants already here.  Even so broad and enlightened a man as Straus (Oscar) could not be made to see that.  He would not consent to restrictions that would limit the flow here from Russia.  In common with less enlightened and selfish persons he thought the situation would care for itself.

"Now it has not, and in consequence we find the East Side to be the most pro-German section of the United States, not even excepting Milwaukee.  East-Siders will deny that, but you and I know it to be the fact that these poor people are being, have been, exploited beyond measure by those who have not our country's interests at heart, who are, in fact, the enemies of our country.

"This is as much our fault as theirs, first, because of our failure to enact and enforce reasonable laws for the admission of the immigrant and to keep out the undesirable, and second, because by neglecting the immigrants we have given them fertile ground in which to sow their damnable doctrines.  What they sow, we will have to reap.

" More than the immediate effect on the war, we must realize that in their resentment the American people may set up an anti-alien wave that will work untold hardship on everybody — those not of alien birth or blood, but on the whole mass; for it does not make for common comfort or safety to have any considerable element in the community proscribed by the others.  Of course, the immediate sufferers will be the immigrants.  But those of alien stock not immigrants will feel it.  Resentment of this Irish agitation if it comes will probably not affect you seriously, for your position is secure, but you will feel it and your boy, when he gets out to make his way, will feel it.  Make no mistake about that.

" Only the other day I was speaking with a Jewish friend about this East-Side situation.  He regrets it as we do, but he did not seem to see where he and his are sure to be hurt if these agitators succeed, as they seem bent on doing, in making the term Jew synonymous for pacifism, pro-Germanism, socialism.  He said, and said very truly, that the Jewish people should not as a whole be blamed for the prominence of Jewish names in this sort of thing.  What he did not see is that prejudice and bigotry never discriminate.  If the bigot ever paused to discriminate, he would cease to be a bigot.

"I wish to see nothing like race proscription in this country, but we ought to be frank with ourselves and recognize that under the surface there is considerable anti-Semitic feeling.  I believe it was you who told me the Frank case in Georgia was, in its final stages, a demonstration of it."

"That was the conclusion Charley (Charles Willis) Thompson and I were forced to accept," I said

"Thompson's a shrewd fellow and a mighty good one," the Colonel went on.  "If he said that was the state of affairs, I’d take his word for it.

"Now that was in Georgia.  If I remember rightly some of the oldest families in Georgia are Jewish — one of Oglethorpe's trustees was a Jew, whose family is still prominent in affairs of that State.  It is one of the last places one would naturally look for that sort of thing.  Yet the seeds must have been under the surface.

"Our Jewish friends share with us who are non-Jewish responsibility for any success these creatures may make among the newer Jewish people in this country.  Like the rest of us, they have assumed that once in, the immigrant would be automatically taken care of by our admirable institutions and have neglected him and left him to his own resources.  What has been the consequence? The immigrant has been and is being exploited.  First it was the sweatshop.  That is largely done away with.  Now it is by these political agitators — the Berkmans, Goldmans, and I know not who, including some persons with American names and some claim to social position.

"What we should have done, what we must do, is see to it that the immigrant is taken in hand and given a square deal.  We must see to it that a real effort is made to Americanize him — he should have the opportunity to become Americanized.  He should be given an opportunity, should be compelled to learn the English language, and if at the end of a stated period he has failed to do so, he should be sent back to the place from which he came.  He must not be left to the agitator and the demagogue to exploit.

"It is foolish to imagine that the immigrant will automatically and of his own will be converted into an American by his mere presence among us, so long as he comes here in masses, and settles down among his own kind, as ignorant of our ways, our customs, and our institutions as he is.

" Nor is it right to criticize the immigrant because he forms what we call 'foreign' colonies in our cities.  It is natural that he should seek his kind.  He does exactly what Americans do when they go abroad and settle in London, Paris, Berlin.  Do they scatter? They do not.  They form colonies just as distinct as do the Russian Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, the Irish, or the Germans, or, if you please, the Chinese; they seek their kind.  We should see to it that their kind becomes our kind.  We won't do it by calling them names, we won't do it by maltreating them, and we won't do it by neglecting them.

"Of course, while the war lasts we will have no immigration to speak of.  Automatically the war has restricted it.  For a time after the war ends there may be, probably will be, little immigration.

" Immigration, however, will be one of our reconstruction problems.  It will have to be handled in a big way, but with the idea that America comes first, and that the time has arrived when we must and will be more particular as to whom we admit into our house, bearing always in mind that we owe it to the alien as well as to ourselves to see to it that he has ample opportunity of becoming a real American.

"All Americans, of whatever stock, should take the position toward the country from which they sprang that Washington and his associates took toward England.  They were English, but they did not hesitate to fight England.  Against them were the Tories, the first pacifists the country knew.  They were against fighting England just as the man of German blood, who is not with us, is against fighting Germany, and of a piece with the Irishman whose hatred of England is greater than his love for America.

" To be sure, only a part of these people are on the wrong course.  They are trying to mislead the rest.  Some are honest, but misguided.  Some are palpably dishonest.  The effect is the same in each instance.  It must be our job to curb them, and in the future so conduct ourselves toward the immigrant that others of their kind that may arise later will have less fertile fields to work in."

Shortly after " Children of the Crucible" appeared.  The first name appended to it was that of Theodore Roosevelt.

Topic 25
ROOSEVELT ON LABOR

COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S position on labor was peculiar in that in some respects he was more radical than Samuel Gompers.  Like Gompers he had no use for a "Labor Party" as such, and to the extent that he favored old age and health insurance he went farther than Mr.  Gompers had ever done.  To the extent that he believed labor would get the best results by working with the existing parties, he and Gompers were agreed.

"The difficulty with the Labor Party idea," he declared, "is that it is based upon a false premise.  It is based on the theory that the interests of so called labor are different from the interests of the community as a whole.  That is a foolish doctrine, just as foolish as it would be to try and maintain that the interests of the manufacturer or other employer are different from those of the rest of the community.  It is entirely a selfish and wicked doctrine, and, if successful, would work hardships on labor more than on any other group in the community."

Colonel Roosevelt made this observation while he was "mulling over" a speech on after-the-war preparedness he proposed to deliver in Bridgeport at a "bye" Congressional election in the fall of 1917.  The death of Ebenezer J.  Hill, long in Congress from that district, a likable old "stand patter," had left a vacancy for which the Republicans had nominated Schuyler Merritt, a banker and manufacturer of Stamford.  The Colonel was asked to speak there and he accepted, with the idea that the speech might be the "keynote" or a "keynote" for the Congressional elections a year later.

"We have got to get ready for after the war," he told me.  "We might as well begin now.  I am going to speak up there on industrial preparedness as much as anything else.  I may shock some persons up there, but we might just as well recognize now as at some later time that something must be done for labor.

"There are a great many business men who seem to be of the opinion that once peace arrives, pre-war conditions will return overnight as it were.  These are as short sighted as the labor radicals who are declaring that abnormal wages, to be expected in time of war, will have to prevail when peace comes.  Both are wrong, and are paving the way for some very serious misunderstandings.  The employers must be fair and reasonable; the reactionary employer is no better than the extreme radical among the union men."

"The shrewdest of the labor men," I told him, "are now preparing against that sort of thing.  For example, William H.  Johnson, head of the machinists, one of the ablest of them, whose trade has probably been affected more than any other by the war, is privately bending every effort to get his organization into as good shape as possible for the reconstruction period."

"Johnson is right.  He has keener foresight than a lot of employers.

"There are going to be disturbances, but these will be minimized if we can get what is commonly called labor and what is commonly called capital together in a realizing sense that their interests are identical, and that the problems of one are the problems of all.  The employer has no more right to hog all the profits than the union has a right to insist upon wages that will permit of no profits.  Unless the business man does well, the laborer won't, because there won't be labor for the laborer to do.

"Sooner or later we have got to come to some system of old age pensions, proper protection against accident and disease, more particularly the occupational disease, and we have got to insure good living conditions.  So far as these are arranged by common consent of both sides and the community, well and good.  Where they cannot be thus arranged, the State will have to do it.  This will not appeal to some of our friends among the so called employing classes, but we may as well face the facts squarely

"Unless all history is valueless as a guide, we are going, sooner or later, to have to pay for the enormous destructions of capital in this war.  We cannot hope to evade some period of depression.  How severe that will be depends largely upon ourselves.  We cannot avoid it, but we can make it less severe than it otherwise might be.  In this labor and capital must work together — must realize that their problems are alike, and that unless the employer is prosperous, the employee cannot be.  Equally so, unless the employee is treated fairly, the employer and the community cannot be prosperous.  The partners in the enterprise must realize their responsibilities to each other and act accordingly."

Developing this thought, Colonel Roosevelt went to Bridgeport where the local reporters were mystified by his failure to say very much about the candidate.  Some tried to read into this lack of interest in Merritt.  A few of the New York papers spoke of it as a "national speech," or as "the opening gun in the 1918 campaign."

"That," he said, "is reasonably accurate."

Later, when the speech was taken up in discussion, I said my talks with labor men had shown it was rather favorably received, at the same time expressing doubt as to how some employers, largely in Merritt's district (he being elected meantime) would like it on mature thought.

"Well," he said, "Gompers will not quarrel with anything I said there, and the others cannot.  Most men not directly interested will approve of all I said.

"Here is the speech sent out.  Except for what I said about Merritt in opening, I followed this closely as you know.  Who can quarrel with this or deny my accuracy? 'The conditions (of business) must be such that the business man prospers or else nobody will prosper; and yet, unless the prosperity is in a reasonable degree shared by the men who work with him and by the public for which he works, it is of little or no worth to the community.  In other words, we must insist upon business prosperity, because otherwise there will be no prosperity at all, and we must insist upon reasonable equity in passing the prosperity around, or it will not be worth having.

" 'The demagogue who inveighs against and seeks to interfere with business prosperity is really the same kind of an enemy to the common weal as his nominal foe, the reactionary, who refuses to acknowledge the duty of the Government to see that there is measurable equity in the distribution of the fruits of this prosperity.  Our aim must be not to damage successful business, but to insure good conduct in business.

'"We wish to secure as a matter of right for the worker among other things permanency of employment, pensions that will permit the worker to look forward to old age with dignity and security; insurance against accident and disease, proper working and living conditions, reasonable leisure, and as high wages as are compatible with giving to capital the return necessary to induce it to invest and giving the public proper service.

"' So far as these needs can be obtained by private agreement, well and good; it is preferable that they should, where possible, come in this manner; for the most important thing is to secure a mental attitude that will secure a hearty recognition by all engaged in a business that each must treat all the others as partners, that all should render the very best service of which each is capable and that both the obligation and the reward shall be mutual.

"' In addition to this good will, there must be the sanction of law.  The State must require and guarantee the well being of the workers as the essential part of its policy in promoting the welfare of the business.  What the individual can do by.  himself or in connection with others should be left to him or them; the State should deal with what cannot thus be left to private individuals.

'"But the welfare of the workers cannot be obtained unless the welfare of the business is assured and the Government should work steadily toward that end.  The demagogic effort to break up or destroy a business, merely because it is big or because it is prosperous, is mischievous from every standpoint.  The aim should be to encourage business and control it, to secure cooperation among all engaged in business so far as is possible, and to supervise large scale business so as to insure its good behavior, but not to penalize it while it renders proper service.'

"Do you see anything to quarrel with in that?" he demanded.

I explained that I did not, but added that he went farther in some respects than Mr.  Gompers had, notably in the matter of old age insurance or pensions.

"I understand that the unions are not in agreement on the desirability of this," he said, "but I am inclined to think they will come to it eventually.  It is, perhaps, as well that they make haste slowly in this respect.  As I understand it, their position is that it will interfere with their progress in other ways.
"I have heard since I saw you last that some of Mr.  Merritt's friends regret that I brought labor into this thing.  I do not.  I told one man who spoke of this that I am not at all concerned in pleasing everybody.  That is something I have never tried to do.  I do not propose to do it now.  I am too old to make that change.

"The greatest liberty in doing all these things I have advocated should, within due limits, having regard for all interests, be left to the employer and employee.  There is a limit, however.

"One of the greatest dangers I can imagine, however, is a combination, an agreement of shortsighted employers and unscrupulous union leaders, to fleece the public between them.  This is possible in highly organized trades.  In such an event both sides should be punished with the greatest severity.

"I have always been for labor within reason and the law.  I have had many friends since my days in the Assembly among the cigarmakers.  I have always been for healthy working conditions, just as when I was Police Commissioner I believed the unions should be allowed to picket, so long as they did not use their fists or clubs to pound home their arguments.  Where they tried that I was for locking them up.  That was fair play and a sane way of looking at the matter.  That is all I advocate now."

I raised a question as to what he meant by permanency of employment — if by that he meant a worker should have a vested interest in his position.

Before he could answer, the Chinese gong hanging in the hallway sounded the signal for him to prepare for dinner.

"No," said he rising, "not exactly that.  I will take the matter up with you some other time.  There is too much of that to dispose of it in a minute.  But we can say this: a good deal of consideration should be given before any old employee, whether he be superintendent or day laborer, is thrown out of employment."

This phase of his labor programme, I regret to state, we never took up again.

Topic 26
"ONE PURPLE NIGHT"

THIS was Colonel Roosevelt's description of a party he gave at a Westchester roadhouse early one Sunday morning in the fall of 1917.  The Colonel's guests were a half score of Bridgeport, Connecticut, policemen and some New York newspaper men; the party followed a speech by the Colonel in Bridgeport.

The night train service from Bridgeport to New York is not attractive, and whenever the Colonel spoke there he would return to New York by motor, guarded by police.  First, however, there would be a little supper at the Stratfield, where a few of the local leaders would meet the Colonel.

On the night in question the supper had been disposed of, and the start was about to be made for New York, when the Colonel asked if the men who were to accompany him were those who had been with him during the day.  John King said they were.

"That must not be," said the Colonel.  "These men have been on duty all day.  It will be all hours before they can get back.  Send them home.  We'll get back all right without them."

"Nothing doing," replied King.  "The men will insist on going.  They can sleep tomorrow.  It's their day off."

"Very well, then," said the Colonel.  "Of course it will be all right for me to give them a little money for breakfast."

"No, sir," said King; "you must not give it, and they must not take it.  That would never do."

"Well," said the Colonel, "it will be all right for me to take them to breakfast with me?"

"That cannot be done," I suggested.

"So," concluded the Colonel, "between you and King I seem unable to do anything.  Now, why can't I take them to breakfast?"

" Because Mayor Mitchel closed everything except 'one arm' lunch rooms at one o'clock."

"By Jove, there is an advantage to a Broadway education, is n't there? It's so long since I've been uptown late I had quite overlooked that change.  But is n't there some good place between here and New York?"

There were several.  Mr.  King recommended the Post Road Inn in New Rochelle, and it was decided to stop there.

It was two in the morning when we reached the place in three automobiles — the policemen in full uniform, the Colonel, the late N.  A.  Jennings of the New York Herald, A.  Leonard Smith of the New York Times, and myself.  It was the practice, I should state, to use three cars, a pilot car loaded with police, the Colonel's car with two policemen on the box, and a trailer carrying four more.  Regardless of speed laws, the party usually made fast time.

As the crowd unloaded at the Inn, the proprietor, naturally swarthy, looked out and turned pale.  Alarm, fear of a raid, and arrest were written on every feature.  Before he could say or do anything I assured him.

"Don't be scared," I said, as I led the police in; "it's not a raid — only some folks after something to eat."

With a sigh of relief he asked, "How many?" and started to arrange the table.  Halfway to the dining room he espied the Colonel and retraced his steps.

"Beg pardon," said he, "but isn't that El Presidente, President Roosevelt?"

"It is Colonel Roosevelt, all right," I said.  And again he started for the dining room, this time registering something like a cross between surprise and elation.  A moment later the band suddenly switched from rag time to the national anthem, and before the surprised dancers had a chance to adjust their steps the Colonel at the head of the party was halfway across the room.

Instantly the dancers broke into applause, the few who had been seated rising to cheer.  Then, in a confused sort of way, as though doubtful of what to do next, all hands took their seats and watched the Colonel's party.

The dance hall crowd, it may be stated, was just such a crowd as one would expect in a country road house at an early hour Sunday morning — men of the "tired business" or salesman type; girls young, a bit inclined to be flashy, but not conspicuously so — something between the "flapper" and the chorus girl type.  Probably all had worked hard during the week and were having their weekly "blowout."

After some discussion of the bill-of-fare, lobster was ordered — that and champagne, the latter by Colonel Roosevelt without any suggestion from others in the group.  During the meal most of the talking was done by Colonel Roosevelt, among it some on John L.  Sullivan, who had been in Bridge port the preceding day.  He also discussed some of his Spanish War experiences.  These latter followed an interruption by a man wearing the Maltese cross of the Spanish War veteran.

"No apology needed," the Colonel assured this man when he apologized for "butting in." "I am always glad to meet any of my old comrades in arms.

We did not have much of a war, but it was the best to be had, and we did the best we could."

"A lot of the old boys have gone from around here, Colonel," said the veteran in a tone suggesting regret that he, too, could not go.

"I know it,, and I am proud of them for having gone," answered the Colonel.  "If I had been permitted to go, to take my division across, I'd have had whole camps with me.  The boys are right."

"The boys are all strong for you, Colonel; they were all rooting for you to get a chance.  They knew you'd make good."
"And they would have made good, they will make good, those of them that are permitted to go, and their sons will make good.  They're the make good kind."

Others, emboldened by the fact that the Spanish War vet had not been rebuffed, then came up to pay their respects.  When the last had gone, some one remarked that the "exsoldier was feeling pretty good."

"Yes," said the Colonel, "I noticed that.  I have noticed before this that all Spanish War veterans are not teetotallers.  In fact, I have known some of my own men to get rather drunk, to put it mildly — but they were all good fellows, just the same.

" I remember on one of my trips West, one of my old men rode many miles to see me.  He’d told everybody what he was going to say and what a good time he'd have when he saw me.  When I arrived, however, I think he can best be described as having been too full for utterance.  The boys had had to tie him up and lay him away to recuperate.  It was his first lapse, I was told, in several years.  Of course I did n't see him.

'' Later on I had a letter from him full of contrition, apologies, and regrets, and a rather nai've explanation.  If he could n't celebrate when he was to see his old Colonel, when could he celebrate? However, he added, he was back on the water wagon.  Recently I heard he was still on it.  I hope he stays there for life, for he is a good fellow and that's his one weakness."

The curious may wish to know if the Colonel drank anything that morning.

He did — part of a glass of wine.

Topic 27
DEVIL FISHING

GOOD sport, but not exactly the thing to recommend to a weakling, or one at all nervous of a little danger," was Colonel Roosevelt's opinion of devil fishing.  He had one try at this, in the spring of 1917, when the declaration of war against Germany made it seem advisable to call off a visit to the West Indies for which he had made all of his plans.

He thought so well of the sport that just before he died he wrote his friend, Russell J.  Coles, of Danville, Virginia, accepting an invitation to join him in an expedition on March I, and thanking him for having included Captain Archie, then practically recovered from his wounds, in the invitation.

"The devil fish," said the Colonel describing the sport in his library at Oyster Bay, "is the big game of the sea.  There is nothing else quite like it that I know of, though I doubt if it will ever become a very popular sport.  It is good sport, but not exactly the kind to recommend to a weakling, or one at all nervous of a little danger.  I do not know that careful physicians will agree in recommending it to gentlemen of advanced years, for, as you may imagine, it is hard work.

"I  became interested in devil fishing  through Russell Coles, of Danville, Virginia.  Coles is rather an extraordinary sort of person, the unusual combination of good business man and high class scientist.  Most of his year he devotes to his tobacco business in Virginia.  The rest of it he puts in hunting devil fish and sharks, and by way of diversion at odd moments writes scientific articles, or prepares papers to be read before scientific societies.  He takes a very practical interest in public affairs, and is in every sense of the word a mighty fine citizen.

"I became interested in him through something he did for the American Museum of Natural History.  That was some years ago.  Since then I have had much correspondence with him, and when I found that I could not go South as I had arranged, I decided to accept one of his many invitations to go fishing.  His proposal was that I should spend a month.  We compromised on about a week.

"In devil fishing you camp in a house built on a scow that is anchored off a Florida key.  Your fishing you do from a launch.  Coles, who is a whale of a man himself, has a crew that is as good as he is.  His captain, Charley Willis, is a powerful, two handed sort of a man who has been with him many years.  Another of his outfit is Captain Jack McCann.  He's unusual, too, a good seaman and a naturalist, who habitually describes plants by their scientific names.

