William Allen White

“ It is so unselfish and noble a motive in politics, that it has been neglected in the popular estimate of Roosevelt, and therefore many people have regarded him as a pugnacious, impetuous, honest, but eccentric young man, while others have looked upon him as a harum-scarum, "bronco-busting" lover of notoriety, a poser who liked a fight for its own sake, and had no regard for the amenities of political relationship. ”

“ Politicians have much to say about the voice of the people, as if it was the one ever safe guide, but the makers of our country, Washington and Lincoln; were essentially leaders, and not followers of public opinion. Is not the highest privilege of friendship the giving to a friend the best of one's conscience and judgment ? The people will not call Roosevelt to act, no matter how loudly they clamor, unless their wisdom is confirmed by his own conscience and judgment. ”

“ The average man sitting by the average grate fire in the average club hall in the United States would proclaim virtually the same opinion about civic morality and public honor that Roosevelt would proclaim. There would be amicable discussion, but few differences between them in spinning theories. But when the average man left his club for the caucus or convention, the legislature or the congress, he would accept things as they are, and thank God he is not as other men. Roosevelt has fought with all the force in his indomitable soul for things as they should be and can be. ”

“ Roosevelt brings to this high office an erudition ripened by a practical grapple with life; a political sagacity which has been at daily gymnastic exercise for twenty years in every manner of public contest. He is fit. His public virtue is as certain as his private virtue. He has no double standard of morals. The strong moral purpose which has moved him at all times, which has strengthened him in other crises, now dominates his life. ”

“ Enjoyment of life is the powerful under tone of his whole career. Throwing himself whole-souled into his task, he enjoys the trials, disappointments, the stress of it along with the successes. To him it is all in the day's work and all good. The dominant note of his private conversation is his love of the fun of work, and the side he volunteers to give one is always the humorous side of what has happened to him. ”

“ The American idea is that most politicians of all parties are bad, the worst ones generally being in the other party, and the good ones all dead or out of office. Americans believe that to get an office and enjoy it forever is the chief end of a politician's existence. Roosevelt has held offices more than half his life since his majority, and offices that have brought more labor and more enemies than glory or material reward. Only as Governor of New York and Vice-President was his official salary as much as he could make writing for magazines and publishing books. ”

“ It is easily said that one will follow a policy laid down by a predecessor, but could ever a man finish another man's work and not make the end his own? The personal element which is so strong in Roosevelt will mold his work, even though conditions remain as they are when he began it. And conditions which have changed so entirely since 1897 will not stop stock-still until 1905. Conditions are bound to make new problems and new policies, and the personality of Roosevelt, virile, aspiring—in the best sense—and true, will help shape and solve them. ”

“ If a senator, friend or enemy, will have easy access to the White House on business of the patronage, any constituent of that senator, however humble, will find the White House door swing as easily for him to show the President that a candidate for public office is dishonest. And when Roosevelt has found a candidate is unfit for an office he will not be appointed, even though the entire Senate of the United States demands it. ”

“ All his life, for instance, Roosevelt has paid attention to detail, to little things. He has worked hard for small results, which he believed to be actual and necessary. Nothing can check this tendency in him. For instance, if some one should call his attention to the annoyance homecoming Americans suffer at the New York Custom-House, he would change it if it was wise to change it. If he should be shown that an architect was blackmailing a contractor on a public building he would turn aside from any big work he was engaged upon to punish that architect. ”

“ He is on the threshold of his life work, so full of the high faith that if his feet stumble, as human feet are prone to do, no man may gainsay the purpose that guided them. During the three sad, dumb minutes following Roosevelt's repeated oath to the Presidential office, youth, which he has clung to so fondly, left him, and maturity came. ”

“ And the tools of his trade were the familiar utensils of every-day politics; for he has no genius for cunning, no stomach for intrigue, little or none of that stage presence which hypnotizes men and cords them up like wood. ”

“ While Roosevelt has had relations with evil men, he has never compromised with evil. And here concerning President Roosevelt's attitude to politicians, good and bad, it can safely be said that, as the past is an index to the future, be will treat all alike, with all fairness and courtesy, carrying no grudges. Revenge is not sweet to him. His slate is clean, and there is no doubt that Senators Platt and Quay can come to the President on honest business as easily as his best friends ”

“ In any purely native American community manhood suffrage works infinitely better than any other system of government; and throughout our country at large, in spite of the large number of ignorant voters, it is probably preferable as it stands to any modification of it. But there is no more 'natural right' why a white man over twenty-one should vote than there is why a negro woman under eighteen should not. 'Civil rights' and 'personal freedom' are not terms that necessarily imply the right to vote. People make mistakes governing themselves exactly as they make mistakes governing others. ”

