Daniel Henderson

“ Powerful indeed will be the pen that adequately describes Roosevelt’s life of struggle and triumph, with its warfare against bodily handicaps and political prejudice; warfare against wild beasts in dense jungles; warfare against hunger and exhaustion on inconceivably hard journeys of exploration; warfare against predatory wealth; warfare against men in high places who would grind the faces of the poor ”

“ Sometimes a man gets caught in the rush of the beasts and is trampled to death. Roosevelt never experienced this danger, but he knew the very hardest part of the work. On one occasion he was for thirty-six hours in the saddle, dismounting only to change horses or to eat.
At another time he was helping to bring a thousand head of young cattle down to his lower range. At night he and a cowboy stood guard. The cattle had been without water that day, and in their thirst they tried to break away. In the darkness Roosevelt could dimly see the shadowy outlines of the frantic herd. ”

“ Roosevelt and I have four sons, and they are as dear to us as your sons are to you. If we now had war, these four boys would all go. We think it entirely right that they should go if their country needs them. But I do not think it fair that they should be sent to defend the boys who are too soft or too timid ‘to face the cannon,’ or the other boys who wish to stay at home to make money while somebody else protects them. ”

“ His reviving interest in politics and his engagement to Edith Carow came to draw him back to the fields where happiness and success waited. Sewall and Dow returned East with him.
The duty of a biographer is to record and not to speculate, yet as we look at Roosevelt’s later life in his unpretentious home at Sagamore Hill; when we think of the democratic sewing circle at Oyster Bay to which Mrs. Roosevelt goes regularly to sew garments for crippled children, and when we see the democratic simplicity with which Roosevelt mingled with his neighbors and shared their experiences and confidences ”

“ It was with men like these, in surroundings like these, that young Roosevelt had elected to learn to the full extent the lesson of democracy.
Before his Western trip Roosevelt had already had his manhood and his spirit of brotherhood tested in the hard-waged battles of New York political life. Now was to come a test infinitely greater. The former member of the New York Assembly, the man who had occupied a high place in New York social life, who in his earlier days was noted for his well-tailored figure and his eyeglasses, had turned his back on all this. ”

“ It was by his inspiration that the American officials who administered government in the Philippines, Porto Rico and, during the American occupancy, in Cuba, devoted themselves to the welfare of the people in a way that won the commendation of our sister nations. His course in this respect was governed by a belief that when it was necessary for our government to administer the affairs of the weaker nations under its control that government should be, not for the profit of the people in the United States, but for the people governed. ”

“ The assassination of President McKinley, which led Roosevelt to the White House, simply hastened the goal which was already in sight.
From his early days in politics he took a high moral stand and formed the habit of going to the people over the heads of the politicians whenever he thought that the public interest required such drastic measures. He set for himself a high standard, yet, when he quitted the Presidency, that standard had been set even higher than when he made his first campaign for clean politics in the New York Legislature. ”

“ The following paragraphs from his reply illustrate that tender yet just attitude that Roosevelt took toward American women, including, of course, the women of his own household:
“Now, my dear Mrs. ——, you have described a career of service which makes me feel more like taking off my hat to you, and saluting you as a citizen deserving of the highest honor, than I would feel as regards any colonel of a crack regiment. But you seem to think, if I understand your letter aright, that ‘preparedness’ is in some way designed to make your boys food for cannon. ”

“ Roosevelt was fond of boxing with “Mike” Donovan, trainer at the New York Athletic Club, as well as with William Muldoon, the wrestler and trainer. His opponents testify that the Colonel was handicapped by his poor sight. He wanted to see his adversary’s eyes—to catch the gleam that comes before a blow. Roosevelt always maneuvered to see his opponent’s face, and he liked to “mix in” when boxing.
Hard and heavy was the Colonel’s method, and his opponents forced the colonel to adapt his plan of fighting to theirs. It did not matter to Roosevelt. ”

“ The appearance of an ex-President of the United States carrying the Star-Spangled Banner over a body of American soldiers to the battlefront would glorify us as will nothing else. It will electrify the world. ”