The others of his crew — he usually has four men — are of the same high type of intelligence.

"It is some considerable journey to the 'camp.' There you get up at sunrise, get into rough clothes, and after you 've made sure that the gear is all right, make off in a launch for the fishing grounds.  The weapons used are harpoons, which the real fishermen call 'irons,' just as I have heard some whalers call their weapons, and a lance.  Sometimes the old fashioned whaling lance is used.  Coles has had some made on designs of his own.  New Bedford, by the way, is the best place to get these things if you ever wish them.

"The iron is a business like weapon.  It has a head of the finest tempered steel, on a shaft of soft iron.  There is one there, minus the wooden handle.  When you see the way that is bent, you will see why it is necessary to make the shaft of comparatively soft metal."

The instrument, somewhat rusted, was bent to an angle of almost fortyfive degrees and occupied a place of honor on the mantel on which rested the bronze presented to him by the famous "tennis cabinet."

"That's one I used on the big fish I got with Coles's assistance.  You see it is so built that once in, the struggles of the beast release the barb and usually, though not always, prevents your prey escaping.  The iron is attached to a rope which is either run out of the boat or made fast to what they call a drogue — a sort of sea anchor, or drag.  This is a powerful brake, but one of these creatures will pull a heavy launch almost unbelievable distances with one of these drogues fastened to it with another harpoon.

"I missed my first fish through inexperience in gauging the speed at which it was moving.  The second one, I got square in the middle of the body.  When we came to take my iron out we found I had driven it through bone, muscle, and hide more than two feet — two feet four inches to be exact — and the thing had gone through the beast's heart.  After I got my iron into it, Coles also put one in.  With these two in its body, the thing dragged the boat a full half mile before it became exhausted enough for us to get it alongside.  Then it was necessary to use the lance on it twice.

" I should say that before I went to Florida, Coles had coached me a great deal — so that I knew how I was expected to handle myself, where to aim for with the harpoon, and how to use the lance.  He drilled and drilled me so that while it was my first 'appearance on any stage' as a devil fisher, I was by no means ignorant of the art.

"On the second fish we struck, Coles's iron pulled out.  He got it a second time.  This one towed us two miles.

"One of our specimens when we came to measure it proved to be the second largest of which there is any record of being killed.  Coles has the record fish.

"We did not have such good luck on the second day, the one fish we struck being lost.  In this respect it is like every other kind of sport; you must figure on having good luck and bad, and on days when you will get nothing as well as the rare days when you will get a big bag."

"You call this fish the 'big game of the sea.' How does killing it compare with 'big game' killing ashore," I asked.

"It is difficult of comparison because all of the circumstances are so different.  Both are good, but I think I prefer the land game.  I am too much of a landlubber not to have a preference for solid earth under my feet.  But it is great sport, and I am going back when I have more time to spare, just as I hope to get another chance at lions in Africa.  I have no desire for the bigger game, elephants and that sort of thing, but I would like a few more lions.

"Like all big game hunting, in devil fishing you have to depend very much on your guides and you must expect some considerable danger of being hurt.

The fish will not attack any one, but when attacked they will fight back.  At the risk of being called a nature fakir I'll add that the male of the species has been known to attack a boat which had made fast to a female.  At least, that is what veterans at the sport tell.  Like everything else of this sort, this is something one would like to verify.  However, Coles, who like most scientists is sceptical of many things, is inclined to credit these stories.

"Coles, by the way, got into this thing in a rather unusual way.  He had the groundwork of a good education when he went into devil fishing and shark hunting because he had become wearied of other fishing.  The scientific side of the thing appealed to him, and when he began to look things up, he found that very little work had been done.  Now he is probably the world's best authority in this line.  He has also gone to the point where he has made shark fishing attractive from a commercial standpoint.  He has no interest in the commercial side of the thing — he has passed that up to others after spending quite a lot of money in pioneer work.  That, of course, is the scientist of it."

Colonel Roosevelt's last college degree — that of Doctor of Science — was awarded him by Trinity College, at the same time Coles received a similar honor.  To be invested in the degree they journeyed together to Hartford.  On their return, the Colonel said he had had a "bully" time.

"Jack Morgan was there to get a degree, too," he said, "and he was very much interested in Coles.  Coles invited him to go fishing.  It would not surprise me if he went, for Morgan, you know, is a husky chap who knows a thing or two on handling a boat himself — much more than I do."

Topic 28
A VARIED READING DIET

IN his travels Colonel Roosevelt's reading was catholic in scope.  It ranged from a volume of "Plutarch's Lives," he may have taken from his library, a bulletin of some learned society picked up from a desk as he was about to leave home, or a popular magazine filled with detective stories or tales of adventure.

"I wish," he would say as we were arriving in a town, "that you would try and get me a copy of the Red Book; there's a detective story in that I want to finish"; or, "see if you cannot pick up a copy of Adventure.  I am somewhat of an adventurer myself and want to know what the rest of the tribe may be interested in just now."

Once I remarked that this was "rather low brow diet."

"True," he said, "but why feed entirely on the heavier stuff? I get all the 'high brow' magazines at home.  Lord! I don't read one half of them.  This lowbrow stuff, as you call it, is good for a change.  I like a good detective story when I can get it.  These things may not be literature, but they interest and rest me.  They make up the salads of my reading.

"You remember old Senator Hoar from your State? Do you remember that he was addicted to dime novels? That used to be a shock to some very good people who imagined the Senator lived on the Transcript and the Congressional Record when he was not devouring law books and even heavier things.  Some saw in this evidence of total depravity on the old man's part — an evil example to the young.  It was merely his way of relaxing and resting up between times.

" I was very fond of Hoar, though I did not know him as well as I would have liked to.  I have often laughed at that mot of his on 'Ben' Butler's funeral.  You remember some one asked the Senator if he were going to attend it.

"'No,' he is said to have replied, 'but I approve of it.'"

Topic 29
"TRYING TO KILL ME"

IT sometimes seems that some of my admiring friends wish to work me to death.  The idea of most committees seems to be to pass me on to the next place as nearly dead as possible."

Most considerate of the comfort of others, Colonel Roosevelt at times complained of the lack of consideration for him.

"It is queer," he said on another occasion, this time when he was reported recovered from a serious illness, "that people should hail my discharge from the hospital as the signal to pile invitations to work on me.  Really it seems as though one half of the letters congratulating me on my recovery conclude with an invitation to speak here, there, anywhere.  There are hundreds of them."

Returning from his last extensive tour of the West, the Colonel spoke of this demand of speeches from him.  He had been ill on this trip, and as we neared New York, I ventured to advise that he spend the summer quietly at Oyster Bay.

"I hope," I said, "that if I may say so, this experience has taught you something.  It is a result of your not following Dr.  James's orders and taking a rest.  It is a warning.  You must take things easy."

"I shall do that; I shall have to do that.  But I shall have to do some things."

"Colonel, you simply will have to rest.  There are two hot months ahead, there's good boating and fishing at Oyster Bay, you have n't cut your winter's wood yet.  I am presuming, I know, but you must rest, for there's hard work ahead and you will be needed.  In saying this I do not mean to be offensive."

"You are not; you are perfectly right, and I shall take things easier.  You simply say what all my real friends say.  But I must go to Passaic July 4.  I must do that."

"You should not accept any more invitations.  It is asking too much."

" I know it is.  The usual committee idea is to pass me along to the next town as nearly dead as possible, always taking pains to see that I do not die on their hands."

"And don't yield to any 'just one speech' appeal."

" I won't.  You are saying what those who really have my interest at heart say.  The others say to me, 'Save yourself,' and then ask me to come out and speak for them.  Jim Goodrich wants me to return to Indiana for another speech.  I'll see him in helL first."

Topic 30
LOYALTY

THE longer I live the more I am inclined to think of clan loyalty.  I am afraid of those superior persons who are so good they can long stand by nobody, not even themselves."

Colonel Roosevelt had in mind some members of the old Progressive party who did not fully approve of his war attitude.  These were the more respectable of what he had been known to call the "lunatic fringe."

"The spirit of the clan," he went on, "is what we as Americans lack.  We need one big American clan, with its members always for the clan.  I must confess that I have never been able to get the viewpoint of those very excellent persons who object to the old navy toast: 'My country right, my country wrong; but right or wrong, my country.' There are other versions, and I may not have it exact, but that is the thought.

" I suppose it is another manifestation of my general bloodthirsty, swashbuckling frame of mind, my fondness for the big stick and violence of all kinds.  I know it is most reprehensible for me to talk to a youth of your tender years — you are n't much over forty, are you? — and I should know better, but I don't.  I cannot bring myself to that point where I can disagree with that sentiment.

"I want my country to be right; I hope she always will be right; but right or wrong, whatever she gets into I am going to be with her until she gets out.  Then if there is any correcting to do, I'll try and do my share.  And I am not prepared to concede the possibility of error in  that doctrine by agreeing to debate it with anybody.

" It is said to be bad ethics, just as it is said to be bad ethics to teach a boy to defend himself, or his baby brother or his sister or his mother.  Some good people hold that a boy who gets into a fight, whether he be right or wrong, should be punished.  I do not.  If one of my boys was a bully, I’d try to thrash it out of him.  If he would not defend himself against a bully, I’d thrash him until I had some degree of manhood in him.  He'd require but one thrashing.

"The clan, of course, is one of the oldest forms of organization — it is a crude manifestation of the organizing spirit.  At bottom there is no real difference between the spirit that makes possible great corporations and that responsible for our New York gangs.  It is the clan spirit — the organizing spirit.  The difference is that in one instance the organizing spirit is developed along good lines, is used in a proper direction, and in the other it is not.  Organization per se is bad only when it is used for bad ends.

"The New York street gang is but a form of clan.  The gang leader comes to the top because of the same general qualities that makes another, born into happier surroundings, a society leader.  Both have to fight their way up through.  I do not like gangs, and I do not admire gang leaders, but this much is to be said for them — they do stand for something and you know where they stand.  They have in them the essence of loyalty."

Topic 31
GERMANS IN AMERICA

THERE is nothing in sound Americanism that will not be endorsed by the preponderating majority of the men and women of German blood in America."

This sentiment Colonel Roosevelt expressed again and again to all who would listen to him before, during, and after hostilities.  He was most emphatic in declaring it after leaving Milwaukee, and again on leaving St.  Louis.

After a meeting in Toledo, largely made up of Germans, he declared they resented only "pseudoAmericanism."

"It is," said he, "only the pseudo-Americanism of Wilson that they object to."

With this declaration went a call for fair play for the Germans in this country and he went out of his way to practice what he preached.

A notable example of this was in St.  Louis, which in addition to a large German population also has a Mayor of German blood — Henry Kiel.

When the Colonel paid his last visit to St.  Louis, he was very sick with erysipelas.  He was insistent on keeping the dates made for him by the National Security League, and, by following his physician's orders to get all possible rest, managed to do so.  In St.  Louis, however, conditions made it necessary that he take a hand in arranging the details of his meeting, lest injustice be done somebody and a bad matter made worse.

This condition, partly political and partly hysterical, arose from the fact that the local committee was not in sympathy with Mayor Kiel, who, according to some of its members, was pro-German.  For this reason Kiel had been overlooked to a large extent in making the arrangements for the Colonel's reception and meeting.  To this meeting the Colonel insisted upon being introduced by the Mayor.  The active members of the committee did not wish anything of the sort, the Mayor was not on hand to speak for himself, and there was no one to speak for him.

In this muddle the Colonel insisted that courtesy and fair play demanded that Kiel be given an opportunity to decline to take part in the meeting, and that every other consideration supported this demand.  If the Mayor declined, it would, he said, be another story.

"Then I'll hang his hide on the barn door," he declared to me; "but I'll not attack him nor any other man until I am sure of my grounds for attacking."

After much backing and filling, Judge Dyer, whom the Colonel, as President, had placed on the Federal Bench, called to leave a card.

" I understand the Colonel is not well, so I won't ask to disturb him," he said.

I asked him to wait until I could learn the Colonel's wishes in the matter.

"By all means," he exclaimed.  "He is the one man in St.  Louis I do want to see."

"The Judge," he told me after the visit, "says Kiel is all right.  He knows.  I’d rather have that old hard shell's opinion than that of any other man here.  These young men on this committee are nice boys, but they don't know.  If they were residents of New York, they would be members of the Citizens' Union, and strong for reform, but they would not know the names of their Assemblymen."

It was, however, not easy to locate Mr.  Kiel; he was not, in fact, located until the Colonel reached the barnlike Auditorium where the meeting was to be held.  Just before we left for the hall, I asked what would be done about Kiel.

"We will do nothing until we find whether or not the Mayor shows up," he said.  " If he does, all right.  If he doesn't, well, I'll preside myself if I have to."

Mayor Kiel was, however, waiting at the hall, a bit nervous, but glad to do the honors.  His brief, clean cut speech was satisfactory even to the Colonel, who was mightily pleased with the way the matter turned out.

"Don't you see," he asked, on the way back to the hotel, " that it was far better to do as we did do? Had we proceeded on the theory that Kiel was all he was said to be, an injustice would be done to the man, the cause for which we all stand would be injured, and we should have gone far toward setting up such another situation as exists in Chicago.  Kiel is not another Mayor Thompson; he is entirely of another type, and he is making the best of a condition that at times must be very difficult for him.

" It is always best to be fair in the extreme in such matters; best to go slow until you have all the facts.  Then if the man is wrong hit him, and hit him hard; show him no mercy.  Had Kiel justified what they had said about him and not taken part in that meeting, I’d have pilloried him.  I 'm glad I did not have to.

"Just think how it would have heartened the enemy abroad and the enemy at home if it had gone broadcast: 'Roosevelt denounces St.  Louis Mayor as Pro-German'; or, 'St.  Louis Mayor refuses to speak at Loyalty Meeting.'

" Did you notice how well the crowd took what I had to say about Germany and straight Americanism? That audience was very largely German — it was full of German types — but they all seemed to like it.  There was one chap there — I wonder if you noticed him, he sat well down front and looked like the German bandsman the funny papers print — he enjoyed it every minute.  If I had time and it were possible I’d like to meet that old fellow and talk with him.  Without knowing a thing about him, I’ll wager that he is one of those Germans who left Germany to escape the' Kultur' we are now fighting to escape."

" I watched Kiel closely during your speech," I said, " and he seemed as well pleased as your German down front did."

" Probably, though he is in rather a different position.  But the old Judge was all right.  Depend upon men of his type.  He's an old hard shell Republican, on the bench and out of politics, but he knows more than all the nice boys on the committee ever will.  Steve Connell, whom you met today, is another shrewd fellow.  He was with me when I was in the White House — secret service, you know.  He's a fine fellow and I 'm glad to have you meet him.  You'll find him dependable and straightforward."

This visit to St.  Louis was part of an "invasion of the enemy's country," including Milwaukee, and Springfield, Ohio, the latter the seat of Wittenberg College, one of the oldest Lutheran institutions in the country, and Madison, Wisconsin, seat of the State University, which Dr.  Robert M.  McElroy, of Princeton, had reported, after rather an unpleasant experience, "was not one hundred per cent loyal." Proceeding to these places, the Colonel declared it to be his intention to "give them all that is in me."

" In Milwaukee," said he," I shall give them everything I have said anywhere else and, if I can think of it, something more.  Being in what Bryan might call the 'enemy's country' will make no difference with me.  I do not anticipate any bother, but if there is any, we shall have to make the best of it."

Anticipating "bother," secret service men detailed by the management of the St.  Paul road, the Colonel's ever faithful colored valet, James Amos, to whom his last words, "Please turn off the light," were spoken, and I grouped ourselves about him as he left the train.  He broke away from the group to greet a white whiskered old man who walked with a cane.  "General," he exclaimed, "this is almighty good of you to come and see me! I wanted to have a talk with you.  I was going to call at your home.  May I call there or will I see you at the hotel? Which is the more convenient to you?"

"I am surprised you remember me," said the old man.  "It is many years since you have seen me.  I will see you at the hotel."

"Come right up now.  Yes, indeed, come right up with me.  I am glad to see you and you must come to the meeting.  I want you on the platform."

The old man, the Colonel introduced as General Mueller.
"He lost a leg in the Union Army," he told me at the hotel.  "He's the kind of man that has saved the mass of Germans in this country from the infamy some of their number would put upon all: men like him and Adolph Vogel whom you just met.  The General tells me that his grandsons are all in the army and all but one of Vogel's boys are there too.  That one goes next month.

"Vogel tells me they have the largest hall in town and that it's already packed with Germans.  He has no doubt as to my reception.  Neither have I.  But I am going to talk straight at them."

He did.  Among the new notes struck was a hard drive on the teaching of German in grade schools.  To my surprise this was the "hit" of the speech.  I mentioned this surprise to the Colonel.
"That has been a big issue here," he said.

After the meeting a young man, evidently a graduate of some German university to judge by the duelling scars on his cheeks, told me the Colonel's talk was "the sort needed."

"What the Germans here have had, in private talk at least, has been abuse," he said.  "Loyal men have been abused as much as those openly disloyal.  This has tended to increase disloyalty.  The Colonel's talk will weaken the Bergers and strengthen men like Vogel.  Milwaukee is all right."

"The young man is not entirely accurate," the Colonel commented when I repeated his remarks.  "He is quite correct on the matter of abuse.  But he is wrong in saying that Milwaukee is all right.  There is a big element here that is all wrong.  Milwaukee today may be sixty per cent all right, fifteen per cent in the shadow zone, and twenty-five per cent dead wrong.  It cannot be all right with a Socialist Mayor, a Socialist Chief of Police, and a Socialist Sheriff.  Remember, the Socialist Party which elected these men is not an American institution."

Springfield, Ohio, like Milwaukee, is largely populated by persons of German birth or blood.  In addition to Wittenberg College, which, in the commonly used term, is a German school, it had thirteen churches in which German was the only language used and four where both German and English prevailed.  The school had suffered because of its supposed German leanings, and Springfield as a whole was not pleased with the reputation that it was inclined to be pro-German.

Dr.  Hecker, an aggressive type of college president, more the able administrator than the great teacher, was very anxious to overcome the feeling that had been aroused, and as one way to accomplish the desired result invited the Colonel to address the school.  Other interests joined in the invitation.

"I have," said the Colonel, speaking of his decision to accept, "no delusions as to Dr.  Hecker's self interest in inviting me to address the school.  It is natural and proper on his part.  But I won't toe down one bit.

"It is just the sort of place I want to speak, but I am not going to temper my remarks to please anybody.  Of course they say there is no pro-Germanism in that country and that they are poor, much abused, little woolly lambs.  That fools nobody.  They are now trying to run straight.  Very well.  I will help them by giving them the cleanest cut Americanism that is in me.  They have agreed to this and they will get it.

"They have also agreed to my terms as to arrangements.  I will be introduced by the President, who is a Lutheran minister of German blood, and the prayer will be by a Roman Catholic priest of German birth, Father Vottman.  He is a major in the regular army, an old chaplain, and a Monsignor in the Church.  He helped immensely in adjusting the Philippine church troubles.

" I propose also to say a word to them on the wisdom of the Lutheran Church making English the church language in this country.  Otherwise, the Lutheran Church, powerful as it now is, must go the way of the Dutch Reformed Church to which I have the honor to belong.  Had it changed to English, it would in all probability be one of the leading churches in New York at least.  But it stuck to Dutch too long; the younger people drifted away until, too late, English was made the church language.  I would very much regret a like fate for the Lutheran Church.  I want it to continue, as it is today, a permanent and powerful factor in American life."

Returning East, Colonel Roosevelt spoke regretfully of the changed position the German found himself in in this country.

"I was," he said, "very sorry at the changes in Milwaukee.  This was my first visit there, you know, since that madman shot me.  Before, when I went to Milwaukee, my German friends were a happy lot.  After a meeting I would go to their club, there would be light refreshments, singing, real good fellowship.  Now all this is changed.  Men like Vogel, real Americans, who are doing their full duty, are saddened by the position some Germans would put all of their kind in America in.  They have no doubt of the out come of the war — they know it must end in Germany's defeat; but, naturally, they fear the reaction on the Germans in this country.  Some of them in Milwaukee have behaved very badly.  I do not refer to Berger and his class.  I mean a higher, and supposedly more respectable, type.

