Chapter 3

Washington, February 25, '98.Dewey, Hong KongOrder the squadron, except theMonocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. KeepOlympiauntil further orders.Roosevelt.

Washington, February 25, '98.

Dewey, Hong Kong

Order the squadron, except theMonocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. KeepOlympiauntil further orders.

Roosevelt.

War against Spain was declared in April,—the month in our history which has also seen the beginning of our Revolution, our Civil War, and our entrance into the Great War against Germany. Congress arranged for three regiments of volunteer cavalry to be raised among the men in the Rockies and on the Great Plains who knew how to ride and shoot. Here Roosevelt saw his chance. He knew these men and longed to go to war in their company.

The Secretary of War offered to make him Colonel of one of these regiments. It is worth while to notice what his reply was. He knew how to manage a horse and a rifle, he had lived in the open and could take care of himself in the field. He had had three years in the National Guard in New York, rising to the rank of Captain. Many men in the Civil War without one half of his experience and knowledge, gayly accepted Brigadier-Generalships. Also, in the Spanish War, anotherpublic man, Mr. William J. Bryan, allowed himself to be made a Colonel, and took full command of a regiment, without one day’s military experience. Yet Roosevelt declined the offer of a Colonel’s commission and asked to be made Lieutenant-Colonel, with Leonard Wood, of the regular Army as his Colonel.

When you hear or read that Roosevelt was a conceited man, always pushing himself forward, it may be well to ask if that is the way a conceited man would have acted.

Colonel Wood was an army surgeon, who had been a fighting officer in the campaign against the Apaches. He had been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest decoration an American soldier can win for personal bravery.

The new regiment, the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, was promptly called, by some newspaper or by the public, the “Rough Riders,” and by that name it is always known. Most of the men in it came from Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Indian Territory, but it had members from nearly every State. Many Eastern college men were in it, including some famous foot-ball players, polo-players, tennis champions and oarsmen. The regiment trained at San Antonio, and landed in Cuba for the attack on Santiago on June 22. The troopers had to leave theirhorses behind, so they were to fight on foot after all. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, somebody said, had become Wood’s Weary Walkers. The walking was not pleasant to some of the cowboys, who never used to walk a step when there was a horse to ride.

Within a day or two they were in a fight at Las Guasimas. It was a confusing business, advancing through the jungle and fired at by an enemy they could not see. The Rough Riders lost eight men killed and thirty-four wounded. The Spaniards were using smokeless powder, then rather a new thing in war. Two of our regiments at Santiago were still using black powder rifles, and the artillery used black powder, which by its smoke showed the enemy just where they were. Our artillery was always silenced or driven off, because this country had been so neglectful of its Army and its men as to let poor, old backward Spain get better guns, and more modern ammunition than ours. That never should happen with a rich, progressive country like ours.

A few days later came the fight at San Juan. Colonel Wood had been put in command of the brigade, so Roosevelt led the regiment of Rough Riders. It was a fearfully hot day; many men dropped from exhaustion. The regular regiments of cavalry, together with the Rough Riders, allfighting on foot, moved forward against the low hills on which were the Spaniards in block-houses or trenches. For some while they were kept waiting in reserve, taking what shelter they could from the Mauser bullets, which came whirring through the tall jungle grass. This is the most trying part of a fight. It is all right when at last you can charge your enemy and come to close quarters with him, but to lie on the ground under fire, unable to see anybody to fire upon, is the worst strain upon the soldiers' nerves. As one after another is shot, the officers begin to watch the men closely to see how they are standing it. Roosevelt received a trifling wound from a shrapnel bullet at the beginning of the fight. Later his orderly had a sun-stroke, and when he called another orderly to take a message, this second man was killed as he stood near, pitching forward dead at Roosevelt’s feet.

Finally came the order to charge. Roosevelt was the only mounted man in the regiment. He had intended to go into the fight on foot, as he had at Las Guasimas, but found that the heat was so bad that he could not run up and down the line and superintend things unless he was on horseback. When he was mounted he could see his own men better, and they could see him. So could the enemy see him better, and he had oneor two narrow escapes because of being so conspicuous.

