Chapter 4

THE ROUGH RIDERWith Mr. Punch’s best wishes to Colonel Roosevelt, President of the United States.(A Cartoon inPunchwhen Colonel Roosevelt became President.)

“All right,” said President Roosevelt, “I can change my mind. Admiral Dewey will not even wait until Tuesday to start for Venezuela. He will go on Monday. If you are cabling to Berlin, please tell them that.”

The pompous Ambassador was much flustered. He hurried away, but returned in about a day and a half, still out of breath.

“Mr. President,” he said, “His Imperial Majesty the Emperor has agreed to arbitrate with Venezuela.”

So there was no delay, no long and distressing argument; and there was no war. The President could do this because he knew his countrymen; he knew that they were not cowards. He knew they never had failed to back up their leader in the White House. He knew that no President need worry about loyalty when he tells America that a foreign enemy is making threats. He had seen his courageous predecessor, Grover Cleveland, rouse America, as one man, over another Venezuelan incident, a dozen or more years before. And he knew that the only occasion when America had ever seemed about to fall into doubt and hesitation in time of danger, was when that doubt andhesitation began in the White House,—in the administration of Buchanan, before the Civil War. America will always support her President, if war threatens,—but America expects him to show leadership. Timidity in the leader will make timidity in the nation.

So the Kaiser changed his mind and gave in,—why? Because he knew that there was a President in the White House whose words were easy to understand; they did not have to be interpreted nor explained. And moreover, when these words were uttered, the President would make them good, every one.

CHAPTER XI

THE LION HUNTER

Otherimportant events of President Roosevelt’s administration will best be described farther on. For their importance increased after he was out of office, and they had a great influence upon a later campaign.

Here, it should be said that in 1904, as the term for which he was acting as Mr. McKinley’s successor, drew toward an end, he was nominated by the Republican Party to succeed himself. There was some talk of opposition within his party, especially from the friends of “big business” who thought that he was not sufficiently reverent and submissive to the moneyed interests. This opposition took the form of a move to nominate Senator Hanna. But the Senator died, and the talk of opposition which was mostly moonshine, faded away.

When the campaign came in the autumn of 1904, his opponent was the Democratic nominee, Judge Parker, also from New York. Mr. Roosevelt was elected by a majority of more than twomillion and a half votes,—the largest majority ever given to a President in our history, either before or since that time.

On the night of election day he issued a statement in which he said: “Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.” Of this he writes:

The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was twofold. In the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I believed then (and I believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble over the words usually employed to express it. On the other hand I did not wish simply and specifically to say that I would not be a candidate for the nomination in 1908, because if I had specified the year when I would not be a candidate, it would have been widely accepted as meaning that I intended to be a candidate some other year; and I had no such intention, and had no idea that I would ever be a candidate again. Certain newspaper men did ask me if I intended to apply my prohibition to 1912, and I answered that I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920, nor of 1940, and that I must decline to say anything whatever except what appeared in my statement.[17]

[17]“Autobiography,” pp. 422-3.

From March 4, 1905, until March 4, 1909, he was an elected President, not a President who had succeeded to the office through the death of another. When the end of his term approached he threw his influence in favor of the nomination of Mr. William H. Taft, Secretary of War in his Cabinet. He could have had the nomination himself if he had wished it; indeed he had to take precautions against being nominated. But Mr. Taft was nominated, and in November, 1908, was elected over Mr. Bryan, who was then running for the Presidency for the third time.

President Roosevelt and President-elect Taft drove up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol together, March 4, 1909, in a cold gale of wind, which had followed a sudden blizzard. The weather was an omen of the stormy change which was coming over the friendship of these two men. An hour or two later it was President Taft who drove back to the White House, while Mr. Roosevelt, once more a private citizen, was hurrying to his home in Oyster Bay, to get ready for his hunting trip to Africa.

This was the vacation to which he had been looking forward for years. He had long been a friend of a number of famous hunters, and had corresponded with and received visits from someof them. Chief among these was Mr. Frederick Selous, one of the greatest of African hunters. Those who have read any of Rider Haggard’s fine stories of adventure (especially “King Solomon’s Mines” and “Allan Quartermain”) will be interested to know that Mr. Selous was the original of Quartermain. Adventures like these of Selous, the opportunity to see the marvelous African country, and the chance to shoot the dangerous big game, made Roosevelt long to visit Africa.