"Some few of the wealthier and more influential ones have been foolish enough to start a sort of boycott.  Take Willett Spooner.  Spooner had a splendid law practice, largely with Germans here.  Overnight almost, I am told, it fell away.  Spooner had given offence by taking a strong American position.  That, of course, is rough on Spooner, but he will survive it.  The very people who tried to hurt him will be glad to go back to him and ask his help when this thing is over.  They will suffer, not he.

"The German in this country has been a good citizen.  He has been thrifty and hard working as a very general rule; he has contributed to the welfare of every community in which he lived.  He has been law abiding — in a word, has met his obligations squarely.  This is particularly true of the older Germans.  Properly handled there would have been very little difficulty with them.  If, from the start, it had been made clear to them that we were at war, not with them, but with the Germans in France and Belgium with guns in their hands trying to impose upon the world the things they left Germany to escape, and that they were expected and relied upon to do their full part just as any other group of citizens were expected to do theirs, there would have been little misunderstanding and very little of this feeling.

"I have absolutely no sympathy with the over zealous patriot who would persecute everybody here with a German name.  It is all wrong.  It is like the case of an old German waiter, Emil — huh, the last name has escaped me.  I knew him when I was Police Commissioner.  Not long since I met him as I was leaving the Metropolitan office.  He spoke and I remembered him.  I asked him how he was getting along.

'' Oh, purty veil,' he said; ' my two boys are gone, one in the army and one in the navy, my son-in-law is gone, and I have his wife and the grandchildren home with me, but still some people call me '' dot damn Cherman."

"I told him he was a pretty good American and that I was proud to know him, and that he should be proud of his two fine sons and his son-in-law.

"Now nothing is made by mistreating men like that poor waiter.  A real American would not do it.  Instead, he'd devote his attention to the men on soap boxes, no matter who they may be, that are preaching peace without victory or praying for the defeat of one of our brave allies."

The question of German immigration after the war coming up, Colonel Roosevelt expressed doubt as to how extensive it might be.

" I am not as sure as some persons seem to be that there will be any great migration of Germans to this country," he said.  "It will all depend, I suppose, on the condition Germany is left in by the war.  For one thing, I would not oppose such immigration, provided the immigrants were of the kind that come here prepared to work.  Most Germans, I have found, have some trade.  Very frequently they are highly skilled along special lines.  Such men should be welcomed.  The other kind should be barred."

Again, in Toledo, this time before we entered the war, and while the Colonel was talking politics, he found that there were many Germans in his audience.  As in every other place his talk was mainly preparedness, emphasized, I thought, because one of the committee expressed the hope that many Germans in it would not take offence at what he might say.

"My dear fellow," said he, "they will not take offence because I am going to talk straight Americanism to them.  They will not object to that.  Why, one of the most wonderful books of the war was written by a German in your town — at least he is of German blood.  It is called 'Their True Allegiance.' His name is Ohlinger.  I'll be obliged to you if you will have him located for me."

"Did you notice that I offended anybody in that audience?" he asked after the meeting.
I assured him I had not.

"I did not think you would," he replied, adding:

"Oh, for a little courage and plain horse sense in the handling of this whole German question! It would make things so much easier."

Topic 32
PLAYING THE GAME

JULIUS KAHN, Member of Congress from California, did yeoman work in forcing through the draft and other war measures, when Mr.  Wilson's party leaders in the House chose to refuse their aid.  None were more appreciative of this work than Colonel Roosevelt.  In private and in public he extolled the Californian as typical of those of German blood and birth in the United States to whom their naturalization decrees were more than "scraps of paper."

Imagine, therefore, my surprise when early in April, 1918, Colonel Roosevelt refused point blank to take part in the "Julius Kahn day" celebration arranged for April 30 by St.  Cecile, New York's far famed "actors'" lodge of Masons.  The surprise was the more complete because I was sure the Colonel approved of the demonstration for the effect it might have in rousing the spirit that demanded "peace through overwhelming victory."

"No," said he, after I had repeated the message given me by R.  W.  George Loesh, who was in charge of the affair, " I will not take part in the celebration, though I wish you’d thank the boys for remembering me.  It is out of the question.  On that I am as adamant."

"Colonel," I asked, "will you come if I make it a personal matter? This is the first thing St.  Cecile has ever asked me to do, and I’d like to do it.  They do wish you would come.  Now, won't you?"

"Jack," said he, "I am surprised that you do not see how impossible it is for me to do as you ask.  I really am.  I am surprised that Bro.  Loesh or any one else should ask it.  For me to attend would be absolutely unfair to Kahn.  Can't you see that?"

I confessed that I could not.

"I cannot," said I, "conceive how it would be unfair to any man in the world for you to attend a celebration in his honor.  Why, at this stage, it's the greatest honor any American could have paid him!"

"Jack, your loyalty to me, your affection for me if I may so term it, has destroyed for the moment your perspective.  You know I like Kahn, that I have a very high regard for him as a man and as a citizen.  I’d do anything to help Kahn.  I won't hurt him.  You don't see it now.  Let me explain it for you.

"On your own statement, Kahn was raised in St.  Cecile thirty odd years ago when, to use your own words, he was a ' ham actor,' and wholly unknown to fame.  As such he went West, took up law, and finally landed in Congress.  All this time, as you say, he retained his membership in his mother lodge.  And how a dozen or so years ago, when he happened in town on a lodge day, he almost had to work his way in, so few of the active members knew him.

"Now he is about to visit it again, not as an humble, almost unknown member, but, if you please, almost as a hero, as a type of hero, to be received by all of the big men in the Craft, with all the honors the Craft may bestow on a member who's made good in an extraordinary way.  That is as it should be.  The dramatic values of the contrast will not escape your associates, I 'm sure.  It should be a splendid affair with Kahn in the centre of the stage all the time.  That is as it should be, for it is his day.

"It would not be that way were I to attend.  I know what would happen.  So do you.  I 'm not immodest when I say it would be a Kahn Roosevelt day, or more likely a Roosevelt Kahn day, with Kahn playing second fiddle part of the time at least.

" Don't you see how unfair that would be to Kahn? It would not be square; it would n't be playing the game.  It's to be his day, and he's entitled to the whole of it.  Furthermore, so far as the effect on the outside public is concerned, there'll be more inspiration to intensive war work if it is what you have planned — a demonstration in honor of an humble Congressman of German birth, but a real American who did his full duty with no truculent ex-President cluttering up the stage.  It would be wrong from every angle.  You see it now, I know."

"However, Colonel," I said, "you won't mind sending a letter of declination in which you record some of the nice things you've been saying.  Kahn, I'm sure, would like that?"

"Certainly," he replied, "I'm glad to do that.  That won't interfere with the fitness of things; at least it should not detract anything from what should be a great day."

In his talk with me Colonel Roosevelt spoke of the values of contrasts, and as I write I cannot but record, for like reason, the excuse given by a public official, then suffering from the sting of the Presidential Bee, for not appearing at the celebration after promising to do so.

"Why," he asked, "should I do anything to help boom a man who may be one of my rivals for the Presidential nomination?"

The man to whom the explanation was made missed the unconscious jest in the answer.  Like the man who made it, he had forgotten Section 5, of Article 2, of the Constitution.  This reads:

"No person except a natural born citizen .  .  .  shall be eligible to the office of President."

Topic 33
MAKING UP WITH TAFT

JACK, I've seen old Taft, and we're in perfect harmony on everything."

Colonel Roosevelt fairly beamed the words — if one may be said to beam a word — in his rooms in the Blackstone Hotel one Sunday in May, 1918.  He had just come in from his first real meeting with Judge Taft since the break in 1912, and he was happy as the proverbial lark.

"We're in perfect harmony on everything," he repeated.  "Now hurry, for we've got to make a train."

I say "real meeting" advisedly, for, while it is true that Mr.  Taft and the Colonel met during the 1916 campaign in the Union League Club, at the request of Mr.  Hughes's managers, the "reconciliation meeting" was anything but cordial or friendly.

"It was," as the Colonel remarked at one time, "one of those friendly affairs, where each side, before entering the meeting place, made sure its hardware was in good working order."

The Union League meeting was arranged solely for the effect it might have on the country; it was as much a staged affair as though Belasco had planned it, though it lacked the Belasco touch.  Because it was so poorly (or so palpably) staged, its only effect on the public was to provoke a rather large grin.

The Chicago meeting, on the other hand, was as satisfying as it was unexpected; there were hearts in the hand clasps.  For this reason, the effect on the country, and more particularly the Republican part of the country, was all the Union League meeting was not.

Colonel Roosevelt's serious illness in the early part of 1918 opened the door to the real reconciliation.  Mr.  Taft took advantage of the Colonel's recovery to write him a warm hearted letter of congratulation — a typical Taft letter.  On his part the Colonel reciprocated in kind, saying, among other things, in his note to Mr.  Taft, that his was the first letter he was answering.  This paved the way to other letters, and when, soon after, the Colonel delivered his "keynote" speech to the Maine Republican Convention, the manuscript was submitted to Mr.  Taft for his opinion.  Mr.  Taft suggested a few changes in its wording, changes the Colonel gladly made.

From this point mutual friends helped the situation along by repeating to Colonel Roosevelt kindly things Mr.  Taft had said about the Colonel.  The Colonel was particularly appreciative of a story told by Governor W.  L.  Harding of Iowa.

The Governor, it appeared, had been a guest at dinner with Mr.  Taft, where, over the coffee, all hands turned to discussing the conduct of affairs in Washington.

"When I see the way things are going in Washington, it makes my blood fairly boil," Mr.  Taft was quoted as saying, " but when I think how much madder they must make T.  R., I feel a whole lot better."
"From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for Roosevelt," he went on after the laugh had subsided.  " Here he is, the one man in the country best capable of handling the situation, denied any part in it, and compelled to sit in the bleachers and see the ball booted all over the lot."

Some one — I know not who, — repeated this story to the Colonel, and in telling of it, the Colonel added that "Taft was not much better off."

"Taft," said he, "could do real work in Washington — he could do great work abroad.  Tr ink what he could do in Baker's place; what a splendid thing it would be to have him in Paris or London or Rome! Just think of the appeal that would make to the imagination of the people of Europe!"

On the morning of the Hotel Blackstone meeting, Colonel Roosevelt arrived in Chicago en route for Des Moines.  He planned a quiet day — a meeting with Richard Lloyd Jones, of Madison, Wisconsin, and a private talk to an editorial association in the afternoon, a late dinner, and an early train.  After the talk to the editors, he advised me to "take the evening off."

"There won't be a thing doing," said he.  "I'm going to get into some dry clothing" (he was perspiring very freely), "have a.  late dinner, and get ready for the ten-o'clock train.  You had better take the evening off, but be back by nine-fifteen sure."

My idea of taking the evening off was to stick about the hotel lobby, for travelling with the Colonel, as all newspaper men who have toured with him will testify, was serious business.  One never knew what might turn up, and in the months immediately before and after our entry into the war, there was always the chance that some German fanatic might seek to aid the Fatherland by destroying him.  The Colonel gave this danger small thought, but it was present nevertheless.

Therefore I had my dinner, filed a brief despatch for New York, and was chatting with the Western Union operator in the hotel, when, suddenly, came the sound of cheers from the dining room.  They were not the customary well bred cheers one looks for at any time in a hotel like the Blackstone — rather were they the kind one hears in a mass meeting in the midst of an exciting campaign.

Both telegraph operators and the telephone girl paused in their work— cheers in the Blackstone on a Sunday night are so unusual.  I made for the dining room.

In the Blackstone the dining room is some nine or ten steps above the level of the office floor.  These steps were crowded by men and women who a moment before were seated in the lobby — all very much excited about something.

"What's up?" I asked a man on the lower step.

"Nothing; only T.  R.  and Taft's got together," he replied.  "They're in there holding an old home week."

"Old home week" seemed to describe it perfectly.  At the far side of the dining room at a small table by a window sat the two ex-Presidents.  Mr.  Taft was beaming, and Colonel Roosevelt, leaning half across the table, was expressing himself very earnestly.  It was for all the world like two old soldiers met, after many years, at a G.A.R.  reunion.

I left the crowded stairs to bulletin New York, "Roosevelt and Taft dining together" —for it so appeared from the stairs, and returned to await the end of the meal.  On my way I met Mr.  Taft.

"Judge," I asked, "won't you tell me about your meeting with Colonel Roosevelt? Was it by appointment?"

"Lord, no!" said he.  " I came here from St.  Louis on War Labor Board business — we have a session here tomorrow — I was halfway to my room when I heard he was in the dining room and going to leave in a few minutes, so I just dropped in on him to pay my respects.  Is n't he looking splendid? I never saw him looking much better."

"Did you talk politics?"

"Son," laughed Mr.  Taft, "you really do not expect me to answer that question, do you?"
"Well, I am safe in assuming you did."

"Now don't you assume anything," he commanded.  "You just quote Mr.  Taft as saying Colonel Roosevelt and he discussed patriotism and the state and welfare of the Nation.  That will cover everything."

I left Mr.  Taft to go to the Colonel's suite, arriving just as he came bouncing in.

"Jack," he exclaimed, "did you know I've just met old Taft?"

"I have just left him," I replied.  "How did it happen?"

" I was never so surprised in my life," he answered.  "I thought I heard some one call 'Theodore' and I looked up just as he reached the table with his hand stuck out.  There was so much noise being made by the people in the room I am not quite sure what he said.  I think it was, 'Theodore, I am glad to see you."

" I grabbed his hand and told him how glad I was to see him.  By Godfrey, I never was so surprised in my life.  He was farthest from my thoughts.  I no more thought of him being in Chicago than in Timbuctoo.  But was n't it a gracious thing for him to do? Now, I don't know what to tell you.  What did he say?"

I repeated what Mr.  Taft had given me for publication.

"Taft is right," he said.  "That covers it.  Let it stand at that.  But I am mighty glad to tell you that he agrees with me on everything.  He feels exactly as I do about those people in Washington and the way they are carrying on."

A few minutes later, still beaming, the Colonel came downstairs to take a cab for the train.

"Jack," said he, "I don't mind telling you how delighted I am.  I never felt happier over anything in my life.  It was splendid of Taft."

"It is a big night's work," I said, "and notice to the world that the party is really and truly united.  It will be so taken in Washington."

" I believe you are right." And then, with a laugh, "It is too bad to spoil Mr.  Wilson's breakfast!

"But the important thing, Jack, is something more than our meeting.  Did I tell you that he is in perfect harmony with me — that we agree perfectly on the way things are going in Washington? That is important.  What did you wire New York?"

"Just a brief despatch, emphasizing the warmth of your meeting.  I had no time for more.  I think it well to let the fact sink in and follow the story with one bringing out the significance of the meeting.  I am also wiring John King a personal message."

"Good; John should know, by all means.  You will know what to tell him."

No more was said on the way to the station — the Colonel was busy with his thoughts and — humming his favorite battle air, "Garry Owen."
 
Topic 34
MONEY GRUBBERS

I FIND I can work best with those people in whom the money sense is not too highly developed," said Colonel Roosevelt one afternoon in the course of a chat on the veranda at Sagamore Hill.  He had just come in from a tramp about the estate and he was in a speculative mood.  ,

"With the Irishman in whom as a whole it is lacking rather than with the Jew in whom as a rule the money sense is dominant, I get the best results," said he.  "Of course there are exceptions on both sides! — Blank (naming a well known New Yorker) is pure Irish and as keen after money as any man I ever knew, while Oscar Straus, a pure Jew, has the money sense as little developed as is possible in any man — and I would treat every man as an individual.

"The weakness of the Jew, however, is in his lack of national spirit.  I do not like that any more than I like the Ultramontanes among the Catholics, among whom are some of the friends I think most of.  Archbishop John Ireland — what a magnificent American he is! Take Mgr.  Cassidy — a bully fellow.

"Do you know that I often find the impulsive Irishman, who may be depended upon to throw all caution to the winds when he is speaking for himself, more than likely to be the most cautious of men when speaking for or advising another? Why? I presume it is largely due to his delight in tearing an opponent to pieces and his habit of always being on the alert for an opening in the armor of another.  Advising you, he is apt to put himself in an opponent's place and do what an opponent would do — pick holes in your argument.  It is, I presume, one expression of Irish wit, which, after all, is mental alertness."

"Why," I asked, "do you think this type of Irishman fails to exercise this caution in his own affairs? "

"Partly because no man can appraise his own words at exactly the value others may place on them, and partly to the Irishman's proverbial disregard of personal danger.  He is, I have found, as careful of his friends as he is reckless of himself.  It is a manifestation of his loyalty.

Take dear old Joe Murray as an example.  Joe is frankness itself when it comes to speaking for1 himself, in voicing his own opinion.  But he's never got over the fear that I, in my rashness, may say something that may injure me.  More than once I know I have caused him worry.  He's been as worried in my later campaigns as he was when he started me in politics, by having me nominated for the Assembly.  You know that he called my personal canvass off because he thought I was too rash in telling a liquor dealer he was not paying taxes enough? He's always been fearful of like outbreaks.

"Old Joe lacks the money sense.  I can understand that.  But I am frank to confess I cannot understand the man who, having enough for all his needs and those of his family, pursues more money for the mere sake of piling it up.

"Mind you, I am not referring now to the man who, in work that benefits a whole community, acquires a great fortune incidental to his service to the community.  With that type of man, money is not all important — it is not the goal — and he is entitled to what may fairly come to him.  Such men are necessary in great industries — are a natural byproduct, so to speak, of productive industry.

"The man I refer to is the man who piirsues money for the sake of piling it up — the money grubber.  For the life of me, I cannot understand what he wants more than enough for.  Of course I understand that with this type getting money is a game to be played like chess, but what I do not understand is his mental processes.

" Money per se has never meant anything to me.  I have never had so much that I did not have to work, and usually I have had to consider carefully and plan my outlays.  Otherwise I would have become bank rupt.  But I have always had all I needed for real comfort for myself and my family in the modest style we would have preferred to live had we the wealth of Croesus.

"In more recent years I have had a comfortable surplus, but it has meant very little to me except for what we may have been able to do with it.

"Mind you, I do not undervalue money and I am not talking against thrift.  What I mean is that the really wise person is he who tries to see money in its real perspective.  The young man who is careful and thrifty — not miserly, but thrifty — makes the best citizen.  Conversely, the man with a lot more money than he needs who spends it in lavish display is not a good citizen, though he may think he is.  His example to others, not so wealthy as he, is bad; his influence upon others is bad.

" It all comes down to the question of service.  The man with money, in an industry producing wealth and enriching the community, is doing real service.  The man who having money devotes himself to public service, not necessarily politics, because he is free from the need of earning a living, is a good citizen.  His money is a blessing to him and a service to the community.

"But the money grubber — I do not understand him, and I am sorry for him.  I 'm Pharisee enough to rejoice that I am not as he is."

Topic 35
NEW BLOOD IN THE G.  O.  P.

BY the way, do you know Beekman Winthrop, Governor of Rhode Island?" Colonel Roosevelt asked at Sagamore Hill one afternoon.

"Not very well," I said.  "I think I've met him but once.  He seemed a decent sort."

" I met him a few days ago," the Colonel went on, "and I was just a bit surprised to find him a pretty regular sort of a fellow.  I had thought he was more of a Newport society chap.

"I was pleased to find he is surrounding himself with men of all race stocks that show themselves to be really American.  Funny, too, bu.t Colt and Lippett (Senators from Rhode Island) rather oppose that sort of thing.  They have gotten where they are willing to admit a French Canadian to full fellowship, but they balk at the Irish.  He is gradually working these young men in so that eventually they will hold places of power and responsibility in the party.  They seem to feel that the party is a sort of club.

" It is so silly to oppose the entrance of new blood into the party.  To do so is to fail to recognize that there are new racial elements in the community that are coming to the point where they must be considered politically, for they are political factors.

"The wise thing to do is to welcome all that are good in these new elements into the party, make them feel at home, and give them a share of the work that is to be done, and let them, in time, work into the places that belong to them.  Otherwise your party is apt to become too exclusive to be of value when it comes to a real test.

"Beekman Winthrop has an adjutant on his staff who is a Jew.  He's a bright young fellow who's come along on his merit.  At dinner the other night two of the most prominent party men there hardly spoke to him.  I remarked to Winthrop that it was as caddish a thing as I had ever seen.  He said, ' You ought to be around and see how many petty things of that kind I have to put up with.'