He started in the rear of the regiment, which is where the Colonel should be, according to the books, but soon rode through the lines and led the charge up “Kettle Hill,”—so-called by the Rough Riders because there were some sugar kettles on top of it. His horse was scraped by a couple of bullets, as he went up, and one of the bullets nicked his elbow. Members of the other cavalry regiments were mingled with the Rough Riders in the charge,—their officers had been waiting for orders, and were glad to join in the advance. The Spaniards were driven out and the Rough Riders planted their flags on the hill.

But there were other hills and other trenches full of Spaniards beyond, and again the Rough Riders, mixed with men of other regiments, went forward. In cleaning out the trenches Roosevelt and his orderly were suddenly fired on at less than ten yards by two Spaniards. Roosevelt killed one of them with his revolver. The Rough Riders had had eighty-eight killed and wounded out of less than five hundred men who were in the fight.

The American forces were now within sight of Santiago, but they had to dig in and hold the ground they had taken. There was a short period in the trenches, which seemed tedious to the ridersfrom the plains, but was nothing to what men, years later, had to endure in the Great War against Germany. At last Santiago surrendered, on July 17.

The war ended within about a month. Commodore Dewey had beaten the Spanish Fleet at Manila and Admiral Sampson and his fleet had destroyed the Spanish cruisers which were forced out of Santiago Harbor on July 3rd, as a result of the Army getting within striking distance of the city. One other thing of importance was done by Roosevelt before the regiment was brought home to Montauk Point and mustered out. After the surrender of Santiago it was supposed that the war was going on and that there would be a campaign in the winter against Havana. But the American Army was full of yellow fever. Half the Rough Riders were sick at one time, and the condition of other regiments was as bad. The higher officers knew that unless the troops were taken to some healthier climate to recover, there would be nothing left of them. Over four thousand men were sick, and not ten per cent, of the Army was fit for active work. But the War Department would not listen to the suggestion that the army be sent for a while to a cooler climate.

What none of the regular Army officers could afford to do, Roosevelt did. He wrote a letter toGeneral Shafter, the commander of the expedition, explaining the state of things, and setting out how important it was, if any of the army was to be kept alive, that they should be sent away from Cuba, until the sickly season was over. General Shafter really wished such a letter to be written, and he allowed the Associated Press reporter to have it as soon as it was handed to him.

Then, all the Generals joined with Roosevelt in a “Round Robin” to General Shafter, saying the same things. The Government at Washington began to take notice, and in a short time ordered the army home.

Roosevelt had taken a leading part in an act which caused him to be severely blamed by many, to be denounced by all who worship military etiquette, and charged with “insubordination” by men who would rather make a mess of things and do it according to the rules of the book, than succeed in something useful and do it by common-sense rules made up at the time. He had shocked the folks who like red tape, and he had helped save the lives of perhaps four thousand men.

CHAPTER IX

GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK

Whenthe Rough Riders were disbanded at Montauk Point in September 1898, Theodore Roosevelt was the most popular man in America. This is the judgment of his best historian, Mr. Thayer, and it is undoubtedly correct. The war had made known to the country a number of professional soldiers or sailors—especially Admiral Dewey and Admiral Sampson, whose conduct had been splendid. It had also created some popular “heroes,” whose fame was brief. But Colonel Roosevelt was first and foremost acitizen, his career as a soldier was for a few months only. Behind that was a solid foundation of service in civil office. Ahead of it were still finer achievements, also in civil life. He felt the pride which all men feel—despite much pretense and humbug—to have had the chance to lead men in battle for a just cause, to have put his life in danger when his country needed such offer of sacrifice.

But the Santiago campaign, the charge up SanJuan hill, did not “make” Roosevelt. It was a dramatic episode in his history; it attracted attention to him. Such are the peculiar conditions of politics, it proved a short cut to the White House. He said, frankly, that he would never have been President if the Rough Riders had not gone to Cuba. In this he underestimated himself, as he often did. He had too much ability in politics, too much courage in fighting for the cause of better government, at a time when courage was badly needed, to have failed to rise to the highest office. Back in the days when he was Civil Service Commissioner two visitors in the White House, saw him, also a visitor, looking about the rooms.

“There is a young man,” said one of them, who knew him, “who is going to move into this house himself, before long.”