So he headed a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution to collect specimens for the National Museum at Washington. With him went his son Kermit, a student at Harvard; and three American naturalists. They left America only two or three weeks after his term as President had ended, and they came out of the African wilderness at Khartoum about a year later. With friends whom they met in Africa, English and American hunters, and a long train of native bearers and scouts, they visited the parts of Africa richest in game, and killed lions, leopards, hyenas, elephants, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, zebra, giraffe, buffalo, and dozens of other kinds of animals. Mr. Roosevelt and Kermit shot about a dozen trophies for themselves; otherwise nothing was killed which was not intended as amuseum specimen or for meat. No useless butchery of animals was allowed; often at great inconvenience and even danger, animals were avoided or driven off rather than let them be killed needlessly. Some of the finest groups of mounted animals in the country are now standing in the National Museum, as a result of this trip.

They saw many wonderful sights. They saw a band of Nandi warriors, fierce savages, naked, and armed only with shields and long spears, attack and kill a big lion. Kermit Roosevelt took photographs of most of the large game, coming up to close quarters in order to get his pictures. He took two or three photographs of a herd of wild elephants in the forest, going at great risk within twenty-five yards of the herd to be sure to get a good view.

One day’s hunting, which Mr. Roosevelt describes, shows what the country was like, how full it was of all kinds of animals. Leaving camp at seven in the morning they were out altogether over fifteen hours. They were after a lion, so did not look for other game. They soon passed some zebra, and antelope, but left them alone. The country was a dry, brown grassland, with few trees, and in some places seems to have looked like our Western prairie. At noon they sighted three rhinoceros, which they tried to avoid, as they didnot wish to shoot them. Of course, in such circumstances it is necessary to do nothing to disturb the temper of the animals—stupid, short-sighted beasts—or else in their anger or alarm, they will blindly charge the hunter, who then is forced to shoot to save himself from being tossed and gored on that great horn. There was a hyena disturbing the other game, and as these are savage nuisances, Mr. Roosevelt shot this one at three hundred and fifty paces. While the porters were taking the skin, he could not help laughing, he says, at finding their party in the center of a great plain, stared at from all sides by enough wild animals to stock a circus. Vultures were flying overhead. The three rhinoceros were gazing at them, about half a mile away. Wildebeest (sometimes called gnu) which look something like the American buffalo or bison, and hartebeest, stood around in a ring, looking on. Four or five antelope came in closer to see what was happening, and a zebra trotted by, neighing and startling the rhinoceros.

After a rest for luncheon, they went on, looking for lions. Two wart-hogs jumped up, and Mr. Roosevelt shot the biggest of them. By this time it was getting late in the afternoon; time for lions to be about. At last they saw one; a big lioness. She ran along the bed of a stream, crouching so as not to be seen in the failing light. The twohunters rode past and would have missed her if one of the native followers had not sighted her a second time. Then Roosevelt and the other hunter left their horses, and came in close on foot. This is perhaps as dangerous as any hunting in Africa. A man must be cool and a good shot to go after lions; sooner or later almost every lion hunter either gets badly hurt or gets killed.

This time all went well; Roosevelt hit her with his first shot; ran in close and finished her. She weighed over three hundred pounds. The porters—much excited, as they always are at the death of a lion—wished to carry the whole body without skinning it, back to camp. While they were lashing it to a pole another lion began to growl hungrily. The night was dark, without a moon, and the work of getting back was hard for the porters, as well as rather terrifying to them. Lions were grunting all about; twice one of them kept alongside the men as they walked,—much to their discomfort. Then a rhinoceros, nearby, let off a series of snorts, like a locomotive. This did not cheer up the porters to any great degree. Roosevelt and the other white hunter had trouble to keep them together and to keep on the watch, with their rifles ready to drive off any animals which might attack.

At last they came to the camp of a tribe of savagescalled Masai. As they were still four miles from their own camp and as the porters were about exhausted from carrying the lion, they decided to go in there, skin the lion and rest for a while. There was some trouble about this, as the Masai feared that the scent of the dead lion would scare their cattle. They agreed at last, however, admitted the white men and the porters, and stood about, in the fire-light, leaning on their spears, and laughing, while the lion was being skinned. They gave Roosevelt milk to drink and seemed pleased to have a call from “Bwana Makuba,” the Great Chief, as the porters called him.