"From now on, I am for Beekman Winthrop.  Any one who thinks he's little more than a Newport society chap is going to be disappointed.

" I am strong for the type of Irishman represented by Jimmy Gallivan (Representative James A.  Gallivan of Massachusetts) and Griffin of Rhode Island.  I can work with them, for they are Americans.  They belong."

"Jimmy Gallivan," said I, "is a Roosevelt Democrat.  He stands for everything you do."
" I know it.  Do you know he described the recent contest in his district as Roosevelt and Gallivan against Burleson and Curley? The day after the primary he wired me that the Roosevelt Gallivan ticket had won.

"I can work with men like him.  Gallivan is better than his party.  His natural inclinations, his training, and his experience make him better.  Had things been managed differently in Massachusetts I have no doubt Gallivan and many others like him would as young men have gone into the Republican Party.  As it was, they probably were not welcomed because of a short sighted policy of exclusiveness.  Now that is changing as it should change.  It should not be possible to tell a man's politics by his name."

Mr.  Gallivan, by the way, was the means unconsciously used on one occasion by Colonel Roosevelt to show of what little consequence he considered most members of Congress.  It was incidental to the fight in the House to put the Harding amendment to the Army Bill, under which the Colonel might have been given a commission.  In this fight the Associated Press quoted "Gallivan (Dem.  Mass.)" as making a strong plea for the amendment and an attack upon Secretary Baker.

"Who is Gallivan?" the Colonel asked.

"Gallivan, of Boston — the old Ninth, the South Boston Dorchester District," I answered.  "You know him."

"No, I'm sure I do not," said the Colonel.

"Of course you do," I ventured to contradict.  "You certainly know Gallivan, the old Harvard second baseman?"

"Know him?" asked the Colonel.  "Why, of course, I know him! But do you know I didn't realize that Jimmy Gallivan, the great second baseman, had become a mere Congressman!"

Topic 36
SPEED ON THE TRIGGER

OF the many traditions that grew up about Theodore Roosevelt was that of his being instant on the trigger.  Indeed, enemies have not hesitated to accuse him of going off at half cock.  Nothing could be farther from the facts.  Of all the men I have known, in and out of public life, I have known none of any consequence whatever who was more careful of his premises before moving than he.  Compared to him the man who first laid down the principle, "Be sure you are right, then go ahead," was a speed maniac.

The tradition was and is mainly due to the Colonel's ability, almost uncanny, to see months in advance of most mortals, to his fondness for work, and his habit of practising the preparedness he preached.  In public matters it was not unusual for him to have a speech on some phase of the situation likely to be uppermost ready weeks or months in advance.  When the time seemed ripe — pop! and the Colonel had his say in speech, public statement, or letter answering some correspondent.

As I write I have before me two typewritten manuscripts.  One, labelled "tentative draft for letter protesting against the establishment of a civilian engineer corps in the navy," is incompletely dated, and the salutation is left blank by the typist.  In the Colonel's distinctive hand appears the name "Mr.  Reuterdahl," and a few words from his pen and his signature are at the end.  This was a document presented by one interested in the matter.  To help the cause along, the Colonel made the draft his own, and sent the completed letter to his naval artist friend.

Another typewritten manuscript left the typist as a statement on a "Naval Training Cruise." As it left the Colonel it was a draft for a complete letter, his hand supplying date line, an address, and a few words in closing before his signature.  This went to a Mr.  Slocum, after a secretary had typed it, while copies of the letters and a memorandum on the cruise, written by the Colonel, went to the press.  At the moment the navy's needs were important and, as usual, he was ready.

Yet another instance.  While the Colonel was putting in his hardest licks for preparedness he one day read the "cabinet" a speech he intended to deliver when opportunity offered.  A fortnight passed, then in came a letter from St.  Louis.

"Here," said the Colonel, "is where I make use of that speech I read you the other day.  I will send it to this man in answer to his letter."

Next day, not more than forty-eight hours after he had written Colonel Roosevelt, the man in St.  Louis read in his morning paper perhaps a column of a letter answering him.  The following day the letter itself, three to four columns long, reached him.  It would be difficult to convince that man that Colonel Roosevelt on receipt of his letter did not drop all other business and proceed to answer him.  His friends, knowing some of the facts, would think as he did.  Sure the Colonel was quick on the trigger!

But only in the sense that the forehanded gunner, waiting with gun in hand for the ducks to rise, is quick.

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.' "

Topic 38
WITH THE ALLIES' ENVOYS

JACK MITCHEL told me it was by directions from Washington that I was not asked to speak at the official welcome at the Waldorf.  Apparently it is the idea to keep the visitors free from any possible Roosevelt contagion.  It won't succeed."

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the dinner given by the City of New York to General Joffre and M.  Viviani representing France, and Arthur J.  Balfour, representing England, shortly after their arrival in this country following our entrance into the war.

"That is why I went to the dinner given General Joffre by Mr.  Frick," he went on.  "You know my antipathy to dinners.  I had no desire to meet such a group as I knew Mr.  Frick would have there, and, when first invited, I declined.  Then Mitchel came to see me.  He explained that it was by orders of the State Department, which is really in charge of these visitors, that none but Joe Choate and himself were to be allowed to speak at City Hall or at the banquet.  Nominally it is a city affair.  Actually it is being directed by Mr.  Lansing with Frank Polk in immediate charge.

"When he told me that and renewed his invitation to Mr.  Prick's dinner, I accepted.  I am glad I did.  I was seated next to the General, and when he found we could talk to one another — well, he did not talk much to any of the others.  He did not tell me anything I did not know, or suspect.  France does want our men.  She wants them badly, more than she wants supplies.

"Joffre has told Washington that.  They must have men.  Joffre, I find, understands the position we are in.  He has no delusions."

Next on the list of envoys to hold private conference with the Colonel was Mr.  Balfour.  This was arranged by General Bridges, of the British Army, who called on the Colonel to ask when it would be convenient for him to receive Mr.  Balfour.

" I told him," said the Colonel describing the call, "that I would be very glad to see Mr.  Balfour at any time, and as Sunday seemed to be his only open time, I suggested that he take tea with us Sunday afternoon.  I explained to him, however, that on the hill here we never dine on Sunday.  Instead we have what might be called a high tea, a most informal sort of a meal, and he’d have to take 'pot luck.'

"General Bridges replied that it would be to Mr.  Balfour's exact liking, and it was agreed that they should come out Sunday."

Mr.  Balfour was Colonel Roosevelt's guest until late into the night.  When he had gone, Colonel Roosevelt, evidently much pleased with the visit, said they had canvassed the entire situation.

"The British," said the Colonel, "doubt that Washington even now appreciates the needs of the hour.  They still seem, from what these men say, to be of the opinion that we can successfully fight this war with dollars and vegetables — that Uncle Sam's part in it is to be that of a settler."

Next the Italian mission, headed by the Prince d'Udine, went to Oyster Bay which was not in the official programme, the Italian Embassy having vetoed a proposal that it be included, on the nominal ground that royalty cannot visit a commoner, a decision overruled by the Prince.

"The Prince expressed regret that he would not be able to visit the trophy room of which he said he had heard much," said the Colonel.  "'I should be very glad to have you call,' I told him, 'but I was told you would find it impossible to do so.' The Prince's answer was something like 'Nonsense,' so he came out."

Telling this story at the Harvard Club, Colonel Roosevelt took occasion to read a lesson in manners to a well known reporter, who resented the idea that an ex-President of the United States was not the equal of any prince.

"You might have told him," said this man, "that you are as good as he is."

"That is exactly what I should not have done," snapped the Colonel.  "Whenever you find a man going around declaring he is as good as somebody else, rest assured he does not believe he is and his declaration of equality or superiority is, in effect, an admission of inferiority.  The man who is as good as the other fellow does not have to advertise the fact."

From Mayor Mitchel's explanation as to why he was not asked to speak at the public functions in honor of the Allies' envoys, and from his contact with some of them, Colonel Roosevelt gained the impression that more than ever he was "getting under their skins."

"My efforts to make them do something seem to be getting under their skins in Washington," said he.  "I am very glad of that if it only results in making them move in the right direction."

Following his long talk with General Joffre, the Colonel was much amused by a report that the great Frenchman had increased his vocabulary by the addition of a single English word.

"He pronounces it 'bull-lee,'" I told him.

"The General, as usual, shows admirable judgment," he laughed.  "It's a perfectly good word.  I ought to know.  I 've used it years enough."

Topic 39
POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP

IF you'll promise to mail this promptly," said Colonel Roosevelt one day in 1918, "I'll let you in on a State secret — our friend Arthur Woods is going to France on a special assignment.  This contains some letters I am giving him to Clemenceau and others he may wish to meet.  He is an excellent fellow, and I'd like to help him."

"He made a good Police Commissioner, Colonel," I observed.

"The best New York ever had," came the prompt answer.  " I used to think that honor belonged to me, but it no longer does — Woods has been a better man than I was.  If that letter were not sealed, you’d find I say so in the enclosures.  You like Woods?"

" Yes, he's a friend of mine — he tried to help me get into the army."
" Did n't you like his police work?"

"Yes, sir, though until you had spoken I would not have ranked him quite so high.  I always felt that niche was permanently filled by you."

"I did myself; but to be entirely honest Woods has done everything I did as well as I ever did it, and he's done other things much better.  In some respects his work was easier, but this, I think, was more than offset by the changed conditions, the growth of the city, and a large increase in the potentially criminal classes.  Crime has become more refined — by that I do not mean criminals have become cultured — but that, as in other trades, criminals have made progress.  They have had newer and better tools to work with — the automobile is an example — new implements, and there have been more types of crime and criminals.

"The wealth of the city has increased enormously, especially its easily portable wealth; it has spread out more, and more than ever the city has become to America what Paris is to the world — a playground for men and women, particularly men, with more or less money and more or less sense.  This has served to bring in a larger number of criminal types of both sexes — you know what I mean — and it has made police work more difficult.

"Under Woods's control of the police New York is cleaner than it ever was — infinitely cleaner than I was ever able to make it.  New York, with all that has been said about it, has never been as unclean as other great cities of the world.  I am not as familiar with vice abroad as I have been with what we have had in New York, but I know we have had less than London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or other big cities.

We have been cleaner, too, than Chicago, San Francisco, or other large American cities.

"There has, it is true, been a sort of house cleaning in many of our big cities, and, I believe, a general improvement taking in the cities of the country as a whole, but that does not detract from the credit due Woods.  When I was Commissioner a reform wave in other cities usually sent the undesirables who were in funds here.  Presumably that sort of thing is still the rule.

"These changed conditions make it difficult to compare Woods's work with mine, but, on the whole, he did much better than I did, and as the friend of both, you might as well be prepared to concede it."

"I won't attempt to argue with you, but did n't he have your work to build on?" I asked.

"I'm glad you made that point — mighty glad.  To an extent, yes, but so did others — General Bingham, and Waldo, for example.  But only to a limited extent.  Had he followed immediately after me, that would be wholly true, but he did not and in between much of my work was undone.  Could he have come in immediately I left, he would have done even better.  You see what I mean?

"Woods is the sort of man I have always said should be in that office — he's a non-partisan; no politician had any strings on him.  To get the best results the head of the New York Police Department should be as nearly permanent as any public officer ever is, and he should be of the same non-partisan type that Woods has been while in office.  The theory that a temporary Commissioner can get the best results from a permanent police force is unsound.  It is this condition that was the life of what has been called 'the system.' We've all heard that 'the system' is dead.  I don't believe it.  I don't believe Woods believes that.  It has not been active, not been visible to the naked eye under Woods, but I think you'll find it has only been asleep.

"Woods was a splendid executive.  In all his work that I am familiar with he made one error that I consider serious.  That was with Enright — now in his place.  I told him, and I maintain now, that it was a serious error of judgment on his part, as it was on the part of others, not to give Enright the captaincy his place on the civil service list entitled him to.  As I told Woods, the just thing to do was to give him his promotion and see what he did with it.  If he did not do right, he could then break him.  I did not think his activity in department politics, so long as there was nothing else provable against him, should be allowed to keep from him the place that it was admitted he was competent to fill.

"That was bad judgment, I think, because it tended to make a martyr of him.  Woods would have done better to have tried other tactics.  However, that was a thing he had to decide for himself.

" In all other matters he has done splendidly.  You know that, despite my tyranny as Commissioner, I still have many good friends in the department.  The police, except the crooks I made life miserable for, have always been friendly to me.  What I mean is that I have always retained the intimate friendship of men who were under me in the department.  These men know what is going on and they have all told me Woods was all right.  They had no complaints to make, heard of none.  They all rejoiced in the absence of 'pull.' That has been the curse of the department.

"Under Woods the men have felt free, they all tell me, to do their work as it should be done.  They have not had to consider the politicians.  This has made their work easier and it has been better for the city.  I am not certain but that the politicians like it.  It makes less work for them, you know, less asking favors, less 'going to the front' for some scapegrace in trouble.  There have been Tammany leaders who have dropped men from their clubs as soon as they joined the police.  This was not done to discourage men from joining the force; these leaders would help men prepare for their civil service examination and that sort of thing, but they quit there.  They found policemen retainers to be something of a nuisance and at times worse.

"The police of New York, man for man, have always been a splendid lot.  They have been just as honest as the administration and the head of the department wished them to be.  There was more truth than poetry in what a captain or inspector — I think it was Herlihy — is said to have told Bingham: 'Put all your cards on the table.  I'm a cop and I'll do what I'm told to do; only let me know whether you mean what you say when you say it.' It was something like that.  That is the real spirit of the police — they'll be just as honest as the head of the department wishes them to be.  If he's honest and not influenced by dishonest politicians, they will run straight.  If dishonesty is favored or expected, the weaker ones most exposed to temptation will be dishonest.

"Woods, of course, was honest and he was not tempted or controlled by politicians and others.  Temperamentally he was admirably fitted for the place.  Mitchel left him a free hand.  Hence his success.

"Woods, by the way, was one of the very few of Mitchel's appointments that did not weaken him with the voter.  He blundered with Woods in not making more of his administration in his campaign for reelection.  It could have been made a very strong point.  Woods will do well in the army, but, personally, I would have preferred to have him stay at the head of the police.  He would have been of vastly greater value to the country there than in the army.  The law, however, made that impossible.

"When he comes out of the army I expect he will go into some sort of business.  His great executive ability will be in demand.  I do not suppose he will ever return to the police department.  He would hardly care to, though he never should have been allowed to leave it.

"Some day you may be called upon for your opinion of police commissioners.  If you are, put Arthur Woods first; if you wish, and feel that way, put me second.

"And if any one asks your authority, say I told you so."

Topic 40
COLONEL ROOSEVELT ON BOYS

BETTER a boy you have to rescue from a police station because he whipped a cab driver or a 'cop' than a 'Miss Nancy'" — that was Colonel Roosevelt's idea of the kind of boy one should have.

This preference Colonel Roosevelt expressed to me one Sunday afternoon at Oyster Bay, following a question from him as to how my own boy was getting along.

"All right," I replied, "only a little too much football and swimming and not enough schoolwork — almost too much boy."

"That's all right," he replied.  "Don't let that worry you.  Do you know you are fortunate in having a real boy? Some of the most splendid fellows I know have boys that if they were mine I’d want to choke them — pretty boys who know all of the latest tango steps and the small talk, and the latest things in socks and ties — tame cats, mollycoddles, and their fathers real men, and their mothers most excellent women! Throw-backs, I suppose.  I’d feel disgraced beyond redemption had I such boys.

"Mine, thank God, have been good boys, a bit mischievous at times, all of them, but every boy is.  Honestly, if I had to take my choice, I’d rather have a boy that I’d have to go to the police station and bail out for beating a cab driver or a policeman, than one of the mollycoddle type.  He might worry me, but he wouldn't disgrace me."

On another occasion when he asked about my boy, I said he was in a bit of trouble.

"He has had his first real bump," I said.  "He flunked on his examinations, and probably will fail to get promotion.  Consequently he feels badly."

"Now, see here," advised the Colonel, "just don't be severe with him.  Tell him I said, as an indulgent grandparent, that it really is not such a serious thing.  You just tell him that for me and just make him feel more than ever that his father is his best friend and understands all about such things,."
"I have wired him as much," I said.

"That's fine," said he.  "You are on the right track.  Sometimes we fathers do not realize how important such things may be and we do not always do the right thing.  We can become excited about something and chastise or severely lecture a boy and make him afraid of us or we can sit down with him, man fashion, and reason the thing out.  Sometimes, I grant you, chastisement is exactly what a boy needs most.  Then he should have it.  But when a boy's in trouble as your lad is over something that really involves at most only carelessness, it often is a mistake to do anything more than point out to him what a foolish fellow he's been and try to plan out some way in which he, not you, can undo the mischief.

"In other words, every boy thinks his father is a pretty big man.  One of mine told a teacher once his father was 'it.' That confidence is something no man can afford to lose, and if he can make his boy see that the thing to do is to go to his father with his troubles, he has a pretty good guarantee that the boy won't get into any very serious messes.  On the other hand, if the boy knows that he is going to get a dressing down every time his parent hears of some venial sin of omission or commission, boy like, he's going to try and conceal as much as he can.  He will, however, get advice abroad if he does not get it at home, and he's mighty lucky if the kind he gets abroad is the kind he should have.

"That's why many a boy goes wrong who otherwise would in all probability have gone straight as H.

"Yes, sir, it's a mighty bad thing for a boy when he becomes afraid to go to his father with his troubles, and it's mighty bad for a father when he becomes so busy with other affairs, that he has no time for the affairs of his children.

"I had a friend lament to me once over the fact that his boy was wild and was constantly getting into scrapes.  He was absolutely out of control, the father said, and he could do nothing with him.  I knew the boy and liked him.  He was a clean cut, upstanding chap — the kind that looks you straight in the eye when he talks to you and shakes hands as though he meant it.  I did not believe there was anything very wrong about the boy, and said so.  Finally, the father asked me if I wouldn't talk to the boy.  I said I would.

'"I'll send him to you tomorrow,' he said.

'"No, you won't,' said I.  'You say the boy won't listen to you.  Let me handle him in my own way.'

"Well, I saw the boy, and asked him what all the reports I was hearing meant.  There was n't anything serious, anything involving meanness or unmanliness — the trouble was mainly misdirected energy.  We talked things over — the boy doing most of the talking — and, well, finally I advised him to make up with his father.  I forgot to say he had left home and gone to live with a maternal relative.

'"Not much, Colonel,' said he.  'If I go to the Governor, he’ll explode.  He explodes every time the least thing not on the schedule happens.  It's been that way ever since I was a kid.  He's never given me a chance to tell my story — no matter what happens, I'm always wrong, I'm always to blame.  It's always been that way.'

" I told him that might be so, that it probably was so, but that he should see his father anyway, and try and reach an understanding.' You may not agree with me,' I told him, 'but your father's your best friend.  You're more to him than all the rest of the world.'

'"You may be right, Colonel,' said the boy, 'but I wish he'd take some other way of showing it.'

"Then I sent for the father.  I told him what the boy had said.  I told him some things on my own account.  He did not like them and came back at me — exploded just as the boy said he did with him.  We were old friends and I did not mind that; in fact, as I look back, I rather enjoyed it.  At any rate, I let him blow off steam.  I knew he’d feel ashamed of himself when he paused for breath.  Then I said some things to him.

"'If you talk to your boy the way you've been talking here,' said I, ' I don't wonder he's left home.  I marvel that he did n't do it before he came of age, that he did n't run away or get into some scrape he’d never get over.  He's got more in him than I thought he had.  Now you go and get acquainted with him.  Don't think you Ve got to eat a lot of crow — the boy would n't like that.  Meet him halfway, and let him see you are his friend.  Go away for a week's fishing with him — it will do you both good.  Why, man, all this trouble you’ve brought on yourself —

you don't appreciate even now that your boy is a man — you 've been too busy making money to have paid much attention to him.'

"It was strong medicine and the old fellow did not like it, though he swallowed it.  He never referred to the matter again, but the boy did.

"'Colonel,' said he, one day after his father had sort of taken him into partnership, 'you must have talked turkey to the Governor — he has n't been the same man since.'

'"Young man,' said I, 'all I told him was to get acquainted with you, just as I told you to get acquainted with him.  You folks simply did not know one another.'

"That," he concluded, "is the advice I'd give every father of a boy — get acquainted with him."