After Cuba, the next step was the Governorship of New York State. Before he was out of uniform, the politicians began talking about him for the place. The Republican party in New York was in a bad way. They had quarreled among themselves; the Democrats had just beaten them in an election. They knew they must have a strong candidate for Governor, or the Democrats, (that is, Tammany Hall) would get control at Albany.

This was the great day of the political Bosses. Perhaps at no time since have they been quite aspowerful as they were then. A man named Croker was the Boss of the Democratic Party; a man named Platt, the Boss of the Republicans. Men called the Boss of their own party the “Leader,” but they referred to the “Leader” of the other party as the Boss, without wasting any politeness. Most men do not pay much attention to politics; a Boss is a man who pays too much attention to them. He exists because the average citizen thinks he has done his whole duty if he votes on election day. A Boss works at his business, which is politics, night and day, all the year round. He might be very useful if he could be kept honest. He manages to get a great deal of power, in ways that are shady, if not actually criminal. Then, if he is one kind of a Boss, greedy for money, he sells this power to the highest bidder. Men are nominated for office, because the Boss has picked them out, as a poultryman might select a fat goose. Usually he selects a man who will obey orders. But another kind of Boss does not especially care for money. He likes the power which his position gives him, he likes to be able to move men about as if they were toy-soldiers.

Such apparently was Senator Platt, the Republican Boss of New York. People had so neglected their duty of managing their own affairsin politics, that he had seized the reins, and could say who should be nominated. In the same way Croker was the ruler of the Democratic party in New York, and could say who should be nominated in his party.

Now, in such a situation, what was an honest man to do? The best men in the Republican party believed that Roosevelt was the only one who could be elected, that the people believed so firmly in his honor and courage that they would vote for him. Senator Platt did not want him, did not like him, but he came to see that they could win with him, and with no one else. So Roosevelt was nominated, and elected, by a narrow lead of 18,000 votes. So far, the people could rule with Roosevelt as their servant. But the Governor can do little alone; he must have the support of the Legislature and the other State officers. The Boss hoped to rule through them, to say who should be appointed to office, to decide which bill should pass and which be defeated.

There were people who would have had Governor Roosevelt declare war on Platt; refuse to have anything to do with him; refuse even to speak to him. In that way he could have done nothing for the good of the State; he could have spent his term in fighting Platt, made a great show of independence and reform, but, in point of fact, advancedthe cause of good government not an inch. All of his proposals would have been blocked by Platt’s men in the Legislature.

Instead, he acted in accord with the facts as they were; not as if they were the way he would have liked them to be. If Platt could not rule he could ruin. So the Governor treated him politely, and only disagreed with him when the Boss proposed something actually bad. For instance, there was a most important officer, the Superintendent of Public Works, to be appointed. Senator Platt informed Governor Roosevelt that a certain man had been chosen; he showed him the telegram with the man’s acceptance. Roosevelt said, quietly, something like this:

“I think not, Senator. The Governor appoints that officer, and I am the Governor.”

Platt was very angry; Roosevelt refused to get angry, but stuck to his decision, and made his own choice. Things like this happened again and again, during the two years while Roosevelt was Governor of New York.

Every honorable man in American politics has to fight against this evil of the Boss. Officeholders, Presidents and Governors, come and go, but the Bosses hold their power for a long time. So long as they exist it is not wise for us to talktoo much about Kings and their tyranny. For a Boss is very like a King. Platt and Croker thought that the people were not fit to rule; theirs was much the same idea that King George the Third and the German Kaiser had. The best and wisest men have had to admit the strength of the Boss and try to deal with him as well as they could; Abraham Lincoln even had to appoint one to his Cabinet. The Boss creeps into power while the people are asleep.

Roosevelt pointed out that it is not hard for a man to be good if he lives entirely by himself. Nor is it difficult for him to get things done, if he is careless about right and wrong. The hard thing, yet the one which must be demanded of the public man, is to get useful things done, and to keep straight all the while. When Roosevelt was elected Governor, John Hay, the Secretary of State, wrote to him:

“You have already shown that a man may be absolutely honest and yet practical; a reformer by instinct and a wise politician; brave, bold and uncompromising, and yet not a wild ass of the desert. The exhibition made by the professional independents in voting against you for no reason on earth except that somebody else was voting for you, is a lesson that is worth its cost.”[10]

[10]“Autobiography,” p. 296.