So here was an Ex-President of the United States, not many months from his work as Chief Magistrate in the Capitol of a civilized nation, talking to a group of savages, who in their dwellings, weapons, clothing and customs had hardly changed in three thousand years; the twentieth century A.D. meeting the tenth century B.C.

At ten o’clock they got back to their own camp, and after a hot bath, sat down to a supper of eland venison and broiled spur fowl,—“and surely no supper ever tasted more delicious.”

Another day, when hunting with the same companion he had the experience of being charged bya wounded lion. It was a big, male lion, with a black and yellow mane. They chased him on horseback for about two miles. Then he stopped and hid behind a bush. A shot wounded him slightly and, Mr. Tarlton, Roosevelt’s companion, an experienced lion-hunter, told him that the lion was sure to charge.

Again I knelt and fired; but the mass of hair on the lion made me think he was nearer than he was, and I undershot, inflicting a flesh wound that was neither crippling nor fatal. He was already grunting savagely and tossing his tail erect, with his head held low; and at the shot the great sinewy beast came toward us with the speed of a greyhound. Tarlton then very properly fired, for lion hunting is no child’s play, and it is not good to run risks. Ordinarily it is a very mean thing to experience joy at a friend’s miss, but this was not an ordinary case, and I felt keen delight when the bullet from the badly sighted rifle missed, striking the ground many yards short. I was sighting carefully from my knee, and I knew I had the lion all right; for though he galloped at a great pace he came on steadily—ears laid back, and uttering terrific coughing grunts—and there was now no question of making allowance for distance, nor, as he was out in the open, for the fact that he had not before been distinctly visible. The bead of my foresight was exactly on the center of his chest as I pressed the trigger, and the bullet went as true as if the place had been plotted with dividers. The blow brought him up all standing, and he fell forward on his head.

The soft-nosed Winchester bullet had gone straight through the chest cavity, smashing the lungs and the big blood-vessels of the heart. Painfully he recovered his feet, and tried to come on, his ferocious courage holding out to the last; but he staggered and turned from side to side, unable to stand firmly, still less to advance at a faster pace than a walk. He had not ten seconds to live; but it is a sound principle to take no chances with lions. Tarlton hit him with his second bullet probably in the shoulder; and with my next shot I broke his neck. I had stopped him when he was still a hundred yards away, and certainly no finer sight could be imagined than that of this great maned lion as he charged.[18]

[18]“African Game Trails,” pp. 192-3.

To the man who can shoot straight, and shoot just as straight at a savage animal as at a target, African game-hunting is for part of the time not very dangerous. Nine or ten lions or elephants or rhinoceros may be killed, without seeming risk. The tenth time something unexpected happens, and death comes very near to the hunter.

In shooting an elephant in the forest one day, Roosevelt had what was perhaps his closest call since the bear nearly killed him, years before in Idaho. He had just shot an elephant, when there came a surprise:

But at that very instant, before there was a moment’s time in which to reload, the thick bushes parted immediately on my left front, and through them surged the vast bulk of a charging bull elephant, the matted mass of tough creepers snapping like packthread before his rush. He was so close that he could have touched me with his trunk. I leaped to one side and dodged behind a tree trunk, opening the rifle, throwing out the empty shells, and slipping in two cartridges. Meantime Cunninghame fired right and left, at the same time throwing himself into the bushes on the other side. Both his bullets went home, and the bull stopped short in his charge, wheeled, and immediately disappeared in the thick cover. We ran forward, but the forest had closed over his wake. We heard him trumpet shrilly, and then all sounds ceased.[19]

[19]“African Game Trails,” p. 251.

CHAPTER XII

EUROPE AND AMERICA

AtKhartoum Mr. Roosevelt and his son were joined by other members of his family. They all crossed to Europe, for he had been invited by the rulers and learned bodies of a number of countries to pay them a visit. He went to Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Holland, France, Denmark, Belgium and England, receiving the highest compliments from their rulers, honorary degrees from the universities, and a welcome from the people everywhere which had been given with such heartiness to no other American since General Grant traveled round the world after the Civil War.