Topic 41
HIS BOYS' CRITICS

THE important thing," Colonel Roosevelt used to say to those who sought advice on going into the war, "is to get into the game.  Get in as you would like to get in if you can, but get in!"

One of the Roosevelt boys — Kermit — "got in" via a commission in the British army from which he later transferred to Pershing's forces.  Kermit's entering the service of another power aroused some criticism from Sinn Fein and pro-German sources.  These declared it to be unpatriotic for an ex-President's son to serve under the flag of another country, criticism which aroused the Colonel's ire.

" I do not care a hang how or where my boys or any other man's boys fight, so long as they do fight," he declared.  "The important thing is that they are fighting and that they are fighting Germany.

"Three of my boys are in the American army and in American uniforms.  This one is going to fight in a British uniform.  It does not make any difference to me what uniform they fight in.  The main point is they are fighting, and I don't care a continental whether they fight in Yankee uniforms or British uniforms or in their nightshirts, so long as they are fighting.  That's the main point — they are fighting."

Just the same the departure of the boys had its effect on the Colonel.  He was more thoughtful and at times gave little hints that he dared not hope to see them all again.  Better than most men, he realized that war means death, and that modern war justifies Sherman's famous saying.

"Those infernal jacks!" he declared one day, "criticizing me for allowing my boy to go into the British army and talking as though I permitted my boys to go to war for the personal glory that might come to me! The infernal jacks do not know what modern war is like! They do not know what shellfire is like!

" It is n't pleasant for me or any other father, who knows the fearful things a high explosive shell will do, to think of his boys being exposed to them — to think that at the moment they may be lying disembowelled in No Man's Land, but that is war.  I hope and pray that they’ll all come back, but before God, I’d rather none came back than one, able to go, had stayed at home.  I pray God will send them back to me safe and sound, but in my heart I know it is almost too much for me to hope for.  I know my boys.  I know they will do their part.  That means, danger.

"I miss them, their mother misses them, their wives miss them.  But let me tell you their wives are bricks — every one of them.  They are splendid — just as splendid as their mother.  I tell you I have been blessed not only in my boys, but in the young women my boys chose for wives.  And that goes for my one son-in-law that is able to fight.  Dick Derby is a splendid fellow and I am as fond of him and as proud of him as I am of my blood sons."

Again, an Oklahoma editor aroused his ire by charging editorially that "Roosevelt's boys were enjoying soft snaps in safe berths." A rival editor wired the attack to the Colonel with a request for an answer.

"The infernal cur!" he snapped when he read the wire; "the infernal cur who dares say that my boys, every one of them in combat service, have shirked their duty with the aid of my supposed influence.  The infernal cur — how dare he say that of an American father! That man's a ghoul! I won't dignify him by replying to his contemptible attack, but I’d like to have him here for just three minutes! He’d wish he was in a front line trench or some other comfortable place.  The infernal cur!"

The Colonel was "mad" from "toes to topknot," but in a moment he relaxed a bit.

"I'm foolish, I suppose," said he, "to allow a creature like that to annoy me, but — well, God had a reason for everything he created, and I suppose he created fellows like this that we might the better appreciate the decency in the great, big, preponderating majority."

It was on his boys — and girls — that his mind was in the dark days of February, 1918, when he was near to death in Roosevelt Hospital.

"You had us worried," I told him on my first visit to the convalescent room.

"Well," said he, "I was not worried about myself.  I was not thinking of myself.  I was thinking of my four boys.  I tell you I am mighty proud of my boys and " — after a momentary pause — "just as proud of my two fine girls."

This pride in the boys became more and more manifest as reports began to come back from the front of their valor.  Always affable to strangers, he fairly beamed  that is the best way to describe it — at the visitor who asked, "How's the boys?"

Sometimes the question would come from some one in a crowd, as in St.  Louis, where, answering it, he made ten thousand laugh.

"I met Peter Dunne the other day, "he said.  "You all know Peter Dunne — Mr.  Dooley, you know.  Well, Dunne said: 'Colonel, you want to watch out.  The first thing you know they'll be putting the name of Roosevelt on the map.'"

He enjoyed the story and the laughs it raised, but he was never without the thought that the boys were in danger.

"Gray was right," he said, when Ted, Jr., was in a hospital.  "You remember his line, 'the paths of glory lead but to the grave'? He is not dangerously hurt, but I cannot expect all will escape, I can only hope."

The end of the hope that all would return came to the Colonel one July night at Sagamore Hill.  Phil Thompson, the resident correspondent at Oyster Bay, had called to ask about various matters, among them a cable message to the New York Sun from Raymond G.  Carroll, one of its men at the front.  This, Thompson mentioned last.

"I have here," he told him, "a cable message to the Sun .  The censor has cut it some, so that it is blind.  It reads, 'Watch Oyster Bay for.' Have you any idea what it means?"

"Something has happened to one of the boys," he answered.  "It cannot be Ted and it cannot be Archie, for both are recovering from wounds.  It is not Kermit, for he's not in the danger zone at the moment.  So it must be Quentin.  However, we must say nothing of this to his mother tonight."

Confirmation of his fears came early the next morning.  The Colonel took the blow exactly as one would expect him to.

"I must tell his mother," he said.

A few minutes later he gave to Thompson the wonderful comment, expressing the joy of Quentin's parents that he had had his chance to do his bit before he was called to go.

The next day the Colonel kept an engagement to speak at the Republican Convention in Saratoga.
"It is my duty to go there," he said.

To the stranger Colonel Roosevelt gave no sign of his bitter affliction.  Those who knew him best saw, however, that the blow had slowed him down.  Not that he paraded his grief — even to them.  That grief was a secret, sacred thing — to be exhibited to none.

Not long after, Captain Archie, crippled in arm and leg, came home.  His coming gave the Colonel relief, for the young man was in much better shape than had been anticipated, and the doctors were strong in assurances that his recovery would be nearly if not quite complete.  When he was well enough to leave the hospital, he and the Colonel "chummed" about town and Oyster Bay.

"Colonel," I said in the Harvard Club one day, "Archie is making splendid progress.  I just saw him running down the street.  He runs as well as any boy.  I congratulate you."

"Thank you, Jack," he replied.  "The surgeons are working wonders.  In the early days of the war he'd have lost arm and leg if not his life.  As it is, he's coming around splendidly.

"And Ted — I 've just had a letter from a regular army officer who says Ted's as good an officer as there is in the regular establishment.  He's been made a lieutenant colonel, you know.  Is n't that fine? And Kermit's doing well too."

But the dead boy — the eagle whose fall had hurt him to the heart — he did not mention.

Topic 42
OUR SOLDIER DEAD IN FRANCE

EARLY in 1918 Colonel Roosevelt anticipated propaganda after the war might cease for the return of the bodies of American soldiers who died in France.  The idea did not appeal to him, any more than did the policy of the quartermaster's department of the army in using valuable cargo space to send coffins abroad to the exclusion of other articles.

"They are," said he, "sending coffins over, though they are short of shoes.  They have sent twenty thousand over.  It is all very well to show respect for the dead, but it would be far better to care for the boys while they are alive.  This cargo space should have been used for shoes and other supplies.  I know they are short of shoes for I have helped provide fifteen hundred pair myself, for men who have had no shoes issued to them since August.

"This shipping of coffins is part of a general scheme to send all our dead home, paving a way for a demand after the war that this be done.  It will not be practical, but there probably will be an attempt to play on the heart strings of relatives.  This is probably not in the minds of whoever is responsible for sending these boxes over now — somebody is probably following some musty rule in the department — but that will be the effect.

" If any of mine are killed over there, I shall oppose disturbing their graves when peace comes.  They should rest, and if I have anything to say about it, they will rest, where they may fall."

Months after, Quentin, the Eagle, fell.  Not long after his death — about three months — I was asked to give my associates a letter the Colonel had addressed to Major General Crowder requesting in the name of Mrs.  Roosevelt and himself that the body not be sent home.  It was in this letter, prompted by a Washington despatch to the effect that all bodies were to be returned, that he quoted the line: "Where the tree falls, there let it lie."

The correspondence attracted a great deal of attention.  Most of it that came to my notice was favorable to the position he had taken, and I told him so.

"It is the course I believe sensible people generally will approve of," he said.  "To me it is painful to think that long after death the poor broken body would be taken from what should be its resting place, and moved thousands of miles.  To me it does not seem fitting.  Nor does it seem desirable to reopen old wounds of the living.  These will never fully heal, they will always hurt, but they should not be torn open.  "I know that many good people who have lost sons and brothers and husbands will not agree with Mrs.  Roosevelt and me.  I understand their position and respect their feelings.  But I am very much afraid others will not, and will try to play upon those feelings for profit in one form or another.

" It was to help these good people and others who may be wavering that I asked you to make public my wishes in so far as our boy's body is concerned.  I had thought my example might have some influence in the matter, just as I feel that had Mrs.  Roosevelt and I taken an opposite position, others would have very properly demanded like action in their own cases.

"Personally, I am more concerned in the living than in the dead.  We cannot forget our dead, but we must live for the living.  We should insist on proper respect for our dead — France will see to that — and if we have any energy to expend, use it caring for the soldier who comes back maimed or for the dependents of those who do not come back at all.

"Where the bodies are returned, if they are returned, there will be a lot of attention paid to the first returned.  There will be public funerals.  There will be calls on the purses of relatives, too poor to spare the money, for more elaborate stones than the Government will provide.  Then for a time, while parents or wife lives, their graves will be well taken care of.  After that — comparative neglect.  You and I have seen that in the graves of soldiers of other wars — a little attention one day in the year, and no more.  It is bound to work out that way as families die out and move away.  How different in the national cemeteries or in the soldiers' lots in our larger city cemeteries!

"Crowder's letter shows what I expected, that in planning as it has the department is following rules laid down at the time of our war with Spain.  In that war, and in the Philippine insurrection that followed, we lost fewer men than we have lost in a single day in this war.

"I recall one after tragedy of the Philippines I was told about in a Western town.  It was a small place, and one of the town boys was killed somewhere in Luzon.  His body was brought home and the townspeople spent several hundred dollars to erect a monument over his grave.  When I was in the town I met his mother, whose support he had been.  She was earning her living sewing.  How much better it would have been if that boy's body were left where he fell, and the money spent on his monument spent on his mother!

"It will be far better to leave our dead in great cemeteries over there, places like beautiful Arlington or our other national cemeteries at home.  There the graves will be well cared for, our dead will sleep, as I believe they would prefer, among their comrades, and these shrines will be, if I might use the expression, not a link, but rivets in the chain that binds us to our allies, and our allies to us.

"Rupert Brooke, you will remember, wrote that wherever his body might rest would forever be a bit of England.  Just so, wherever our boys sleep will be forever American soil.  They willed it so."

Topic 43
MAKING PEACE WITH GOMPERS

ALL the world knows that soon after the East St.  Louis race riots, Colonel Roosevelt and Samuel Gompers all but came to blows on the stage of Carnegie Hall, New York.  Few, however, knew that at the time of Roosevelt's death he and Gompers were friends.

They shook hands, so to speak, on the question of Americanism, Colonel Roosevelt making the advances.

The peacemaking came about in this way.  Gompers, at the American Federation of Labor Convention of 1917 in Buffalo, faced the fight of his life with pro-Germans and pacifists within the labor movement who hoped to put the Federation on record as opposing the War and the national programme for prosecuting it to a successful finish.  Days before the convention met, "S.O.S." calls were flashing to all who might help hold the fort.  Among those who responded, it will be recalled, was President Wilson, but even after his visit, the situation was tense up to the moment the convention adjourned.

More than that, adjournment left all hands with a realizing sense that, however emphatic the defeat of the anti-war group had been, it was still an element of great potential danger, and that the situation was anything but pleasant from the standpoint of one hundred per cent Americanism.  This I sought to make clear in a long report I submitted to Colonel Roosevelt at his request, accompanying it with an oral explanation.

"Gompers," I told the Colonel, "has his back to the wall.  He may need help, and need it badly, at any time."
"But," said he, "he has been playing Wilson's game."

" I know that," I replied, " but just now he's playing our game, the one hundred per cent American game.  And he may need help."

"What can I do to help?" he asked.

"Not a thing now," I replied, "but the time may come later when you can help."

"Very well.  Does Gompers know you were to take this matter up with me? Have you discussed this matter with him?"

I replied that I had not.

"There was nothing I could say," I replied, "and no occasion for me to say anything, anyway."

"All right," said the Colonel.  "As you say, Gompers is playing a straight American game.  In that he should have every help.  I do not take back any word I have ever said about him, and I don't care whether he takes back anything he has said about me or not.  We can agree and do agree on Americanism.

"Now, you go to him and say to him for me that if there is anything I can say or do to help him in this fight, to let me know, and I will do it.  Make it clear to him that you have told me the kind of fight that is being made on him because of his Americanism, and say to him that whatever differences we may have had in the past or may have in the future, I am with him in this fight.  It won't embarrass you to do that?"
"Not at all," said I.  "It is what I expected."

"All right, go ahead.  Now, make it clear to Gompers that it is not going to be necessary for him to come to me or to write to me.  You can see where that might be impossible, might embarrass him.  If he wishes to come, all right, let him come; but if he prefers, let him send any message he wishes through you or somebody else we both know and I will attend to the matter."
It was ten days before I had an opportunity to deliver my message to Gompers.  When I did deliver it, he was as pleased a man as I have ever seen.

"Did Mr.  Roosevelt really say that?" he interrupted, when I had given him but part of the message.  "He certainly did," I replied.  "Furthermore, when you want him, write direct if you wish, or, if you prefer, send for me and I will arrange a meeting.  If that is not advisable, send some one else the Colonel knows, or you may, if you wish, send any message through me.  These are the Colonel's instructions — he wants you to feel free to call on him for any help he may be able to give."

"That certainly is very fine of the old man," said Gompers.  "You may go to him and tell him for me that I thank him from the bottom of my heart, that I do appreciate his offer and why it is made and that I shall not forget his offer if the occasion requires.  Is it all right to tell this to Perham?"

Perham (H.  B.), a vice-president of the A.  F.  of L.  and chief of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, was standing near.  I saw no reason why he and others in Gompers's confidence should not be told, and said so.

"The men on whom you rely to help you make your fight should know," I said.  "The Colonel said nothing about secrecy, and would, I think, prefer that they should know."

"Henry," called Gompers to Perham, "this young man has just given me a most pleasing message.  Colonel Roosevelt offers any help he may be able to give in fighting these scoundrels; we're to call on him any time.  Is n't that fine?" Perham, slow of speech, agreed that it was, adding:

"But why should n't he? — you are both in the same fight."

"Yes, Henry," said Gompers, "but you must remember Roosevelt and I have not been very friendly.  You must know that men — and I include the big ones — do not always do exactly what they should do."

So ended the Gompers Roosevelt feud — if feud it could be called.

Topic 44
HENRY FORD AND MARK HANNA

MARK HANNA died long before Henry Ford arose above the horizon of obscurity.  This did not prevent the Colonel from telling a Hanna story to illustrate an opinion he held of the man made famous and wealthy by the "flivver."

"Hanna," said the Colonel, "sent Bunau Varilla, the French engineer, to see me about the Panama Canal.  Later I saw Hanna and told him I could do nothing with the man.

"'Why,' said I, 'that man would instruct Cosmos.'

"'Never mind Cosmos,' said Hanna.  'Cromwell's the man for you to listen to.' He meant William Nelson Cromwell, the New York lawyer.

" Now Ford is a pretty good man for making cheap automobiles.  He makes a good car for the money, and in his sphere has done a very good work.  But he won't stick to his sphere.  He would instruct Cosmos.

"It would not be so bad if he knew anything about the matters outside of automobiles that he attempts to manage and direct.  He does not seem to have the faintest idea of American history, or any history for that matter; he knows nothing of world politics, yet he sets himself up, with the aid of an army of press agents, as the man who must teach everybody.  He has no conception of what we mean by Americanism and has an extreme idea of the importance and power of his money.  He is ignorant, yet because he has been so successful in motors, many, many persons, hardly as ignorant as himself, think him wise in all things and allow him to influence their views.

"Henry, like Barnum, has been a great advertiser.  I do not say his peace ship was an advertising dodge — I will give him credit for being sincere there — but I won't say that he has not been given credit for a lot of philanthropy that was merely good business.  Other of his schemes given much publicity are imaginings that in others would attract no attention.

"He and his son Edsoll make a precious pair.  The exempting of that young man was a glaring bit of injustice.  Had I had my way, he'd have gone into the trenches and taken his chances just as any poor man's son had to go and take his chances.  Instead, he is safe in Detroit.  Cases like his make fine material for demagogues who try to tell the ignorant this is a government for rich men.

"Most rich men's sons are doing their duty.  You see that around the clubs.  The only young men you see there are in uniform.

"By the way, I saw two things the other afternoon that made me proud of New York.  I had been up Westchester way.  Motoring in, I saw a little service flag on a very poor house — more of a shack.  A colored woman was in the doorway — it was apparently a negro home.  Coming down the avenue I saw another little flag hanging out of the window of one of the finest houses in New York.  It signified that its owner, one of America's wealthiest young men, had gone to the front and was doing his bit, man fashion, just as the colored lad out of that poor home was doing.

"That kind of young man is worth a million Edsoll Fords in peace as well as in war, for the man who does his duty in war is not likely to shirk in peace."

The Fifth Avenue home to which the Colonel referred was that of Vincent Astor.
 
Topic 45
A TRIBUTE TO NURSES

MORE so than any other man I have ever known, Colonel Roosevelt was capable of adjusting himself to circumstances and seeing good in places where most humans would see naught of value.  He was a philosopher at all times.

When he was recovering from the serious operation of February, 1918, I commented on the fact that his surroundings in Roosevelt Hospital were comfortable.

"Indeed they are," said he, "and every one here is splendid.  It is almost worth while being sick to meet such people and realize the work that is done in such places.

"Take the nurses — clean, healthy young women, full of animal life and youth and spirit, at just that age when they might be excused if their thoughts and their time were devoted to pleasure, in here doing the hardest kind of work, much of it unpleasant, nearly all of it depressing, not for pay, but because they wish to be of service, to fit themselves for service.

"Thank God, I'm not a cynic; I've always believed in and respected American womanhood, but I tell you, Jack Leary, that I leave here with more respect and a better appreciation of what our girls really are.  We are all apt to take some things for granted.  Most of us, until we are forced into a place like this, never give a thought to the women who give up so much to serve.

"These girls here are all from good families.  Some, I am told, are from what, for want of a better term, we call our best families.  All have education enough to qualify in easier, pleasanter work, where hours are regular and there's ample time for theatres, parties, and all that sort of thing young folks love.  They serve a hard apprenticeship and when they graduate, go out to do work that more often than not is as unpleasant as any in the training period.  They are not well paid, and are about as casual in their employment, many of them, as a day laborer.  I suppose I always knew that, but, as I have said, I took it for granted as we take many things, until I came in here and had a chance to think.  Honestly I feel as though I had had a mental bath.

"After what I Ve seen here I 'm tempted, the next time some half baked jack of a preacher who cannot fill his church any other way cuts loose with an attack on American women, picturing them as brainless butterflies with never a thought of anything but cocktails, cabarets, and dress, who are’dooming the race' — that's one of their favorite declarations 

I 'm tempted to take him by the scruff of the neck and drop him in some first class hospital.  He’ll leave with his soul cleaner and in better working order than when he entered; that is, if he has a soul bigger than a mustard seed, and the girls won't be damaged any by his cluttering up the place for a few days.
"You did not go to church today? I thought not.  Well, there's your sermon.  — I'm in a sermonizing mood today, so you see I am getting better.  Seriously, though, it does one good to get down to brass tacks once in a while, and if any one ever asks you what I think of the nursing profession, you just tell them I said — no, they 're not angels, they are too practical for that, but trumps every one of them."

The respect the Colonel had for the nurses was reciprocated.  In his stays at Roosevelt Hospital on more than one occasion something as close to a row as one would expect in such a place developed over the question as to who should serve him.  All agreed he was a model patient and good in obeying orders, except that he had all of a strong man's opposition to being "waited on." In his sickest hours he always insisted on trying to help himself.

One dour member of Roosevelt's staff had rather an original way of explaining the Colonel's agility in obeying "orders."

"The folks here do not give him orders," said this surgeon.  "They think they do.  He's just come in, captivated everybody in the place, and conies pretty near to running things.  It's what I suspect he does everywhere.  Personally I’ll be glad when he gets out.  Why? Because the nurses and some of the fool doctors here can then think of something beside Colonel Roosevelt."