The year 1900 was the year of a Presidential election. Mr. McKinley was to run again on the Republican ticket, and later it appeared that Mr. Bryan would oppose him again, as he had in 1896. The Republican Vice-President, Mr. Hobart, had died in office, so the Republicans had to find someone to go on the ticket with President McKinley. Roosevelt was mentioned for the office, and Platt warmly agreed, hoping to get him out of New York politics. Roosevelt, at first, refused to consider an office which has more dignity than usefulness about it. Another utterance of Secretary of State John Hay is interesting. He wrote to a friend:

“Teddy has been here: have you heard of it? It was more fun than a goat. He came down with a somber resolution thrown on his strenuous brow to let McKinley and Hanna know once for all that he would not be Vice-President, and found to his stupefaction that nobody in Washington, except Platt, had ever dreamed of such a thing.”[11]

[11]Thayer, p. 148.

Mr. Hay was one of the wisest of our statesmen; one of the most polished and agreeable men in public life. Yet this letter shows how the older men often mistook Roosevelt. For, in less than a year after Mr. Hay had gently poked fun at “Teddy” for thinking that he mightbe made Vice-President, and said that there was not the slightest danger of such a thing happening, Roosevelt had been elected to that office. His enjoyment of his work, his bubbling merriment, his lack of the old-fashioned, pompous manners which used to be supposed proper for a statesman, made many older men inclined to treat him with a sort of fatherly amusement. They looked at his acts as an older man might look at the pranks of a boy. And then, suddenly, they found themselves serving under this “youngster,” in the Government! It was a surprise from which they never recovered.

I have said that the reporters, the makers of funny pictures in the newspapers, and others, exaggerated Roosevelt’s traits, and created a false idea about him. This is true. But it is also true that there was a great deal of real and honest fun poked at him throughout his life, and that it added to the public enjoyment of his career. The writers of comic rhymes, the cartoonists, and the writers of political satire had a chance which no other President has ever given them. Many of our Presidents—wise and good men—and many Senators, Governors, Cabinet officers and others, have gone about as if they were all ready to pose for their statues. Roosevelt never did this. He bore himself in public with dignity, and respect for the high offices to which the peopleelected him. But he did not suggest the old style of portrait, in which a statesman is standing stiffly, hand in the breast of his coat, a distant view of the Capitol in the background. He had too keen a sense of fun for anything of the sort.

Nobody laughed at the jokes about him more heartily than he did himself. When “Mr. Dooley” described his adventures as a Rough Rider, and spoke of him as “Alone in Cubia,” as if he thought he had won the war all by himself, he wrote to the author:

“Three cheers Mr. Dooley! Do come on and let me see you soon. I am by no means so much alone as in Cubia. …”“Let me repeat that Dooley, especially when he writes about Teddy Rosenfelt has no more interested and amused reader than said Rosenfelt himself.”[12]

“Three cheers Mr. Dooley! Do come on and let me see you soon. I am by no means so much alone as in Cubia. …”

“Let me repeat that Dooley, especially when he writes about Teddy Rosenfelt has no more interested and amused reader than said Rosenfelt himself.”[12]

[12]Scribner’s Magazine, December, 1919, p. 658.

Mr. McKinley was reelected President of the United States and Mr. Roosevelt was elected Vice-President in November 1900. Roosevelt had taken part in the campaign before election, and of this Mr. Thayer writes:

He spoke in the East and in the West, and for the first time the people of many of the States heard him speak and saw his actual presence. His attitude as a speaker, his gestures, the way in which his pent up thoughts seemed almost to strangle him before he could utter them, his smile showing the white rows of teeth, his fist clenched as if to strike an invisible adversary, the sudden dropping of his voice, and leveling of his forefinger as he became almost conversational in tone, and seemed to address special individuals in the crowd before him, the strokes of sarcasm, stern and cutting, and the swift flashes of humor which set the great multitude in a roar, became in that summer and autumn familiar to millions of his countrymen; and the cartoonists made his features and gestures familiar to many other millions.[13]

[13]Thayer, p. 51.