In Norway he spoke to the Nobel Committee in thanks for the Peace Prize which they had awarded him after the Russo-Japanese War. In Germany, the Kaiser ordered a review of troops for him; and he was received by the University of Berlin. In Paris, he addressed the famous institution of learning, the Sorbonne. The Englishuniversities received him, and gave him their honorary degrees. London made him a “freeman.” His speeches before the learned men of Europe might not have been extraordinary for a university teacher, but when we think that his life had alternated between the hustle of politics, the career of a ranchman, of a soldier, and of a hunter of big game, it is evident that we shall have to search long and far among our public men before we can find any to match him in the variety of his interests and achievements.

In England, King Edward VII had just died, and Mr. Roosevelt was appointed by President Taft as the American representative at the funeral. There was a gathering in London of thirteen reigning monarchs, and many curious stories are told about the occasion. Of course the Kaiser was there, strutting about and trying to patronize everybody. Mr. Roosevelt had been politely received by the Kaiser and believed, as did every one, that beneath his arrogant manners, there was a great deal of ability. But he did not allow himself to be treated by the “All Highest” with magnificent condescension.

A story is repeated, of which one version is that the Kaiser suddenly called out, at some reception:

"Oh, Colonel Roosevelt, I wish to see you beforeI leave London, and can give you just thirty minutes, to-morrow afternoon at two."

“That’s very good of Your Majesty,” replied Mr. Roosevelt, “and I’ll be there. But unfortunately I have an engagement, so that I’ll only be able to give you twenty minutes.”

Another story concerns a little boy,—the Crown Prince of one of the countries where royal folk have simpler and better manners than in Germany. He and his parents and other persons of royal rank were at the palace where Mr. Roosevelt was staying. As any man would know, boys are interested in much the same things whether they are princes or not, and this one was greatly taken by Mr. Roosevelt’s stories of hunting, and by being taught some of the games which the American father and his boys had played in the White House, not many years before. So it happened that as a group of the visitors, including two or three kings and queens, stepped out of one of the rooms of the palace into a corridor one evening, they were astonished to see a gentleman down on his hands and knees on a rug, playing “bear” with a little boy. The gentleman was the Ex-President of the United States, and the boy was the future King of one of the countries of Europe.

Roosevelt’s return to New York was the signal for a tremendous reception. New York outdid itself in salutes, parades, and wildly cheering crowds. Nothing like it had been seen before. Even after the excitement of the first day of his return, he could not go out without being surrounded by cheering crowds. He knew that it could not last, and said to his sister: “Soon they will be throwing rotten apples at me.”

He was right. A period was about to begin when he was to be defeated in every campaign in which he engaged. All the enemies he had made in his long fight for better government—and they were many and bitter enemies—were to join hands with all the people who opposed him just because they disliked him. He was to part company from some of his nearest friends, and persistently to be reviled, misunderstood and attacked. Yet he was to rally around him a body of devoted friends, and make these the greatest years of his life.

It is partly comic and partly sad, to look back and consider the things for which Roosevelt had fought in his public life, and to recall that a fight had to be made for things like these; that the man advocating them had to stand unlimited abuse. He had been abused for trying to stop the sale of liquor to children, and opposed in his efforts to prevent the making of cigars in filthybed-rooms. He had been violently attacked for enforcing the liquor laws of New York. Lawyers and public men had grown red with anger as they denounced him as a tyrant, and an enemy to the Constitution, because he wished to stop a dishonest system of rebates by the railroads. A man looks back and wonders if he were living among sane people, or in a mad-house, when he recalls that Roosevelt was viciously attacked because he proposed that the meat-packers of this country should not be allowed to sell to their countrymen rotten and diseased products which foreign countries refused even to admit. Sneers greeted his attempts to prevent poisons being sold as medicine, and laudanum being peddled to little children as soothing-syrup. His fight to prevent greedy folk from destroying the forests, wasting the minerals, and spoiling the water supplies of America had to be made in the face of every sort of legal trickery and the meanest of personal abuse.