Topic 46
WOMAN IN OFFICE

WHY not?" Colonel Roosevelt asked this question one day when a visitor jokingly remarked that in the event of his returning to the White House, he might have a woman private secretary.  The woman in question was Miss Josephine M.  Strieker, who became attached to his staff in the Bull Moose days and was his secretary to the end.

"Miss Strieker is a perfectly good secretary," he went on.  "She is competent, faithful, loyal.  If she is to be criticized at all, it is because she tries to do too much herself.  Should I by any chance return to the White House, I should be glad to have a secretary of her attainments.  Some of the politicians might not like it, it might be somewhat embarrassing to them, and it would be a precedent, but I am sure that if I could stand it, and she could stand the politicians, we are about the only persons who would have to be considered.

"Come to think of it, is there any good or valid reason why women should not have many places we are apt to consider exclusive male property? To be sure, Jeannette Rankin has shown a lack of some things to be desired in a member of Congress, but have all the male members been so good? I think not.  Now that women are getting the ballot, we must be prepared to see them in many offices hitherto barred to them.  Not a few of the most successful men I have known in public life owe their success very largely to the political sense of their wives.  Take Blank.  He is a nice fellow, and I like him, but I would give more for the opinion of his wife on a matter of practical politics than I would for his.  It comes natural to her — she is her father's daughter.  Without her, I doubt very much if her husband would have gone as far as he has.  With her, he may go farther.

"I mention this couple because you know all about them.  Another man I won't name had a reputation for real conservatism.  He was as conservative as Senator Allison.  You remember that Allison sheep story — where some one remarked that a flock seemed to be closely sheared, and he is said to have answered, ' It appears so from this side.' The man I have in mind was even more conservative at times.  He always asked time to think a thing over.  It did not take me long to discover that if the thing was of any earthly consequence, he wished time to talk it over with his maiden sister — a lady of the New England schoolma'am type.

"I am not sure that any of us would care to see women in all public tasks — I can think of some that I would dislike seeing any woman in — but any place she can fill as well as the average man she is entitled to.  Therefore, to revert, I see no reason why, if I were again in the White House, Miss Strieker would not be a very capable successor to the Honorable Joseph Patrick Tumulty."

When he was about to leave the hospital after the serious operation in February, 1918, I spoke of the good work done by Miss Strieker while he was so ill.

"Mrs.  Roosevelt may tell you of this," I added, "but there are lots of things she has not known about, I imagine."

"Miss Strieker is a trump — a splendid woman and an excellent secretary.  Her handling of various matters that have arisen since I came here and when she had to depend on her own judgment has been splendid — she has been very tactful in some very delicate matters.  I know that some of my friends do not exactly swear by her — they may swear at her behind her back — but that can make no difference with me.

"They dislike her because she is too faithful to me to please them.  Any good secretary comes in for that sort of thing.  Take Loeb.  He was devoted to me and never considered himself.  He was thoroughly disliked by many persons just because he did as I told him.  He made good as secretary just as he made good as collector (of the port of New York) and as he is making good in business.

"Loeb is going to be a very wealthy man some one of these days, and he deserves to be, for he is honest and a hard worker.

"You do not know Loeb very well? I want you to get acquainted with him — you'll like him, and you'll find you have many things in common.  He's a capital fellow."

Topic 47
THE NEW YORK FIGHT OF 1918

HAD Colonel Roosevelt so chosen, he would have ended his days in the Executive Mansion in Albany.  In the fall of 1918 leaders of a powerful faction in the party used every possible argument and influence to induce him to stand against Charles S.  Whitman for the Republican nomination.

They believed, and privately the Whitman leaders agreed with them, that they could stampede the convention for "T.  R." if he would only say the word.  On the other hand, Whitman's lieutenants used every bit of influence they could command to induce him to declare for their man.  They were as unsuccessful as the anti-Whitmanites.

" I shall support whoever is nominated," was the best either side could get from him.

"I will not," he declared to me as to others, "be used by Whitman, and I will not allow Whitman's foes to use me as a club on him or to drag any of their chestnuts out of the fire.  I shall not interfere in the New York fight or be a candidate for Governor.

" It is a fight within the party for the members of the party to settle between themselves.  They and the party will be the better off for settling it.  I do not know that I could settle it, but if I did, it would leave soreness and ill feeling and put me in a position I will not take — that of a State boss.

"I have no delusions about Whitman.  Neither have I any delusions as to Mr.  Barnes and some others who are fighting him.  There is no call for me to interfere, and I shall not interfere.

"Believe me, I realize that it is not love for Roosevelt that prompts Whitman's party to praise me.  I am too old a bird to be deceived on this point.  They talk of me for Governor, not because they want me, but because they want to kill off Whitman.

"They won't use me as a blackjack."

The effort to induce Colonel Roosevelt to run for Governor was not the only attempt made to use him in New York politics in the last years of his life.  An earlier move was in the form of a bill making him food controller of the State.  The day this move became public, Colonel Roosevelt called me to his office to say he would not for a moment consider it.

"I shall," said he, "have something to say later in the day.  Be at the Union League at five.  If you wish, bring one or two of the boys along."

The late N.  A.  Jennings was the only man of those close to the Colonel I could reach.  When we arrived he had a statement ready.

"I have," said he, "tried to be fair to Whitman by emphasizing the fact that the Governor should be free to make appointments.  I have been Governor and I know what that means.

"Furthermore, I am not the man for the place.  I know my limitations.  And if I were, I would not allow myself to be switched on to a side track at this time.  The main thing is to get troops over, to speed up the work, to wake up the country.  Food is important, it is extremely important, but there are men who can do this work better than I can and I am going to let some one of them do it.

" I am very much out of patience with those cheerful souls who keep crying, 'Food will win the war.' The war will be won by the men with guns in their hands.

"I have said all this, though not in those words, in this statement.  I don't believe you can read my writing, so I'll read it to you.

"You will see," he declared, as he finished reading, "that the real value of this move is that it gives me the opportunity to once more hammer on the need of full, absolute, and complete preparedness."

Topic 48
HOME FOLK

THERE are many things in Oyster Bay that I would like to see changed, but I cannot well do anything.  If I interfered, many would not like it.  You see there are some persons in this world who resent being reformed, even by an ex-President of the United States."

Colonel Roosevelt was talking of his relations with the people of Oyster Bay.

These relations were unique and not readily understood by the visitor, who often was surprised to hear a resident speak unkindly of the town's leading citizen.  At bottom all liked the Colonel and appreciated what he had done for the town; though many resented the thought that Oyster Bay's sole reason for existence was the need of some place where news despatches having to do with Colonel Roosevelt might be dated.

The entire truth, I think, is that Roosevelt was not really understood by the town folks.  Some resented the fact that only a few of their number ever were asked to Sagamore Hill, where Roosevelt's life, while simple, was essentially that of the Lord of the Manor.  They felt that it was in many ways a world apart, and that the great and important who visited Sagamore Hill were not their kind.

On the other hand, they would have very strongly resented any change.  Were they made welcome at any and all times, they would have felt that "T.  R.," as they invariably called him, would be patronizing them.  It was this the Colonel had in mind when he said he was careful not to interfere in town affairs.

"One trouble here," he said, discussing Oyster Bay and his life there, "is that when there is something worth while here you do not report it.  Your papers would not print it if you did, I suppose.  It would not be news.

"Take the Christmas exercises at the Cove School.  For over thirty years I have been the Santa Claus there.  It began when — no, before — my children started to school.  Mrs.  Roosevelt for years bought the presents after consultation with the teachers, and learning just what each child wished or should have.  I remember she always used to buy at Bloomingdale's because she could get the best value for the money.  Of late years she has not been able to do the shopping and the teachers have done that work.

"The celebration is a movable feast, usually fixed after considerable discussion with the teachers.  I have been there whenever I could.  I always have tried to spend Christmas here at home.  Sometimes when I was President I could not come, but I was here when I could.  It is the usual school celebration — carols, 'curfew shall not ring tonight,' addresses by myself and other leading citizens — you know what I mean.  And of course I have a word for everybody.  The occasion would be entirely lost if the little red heads of one family were not appropriately recognized.

"It's a good school and democratic.  There is one negro family here that sends its children there.  Ted at one time shared a desk with one of them.  If that were only known in the South, it would damn me forever.  But that would not be news, that celebration."

The one person in Oyster Bay who, above all others, voiced his disapproval of the Colonel was Disbrow, the local editor.  His was a Democratic sheet (it still is, I believe), and Disbrow seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to speak as an individual as strongly as he did when he used the editorial "we." He particularly resented the fact that practically every news item from Oyster Bay in the New York papers referred in some way to the Colonel or his family — a state of affairs he considered most unjust.

How to change things he and others who felt as he did did not know until after Judge Hughes had been favored over the Colonel by the Republican Convention.  Then it occurred to Disbrow and others that a big Independence Day celebration, with a parade, a firemen's muster, and other trimmings, would for once, at least, result in something other than Roosevelt matter being printed as coming from the Bay.

"This man up on the hill is all through," said Disbrow.  "The King is dead.  We'll have a celebration that will show folks there's something to Oyster Bay but Roosevelt."

Frederic R.  Coudert was selected as orator of the day, and everything arranged, even to having the Colonel sit in the grandstand, as a sort of Exhibit A.  The Colonel, who had an inkling of the motive back of the celebration, agreed to attend on the distinct understanding that he was not to be asked to speak by the committee or the chairman.

When the day came around, a really creditable parade was held, the town was prettily decorated, and half of Long Island was on hand when Mr.  Coudert began to speak.  So was a detail of blue jackets from a warship, stationed in the Bay for the occasion, a battery of moving picture men, and the usual group of New York reporters.  Mr.  Coudert, always a good speaker, was at his best, and everything from Disbrow's standpoint was lovely until he was about to conclude.

"However," he said, "I am sure you have heard enough from me.  There's another here you’d prefer to hear from, and as I 'm bound by no gentleman's agreement, I present to you your fellow townsman, Colonel Roosevelt."

Instantly, the picture changed.  The "corpus delictu" that was came to life with a crashing, patriotic speech, winding up by inviting the blue jackets and their officers to partake of his hospitality at Sagamore Hill, and departed.  Next morning Oyster Bay was on the front pages of half the papers of the country, with Mr.  Hughes receiving scant room inside.  Mr.  Coudert was mentioned as having "also spoke," and the parade was given notice in passing.

"Huh," said Maury Townsend, last of the oldest families, next day when asked what he thought of the denouement.  "What did they expect? First thing any one about here knows some people we know will be scheming to keep squirrels on the ground."

Topic 49
THE VALUE OF MASONRY

COLONEL ROOSEVELT was a Mason, and in a quiet way an enthusiastic one.  He was a frequent attendant at Matinecock Lodge in Oyster Bay in which he was raised, and when in foreign parts, particularly in out-of-the-way places, made it a rule, when possible, to visit the local lodges.  He was as thorough in his Masonry as he was in other things, as witness Harry Russell, well known in the craft, who assisted in his initiation.

"When," says Russell, "the Colonel came up for examination he was letter perfect — hanged if he did not have the work better than his conductor, for he corrected him in an error."

Talking of Oyster Bay affairs at his home one afternoon the Colonel touched on this phase of his activities.

"As you know," he said, turning to me, "I am a member of the local lodge of Masons.  You also know, brother, I violate no secret when I say that one of the greatest values in Masonry is that it affords an opportunity for men in all walks of life to meet on common ground, where for the time all men are equal and have one common interest.

"For example, when I was President, the master was Worshipful Brother Doughty, gardener on the estate of one of my neighbors, and a most excellent public spirited citizen, with whom I liked to maintain contact.  Clearly I could not call upon him when I came home.  It would have embarrassed him.  Neither could he, without embarrassment, call on me.  In the lodge it was different.  He was over me, though I was President, and it was good for him and good for me.

" I go to the lodge, and even the folks who do not belong to or believe in the order, rather like it that I should go.  They seem to feel it's part of the eternal fitness of things.  Whenever I return from one of my journeys I always go there to tell of the lodges I have visited, in Nairobi in Africa, in Trinidad, or the quaint little lodge I found away up on the Ascunsion River.  They sort of feel I am their representative to these lodges, and they like it.  There's a real community of interest.

"It's the same way with Mrs.  Roosevelt.  She is an Episcopalian, you know, and belongs to a guild named after a saint — Saint Hilda, I believe.  She frequently has the members here.  She had them at the White House on several occasions.  There's no social rank in the guild, no distinction — the brake man's wife or the butcher's wife, the equal of her neighbor, and all are comfortable.  You see, they have a common interest.

"That is the way to make people work together.  Get them on common ground, get them together through some interest in common.  There social lines fade out and you get results."

Topic 50
HITTING THE BACK TRAIL

I HAVE no desire to return to the scenes of my ranching days.  It's all changed — and I don't want to see it."

I had asked the Colonel if he ever longed to retrace his steps through the ranch country he had known as a young man.

"It is a mistake, I think, for one to hit the back trail after many years have passed.  One finds things changed, the old picture is destroyed, the romance gone.  I was back in the old country once.  I saw only a little of it, but that was enough.  Why there was a store down where we had the clash with the Indians!
"The place is all settled now.  The folks there are largely of foreign stock, good people and good citizens, who lead most matter-of-fact lives.  It is best that it should be so, but I don't wish to see the place again.  I’d rather try and remember it as it was.

" Change, of course, is the rule of all new countries.  I imagine that thirty or forty years from now the jungle I hunted over in Africa may be quite settled and as safe as Upper Harlem.  This will not be true of the Amazon.  A great many years must elapse before that country is little more than a poorly charted wilderness.  It is not attractive to the white man."Africa, on the other hand, is.  For that reason, it will be comparatively developed when the Amazon country is still raw.

"I shall revisit neither place.  I have done my bit.  Those who come after me must do theirs.  Anyway, I've no desire to hit the back trail.  As a rule, it's not profitable."

Topic 51
ON HEREDITY

ONCE, when Colonel Roosevelt declared that Richard Derby (now Colonel), who married his youngest daughter, Ethel, was "a fine fellow" of whom he was "as proud as I am of my blood sons," I remarked that Dr.  Derby came from a splendid family — the Derbys of old Salem, in Massachusetts.

"Yes, I know," he replied; "it is as you say, a splendid family.  I do not care what any man says, and I'm no ancestor worshipper either, blood will tell in a man, a horse, or a dog.  In either case you will have culls at times and throw backs, but in the long run and on the average you will find the blooded animal wins.

"Take our immigrant stock.  You will find, I am sure, if you could go back into the history of the immigrant that rises above his fellows, that back of him there was some superior stock; that a father, grandfather, or some remote ancestor was eminent above his fellows in the home land, wherever that might have been.

" It is so with our American negroes.  Take my boy, Charlie Lee, for example.  Charlie came to me from Captain Fitzhugh Lee, whose boy he had been.  Charlie is a first class citizen, careful, industrious, cleanly, thrifty — a better man than the average run of whites.  Charlie's father was General Robert E.  Lee's body servant; Charlie takes his name from the Lee family.  The father was a superior negro.  Doubtless if we could go back, we'd find that his father's father, and beyond, were well above the average of slaves.

" Charlie inherits his good points from his parents, from those people I Ve been talking about.  He is as loyal as a bulldog, perfectly attached to the family and devoted to the children.  If it was the life of any one of them or Charlie's, Charlie would not hesitate one second.  If he were lucky enough to escape himself, he would not think he had done anything out of the ordinary, and he would probably resent being told that he had."

Charlie had an equally high opinion of his adored Colonel.

"Colonel Roosevelt has been splendid to me," he said one day.  "He's more like a father to us all than an employer.  You just be up at the house if one of those Irish girls is sick! The Colonel and Mrs.  Roosevelt are just as worried as though she was one of the children and she would n't get any better care if she was one of the children.

"But," laughed Charlie at the conclusion of this — for him — very long speech, "what's the use of talking? Quality folks are quality folks wherever you find them."

The Colonel grinned when I one day repeated Charlie's speech to him.

"It's about what you should expect of Charlie," said he.  " If he were to leave me for any reason, you would find him looking about for some family he felt he could with honor attach himself to and he’d serve it as loyally and as proudly as he now serves mine.  Mere money would not get him if what he terms ' quality' were not there.  And if I make myself clear, Charlie would honor any family he might go with.  If I did not know anything else about it, the fact that Charlie had put his O.K.  on it would tell me its members were worth while people.

"But Charlie won't go.  He'll stay with Mrs.  Roosevelt and me as long as we live, and then, in all probability, go with one of the children.  It will be one of those things everybody will take for granted — Charlie's going with Ted or Ethel or one of the others."

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."

Topic 53
"WELL MEANING FOOLS"

IF they ever get Mr.  Wilson out here, I hope they'll bar that trick.  It's pretty, but it affords the best cover for evil minded persons I have ever seen.  A man with a bomb could not ask a better opportunity."
Colonel Roosevelt was referring to a feature of his reception in Springfield, Ohio, that, pretty as any picture, he did not exactly like.  It was a shower of peonies aimed at the stage as he made his appearance.

Near Springfield is a famous peony nursery.  From it bulbs are shipped all over the world.  For the blooms of its forty thousand plants there is a rather limited market, so once a year there is "peony day" when the flowers are sold about the streets for the benefit of the Red Cross or some other charity.  On the occasion of the Colonel's visit there was a "war chest" drive on, so the blooms were given away, and some one conceived the idea of giving him "a shower" when he reached the auditorium.

This building was filled to capacity when he arrived.  Each of the three thousand or more who had jammed their way in had at least one peony blossom; most of them had several.  As he appeared emerging from the wings, the audience arose and began hurling the great, luscious blooms at the stage.  For a few minutes the air was full of them, the hall looking for all the world as though an army had taken to hurling snowballs.  While it lasted, Colonel Roosevelt held his place in the entrance.  From my seat I could see his jaw set, and his head half shake.  It was clear he did not exactly approve of the demonstration.

"Wasn't that flower thing in the hall a fool affair?" he asked that evening.

I agreed that it was, adding that it was very pretty and that those responsible meant well.

"Exactly," said he.  "They meant well.  But I have found that one of the real dangers of life are people who mean well.  You never can tell what they will do.  You can tell, or at least be on guard against those who do not mean well.  Some of the greatest embarrassments of my life have been caused by people with the best of intentions that’did not know it was loaded.'

"I am not afraid of the crook who means evil.  I can usually take care of him or guard against him.  But the well meaning fool — no man can guard against him or his embarrassments."
 
Topic 54
ON COLLEGE LIFE

THE two classes of college boys who get the least out of college life are those who have no money and those who have too much.  Neither poverty nor great riches are desirable for the boy in college."

Colonel Roosevelt had asked my plans for my boy, and I had told him I meant to send him to Harvard "if I had the necessary funds."

" It does not," said he, " require very much money to send a boy through Harvard or for that matter Yale or any of the big schools.  The fact is that the boy who has too much money in college is just as badly off as the poor fellow who has none.  I have every sympathy with the boy who works his way through college, but I realize that the poor fellow who has to divide his time between work, classroom, and study does not begin to get all a man should get out of college.  He does not get the real spirit of the university, and he may come out with a mass of undigested knowledge, worn physically and mentally and a narrow man.  He'd have done as well in many cases working at some trade and devoting his spare time to a public library.

"On the other hand, the boy who has unlimited money has unlimited opportunities to spend it, to get into trouble and acquire habits that will be a handicap in later life.  With the aid of tutors he gets his degree, and leaves college just as the extremely poor boy without having gotten the real benefit of the college.  Both have been in but not of the college.

"Unlike either of these, the boy of moderate means, enough to permit him to take a real part in all college activities, but not enough to permit or induce extravagance, gets about everything there is to be had.  They are the men who really benefit by college.

"It does not hurt a boy to have to do some work — some of the best men I have known have had to do some work while in college —; but the fellow who has all work and no time for the lighter activities is unfortunate.  He would do better to delay his entrance until he could accumulate enough funds to make his stay in the school less of a constant drill.

"That, I know, is not quite so romantic, but it is eminently more practical.

"However, one can never tell how a university man will turn out or what a university will turn out.  Just now the two most eminent of the alumni of my college are Boies Penrose and Bill Barnes."