In the following March he was sworn in as Vice-President. His duties as presiding officer of the Senate were not severe, and he went on a cougar hunt in Colorado in the winter before inauguration to enable him to bear the physical inactivity of his new work.

When he came back to Washington again, to hold the second highest place in the national government, it troubled him to think that he had never finished the study of law, begun in New York many years before. He asked his friend, Justice White of the Supreme Court, if it would be wrong for him to take a legal course in a Washington law school. The Justice told him that it would hardly be proper for the Vice-Presidentto do that, but offered to tutor him in law. They agreed to study together the following winter.

But Roosevelt’s term as Vice-President was coming to an end. He only occupied the office for six months. He was soon to succeed to the highest office of all.

CHAPTER X

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

In the first week of September 1901, President McKinley was killed by an anarchist in Buffalo. The young man who shot him was rather weak-minded, and had been led to believe, by the speeches and writings of others, craftier and wickeder than himself, that he could help the poor and unfortunate by murdering the President. This he treacherously did while shaking hands with him.

One of the leaders of the poisonous brood who had made this young man believe such villainous nonsense was a foreign woman named Emma Goldman, who for twenty or thirty years went up and down the land, trying to overthrow the law and government, yet always calling for the protection of both when she was in danger. The American Government tolerated this mischief-maker until 1919, when it properly sent her, and others of her stripe, back to their own country.

President McKinley, who was the gentlest and kindest of men, did not die immediately from thebullet wound, but lingered for about a week. Vice-President Roosevelt joined him in Buffalo, and came to believe, from the reports of the doctors, that the President would get well. So he returned to his family who were in the Adirondacks. A few days later, while Mr. Roosevelt was mountain-climbing, a message came that the President was worse and that the Vice-President must come at once to Buffalo. He drove fifty miles by night, in a buckboard down the mountain roads, took a special train, and arrived in Buffalo the next afternoon.

Mr. McKinley was dead, and Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office as President. He was under forty-three years of age, the youngest man who had ever become President.

It is important to note his first act. It was to insist that all of Mr. McKinley’s Cabinet remain in office. Thus he secured for the continued service of the Nation, some of its ablest men: Mr. Hay, one of the most accomplished Secretaries of State we have ever had, and Mr. Root, Secretary of War, and afterwards Secretary of State, whose highly trained legal mind placed him at the head of his profession.

A test of a great man, as well as a test of a modest man, in the true sense, is whether he is willing to have other able and eminent menaround him as his assistants and fellow-workers. The most remarkable instances of this among our Presidents were Washington and Lincoln. The latter appointed men not because they admired him, or were personally agreeable to him; indeed some of his strongest and bitterest antagonists were put in his Cabinet, because he knew that they could well serve the country.

Mr. McKinley had chosen excellent Cabinet officers, and these Mr. Roosevelt kept in office, promoting them and appointing other men of high ability to other offices as the need arose. He did not care to shine as a great man among a group of second-rate persons; he preferred to be chief among his peers, the leader of the strongest and most sagacious of his time.

In saying this, I do not mean to compare Roosevelt with Washington or Lincoln or any of the noble figures of the past. Such comparisons are made too often; every President for fifty years has been acclaimed by his admirers as “the greatest since Lincoln,” or “as great as Lincoln.” This is both foolish and useless. There has been no character in our land like Lincoln; he stands alone. What we can say of Mr. Roosevelt, now, is that he was admired and beloved by millions of his fellow-countrymen while he lived; that his was an extraordinary and entirely different characterfrom that of any of our Presidents; and that upon his death thousands who had opposed him and bitterly hated him but a few years before, were altering their opinion and speaking of him in admiration—with more than the mere respect which custom pays to the dead. This has gone on, and other unusual signs have been given of the world’s esteem for him. So much we can say; and leave the determination of his place in our history for a later time than ours.

One thing which many people feared when Roosevelt became President was that he would get the country into a war. They thought he liked war for its own sake. Men said: “Oh! this Roosevelt is such a rash, impulsive fellow! He will have us in a war in a few months!” The exact opposite was the truth. He kept our country and our flag respected throughout the world; he avoided two possible wars; he helped end a foreign war; we lived at peace. Of him it can truly be said: he kept us out of war, and he kept us in the paths of honor.