The Republican Party had been founded during one of the greatest efforts for human freedom ever made in our history. In its long years in power, and in the amazing increase in prosperity and wealth in America, if had become the defender of wealth. Many of its highest and most powerful men could see no farther than thecash drawer. Human rights and wrongs, human suffering, or any attempt to prevent such sufferings, simply did not interest them. They were not cruel men personally, but they had heard repeated for so many years that this or the other thing could not be done “because it would hurt business,” that they had come to worship “business” as a savage bows his head before an idol. Many of them could give money for an orphan asylum or a children’s hospital, and yet on the same day, vote to kill a bill aimed to prevent child-labor. To pass such a bill as that would “hurt business.”

The Democratic Party was no better. It was simply weaker, and usually less intelligent. Wherever it was powerful, it, too, was apt to be the servant of corruption. The politicians of both parties loved to keep up a continual fight about the tariff, to distract public attention from other important subjects.

There had been disagreements in the Republican Party for a number of years. These had gone on during the Roosevelt administration. In the main, these struggles can be described by saying that President Roosevelt and those who agreed with him were looking out for the advantage of the many, and for the welfare and health of great masses of the people. His opponentswere more interested to see that nothing checked the activities of great corporations, railroads, and manufacturing interests. They sincerely believed that this was the first concern of all true patriots. Roosevelt wished every man to have a square deal, an equal chance, so far as possible, to earn as good a living as he could. His opponents thought that if the great business interests could only go on, as they liked, without being annoyed by the government, they would be able to give employment to almost everybody, and to all the unfortunates, who were crushed in the struggle, they would give charity.

Between these two groups there was a ceaseless fight all the years Roosevelt was in the White House. He had been strongly approved at the polls; many of the measures he advocated had been made laws by Congress. So he thought, and the larger part of the Republican Party thought, when Mr. Taft became President, that the measures which they had approved were going to be advanced still further.

It soon appeared that they were in for a disappointment. Mr. Taft proved friendly to the older politicians; the younger and progressive men were not in favor. He made his associates, and chose as his advisers, the men who calledMr. Roosevelt “rash,” “a socialist,” “an anarchist.” Many of the men who surrounded President Taft were honest and patriotic. But there were also a number of stick-in-the-mud statesmen,—old gentlemen who had been saying the same thing, thinking the same things, doing the same things, for forty years. To change, to be up with the times, to progress, to alter methods to meet new conditions, struck them as simply indecent. Their idea of a happy national life was great “prosperity” for a fortunate few, a lesser degree of success for some others who could cling to the chariot wheels of the rich, and,—charity for the rest. That was always their answer to the old, hard problem of wealth and poverty. Like quack doctors they would try to cure the symptoms, rather than like wise physicians seek to find the causes. They were like the Tories in our Revolution who were for King George against George Washington, because King George was the legal King of the American colonies, or like the Northern pro-slavery men, who defended slavery because it was permitted by the Constitution and the slaves were legal “property.” The Constitution was, for them, an instrument to be used to block all change, whether good or bad.

Other men, near to President Taft, were neither patriotic nor innocent. They were shrewd, powerful Bosses,—men of the type of Platt. Only, Mr. Taft did not stand on the alert with them, as Roosevelt had done as Governor, working with them when he could, and fighting them when they went wrong. He allowed them to influence his administration, and, at last, accepted a nomination engineered by them for their own selfish purposes.

The Republicans who followed President Taft, the “stand-patters,” believed in property rights first, and human rights second. If any of them did not actually believe this, they joined people who did thoroughly believe it, and so their action counted toward putting that belief into practice. The others, the “Insurgents” or Progressive Republicans, (later called the Bull Moose) believed in human rights first. That is as near as the thing can be stated, remembering that it was a disputed point, with good men on both sides. The stand-patters said the Progressives were cranks,—visionary and impractical; the Progressives replied that it was better to be both of these things than to be quite so near to the earth and selfish as Mr. Taft’s followers or managers. The events of later years have not borne out the contention that Roosevelt was “rash” and “dangerous”;while the charge that Mr. Taft made a President more pleasing to the Bosses than to the people was amply proved, in the campaign of 1912.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BULL MOOSE

Itwas not personal ambition which made Roosevelt become the leader of the revolt in the Republican Party, and later head a new party. The revolt had been growing while he was in Africa, and he was long besought to become its leader. At first, Senator La Follette seemed a possible leader, but he broke down in a nervous attack, and the belief that he was not the man for the place has been justified by later events.

