Theodore Roosevelt [68]
as I know, by persons of eminence in their professions, will illustrate this. When one of the great contests between the President and the Interests was on, he remembered that one of their representatives in New York had damaging, confidential letters from him. Hearing that these might be produced, Roosevelt telephoned one of his trusty agents to break open the desk of the Captain of Industry where they were kept, and to bring them to the White House, before ten o'clock the following morning. This was done. To believe that the President of the United States would engage in a vulgar robbery of the jimmy and black-mask sort indicates a degree of credulity which even the alienists could hardly have expected to encounter outside of their asylums. It suggests also, that Baron Munchausen, like the Wandering Jew Ahasuerus, has never died. Does any one suppose that the person whose desk was rifled would have kept quiet? Or that, if the Interests had had even reasonably sure evidence of the President's guilt, they would not have published it? To set spies and detectives upon him with orders to trail him night and day was, according to rumor, an obvious expedient for his enemies to employ.
I repeat these stories, not because I believe them, but because many persons did, and such gossip, like the cruel slanders whispered against President Cleveland years before, gained some credence. Roosevelt was so natural, so unguarded, in his speech and ways, that he laid himself open to calumny. The delight he took in establishing the Ananias Club, and the rapidity with which he found new members for it, seemed to justify strong doubts as to his temper and taste, if not as to his judgment. The vehemence of his public speaking, which was caused in part by a physical difficulty of utterance--the sequel of his early asthmatic trouble--and in part by his extraordinary vigor, created among some of the hearers who did not know him the impression that he must be a hard drinker, or that he drank to stimulate his eloquence. After he retired from office, his enemies, in order to undermine his further political influence, sowed the falsehood that he was a drunkard. I do not recall that they ever suggested that he used his office for his private profit--there are some things too absurd for even malice to suggest--but he had reason enough many times to calm himself by reflecting that his Uncle Jimmy Bulloch, the best of men, believed just such lies, and the most atrocious insinuations, against Mr. Gladstone.
Of course, nearly all public men have to undergo similar virulent defamation. I have heard a well-known publicist, a lawyer of ability, argue that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did not escape from what seems now incredible abuse, and that they were, nevertheless, the noblest of men and peerless patriots; and then he went on to argue that President Woodrow Wilson has been the target of similar malignity, and to leave you to conclude that consequently Wilson is in the same class with Washington and Lincoln. If he had put his thesis in a different form, the publicist might have seen himself, as his hearers did, the absurdity of it. Suppose he had said, for instance: "In spite of the fact that Washington and Lincoln each kept a cow, they were both peerless patriots, therefore, as President Wilson keeps a cow, he must be a peerless patriot." One fears that logic is somewhat neglected even in the training of lawyers in our day.
The commonest charge against Roosevelt, and the one which seemed, on the surface at least, to be most plausible, was that he was devoured by insatiable ambition. The critical remarked that wherever he went he was always the central figure. The truth is, that he could no more help being the central figure than a lion could in any gathering of lesser creatures; the fact that he was Roosevelt decided that. He did use the personal pronoun "I," and the possessive pronoun "My," with such frequency as to irritate good persons who were quite as egotistical as he--if that be egotism--but who used such modest circumlocutions
I repeat these stories, not because I believe them, but because many persons did, and such gossip, like the cruel slanders whispered against President Cleveland years before, gained some credence. Roosevelt was so natural, so unguarded, in his speech and ways, that he laid himself open to calumny. The delight he took in establishing the Ananias Club, and the rapidity with which he found new members for it, seemed to justify strong doubts as to his temper and taste, if not as to his judgment. The vehemence of his public speaking, which was caused in part by a physical difficulty of utterance--the sequel of his early asthmatic trouble--and in part by his extraordinary vigor, created among some of the hearers who did not know him the impression that he must be a hard drinker, or that he drank to stimulate his eloquence. After he retired from office, his enemies, in order to undermine his further political influence, sowed the falsehood that he was a drunkard. I do not recall that they ever suggested that he used his office for his private profit--there are some things too absurd for even malice to suggest--but he had reason enough many times to calm himself by reflecting that his Uncle Jimmy Bulloch, the best of men, believed just such lies, and the most atrocious insinuations, against Mr. Gladstone.
Of course, nearly all public men have to undergo similar virulent defamation. I have heard a well-known publicist, a lawyer of ability, argue that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did not escape from what seems now incredible abuse, and that they were, nevertheless, the noblest of men and peerless patriots; and then he went on to argue that President Woodrow Wilson has been the target of similar malignity, and to leave you to conclude that consequently Wilson is in the same class with Washington and Lincoln. If he had put his thesis in a different form, the publicist might have seen himself, as his hearers did, the absurdity of it. Suppose he had said, for instance: "In spite of the fact that Washington and Lincoln each kept a cow, they were both peerless patriots, therefore, as President Wilson keeps a cow, he must be a peerless patriot." One fears that logic is somewhat neglected even in the training of lawyers in our day.
The commonest charge against Roosevelt, and the one which seemed, on the surface at least, to be most plausible, was that he was devoured by insatiable ambition. The critical remarked that wherever he went he was always the central figure. The truth is, that he could no more help being the central figure than a lion could in any gathering of lesser creatures; the fact that he was Roosevelt decided that. He did use the personal pronoun "I," and the possessive pronoun "My," with such frequency as to irritate good persons who were quite as egotistical as he--if that be egotism--but who used such modest circumlocutions