He preached the doctrine of the square deal.

“A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country, is good enough to be given a square deal afterward. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.”[14]

[14]Springfield, Ill., July 4, 1503. Thayer, p. 212.

He did not seek help and rewards from the rich by enabling them to prey upon the poor; neither did he seek the votes and applause of the poor by cheap and unjust attacks upon the rich. To the people who expect a public man to lean unfairly to one side or the other; who cannot understand any different way of acting, he was a constant puzzle.

“Oh! we have got him sized up!” they would say, “he is for the labor unions against the capitalist!” and in a few months they would be puzzled again: “No; he is for Wall Street and he is down on the poor laboring man.”

For a long time they could not get it into their heads that he was for the honest man, whether laboring man or capitalist, and against the dishonest man, whether laboring man or capitalist.

“While I am President the doors of the White House will open as easily for the labor leader as for the capitalist,—and no easier.”[15]

[15]Hagedorn, p. 242.

Many Presidents might have said the first part of that sentence. Few of them would have added the last three words.

He annoyed many people in the South by inviting a very able and eminent Negro, Booker T. Washington, to eat luncheon with him. According to the curious way of thinking on this subject,Mr. Washington who had been good enough to eat dinner at the table of the Queen of England, was not good enough to eat at the White House. Shortly after being violently denounced for being too polite to a Negro, he was still more violently denounced for being too harsh to Negroes. He discharged from the Army some riotous and disorderly Negro soldiers. Persons with small natures had attacked him for showing courtesy to a distinguished man; other persons with equally small natures now attacked him for acting justly towards mutinous soldiers.

What did he do while he was President? What laws were passed by Congress, which he advocated or urged, and which he approved by his signature? Here are some of them as they are given by Mr. Washburn,[16]a Congressman of that time:

[16]Washburn, “Theodore Roosevelt,” p. 128.

The Elkins Anti-Rebate Law, to end unjust business dealings of the railroads.

The creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

The law for building the Panama Canal.

The laws to prevent impure and poisonous food being sold under false labels; and the law to establish the proper inspection of meat.

The creation of the Bureau of Immigration.

The law limiting the working hours of employeesand protecting them in case of injury in their occupations.

The law against child-labor in the District of Columbia.

The reformation of the Consular Service.

The law to stop corporations from giving great sums of money for political purposes at election time.

You will notice that these were not laws to enable a few rich men to get richer still at the expense of the many; neither were they designed to help dishonest labor leaders to plunder the employers. They were aimed to bring about justice between man and man, to protect the weak.

There was, when Mr. Roosevelt became President, a long standing dispute between this country and England and Canada about the boundary of Alaska. This was quickly settled by arbitration; our rights were secured; and all possible causes of war were removed.

The South American country, Colombia, made an attempt to block the building of the Panama Canal. This canal had been planned to run through the State of Panama, which was part of the Republic of Colombia. It was a part of that country, however, separated by fifteen days' journey from the capital city, Bogotá, and so separated in friendship from the rest of the countrythat it had made over fifty attempts in fifty years to revolt and gain independence. Our State Department, through Mr. Hay, had come to an understanding with the Minister from Colombia as to the canal, and the amount we were to pay Colombia for the privilege of building this important waterway, for the benefit of the whole world.

But the Colombian Government at that time were a slippery lot,— dealing with them, said President Roosevelt, “was like trying to nail currant jelly to a wall.” It struck them that they would do well to squeeze more money yet out of Uncle Sam, and that they might by twisting and turning, get forty million dollars as easily as ten millions. So they delayed and quibbled.

In the meantime, the people of Panama, not wishing to lose the advantage of the canal, and desiring greatly to take any opportunity to free themselves from the Colombians who had plundered them for years, declared a revolution, which took place without bloodshed. Colombian troops, coming to try to reconquer Panama, were forbidden to land by our ships, acting under President Roosevelt’s orders. We were under treaty agreement to preserve order on the Isthmus. Our Government recognized the new Republic of Panama, an act which was promptly followed by allthe nations of the earth. We then opened negotiations with Panama, paid the money to her, and built the Canal.