As President Taft’s administration drew to an end, in 1911 and 1912, it was clear that he was steadily losing the public confidence. State elections, and other straws, showed how the wind was blowing. The Progressive Republicans pointed out to their fellow-members of the party that only where a Progressive ran for office in a state election did the party win. Otherwise the Democrats were victorious. The lesson was plain; but the stand-patters did not care to see it. By the beginning of 1912 it was freely predicted in print that the Democrats would nominateGovernor Wilson of New Jersey, their strongest candidate, and that they would win if the Republicans insisted on naming Mr. Taft. But the old-line Republicans were above taking advice. The Democrats were naturally gleeful about the situation; they kept their faces straight and solemnly warned the Republicans, in the name of the safety of the country, not to listen to the “wild man,” Roosevelt, but to be sure to nominate Mr. Taft. And the Republicans listened to the advice of their opponents. “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.”

Roosevelt had been telling his friends that he would not run again; that he did not wish to oppose Mr. Taft, who had been his close friend and associate. But neither he, nor the Republicans who thought as he did, liked to see their party drift back and back to become the organization for plunder which the Bosses would have made it long before, if they had always had a “good-natured” man in the White House. When the governors of seven States—Michigan, West Virginia, Wyoming, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Missouri and Kansas—united in an appeal to Roosevelt for leadership, he began to change his mind.

He said in private, that he knew it would be hard, if not impossible, for him to get the nomination;President Taft had all the machinery on his side. He knew that it meant parting with many of his best friends; the older politicians would mainly oppose him; he would have to go directly to the people for his support, and rely upon the younger leaders as his lieutenants.

In going straight to the people he was following one of the principles of the Insurgent or Progressive Republicans. In order to fight the Bosses, and overcome the crooked and secret influence of “big business” in politics, the Progressives were proposing various methods by which it was hoped the people might rule more directly, and prevent a few men from overcoming the wishes of the many. One of these methods was the direct primary, so that the voters might choose their candidates themselves, instead of leaving it to the absurd conventions, where large crowds of men are hired to fill the galleries, yell for one candidate, and try to out-yell the opposing crowd.

In February, 1912, Roosevelt announced that he was a candidate for the Republican nomination.

“My hat is in the ring,” he said.

The storm of abuse which raged around him now was terrific. All the friends of fattened monopoly—and this included many of the most powerful newspapers—screamed aloud in their fright. Mostly they assailed him on three counts:that he was “disloyal” to his friend, Mr. Taft, that he had promised never to run for President again; and that it meant the overthrow of the Republic and the setting up of a monarchy if any man ever disregarded Washington’s example and was President for three terms.

The charge of disloyalty to Mr. Taft does not deserve discussion. Those who made it never stopped to think that they were saying that a man should set his personal friendships higher than his regard for the nation; that he must support his friend, even if he believed that to do so would work harm to the whole country. Moreover, if there had been any disloyalty, it had not been on Mr. Roosevelt’s side! He had remained true to his principles. As for the promise never to run again, we have already seen what he said about that. The notion that Washington laid down some law against reelecting a President for more than two terms is an example of how a complete error may pass into popular belief and become a superstition. Washington said and believed the very opposite. He did not wish a third term himself, because he was old and weary, but in regard to third terms he seems to have been even more liberal than Roosevelt, who disapproved of three termsin succession. But Washington distinctly said that he saw no reason why a Presidentshould not be reelected as often as the people needed his services. He said nothing about four, eight, or twelve years, but in discussing this very question in a letter to Lafayette, wrote:

“I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the services of any man, who on some emergency shall be deemed most capable of serving the public.”[20]

[20]Sparks, “Writings of George Washington,” ix. 358.

In the primary campaign, in the spring of 1912, the Progressive Republicans and Mr. Roosevelt proved their case up to the hilt. In every instance but one, where it was possible to get a direct vote of the people, Roosevelt beat President Taft, and overwhelmingly. Thus, in California he beat him nearly two to one; in Illinois, more than two to one, in Nebraska more than three to one, in North Dakota more than twenty to one, in South Dakota more than three to one. In New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon and Ohio, Roosevelt won decisively; in Pennsylvania by a tremendous majority. Massachusetts, the only remaining State which held a direct primary, where both men were in the field, split nearly even, giving Mr. Taft a small lead.