Topic 55
ON PROHIBITION

COLONEL ROOSEVELT was not of those who favored the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, importation, or sale of intoxicating liquors.  To his mind prohibition was certain to cause unrest and dissatisfaction; he doubted the fairness of removing the saloon without providing something to take its place in the life of the tenement dwellers; and he was inclined to think the liquor question was settling itself.

"You and I can readily recall the time," he said to me one day, "when it was not bad form for sub stantial men of affairs, for lawyers, doctors — professional men generally — to drink in the middle of the day.  It is good form no longer, and it's not now done.  It is not so long ago that practically every man in politics drank more or less, when hard drinking, if not the rule, was not the exception.  Now the hard drinker, if he exists at all among the higher grade, is a survival of what you might call another day.

"Take Tammany.  No one holds that up as an organization of model men, yet I am sure that were you to make a canvass of its district leaders, you would find pretty close to a majority if not an actual majority are teetotalers.  Tammany no longer sends men with ability, and a weakness for liquor, to Albany.  It may and it probably will send another of Tom Grady's ability, but it will not send one who drinks as hard.

"This, you may rest assured, is not a matter of morals.  It is, however, a matter of efficiency.  Tammany wants results and it is sufficiently abreast of the times to know that drink and efficiency do not go hand in hand in these days of card indexes and adding machines.

" It is the same in your profession.  Not long ago most of the boys were fairly competent drinking men; some I knew were rated as extra competent by admiring, perhaps envious, colleagues.  Now the drinking man, at least the man who drinks enough to show the effects, is rare.  The reason: your editors won't stand for it.  As Jack Slaght put it the other day — I think it was Jack — a reporter in the old days was expected to have 'a birthday' about so often and nothing was thought of it.  Now, as Slaght puts it, he is allowed but two.  The first time, still quoting your friend Slaght, who at times is inclined to use plain language, he gets hell; the next time he gets fired.  That is so, is it not?"

I assured him that Slaght was substantially correct.

"It's not a matter of morals there, though" (with a laugh).  " I will admit you boys do not lack morals.  As with Tammany, it is a question of getting results, exactly as it is with the doctor, the lawyer, and the judge,

"Drinking declined once it became an economic question, or at least as soon as it was recognized as an economic factor.  It then began to be unfashionable— at least to over drink — and the man who never drank at all ceased to be unusual in any trade or calling.

" I am, however, sorry that they are pressing prohibition so hard at this time.  It is, I think, all right, desirable, in fact, to limit or perhaps prohibit the so called hard liquors, but it is a mistake, I think, to stop or try to stop the use of beers and the lighter wines.

"If this thing goes through, where does the social side of life come in? We both know that a’dry' dinner is apt to be a sad sort of affair.  It will make dining a lost art.

"Likewise, I do not know how the working classes will take to the change.  You and I have no need of the saloon.  We have other places to go.  But you and I know that the saloon fits into a very definite place in the life of the tenement dweller.  I do not know what he will do without it; what substitutes the reformers think they can give him for it.  I do not believe they have thought of that, or that they care much.

" Frankly, I do not know what will be the outcome.  Prohibition, if it comes, will cause ill feeling and unrest — it will be a disturbing factor — but I do not look for anything really serious, for after all is said and done, the fact remains that the American workman is a law abiding individual.

"When it comes, prohibition may or may not be permanent.  You may, however, be sure of one thing — it will be extremely difficult to repeal, once it becomes part of the Constitution."

Responsibility for prohibition Colonel Roosevelt placed squarely upon the shoulders of the liquor dealers good and bad.

"Some liquor dealers I have known," said he, "were good, well meaning citizens, who kept decent places.  Take the Oakeses, father and son, who own the Oyster Bay Inn.  I should be very sorry to see them lose their license.  Theirs is a clean, respectable place.  Again, there is John Brosnan's place in New York.  No one ever heard a complaint against John.  His place has been no more offensive than if he sold dry goods.

"But the John Brosnans are responsible for the plight they now find themselves in, because they have stood neutral when they did not fight to save men who ran dives.  Had the Brosnans and Oakeses and men of their stamp lined up with decent citizens in closing up dives, they would have served the community and themselves.  However, they did not, and the situation is as it is.
" I shall take no part in the contest one way or the other.  It must be settled without me.  I shall not allow it or anything else to swerve me from the work we're now in."

The "work we're now in" was the effort to speed up the war by arousing the American people to the necessity of winning a "peace with victory."

Topic 56
PERSHING AND WOOD

ONE thing which annoyed Colonel Roosevelt was the public's persistence in believing that it was to him that General Leonard Wood owed his big jump in the army; in a word, to its confounding the case of Wood with that of Pershing.

"The man they are thinking of," he used to say, "is Pershing.  It was he I jumped over the heads of several hundred other army officers.  I’d do it again, by thunder, if the same occasion arose! Wood got his big jump from McKinley, and all I ever gave him were the promotions due him in the usual course of seniority.  I've tried a hundred times to straighten this out in the public mind, but I don't suppose I'll ever succeed.  The public seems to wish to believe this myth.

"President McKinley gave Wood his big jump in the regular establishment, after he took him out of the Rough Riders.  I gave Pershing his big jump long after I had succeeded Mr.  McKinley in the White House.

"It came about in this way: Pershing was doing brilliant work in the Philippines.  All the official reports showed him a man of energy and initiative, who could be depended upon to do what he was sent to do, and about whom you did not have to worry.  The unofficial reports that came back squared with all this.  Both left no room for doubt as to the calibre and quality of the man.

"Now about this time the line of promotion in the army became clogged.  It needed new colonels and lieutenant colonels, but the law would not permit the appointment of men immediately below these ranks that were of the quality needed.  Congress would not change the law.

"I had, however, the right to appoint brigadier generals.  I made Pershing one.  Therefore, you might say that Congress, by refusing me the right to make him a colonel or lieutenant colonel, forced me to elevate him even higher.

"Pershing at this time had one handicap.  It was in the person of his esteemed father-in-law, Senator Warren of Wyoming, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs.  To advance Pershing above his elders meant an invitation to charges of favoritism, or, as the army and navy sometimes put it,' the three p's — politics, petticoats, and a pull.' Not to advance him for this reason would have been cowardly and unfair.  There was nothing for me to do but name him and let the heathen rage.

"After I had done so, Warren came to me and thanked me.  "I said to him: 'Senator, I am very fond of you, but this appointment has not been made on your account.  You owe me no thanks for it.  I am promoting Captain Pershing, not because he is your son-in-law, but in spite of the row that relationship will stir up.  You don't owe me a thing on account of it.'

"Warren did not seem to like this, but it was the truth and there was no reason why it should be sugar coated for him.  However" (this with a laugh), "he did not oppose the appointment.

"Time has proven that I was right.  Mr.  Wilson has proved it by his selection of Pershing, first for Mexico, and now to command the armies in France.  Sims, of the navy, another man I was accused of favoring, Mr.  Wilson has also chosen for important work, fairly good proof that my judgment of these men when they were juniors was sound."

"But he has not approved of Wood," I suggested.

"No, he has not.  He has used Wood very badly and very unfairly.  I might say he has also been very foolish in the way he has handled Wood.  If he wanted to side track him, he could have done it by sending him to Hawaii or the Philippines and leaving him there.  But he did not have the courage to do this; he adopted halfway measures, and as a result, Wood has been like a sore thumb to him — always in the way, and doing things so well that the public won't allow Mr.  Wilson to forget him.

"Wood is a good soldier, and a splendid organizer.  So is Pershing.  Pershing, in addition, is something of a courtier.  Wood is not.  Wood has been plain and outspoken and he's suffered for it.

"Wood is a big man who can look on a problem from every angle.  He makes few mistakes, but he's big enough, when he makes one, to admit the error, and he always has patience with the other fellow's opinion.

" I am very fond of Wood, and I know he is of me, but in my years in the Presidency, Wood never took any advantage of our intimacy or in the slightest degree presumed on our friendship.  If anything, he leaned backward in this respect."
 
Topic 57
FONDNESS FOR THE KHAKI LAD

JACK, I understand some of Pershing's wounded are here.  I must see them."

Wherever there were men from overseas — and in the early days of the war these were almost invariably wounded or gassed — Colonel Roosevelt wanted to meet them.  If they were on hand when he arrived, so much the better.  If they were not, he would ask the local committee where they were to be seen.

On trains and in other public places he would always stop to greet them, and ask of their experiences, their commands, and how they were getting along.  They were welcome, too, at Sagamore Hill.  After the establishment of the great camps on Long Island he was at home to the "rookies" on Saturdays, and after a while a reception for them was a fixed feast each week.  For them there would be refreshments, he had something to say to each of them, and glad to show all the famous "trophy room."

Bluejackets, too, were as welcome as the men of the other arm of the service.  The marvel of those meetings was the number of mutual acquaintances the Colonel and soldiers and sailors would discover.

"Colonel," a lad would say, "I am from Blank.  John Smith there says to remember him to you."
"That's splendid! Tell him I am very glad to hear from him.  How did he ever come out with that mine of his?"

Or it might be a request to be remembered to the village doctor or judge.  He knew somebody in nearly every place they would mention.

In Detroit a veteran boatswain, recalled from retirement to assist in recruiting, hailed the Colonel.

"I'm mighty glad to see you again," exclaimed T.  R.  " Let me see, the last time I saw you, you were on top of a turret on a ship in Italian waters — you and two others.  I'll have your name in a moment — is n't it Johnson?"

"Yes, sir," said the proud sailor, swelling his chest a bit, " I was a bosun then."

Johnson, by the way, was a navy character, known in the seven seas as "Steamboat" Johnson.

"Steamboat Johnson — that bosun — is tickled to death at your remembering him," I said to the Colonel afterward.

''That's it, 'Steamboat,' I knew he had some such outlandish moniker, as they might say in our beloved New York.  That helped me recall him.  I remember an officer explaining that he had amazing skill in handling steam launches; could do as much with one as most good seamen could with a fair-sized tug.  He's a good sample of the old time navy man.  I believe he's more than half glad of this war

—	it keeps him in the service."

Once I spoke of the Saturday receptions at Sagamore Hill as a nice thing.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered.  " I rather believe the boys enjoy it.  I know I do.  I 'm glad to have them come, and the obligation is all mine.  If I can extend them any little courtesy I am glad to do it.  It is no more than I would thank another man for doing for my boys.  Mrs.  Roosevelt feels about it just as I do — she's glad to have them come.

"They won't let me go to war, but they cannot prevent my admiring those who are privileged to go that, and minding the grandchildren."

The grandchildren frequently took part in these festivities.  Once little "Dick" Derby, baby son of the Colonel's younger daughter, Ethel, came out, and espying a flag proceeded to salute the colors in true man-of-wars man style.  A group of blue jackets present applauded.

"We start them young out here," said the delighted Colonel.

It was on this occasion that the Colonel, showing his visitors through the " trophy room," called attention to an enormous pair of elephant tusks, said to be the largest in the world.

"Those," said he, "were presented to me by the one man in the world fully satisfied with his ancestry."
"Might I ask, sir," said a bluejacket, "who he might be?"

"King Menelek of Abyssinia.  You know he is said to have descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba."

The Colonel was in an especially jovial mood this particular afternoon, venturing to make what he seldom did — a pun — in showing a book Kaiser Wilhelm, in happier days, had sent him.

"You see, gentlemen," said the Colonel, pointing to a grammatical error in the inscription, "the Kaiser did not know his English very well even then."

Wilhelm had used "to" where he should have spelled it "too."

Topic 58
ON BEING SIXTY

COLONEL," I asked on the eve of his last birthday, "how does it seem to be sixty—you know you will be sixty on Sunday?"

" I do not know that it makes a bit of difference," he replied.  "At any rate, I had not noticed any, or that I feel any different than when I was fifty-nine or fifty-seven."

"You are looking well," I said.  "I think I will emphasize that in my story of Sunday as sort of an answer to those who are spreading the report that you are a decrepit old man."

"Do so, by all means," he said.  "It might be of interest to say that this week I have been pulling a boat — Mrs.  Roosevelt and I had a little picnic down at Lloyd's Neck one day this week.  My boat is rather heavy and it is a good pull, but I did not notice that it affected me any.

"A man should not be old at sixty if he takes reasonable care of himself.  I would be all right if it were not that I have some reminders yet of that old Brazilian fever.  It has come back at times in a very disagreeable sort of way.  Aside from that I am all right.  A man of sixty, though, should be in a position where he can take things easy — be in a position where he can do those things he may like to do and not be compelled to do a lot of other things that younger men can do as well.

"If a man has done his duty, he will have his share of work done at that age, and ordinarily be in a position to retire.  If he has not done his duty he may not be called upon to decide the question, for my experience has been that the man who does not do his work is the kind who abuses his health, and if alive, is not much good at sixty, or, for that matter, years before.

"One cannot, however, lay down any general rule on that sort of thing.  Some men do their best work at sixty or even later.  It depends on the man and on circumstances that surround him or that may arise after he has thought his best work was behind him.

"How old are you?" he suddenly asked.

I told him.

"You've got a long way ahead of you yet.  You'll be in harness many years yet and won't want to think of retiring before you are sixty.  Then you will probably insist on doing some work.  You won't be so foolish as to wish to quit altogether even at what now seems to you to be a pretty good age for a newspaper man.  The man who has been active all of his life who, on a given date, arbitrarily shuts down, is inviting trouble for himself.  By shutting down, he invites a breakdown.

"Therefore the wise retains an interest in some worth while things as long as he is able to."

Topic 59
THE COLONEL AND THE TREATY

THIS country must keep its absolute economic independence and raise or lower economic barriers as its interests demand, for we have to look out for the interests of our own workingman.

"We must insist on the preservation of the Monroe Doctrine; we must keep the right to close the Panama Canal to our enemies in war time; and we must not undertake to interfere in European, Asiatic, or African matters with which we ought to have properly no concern."

That was Colonel Roosevelt's position as to what the peace treaty should in part contain as expressed by him after Mr.  Wilson had announced his intention of going to Paris, but before he sailed.  In this talk he covered the then nebulous field of treaty making, and, as my notes show, strongly indicated that he foresaw the complications that arose in the Senate when the finished document was presented to that body for action.  It was clear that he was not of those who approved of Mr.  Wilson's plan to take part in the Peace Conference and he was very much of the opinion that a definite statement of his position was due the American people from Mr.  Wilson.

He also made it clear that he was fearful the now almost forgotten "14 points" would be pressed to the disadvantage of our Allies.

"President Wilson," he said, "has not given the slightest explanation of what his views are or why he is going abroad.  He pleads for unity, but he himself is responsible for any division among the American people as regards the Peace Conference at this time.

"He has never permitted the American people to pass on his peace proposals, nor has he ever made these propositions clear and straightforward.

"As for the '14 points,' so far as the American people have expressed any opinion upon them, it was on November 5 when they rejected them.

"What Mr.  Wilson says of these' 14 points' is sheer nonsense.  He says the American army was fighting for them.  Why, there was not one American soldier in a thousand that ever heard of them! The American army was fighting to smash Germany.  The American people wanted Germany smashed.

"The Allies have never accepted the '14 points.' The United States has never accepted them.  Germany and Austria enthusiastically accepted them.  Here certain individuals including President Wilson, Mr.  Hearst, Mr.  Viereck, as I understand it, and a number of pro-Germans and pacifists and international Socialists have accepted them; but neither the American people nor the American Congress has accepted them.

"Mr.  Wilson himself has rejected at least one outright and has interpreted another in the directly opposite sense to its plain and obvious meaning.

"The simple truth is that some of the ' 14 points' are thoroughly mischievous under any interpretation, and that most of the others are so vague and ambiguous that it is nonsense to try to do anything with them until they have been defined and made definite.

"Inasmuch as Mr.  Wilson is going over, it is earnestly to be hoped that it is his business not to try to be an umpire between our Allies and our enemies, but act loyally as one of the Allies.  We have n't suffered anything like as much and we have not rendered as much service as the leading Allies.  It is the British navy and the French, British, and Italian armies that have done most to bring about the downfall of Germany and therefore the safety of the United States.  It is our business to stand by our Allies.

"The British Empire imperatively needs the greatest navy in the world and this we should instantly concede.  Our need for a great navy comes second to hers and we should have the second largest navy in the world.  Similarly France needs greater military strength than we do, but we should have our young men trained to arms on the general lines of the Swiss system.

"The phrase 'freedom of the seas' may mean anything or nothing.  If it is to be interpreted as Germany interprets it, it is thoroughly mischievous.  There must be no interpretation of the phrase that would prevent the English navy in the event of any future war from repeating the tremendous service it has rendered in this war.

"The British must, of course, keep the colonies they have captured."

Here the Colonel laid down his irreducible minimum of what the United States should insist upon printed above.

"As for Mr.  Wilson at the Peace Conference," he concluded, "it is his business to stand by France, England, and our other Allies and present with them a solid front to Germany."

Topic 60
ENGLAND AND THE REST OF THE WORLD

December 19, 1918

MR.  LEARY:
Miss Strieker called up this morning to say that Colonel Roosevelt would like you to call on him tomorrow at II o'clock at the Roosevelt Hospital, and bring P.  W.  Wilson with you.  He wants to talk over the article Mr.  Wilson has in this morning's Tribune.  If it can't be arranged for tomorrow morning, then Saturday morning will do.
K.  P.
Mr.  Wilson's telephone number is Bryant 1451.

THIS note was the prelude to one of the most important, as well as one of the last, talks I had with Colonel Roosevelt.  In it he made the flat assertion that it lay with the United States and England to preserve the peace of the world; that he could foresee no reason why there should not be a general arbitration treaty between the two countries, but that such a treaty could not with safety be made with Japan and perhaps not with Italy.

"I see no reason — there is no reason," said he, "why we should not have a general arbitration treaty with Great Britain.  I could not, would not, have said that five years ago, but I can now conceive of no question that may arise between the two countries that cannot in safety and honor be left to arbitration.  Working together they have the peace of the world in their hands.

" I would not favor, I would not approve of such a treaty with Japan.  It would be dangerous.  Such a treaty with Italy might conceivably be dangerous.  But in such a treaty with Great Britain there would be no danger to either party."

Colonel Roosevelt had two things in mind in sending for Mr.  Wilson — to show his appreciation of Wilson's Tribune article referred to in Miss Phelps's note, and to give him assistance in making America's position clear to his English readers.  The article referred to a meeting a few nights earlier of the socalled League of Small Nations to which Wilson had been bidden to speak.  He went there expecting it to be, as the name indicated, a meeting in the interest of small nations.  Instead, it was devoted mainly to demands for the independence of India and to general denunciation of all things English.  Wilson, a former M.P., and a veteran of the press gallery at Westminster, took up the challenge, when it came his turn to speak, with the declaration: "I am an Englishman." Despite hisses he had his say, and with characteristic British doggedness, thereafter pursued his country's assailants through the press.

Colonel Roosevelt had very little to say about this incident.  Instead he plunged, almost immediately Wilson was introduced and he had apologized for having to receive him in a hospital, into the question of President Wilson's mission abroad and the way matters were working out.

"As an American," said he, " I am glad and proud of the reception given Mr.  Wilson.  I know, you know, it is to the President of the United States these honors, these acclamations are given.  As an American I am naturally gratified.  But I very much fear that Mr.  Wilson does not appreciate the fact that these honors, this wonderful welcome, are extended to President Wilson and not to Wilson the individual.  There is danger in this to an egoist of the Wilson type.

"The greatest danger, however, is that the people of England, the people of Europe, will take Mr.  Wilson at his own appraisal, at the value he sets upon himself, and ignore the sentiment of the Republican leaders, the Republican Senate, in the matter of a league of nations.  They should realize that Mr.  Wilson may sell what he cannot deliver, may promise more than he can deliver.  They should not forget that in the recent election Mr.  Wilson, by demanding that the American people elect a Congress favorable to him and his views, demanded, in effect, a vote of confidence, and that the American people, by voting him a Republican House and a Republican Senate, gave him a vote of no confidence.

"The vote was a repudiation of Mr.  Wilson's desire to have a free hand, and should be, as it is, notice to the world, that there are other opinions and other persons to be considered — notice that any treaty Mr.  Wilson may make will be and must be subject to scrutiny and examination, and, therefore, should be made with due regard to that provision in our Constitution giving the Senate coordinate power in treaty making.

"A league of nations per se may be a very desirable thing.  It may be a very dangerous thing.  It may be an instrument that will do the very thing it is designed to prevent — cause war and talk of war.