Of course the politicians in Colombia howled with rage. A tricky horse-dealer, who has a horse which he has abused for years, but desires to sell to a customer for four times its value, would be angry if the horse ran away, and he lost not only the animal, but also his chances of swindling the customer. So with the Colombians. Some people in this country took up their cry, and professed to feel great sorrow for Colombia. It was noticed, however, that this sorrow seemed to afflict most pitifully the people who were strongest in their opposition to Mr. Roosevelt, and this caused a suspicion that their pretended horror at the act of our Government was not so much based upon any knowledge of the facts, as upon a readiness to think evil of the President. Others who joined in an expression of grief at the time, and later attempted to bolster up Colombia’s claims for damages, belonged to that class referred to in connection with the sinking of theMaine, who always think the best of any foreign country and suspect the worst of their own.

The fact that other countries instantly recognized Panama, and that President Roosevelt’s action was completely and emphatically endorsed bySecretary Hay, proved that the Panama incident was an example of the promptness, wisdom and courage in the conduct of foreign relations which leads alike to justice and the satisfactory settlement of difficult problems. For not the bitterest opponent of Mr. Roosevelt’s administration ever dared to cast a shadow of doubt upon the honesty of Secretary Hay. The canal is now built, thanks in large part to President Roosevelt, and we have had a chance to see that wise decisions may often be reached swiftly; whereas dawdling, hesitation and timidity, which are sometimes mistaken for statesmanship, are more than apt to end, not only in general injustice, but in practical failure.

The war between Russia and Japan took place during President Roosevelt’s term of office. After it had been going on over a year, and Japan had won victories by land and sea, the President asked both countries to open negotiations for peace. He continued to exert strong influence in every quarter to help bring the two enemies to an agreement. Only since his death has it become generally known how hard he worked to this end. A peace conference was held at Kittery Navy Yard in Maine, and a treaty was signed which ended the war.

For his action in this, President Roosevelt was the first American to receive the Nobel PeacePrize. This was a sad reverse to the predictions of those who had been so sure that he was longing to start wars, instead of end them. Indeed, men who prophesied evil about Mr. Roosevelt, as well as those who tried to catch him in traps, had a most disappointing experience. The Nobel Prize consisted of a diploma, and an award in money of $40,000. This he tried to devote to helping the cause of peace between capital and labor in America. When Congress failed to take the needed action to apply his money for this purpose, it was returned to him. During the Great War he gave all of it to different relief organizations, like the Red Cross, and other societies for helping the sufferers.

The President assembled the most powerful fleet we had ever had together, sixteen battleships, with destroyers, and sent them on a cruise around the world. This was bitterly opposed at the time. Public men and newspapers predicted that the fleet could never make the voyage, or that even if it could, its effect would be to cause war with some other nation. The most emphatic predictions were made by a famous newspaper that the entrance of the fleet into the Pacific Ocean would be the signal for a declaration of war upon us by a foreign power. Nothing of the sort happened. The cruise attracted to the American navythe admiration of the world; it immensely increased the usefulness of the Navy itself by the experience it gave the officers and men; and it served warning upon anybody who needed it (and some folk did need it) that America was not a country of dollar-chasing Yankees, rich and helpless, but that it had the ability to defend itself.

This was an illustration of Roosevelt’s use of the old saying: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” When he first repeated this, it was seized upon by the newspapers for its amusing quality, and he was henceforth pictured as carrying a tremendous bludgeon, of the sort which giants usually bore in the tale of “Jack the Giant Killer.” Timid folk thought that it proved their worst fears about his fondness for a fight. They failed to notice the “Speak softly” part of the saying. It was only a vivid way of advising his countrymen to be quiet and polite in their dealings with other nations, but not to let America become defenseless. What hasty and shallow critics denounced as the threat of a bully, proved in practice to be the sagacious advice of a statesman, whose promise when he took office, to preserve the peace and honor of his beloved country, was kept faithfully and precisely.