In the face of this clear indication of what the voters wished, for the Republican leaders to goahead and nominate Mr. Taft was sheer suicide from a political point of view. It was also something much worse: the few denying the will of the many. This, of course, is tyranny,—what our ancestors revolted against when they founded the nation. But go ahead they did. It is probable that even as early as this they had no idea of winning the election; they merely intended to keep the party machinery in their own hands. Gravely talking about law and the Constitution they proceeded to defy the first principles of popular government.

By use of the Southern delegates, from States where the Republican Party exists mostly in theory, by contesting almost every delegation, and always ruling against Roosevelt, by every manipulation which the “Old Guard” of the party could employ, Mr. Taft was nominated. In at least one important and crucial case, delegates were seized for Mr. Taft by shameless theft. The phrase is that used by Mr. Thayer,—a historian, accustomed to weigh his words, and a non-partisan in this contest, since he favored neither Mr. Taft nor Roosevelt.

In August the Progressive Party was founded at a convention held in Chicago. Roosevelt and Johnson were the nominees for President and Vice-President. The men gathered at this conventionwere out of the Republican Party; they had not left it, but the party had left them. Not willingly did they take this action; men whose grandfathers voted for Fremont in 1856 and for Lincoln in 1860, and again for Lincoln in 1864, when the fate of the Republic really depended on the success of the Republican Party. The sons of men who had fought for the Union did not lightly attack even the name of the old party. But there was nothing left but its name; its worst elements led it; many of the better men who stayed in it kept silent. Probably even they realized the nauseous hypocrisy of the situation when Mr. William Barnes of New York came forward and implored that the country be saved, that our liberty be saved, that the Constitution be saved!

For the destroyer, from whom the country was to be saved, was one of the greatest and most honorable men of his time,—while it was later established in court that it was no libel to say that Mr. Barnes was a Boss and had used crooked methods.

The Progressives, soon called the Bull Moose Party, attracted the usual group of reformers, and some cranks. Each new party does this. Roosevelt had, many years before, spoken of the “lunatic fringe” which clings to the skirts of every sincere reform.

“But the whole body,” writes Mr. Thayer, “judged without prejudice, probably contained the largest number of disinterested, public-spirited, and devoted persons, who had ever met for a national and political object since the group which formed the Republican Party in 1854.”

All the new measures which they proposed, although denounced by the two old parties, were in use in other democratic countries; many of them have since been adopted here. Roosevelt foresaw the radical wave which was later to sweep over the country and was trying to make our government more liberal, so as to meet the new spirit of things. The more radical of Socialists always hated him as their worst enemy, for they knew that his reasonable reforms would make it impossible for them to succeed in their extreme proposals.

The jokes made about the new party were often most amusing and added a great deal of interest to an exciting campaign. The Bull Moosers were very much in earnest, and had a camp-meeting fervor, which laid them open to a good deal of ridicule. But they could stand it, for they knew that as between themselves and the Republicans, the last laugh would be theirs. The Republicans had nominated Mr. Taft by means of delegates from rock-ribbed Democratic States like Alabama,Florida and Georgia, let them now see if they could elect him by such means!

One phase of the campaign was a shame and a disgrace. The Republican newspapers joined in the use of abusive terms against Roosevelt, to a degree which has never been paralleled, before nor since. They described him as a monster, a foul traitor, another Benedict Arnold, and for weeks used language about him for which the writers would be overcome with shame if it were brought home to them now. This had its natural result. Just as the speeches of Emma Goldman and others stirred up the murderer of President McKinley to his act, so this reiteration of abuse, this harping on the assertion that Roosevelt was the enemy of the country, the destroyer of law and liberty, induced another weak-minded creature to attempt murder.

A man named Schrank who said that he had been led on by what he read in the papers, waited for Roosevelt outside a hotel in Milwaukee. This was during the campaign and Roosevelt was leaving the hotel to make a speech in a public hall. As he stood up in his automobile, Schrank shot him in the chest. The bullet was partially checked by a thick roll of paper—the notes for his speech—and by an eyeglasses case. Nevertheless, with the bullet in him, only stopping to change his blood-soaked shirt, he refused to quit. He went and made his speech, standing on the platform and speaking for over an hour.