" I see no reason — there is no reason — why we should not have a general arbitration treaty with Great Britain.  I could not, would not have said that five years ago, but I can now conceive of no question that may arise between the two countries that cannot in safety be left to arbitration.  Working together they have the peace of the world in their hands.

"I would not favor, I would not approve such a treaty with Japan.  It would be dangerous.  Such a treaty with Italy conceivably might be dangerous.  But in such a treaty between the United States and Great Britain there would be no danger to either party.

" We have a common language and common ideals.  Our laws have the same common roots.  There is no question on which we can well quarrel, for our interests are alike.  We have nothing England is likely to wish to take away from us, and I am sure we envy England possession of nothing she has.  Her navy, great though it may be, is not a menace to our commerce.  In the years before we officially recognized the fact that Germany was making war upon us, it stood between us and the consequences of a policy of unpreparedness.  Talk about freedom of the seas — the British Navy has kept them free.

"A general arbitration treaty with Japan is impossible.  Every one who has given the subject careful thought knows that.  At the moment we are at peace with Japan.  Tomorrow, the immigration question may bring us to the edge of war again.

"That question, immigration, is one that we cannot and must not undertake to arbitrate.  It would not arise with England.  Your immigration here is small.  It is furthermore a highly desirable immigration.  Japan's is not desirable and is not wanted.  Nor can there be arbitration on internal matters including the tariff which is an internal matter and must be so considered.  With Japan, however, the danger at all times is immigration, and allied questions.

"There is also objection to such a treaty with Italy.  It is conceivable — in fact possible — that the time is not far distant when the United States may wish to limit or restrict immigration from Italy.  I have the greatest respect for the Italian, but it is possible to get too much even of a good thing, and conceivable that the time will come when we will have all the undigested Italian immigration we may wish.  Then we will wish to close the door.  We could not and would not arbitrate that.

"Therefore, a general arbitration agreement is not possible or desirable.  An honest man will not make a contract he cannot keep.  We are not yet, thank God, converted to the German idea that contracts are scraps of paper.

"The only thing I can see that may make friction between the United States and Great Britain is the Irish question.  That, however, is an internal question that England sooner or later must settle for her own comfort and convenience if nothing else.  It is a matter that makes for trouble within the family — it is, as you know, a cause of annoyance and an issue of importance in Canada and Australia.  Its clearing up will be welcomed by the Dominions, and, I believe, by the people of England generally.  They wish to do justice by Ireland.  Eventually they will do so."

The Colonel had prefaced this talk by a word as to his condition.  He received us, seated in a great arm chair, with a dressing robe partly concealing, partly revealing, that, save for a coat, he was fully dressed.  His color was good, his voice strong, his eye clear.  The only indication other than his presence in a hospital that anything was wrong was a slight swelling in his right arm and hand.

"I'm here," he said, "mainly because I don't happen to have a town house, and it is not at all easy for the doctor who wishes to keep an eye on this inflammatory rheumatism of mine to run out to Oyster Bay.  They sort of like to have me here — at least they don't object to my presence, so I 'm here.  I'll leave in a few days now so as to be home for Christmas with the grandchildren."

Leaving the hospital, Mr.  Wilson, not exactly clear as to why Colonel Roosevelt had sent for him, asked what he should do.

"I appreciate that I have been honored by Mr.  Roosevelt," said he, "but I realize that he is far too busy a man to give up the large part of a morning to a visiting Englishman, merely for the sake of talking to him.  Yet he was not talking for publication; you know he stipulated that he was not being interviewed and must not be quoted.  He made it clear, however, that you know what he has in mind and that he relies on your having that thing done.  Now: what did he have in mind?"

"Two things," said I.  "First, he's a splendid fighter and admires courage in others.  In his sending for you on the strength of your melee with the League of Small Nations, one first class fighting man was extending the right hand of fellowship to a kindred spirit, and as a mark of that fellowship and his appreciation giving you information that almost any American reporter I know of would risk his right eye to get.  Second, and more important, Colonel Roosevelt recognizes the vast importance of getting the real situation in America, the real American sentiment, before the English people.  You are now in a position to state very clearly what the Republican attitude is and will be, for Colonel Roosevelt is today the head and the voice of the Republican Party and in all human probability, as matters now stand, will be the next President.

"This talk leaves you in a position to say authoritatively, and without fear of successful challenge, just where Roosevelt and those for whom he speaks do stand.  In any event, you cannot now go wrong on any despatch involving this feature of the situation.

"As you will soon be in London, it may be that you will wish to await your arrival there before writing anything.

"In any event, you are in a position to tell the folks at home just how things stand here.  If you write, you cannot, of course, quote Colonel Roosevelt.  You may, however, say what' friends of Colonel Roosevelt' say, or, 'persons in the confidence of Colonel Roosevelt say he feels or believes so and so.' That will be all right."

On the following day I saw the Colonel again for a few minutes and told him what I had told Wilson.

"Quite right," said he.  "If he does that, he will help his people by giving them a real view of the way matters stand here, and that will help us.  It is folly, almost criminal folly, to lead the people of Europe to expect the impossible.  The awakening will be painful and the after effects bad, if they are led to believe we are prepared to surrender our nationality.  We are nationalists, not internationalists, just as we are monogamists and not polygamists, and we love our country above all other countries.

"Do you think Wilson clearly understood me?"
I said I did.

" I 'm glad of that.  What these fool internationalists do not see is that there are things that cannot be arbitrated, and it's not wise or honest to agree to arbitrate where one knows non-arbitrable matters are likely to arise.  You've patiently sat through enough of my speeches to be reasonably familiar with my assertion that a man does not ask arbitration when a blackguard slaps his wife's face.  The Lord knows outsiders may think, after what has happened the last few years, that we are so gaited, but we are not.

" I might have told Wilson that I am not concerned about the Anglo Japanese alliance.  It is of very limited value to either nation, for it is an unnatural alliance.  The real alliance, the alliance worth while, is where the parties' interests are common interests, where they think along the same broad lines and their aspirations do not conflict.  Such an alliance need not be written, nor signed, rior sealed.  It will stand on its own bottom and by its inherent strength.  On the other hand, the written agreement, where these conditions do not attain, is never of lasting value.  Can you imagine the English people siding with Japan against us? Neither can I.  Nor can any other man that is sane and honest with himself and has any real knowledge of the English people.  Even Hearst would have difficulty in imagining such a thing were he only approximately honest with himself.

"What I am afraid of is that this man Wilson will arouse hopes that never can be realized, and that the United States will suffer from the resentment that must follow.  Then the very crowds that acclaim him now will rise up and damn him and us along with him, and we'll be left, as we were before we asserted our manhood and went into this war, the best hated people in Europe.

"Wilson is playing a dangerous game.  He's playing diplomacy with the most skilled diplomatists.  Just now he's got all the advantage.  But he is in the position of the tenderfoot with money playing poker with professional gamblers.  In the beginning he has the advantage of money, they of experience.  In the end they have the money and he some experience.  The difference is that in one case an individual is gambling with his own, while in this case Mr.  Wilson is playing with other folks' chips.  If my poker terms are bad, the other members of the Charley Thompson Finger Club will correct you.

"They will play with Mr.  Wilson.  They will give him a grand time, and he will, unless I am greatly mistaken, give them promises the American people will not endorse.  There will be delay and confusion and in the end the thing will have to be done right.

"It is, of course, possible that anything Mr.  Wilson agrees to may be ratified by the Senate.  But it will only make for trouble, bitter trouble later on, if promises are made that we cannot keep."

On the death of Colonel Roosevelt I cabled Mr.  Wilson in London advising him that in my opinion the time had come when he could tell the story of that Friday morning in Roosevelt Hospital.  I believe he made some reference to the matter, but did not go into it in detail or at any considerable length.

It is not good form for one newspaper man to ask another why he did or did not do a certain thing.  Therefore I have never asked my friend Wilson "why."

If, however, I were to guess, I would not hesitate to say the reason for the matter not being given in full to the people of England, and through them to all Europe, was that the then editor of the London News was and is of those who worship at the shrine of Woodrow Wilson and acclaim him as the long awaited Messiah.
 
Topic 61
MR.  WILSON'S "IDEALS"

IT is a mistake to speak of ' Mr.  Wilson's ideals' or of Mr.  Wilson as an idealist.  He is merely a selfish, dishonest politician."

Shortly before he died, while he was yet in Roosevelt Hospital under treatment for inflammatory rheumatism, Colonel Roosevelt so expressed himself in commenting upon news and editorial references to the President.  Just before he died, on the Friday before in fact, he sent a letter to Ogden Mills Reid, proprietor of the New York Tribune, protesting in much the language quoted above against an editorial reference in Mr.  Reid's paper to Mr.  Wilson's idealism.

The Colonel sent Mr.  Reid, of whom he was very fond, a half bantering sort of note describing himself as "A Constant Reader" who felt he must protest against misstatement of fact.  The letter was dictated — the Colonel could not then use the pen and therefore signed and initialled by Miss Josephine M.  Strieker to the end his secretary and most devoted follower.  Mailed in New York City, it did not reach Mr.  Reid until after the Colonel had died, and was, so to speak, a voice from the tomb.

"Mr.  Wilson never had an ideal in his life; he is merely a selfish politician," was an assertion often made by him.  "One of the difficulties in the present situation (the war and immediately thereafter) is that the man in the street does not readily awaken to this fact.  Nor do many of the politicians.  Mr.  Wilson as a politician is the master of most of them, only they do not know it.  They ascribe all of his success to luck.  They do not realize that much of this that they call luck is mere opportunism on his part.  In so far as a thing may serve his end, he is absolutely unscrupulous.

"A case in point is this cry on which he was re-elected :'He kept us out of war.' No one knew better than Mr.  Wilson that Germany was at war on us and that under his direction we were backing into war stern foremost.  It was a catchzcry, a cry calculated to attract the vote of the pacifists and the peace-at-any-price people.  With its honesty, Mr.  Wilson had no concern.  His only interest was in the way it might work, might advance his political fortunes.

"He was as honest in this, however, as in his 'strict accountability' notes.  As Bryan is reported to have told Dumba, these notes were mainly intended for home consumption and were not to be taken too seriously in Berlin or Vienna.  I honestly believe that Bryan gave that word to Dumba exactly as he is understood to have done and that he was entirely honest in his statement, however doubtful the propriety of his so doing may have been."

Colonel Roosevelt many times spoke with apprehension of the effect Mr.  Wilson's policy toward Germany would have on the rising generation.

"To revert back a bit," he once said, "you spoke of your boy being a hero worshipper.  All real boys, all worth while boys, are.  Do you know that one of the regrettable things about this Administration, these four years of nightmare, is the possible effect on the boys now growing up.  What inspiration is this man Wilson to any boy? What sort of a boy would he be hero to? What has he done, what can any man of his type do to inspire in any boy a love of country? What sort of a country would he leave a boy to be proud of and loyal to? That is one of the saddest things of the Administration.

"Another thing, contempt for the man has in a way led to contempt for the office.  Only the other day a gentleman spoke of hearing Wilson described in one of our best clubs in language rarely heard outside of a bar room.  It was a shock to him.  I was as thoroughly disliked while President as any man could be by certain elements that had a good reason for disliking me, but they did not hold me in contempt, and they did not hold my office in contempt."
 
Much as he disliked Mr.  Wilson, and he was frank in saying, " I despise the man and dislike his policies to the point of hate," as he did in describing the so called Gary dinner, Colonel Roosevelt never abused Mr.  Wilson as an individual or referred to his acts as an individual.  Gossip that was common property in Washington, and the clubs and newspaper offices of the country he never referred to, and those closest to him knew better than to bring them up.  The Colonel was no gossip and no friend of gossipers.  The nearest approach to reference to such matters, and one of the two instances I know of where he indicated that he had knowledge of this talk, was one day when he deprecated the manner in which political foes of Mr.  Wilson were fighting him.

"I am not at all interested in petty gossip," said he.  " It is a waste of time.  The way to fight this man is in the open, smashing him anywhere along the line that he leaves an opening.  It is the only way to fight him.  Were I a master of ridicule, which I am not, I would rejoice in the openings he gives.  Invective and abuse would be, as it nearly always is, a mistake.  That is particularly true now, for people will resent much of that directed against the President.  That was not always the case when I was in the White House" (this with a grin), " but it is very much the case now.
 
" In time Mr.  Wilson will be the best damned man in America since the days of James Buchanan and Andy Johnson, but that time is not now.  When that time comes, I shall be sorry for Mr.  Wilson.  He, however, will not be sorry for himself.  He will figuratively gather his cloak about him and from his great height look down upon and be sorrowfully contemptuous of those pigmies of mortals unable to see things as he sees and has seen them.  It will never occur to him that those who have ceased to acclaim him may by any chance be right and he be wrong."

Just once, and once only, did I hear the Colonel use anything like profanity toward Mr.  Wilson.  This was on the morning the famous Zimmermann note was made public.  The Colonel had not read the morning papers when N.  A.  Jennings, of the New York Herald, and I called on him in his suite in the Metropolitan Magazine offices.  Jennings had an early edition of the Evening Sun which he laid on the Colonel's desk.  The great black headlines caught his eye and he grabbed the paper to get the high points of the despatch.  In an instant he was on the other side of the desk, crushing the paper in his rage and uttering words similar to those employed by the Father of his Country at the Battle of Monmouth.

In another instant, he had recovered himself.
" Boys," said he with a half smile, " I'm sorry, but you have now heard some of the more or less — mostly less — justly famed Roosevelt profanity — some of the Roosevelt capacity to rage.  I don't apologize for it — this man is enough to make the saints, and the angels, yes, the apostles swear, and I would not blame them.  My God, why don't he do something? It is beyond me."

"Oh, give him time," drawled Jennings.  " In time he'll move.  Everything will work out all right."
"Work out all right, yes, it will work out all right; it will have to work out all right; the American people will make it work out all right; but, oh, the cost, in blood, in treasure, in suffering, this delay, this policy of writing notes and doing nothing must in the end involve!"

At this meeting the Colonel declined to speak for publication, adding that he might say something later.
"Just at this moment," said he, "I feel that it is best for me to say nothing.  The facts are strong enough.  Let them sink in.  Then it may be time for me to talk."

Vastly different was the reception the Colonel gave Mr.  Wilson's appeal to the country for the election of a Democratic Congress in 1918.  The appeal, printed in the early afternoon papers, sent me hiking for Sagamore Hill.  The Colonel met me on the piazza.
 
" By Jove, Jack, I am glad to see you.  It's splendid of you to come.  Yes, I've seen that appeal to the country and I 'm just delighted.

" I am as pleased as Punch.  It is exactly as I would have ordered it.  He gives me a splendid opening, and tomorrow I will send out the fighting part of my Carnegie Hall speech."

For this meeting, called to ratify the Republican State and Congressional ticket, Colonel Roosevelt had prepared a set speech which was then in the hands of the press associations.  Naturally it did not touch on Mr.  Wilson's appeal.

"We now see the real Mr.  Wilson," he went on to say.  "It's not a different Mr.  Wilson than the one we have known, but not the Mr.  Wilson he would have us know or that all of the people have known.  Every one can now see Mr.  Wilson the politician in all his nakedness and minus his camouflage.

"It is regrettable that any American President should see fit to make such a lamentable exhibition of himself at a time like this.  It is, however, fortunate in that it will show the country Mr.  Wilson as he is — the real Mr.  Wilson.

"I shall certainly take advantage of this opening in my speech Monday.

" Did I ever tell you the story of the New Bedford whaling captain who, when called to account for
 
knocking down the mate of another ship, explained that he did so because this man 'held himself so inviting' ? Mr.  Wilson has held himself very inviting.

" I shall, of course, try to be very careful and not to abuse or seem to abuse him, but I certainly am grateful for this opening.  I am glad the real Mr.  Wilson has revealed himself."

"Colonel," I suggested, "I hope you will use that expression 'the real Mr.  Wilson."

"Exactly as I used your expression on dealing with Germany — 'compounding a felony.' By the way, I am very glad we agreed to leave politics out of that statement of October 13."

This was a statement in which the Colonel had set out to advise all good Americans who felt as Senator Miles Poindexter spoke to vote the Republican ticket.  This idea was abandoned on the ground that it left the way open to attack, and that in the course of the campaign a better opportunity for such an appeal would present itself.
"To get back to the real Mr.  Wilson," the Colonel went on, "I do not pretend to be able to predict what the people may do any more than I can predict the result of a great war, but I think the gentleman will find he has made a mistake.  There is, however, no limit as to what he will do to get or retain power.

"Do you know that they (the Democrats) are now organizing the various national elements in this country as units that may be as anti-American as they wish so long as they are Democrats? This Americanization Commission is working along those lines.  They have n't exactly lined up the pro-Germans yet, but they are getting around them via the Liberty loans.

"You know that various of these foreign groups kept aloof from the Liberty loans in the early days of the war.  Now they have found it a cheap way to become Americanized.  They take one of these groups who happens to be a Democrat, place him prominently on a committee, and seek to round up his fellows through him.  It is the opposite of what should be done.

" But, I tell you, I 'm as pleased as Punch over this latest of Mr.  Wilson's.  There'll be lots of fun in the next two years."

I told Charles T.  White, of the Tribune, of the Colonel's intention of being conservative in his treatment of Mr.  Wilson's appeal.  After the meeting, White, a veteran of many a political campaign, came to me.

" I thought you said Colonel Roosevelt was going to be conservative? Why, in a nice way, he called him everything but a dog thief.  I 'm glad he was not radical if that's his idea of being conservative."
 
The Colonel laughed when I repeated this to him.

"You may tell the Honorable Charlie White," said he, "that he's a good fellow and I like him, but that until this time I never suspected him of being a mind reader.  He has gauged my sentiments exactly."

These sentiments, Colonel Roosevelt had previously told me, were best expressed in the conclusion of his Cooper Union address at the end of the 1916 campaign.  This was the famous "ghost speech." This speech he prepared, and for once reading an address did not seem to detract from its appeal.  This, by the way, was read to as mixed an audience as one would ask to find, even in Cooper Union.  Most of the seats were reserved and were filled by up town folk in evening clothes for the most part.  The seats not claimed by the more well-to-do were taken by the East Siders who habitually attend everything in Cooper Union.  The result was, paradoxical as the statement may seem, an audience more representative of New York than one ordinarily finds at a political meeting.

Throughout the address the Colonel was frequently interrupted with cheers, but it was not until the close that the real demonstration came.  As he swung into the last paragraph he threw his manuscript to the floor and amidst silence as nearly absolute as an orator ever gets (Colonel Roosevelt was an orator that night at least) drew the final count in his indictment against Mr.  Wilson.

"Mr.  Wilson," he began, "now dwells at Shadow Lawn."

In the press box one could almost feel the house pull itself together, sensing what was to come.
"There should be shadows enough at Shadow Lawn," he went on, clipping off each word cleanly, as was his practice.  "The shadows of men, women, and children who have risen from the ooze of the ocean bottom and from graves in foreign land.  The shadows of the helpless whom Mr.  Wilson did not dare protect lest he might have to face danger; the shadows of babies gasping pitifully as they sank under the waves; the shadows of women outraged and slain by bandits.

"The shadows of Boyd and Adair and their brave troopers who lay in the Mexican desert, the black blood crusted around their mouths and their dim eyes looking upward because President Wilson had sent them to do a task and had then shamefully abandoned them to the mercy of the foes who know no mercy.

"Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; the shadows of deeds that were never done; the shadows of brave words that were followed by no action; the shadows of the tortured dead."
 
With his final gesture the house was on its feet.  It was storming the platform as he reached toward the exit, throwing himself through the group on the platform after the manner of the expert in such work and in a moment was on the sidewalk boarding the car that was to take him to another meeting on the East Side.

Two years later I referred to this speech in the course of a chat, saying his close was quite the best thing I had ever heard him do.

"Down front," said I, "you could almost see the ghosts rising at your call."

"Yes?" he answered in query form.  "Well, Mr.  Wilson is not dead yet.  He is a very fortunate man if he does not live to be tortured by many, many ghosts."

The End

A concluding word from Robert J.   Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.   Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.   He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.   We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.  

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.   A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.   Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.   It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.   Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.   He was a visionary.   He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.   He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.   His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.   His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations.  

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.   It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.   His message is an example, clearly defined.   It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.   Join the good fight today.   You only need to read and interest others to do the same.   

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read.  ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.   It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.   Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.   America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.   The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.   Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.