And he was able to keep the peace, to fill the office of President for seven years without havinga shot fired by our forces, because he made it clear that this country would not submit to wrong, would not argue or bicker with foreign trespassers, kidnappers, highwaymen or murderers, but would promptly fight them. He did not fill the air with beautiful words about his love of peace; but we had peace. For as he knew perfectly well, there were countries, like Canada, with which we could live at peace for a hundred years and more, without needing forts or guns between them and us, because we think alike on most subjects, and respect each other’s honor.

And there were other countries, Germany in particular, against whom all her neighbors have to live armed to the teeth, and in deadly fear, because the Germans respect nothing on earth except force. To argue or plead with the Germans, as he well knew, was not only a waste of time, it was worse: it was a direct invitation to war. Because since 1870 the Germans think that any country which professes to love peace, any country whose statesmen utter noble thoughts about peace, is simply a cowardly country, bent on making money, and afraid to fight. So when,—during Roosevelt’s administration, the biggest swaggering “gun-man” of the world, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, made a threat against the peace of America, Roosevelt no more read him pretty lecturesabout his love of peace, than he would have recited poetry to that other gun-man in the hotel in Dakota years before. He simply told the Kaiser in a few words, just what would happen if Germany didn’t drop it. It was so quietly done that nobody knew anything at all about it until years afterward. There was no delay; there was no endless note-writing; there was no blustering; the Kaiser climbed down;and there was no war.

This, I am inclined to think, was one of the most important events of Roosevelt’s seven years in the White House. If we wish America to live henceforth in peace and in honor, there is no incident of the past thirty years which should be studied by every American with more care. Germany began her attack on the world long before 1914. She bullied here, and she schemed and plotted there, but she was at work for years. In 1898 she tried to range the countries of Europe against us, as we went to war with Spain. England stood our friend and kept her off. Germany sent a fleet meddling into Manila Harbor to annoy and threaten Admiral Dewey. He refused to be frightened by them however and as an English squadron which was also there played the part of a good friend, the German admiral had his trip for nothing.

Later, about a year after Mr. Roosevelt becamePresident, the German Kaiser discovered a way, as he thought, to grab some territory in South America. Our Monroe Doctrine, which insures peace in the Western Hemisphere, by forbidding European nations to seize land here, was an obstacle to the Kaiser. He disliked it. But taking as pretext the fact that some people in Venezuela owed money to various Europeans, including Germans, he induced England and Italy to join in sending a fleet for a blockade of the Venezuelan coast. The English and Italians agreed, before long, to arbitrate their difficulty with Venezuela, and moreover they had no intention of seizing land. The German plan was quite different. They threatened to bombard Venezuelan towns, and we know enough now of their methods to say that they were hoping for something which might serve as an excuse for landing troops and taking possession of towns and territory. This was in defiance of our Monroe Doctrine; it aimed at setting up an Emperor’s colonies in South America, and putting the peace of both South and North America into danger. Mr. Roosevelt did not mean to allow it.

But consider the situation. Germany was the foremost military power of the world. Her army was almost the greatest; probably the best trained and equipped. Ours was one of the smallest. Germany was not engaged in difficulties elsewhere.She faced us across no barriers but the sea. No great French and British armies held the lines against her, as they did in later years when once more she threatened America. No mighty British fleet held the seas and kept the German Navy cooped up where it could do no harm,—except to such merchant ships, passenger steamers and hospital boats as it could strike from under the water. We faced Germany alone. But we had two means of defense. One of them was Admiral Dewey and his ships. The first of them, however, and the only one needed, was the cool-headed and brave-hearted man in the White House.

He told the German Ambassador, quietly and without bluster, that unless the Kaiser agreed to arbitrate his quarrel with Venezuela, and unless he agreed within a short time, ten days or less, Admiral Dewey would be ordered to Venezuela to protect it against a German attack. The German ambassador said that, of course, as the All Highest Kaiser had refused once before to arbitrate, there could be nothing done about it. All Highests do not arbitrate. People simply have to step aside.

President Roosevelt informed the German Ambassador that this meant war. A few days later when the German Ambassador was again at the White House, the President asked if the Kaiser had changed his mind. The Ambassador seemed to think that it was a joke. The Kaiser change his mind at the bidding of a Yankee President! It was almost funny!

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