He thought of himself as a soldier fighting for a cause, and he would no more leave because of a wound than he would have deserted his fellow-hunter in Africa, when that charging lion came down on them.

For two weeks he had to keep out of the campaign, recovering from his wound, first in a hospital and then at home. Governor Wilson, the Democratic nominee, soon to be the President-Elect, generously offered to cease his campaign speeches, but this offer was declined by Mr. Roosevelt.

In the election, Mr. Wilson was the winner, with Mr. Roosevelt second. The Progressive candidate beat the Republican, as it had been predicted he would. Mr. Roosevelt received over half a million more votes than Mr. Taft, and had eighty-eight electoral votes to eight for Mr. Taft. The Bosses were punished for defying the will of the voters and a useful lesson in politics was administered.

The testimony of Mr. Thayer is especially valuable, since he was a supporter of Mr. Wilson inthis election. He writes that since the election showed that Roosevelt had been all the time the real choice of the Republican Party “it was the Taft faction and not Roosevelt which split the Republican Party in 1912.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE EXPLORER

I cannot rest from travel; I will drinkLife to the lees. All times I have enjoy’dGreatly, have suffered greatly, both with thoseThat loved me, and alone; on shore, and whenThro' scudding drifts the rainy HyadesVext the dim sea. I am become a name;For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known,—cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honor’d of them all,—And drunk delight of battle with my peers,Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. …How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on lifeWere all too little, and of one to meLittle remains; but every hour is savedFrom that eternal silence, something more,A bringer of new things; and vile it wereFor some three suns to store and hoard myself,And this grey spirit yearning in desireTo follow knowledge like a sinking star,Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.Tennyson’sUlysses.

Tennyson’sUlysses.

Mr. Roosevelttook his defeat without whimpering. When he was in a fight he gave blows and expected to receive them. His enemies often hit foul blows, and this his friends resented, especially when the attacks actually provokedan attempt at murder. When his private character was assailed he defended himself, promptly and successfully. But neither he nor any of his friends asked that he should be sacred from all criticism; nor feebly protested that he was above ordinary mortals, and only to be mentioned with a sort of trembling reverence. He was too much of a man to be kept wrapped in wool.

In 1913 he traveled through South American countries to speak before learned bodies which had invited him to come before them. Afterwards, with his son Kermit, some American naturalists, and Colonel Rondon, a brave and distinguished Brazilian officer, he made a long trip through the wilderness of Brazil, to hunt and explore. Some of the country through which they traveled was little known to white men; some of it absolutely unknown. They hunted and killed specimens of the jaguar, tapir, peccary, and nearly all of the other strange South American animals.

In February 1914, they set out upon an unknown stream called the River of Doubt. They did not know whether the exploration of this river would take them weeks or months; whether they might have to face starvation, or savage tribes, or worse than either, disease. They surveyed the river as they went, so as to be able to map itscourse, and add to geographical knowledge. Strange birds haunted the river, and vicious stinging insects annoyed the travelers. They constantly had to carry the canoes around rapids or waterfalls, so that progress was slow. Some of the canoes were damaged and others had to be built. Large birds, like the curassow, and also monkeys, were shot for food. The pest of stinging insects grew constantly worse,—bees, mosquitoes, large blood-sucking flies and enormous ants tormented them. The flies were called piums and borashudas. Some of them bit like scorpions.

Kermit Roosevelt’s canoe was caught in the rapids, smashed and sunk, and one of the men drowned. Once they saw signs of some unknown tribe of Indians, when, one of the dogs belonging to the party was killed in the forest, almost within sight of Colonel Rondon, and found with two arrows in his body. The river was dangerous for bathing, because of a peculiar fish—the piranha—a savage little beast which attacks men and animals with its razor-like teeth, inflicts fearful wounds and may even kill any unfortunate creature which is caught by a school in deep water. Some members of the party were badly bitten by the piranhas.

As their long and difficult course down the rivercontinued, and as their hardships increased, one of the native helpers murdered another native—a sergeant—and fled. Roosevelt, while in the water helping to right an upset canoe, bruised his leg against a boulder. Inflammation set in, as it usually does with wounds in the tropics. For forty-eight days they saw no human being outside their own party. They were all weak with fever and troubled with wounds received in the river. Colonel Roosevelt (who was nearly fifty-six years old) wrote of his own condition:

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