Theodore Roosevelt [144]
must understand, that the years which followed 1910 were the culmination and crown of all that went before. He was a fighter from the days when, as a little boy, he fought the disease which threatened to make his existence puny and crippled. He was a fighter, and from his vantage-ground as President, he fought so valiantly that the world took notice and he brought new ideals into the hearts of the American people. He was just as brave and resourceful and tenacious a fighter when he led the forlorn hope, as when he marched at the head of the Nation in his campaigns against corruption and the mercenaries of Mammon. During these later years he gave up everything - his ease, his probable restoration to power, the friendships that were very dear to him, even his party which no longer, as he thought, followed the path of righteousness, or desired righteous ends - for the Cause to which he had been dedicated since youth. Analyze his acts at any period, and you will find that they were determined by his loyalty to that Cause.
And how could so great a soul exercise itself to the full, except by grappling with adversity? The prosperous days seemed to fit him like a skin, but only in these days of apparent thwarting and disappointment could he show himself equal to any blows of Fate. At first he struggled magnificently against crushing odds, asking no allowances and no favors. He founded and led the Progressive Party and, in 1912, received the most amazing popular tribute in our history. And he would have pushed on his work for that party had not the coming of the World War changed his perspective. Thenceforth, he devoted himself to saving civilization from the reptilian and atrocious Hun; that was a task, in comparison with which the fortune of a political party sank out of sight.
His work demanded of him to rouse his country men from the apathy and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it, and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they trusted him. Never for a moment did they suspect that he was slyly working for the enemy, or for special interests here or abroad.
He, the supreme American, spoke for America and for the civilization which he believed America fulfilled. His attacks on the delays and the incompetence, on the faint-heartedness and contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one, Roosevelt's demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it had to be driven through at top speed. And so of the other vitally necessary things. He ceased to warn Americans that they must be neutral "even in thought"; he ceased to comfort them by the assurance that a nation may be "too proud to fight"; he ceased to extol the "justice and humanity of the Germans." That he suffered these changes was owing to the fact that American public opinion, largely influenced by Roosevelt's word and example, would not tolerate them any more. And President Wilson, when he can, follows public opinion.
Roosevelt took personal pleasure in the bridging of the chasm which had opened between him and his former party intimates. On neither side was there recantation, but they could unite again on the question of the War and America's duty towards it, which swallowed up partisan grievances. Many of the old time Republicans who had broken politically from Roosevelt in 1912, remained devoted personal friends, and they tried to reunite him and the discordant fragments. One of these friends was Colonel Robert Bacon, whom every one loved
And how could so great a soul exercise itself to the full, except by grappling with adversity? The prosperous days seemed to fit him like a skin, but only in these days of apparent thwarting and disappointment could he show himself equal to any blows of Fate. At first he struggled magnificently against crushing odds, asking no allowances and no favors. He founded and led the Progressive Party and, in 1912, received the most amazing popular tribute in our history. And he would have pushed on his work for that party had not the coming of the World War changed his perspective. Thenceforth, he devoted himself to saving civilization from the reptilian and atrocious Hun; that was a task, in comparison with which the fortune of a political party sank out of sight.
His work demanded of him to rouse his country men from the apathy and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it, and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they trusted him. Never for a moment did they suspect that he was slyly working for the enemy, or for special interests here or abroad.
He, the supreme American, spoke for America and for the civilization which he believed America fulfilled. His attacks on the delays and the incompetence, on the faint-heartedness and contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one, Roosevelt's demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it had to be driven through at top speed. And so of the other vitally necessary things. He ceased to warn Americans that they must be neutral "even in thought"; he ceased to comfort them by the assurance that a nation may be "too proud to fight"; he ceased to extol the "justice and humanity of the Germans." That he suffered these changes was owing to the fact that American public opinion, largely influenced by Roosevelt's word and example, would not tolerate them any more. And President Wilson, when he can, follows public opinion.
Roosevelt took personal pleasure in the bridging of the chasm which had opened between him and his former party intimates. On neither side was there recantation, but they could unite again on the question of the War and America's duty towards it, which swallowed up partisan grievances. Many of the old time Republicans who had broken politically from Roosevelt in 1912, remained devoted personal friends, and they tried to reunite him and the discordant fragments. One of these friends was Colonel Robert Bacon, whom every one loved