“ Roosevelt’s experiences taught him that in the era in which he lived war at times was essential to establish justice. He did not believe in surrendering to the blusterer, or to the ruler who tried to overrun his neighbor’s boundaries by force. He trained himself to be a warrior and a hunter because he believed that a strain of the primitive man was necessary to combat the too often debilitating influences of modern life. ”

“ A FRANK CANDIDATE
From the date of his entering the Presidency until after the election of 1904 Roosevelt was under restraint. Although he knew that his policies had the full approval of the people, he felt himself to be a President by accident. It is well known that he desired a nomination and election in 1904.
“I do not believe in playing the hypocrite,” he said. “Any strong man fit to be President would desire a nomination and re-election after his first term. Lincoln was President in so great a crisis that perhaps he neither could nor did feel any personal interest in his own re-election. ”

“ How good is man’s life, the mere living! How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!”
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These splendid lines of Browning were Roosevelt’s outdoor creed. His exploits as a hunter in Africa were merely a development of his life as a naturalist and out-of-door man. At Harvard Roosevelt had devoted himself to a study of natural science, and had even thought seriously of making it his lifework. Politics claimed him then, but always underlying Roosevelt the statesman was Roosevelt the naturalist. ”

“ One shudders to think of what fate would have befallen the United States if the monopolies which Roosevelt curbed while he was President had been allowed to flourish until this era of revolution. That the working people of America are contented and peace-loving today is largely due to Roosevelt’s saving them from exploitation by the trusts. ”

“ The next obstruction that confronted young Roosevelt was the attitude of his party associates in the Legislature. Many of these men were in politics for purely commercial reasons. They frowned on crusaders and tried to squelch any tendency in Roosevelt toward independence of thought and action. His part, as they saw it, was to be merely the smallest cog in the political machine, moving only when a man higher up applied the power. ”

“ The most exciting and dangerous part of the roundup comes when the cattle are stampeded by a storm or through fright. Anything may start them—the plunge of a horse, the approach of a coyote, the arrival of new steers or cows. In an instant the herd rises to its feet and rushes off. Then the work of the cowboys is cut out for them. No matter how rough the ground or how black the night, the cow-punchers must ride36 without sparing themselves to head them off and finally stop them. Even when stopped there is danger of them breaking again. ”

“ Good Will Abroad; A Square Deal at Home In Roosevelt’s opinion and in the opinion of the entire country, his act in sending the fleet upon its world mission did more to favorably advertise the United States to the world and to establish cordial international relations, than any other of his deeds as President. His object in sending the battle fleet on this voyage was to prove to foreign nations that American battleships could be assembled in the Pacific Ocean as well as in the Atlantic, without this movement assuming the nature of a threat against any Asiatic or European power. ”

“ Some one called the regiment “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.” The name caught the public’s fancy. It spread from coast to coast and made Roosevelt’s name a household word.
Roosevelt had his work cut out for him in welding the various elements under him into a disciplined unit. He measured fully up to his task. No man was better equipped than he for such a command. In roundups in the Far West, in hunting expeditions, in the political districts of New York City, in clubs and drawing-rooms and in official circles he had met all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ Roosevelt’s Political Victories There is a phrase, attributed to Napoleon, to the effect that God fights on the side of the big battalions. There is a truth in the saying that applies to big men, just as well as to big armies.
Fate seemed to battle on the side of Theodore Roosevelt through every step of his political career, though a study of the man shows that by his superhuman energy he himself was almost always the creator and molder of the circumstances that seemed to advance him.
When Roosevelt, at twenty-three, determined to enter politics, the political cards were stacked against him. ”

“ Theodore Roosevelt was the most inspiring and, consequently, the most dominant figure in our national life since Lincoln, and his influence on American youth and upon our people as a whole will always be an uplifting one.
His life will always be an inspiration for greater effort and for higher ideals. ”

