Theodore Roosevelt [67]
and privileges with the tenacity of a drowning man clinging to a plank, and he deceived himself into thinking that, in desperately trying to save himself and his order, he was saving Society.
Most tragic of all, to one who regards history as the revelation of the unfolding of the moral nature of mankind, was the fact that these men had not the slightest idea that they were living in a moral world, or that a new influx of moral inspiration had begun to permeate Society in its politics, its business, and its daily conduct. The great ship Privilege, on which they had voyaged with pomp and satisfaction, was going down and they knew it not.
CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO ROOSEVELTS
I do not wish to paint Roosevelt in one light only, and that the most favorable. Had no other been shed upon him, his Administration would have been too bland for human belief, and life for him would have palled. For his inexhaustible energy hungered for action. As soon as his judgment convinced him that a thing ought to be done he set about doing it. Recently, I asked one of the most perspicacious members of his Cabinet, "What do you consider Theodore's dominant trait" He thought for a while, and then replied, "Combativeness." No doubt the public also, at least while Roosevelt was in office, thought of him first as a fighter. The idea that he was truculent or pugnacious, that he went about with a chip on his shoulder, that he loved fighting for the sake of fighting, was, however, a mistake. During the eight years he was President he kept the United States out of war; not only that, he settled long-standing causes of irritation, such as the dispute over the Alaskan Boundary, which might, under provocation, have led to war. Even more than this, without striking a blow, he repelled the persistent attempts of the German Emperor to gain a foothold on this continent; he repelled those snakelike attacks and forced the Imperial Bully, not merely to retreat ignominiously but to arbitrate. And in foreign affairs, Roosevelt shone as a peacemaker. He succeeded in persuading the Russian Czar to come to terms with the Mikado of Japan. And soon after, when the German Emperor threatened to make war on France, a letter from Roosevelt to him caused William to reconsider his brutal plan, and to submit the Moroccan dispute to a conference of the Powers at Algeciras.
Instead of the braggart and brawler that his enemies mispainted him, I saw in Roosevelt, rather, a strong man who had taken early to heart Hamlet's maxim and had steadfastly practiced it:
"Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake."
He himself summed up this part of his philosophy in a phrase which has become a proverb: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." More than once in his later years he quoted this to me, adding, that it was precisely because this or that Power knew that he carried a big stick, that he was enabled to speak softly with effect.
No man of our time better deserved the Nobel Peace Prize than did he. The fallacy that Roosevelt, like the proverbial Irishman at Donnybrook Fair, had rather fight than eat, spread through the country, and indeed throughout the world, and had its influence in determining whether men voted for him or not. His enemies used it as proof that he was not a safe President, but they took means much more malignant than this to discredit and destroy him. When the Big Interests discovered that they could not silence him, they circulated stories of all kinds that would have rendered even the archangel Gabriel suspect to some worthy dupes.
They threw doubts, for instance, on his sanity, and one heard that the "Wall Street magnates" employed the best alienists in the country to analyze everything the President did and said, in the hope of accumulating evidence to show that he was too unbalanced to be President. Not content with stealing away his reputation for mental competence, they shot into the dark the gravest charges against his honor. A single story, still believed,
Most tragic of all, to one who regards history as the revelation of the unfolding of the moral nature of mankind, was the fact that these men had not the slightest idea that they were living in a moral world, or that a new influx of moral inspiration had begun to permeate Society in its politics, its business, and its daily conduct. The great ship Privilege, on which they had voyaged with pomp and satisfaction, was going down and they knew it not.
CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO ROOSEVELTS
I do not wish to paint Roosevelt in one light only, and that the most favorable. Had no other been shed upon him, his Administration would have been too bland for human belief, and life for him would have palled. For his inexhaustible energy hungered for action. As soon as his judgment convinced him that a thing ought to be done he set about doing it. Recently, I asked one of the most perspicacious members of his Cabinet, "What do you consider Theodore's dominant trait" He thought for a while, and then replied, "Combativeness." No doubt the public also, at least while Roosevelt was in office, thought of him first as a fighter. The idea that he was truculent or pugnacious, that he went about with a chip on his shoulder, that he loved fighting for the sake of fighting, was, however, a mistake. During the eight years he was President he kept the United States out of war; not only that, he settled long-standing causes of irritation, such as the dispute over the Alaskan Boundary, which might, under provocation, have led to war. Even more than this, without striking a blow, he repelled the persistent attempts of the German Emperor to gain a foothold on this continent; he repelled those snakelike attacks and forced the Imperial Bully, not merely to retreat ignominiously but to arbitrate. And in foreign affairs, Roosevelt shone as a peacemaker. He succeeded in persuading the Russian Czar to come to terms with the Mikado of Japan. And soon after, when the German Emperor threatened to make war on France, a letter from Roosevelt to him caused William to reconsider his brutal plan, and to submit the Moroccan dispute to a conference of the Powers at Algeciras.
Instead of the braggart and brawler that his enemies mispainted him, I saw in Roosevelt, rather, a strong man who had taken early to heart Hamlet's maxim and had steadfastly practiced it:
"Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour's at the stake."
He himself summed up this part of his philosophy in a phrase which has become a proverb: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." More than once in his later years he quoted this to me, adding, that it was precisely because this or that Power knew that he carried a big stick, that he was enabled to speak softly with effect.
No man of our time better deserved the Nobel Peace Prize than did he. The fallacy that Roosevelt, like the proverbial Irishman at Donnybrook Fair, had rather fight than eat, spread through the country, and indeed throughout the world, and had its influence in determining whether men voted for him or not. His enemies used it as proof that he was not a safe President, but they took means much more malignant than this to discredit and destroy him. When the Big Interests discovered that they could not silence him, they circulated stories of all kinds that would have rendered even the archangel Gabriel suspect to some worthy dupes.
They threw doubts, for instance, on his sanity, and one heard that the "Wall Street magnates" employed the best alienists in the country to analyze everything the President did and said, in the hope of accumulating evidence to show that he was too unbalanced to be President. Not content with stealing away his reputation for mental competence, they shot into the dark the gravest charges against his honor. A single story, still believed,