“ A MAN AMONG MEN
Roosevelt brushed elbows in Medora with newly arrived hunters from the plains and mountains, clad in buckskin shirts and fur caps—greasy and unkempt, yet strong and resolute men. Then there were teamsters, in slouch hats and great cowhide boots; stage-drivers with faces like leather; Indians wrapped in blankets; cowboys galloping through the streets. ”

“ Now and then, however, there is a youth who uses his wealth instead of abusing it. Mr. Roosevelt’s entire career is an incentive to rich men’s sons. Born in a great house; a graduate of Harvard—rich man’s college; traveled abroad; a Civil Service Commissioner with George William Curtis, an intellectual aristocrat; Police Commissioner of New York; a cattle man on the plains of Montana; leader of the Rough Riders in Cuba; Governor of New York; Vice-President and President of the United States—all this represents a long and brilliant career. ”

“ We know that many good persons feel entirely different, but to us it is painful and harrowing long after death to move the poor body from which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where he fell in battle and where the foemen buried him.
After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I intend to visit the grave and then to have a small stone put up saying it is put up by us, but not disturbing what has already been erected to his memory by his friends and American comrades in arms. ”

“ Roosevelt was as ready then with an answer as he was in later life. “If that is so,” he replied, according to his close friend, Jacob Riis, “the groom and the saloonkeeper are the governing class and you confess weakness. You have all the chances, the education, the position, and you let them rule you. They must be better men!” He went to the Republican Club, leaving his would-be advisers dolefully shaking their heads.
This opposition overcome, Roosevelt found another obstacle in his way. ”

“ The Colonel craved to be alone with Nature. It was evident that he was hungry for the wild and the aboriginal. It was this hunger that came to him periodically and resulted in his going forth on hunting and exploring trips to the Far West, Africa and Brazil.
As an illustration of the fact that it was love of nature itself more than love of killing that drove Roosevelt into the wilds, Burroughs describes how, at their second camp, which they reached in mid-afternoon, their attention was attracted by a strange note in the spruce woods. ”

“ Interesting and enthusiastic was this comment of Colonel Henry Watterson, the famous editor of “The Louisville Courier-Journal”:
“The proposal of Theodore Roosevelt to enlist in the world’s army of freedom and to go to one of the fronts in Europe leading a body of American soldiers may not be whistled lightly down the wind as a man who has a positive genius for217 the spectacular. It should be considered very seriously. Men are reached equally through their imagination and their patriotism, and except for the sympathetic and emotional in man there would be no armies. ”

“ Roosevelt had suggested that when war came it would be wise for the United States to seize the Philippine Islands, then under Spanish possession. He it was who, when the War Department proposed to supplant Dewey, successfully urged that he be retained at the Asiatic station. “Keep the Olympia! Provide yourself with coal,” he cabled to Dewey at this time.
No sooner had President McKinley declared war than Roosevelt sent a still more vital message to Dewey, ordering him to sail into the port of Manila and to capture or destroy the Spanish fleet. ”

“ Those in authority considered Sims an alarmist, but Roosevelt grew concerned as he noted the small proportion of hits to shots made by our ships. He then sounded the slogan that “the shots that hit are the shots that count.”
Roosevelt could do little then in support of Sims, but when he became President he remembered Sims and appointed him to lead in revolutionizing the fleet’s training in marksmanship. It was due to Sims—now the admiral who has served this country so well in the present war—that the fighting efficiency of the navy, as far as gunnery went, became three times more effective. ”

“ Through the remainder of his historic career the Colonel never reached too great a place to be out of touch with his Rough Riders, no matter what humble positions they held. No member of the regiment ever came to the White House to see his former chief without Roosevelt breaking all engagements to shake his hand and talk over with him the stirring events in Cuba. ”

“ All over America the people will follow the movements of the fleet; they will learn something of the intricate details of the coaling and commissariat work under war-like conditions, and in a word their attention will be aroused. Next time Mr. Roosevelt or his representatives appeal to the country for new battleships they will do so to people whose minds have been influenced one way or the other. The naval programme will not have stood still. We are sure that, apart from increasing the efficiency of the existing fleet, this is the aim which Roosevelt has in mind. ”