“ HOW PROFOUNDLY HE STUDIES PUBLIC QUESTIONS. While to predict what a man will do or will not do is as dangerous as for a man to predict what he will do himself, certain trends of character—like streams of moving humanity in a city street, all helter skelter till seen in perspective, when they assume direction and unvarying tendency—certain trends of character are so marked that it is almost safe to assume, if not to prophesy, that he who holds them will follow them through whatever stress of circumstances he may come. ”

“ Providence does not make a rugged virile, honest, cheerful, clear-minded man to waste him on little tasks in lonesome places. Great strength is made for hard work. To-day, Theodore Roosevelt, young, vigorous, and brave, is going to his life work rejoicing as a strong man to ran a race. ”

“ Surely he loves to live the truth much more than to create it in literature. He has no vanity in his writing; style with him is simply the complete, forcible expression of an idea that he would make a fact or a true report of an act done. Little that he has written contains more than his public feelings. The depths of his nature, emotional and intellectual, have never taken literary form, no doubt because literature is not the best medium for a complete expression of this man of action. ”

“ Roosevelt has not the Prince-Albert-and-white-necktie intellect. The fourth-rate patter that the average politician in Congress learns about the tariff, about the money question, about the so-called trusts, has never filled Roosevelt's head. What he has read and considered along economic lines has been the presentations and conclusions of first-class men whose names are unknown to most of the gentlemen who form policies and believe they are thinking profoundly in the national legislature. ”

“ Roosevelt, who, in the most trying circumstances, is a gentleman before he is anything else under the sun, courteously yet finally, and doubtless with some emphasis, told Platt to name honest men or none. Platt named honest men. ”

“ Common sense is so common that few of us really use it, and when a man like Roosevelt comes along and will have nothing else for his mental food and moral drink but the ordinary wisdom of the race, men are appalled and ascribe many strange and amusing traits to him, which if human enough is nevertheless absurd. ”

“ Fate, destiny,. a new duty, or the compelling bent of his eager mind has called him away time and again from the work he had on hand; but always, in every place where service has sent him, he has left the lasting influence of a fine man, honestly, earnestly laboring toward a clean, high, and ultimately accomplishable purpose. ”

“ McKinley went to Buffalo with his mind full of a great policy—the policy of international reciprocity. There were many treaties—mostly commercial treaties—on the block when McKinley laid down the work. To adopt these treaties which affect the industrial conditions of the country almost as seriously as an entirely new tariff bill, will require the masterful imperturbability and velvety adroitness which McKinley used so skillfully. Roosevelt may have to learn this art of fencing. If he tries to learn it he will learn it well despite his training. ”

“ The world may love a lover, but it keeps its richest rewards for the man who, at the end of the day, has deeds done and no excuses to make. He was Civil-Service Commissioner because, knowing that the principles of civil-service reform are vital, he had the grit to determine that conditions should be shaped to that mold; he was made Police Commissioner of the city of New York at thirty~six, because Mayor Strong was looking for a brave, sensible man to take an unpopular task and not play politics in the office. ”

“ But in every crisis he has asked for help, has sought from first-class intellects their best wisdom, from experts in each line of knowledge their soberest advice, from practical men their soundest judgment. ”

“ As a personality Roosevelt is a simple proposition Men who achieve greatly are always men of primitive instincts, who do their work in the most direct sort of way. There is no legerdemain about the best success; no conjuring, no devious and mysterious machinations. Roosevelt has succeeded in life because by the plainest method he has done in a thoroughly human, unflinching, and often humorous way, what he had conceived to be the right thing to do. It is not because he has aimed high that men trust him ”

“ The unyielding Dutch in him is too big, and his training, his character, and all his traditions are against securing popularity at the price of his conscience.
KNOWS EVIL MEN, NOT EVIL. Working life in this imperfect world is hardly a Sunday-school picnic. In it evil men form, let us say, a fair working minority, and he who ignores them does not get his day's good work done. ”

“ An infinitesimally small number of Americans of the next century, historians, and advanced students of the period of American development from 1870 to 1899 would have a look at Roosevelt's "Winning of the West," "American Ideals," "With the Rough Riders in Cuba," and in so much as the style of these writings reveals the man, they would know him as a frank-spoken, sturdy fellow, a hater of shams, and a friend of every one who gets things done and over with. ”

“ He still retains that unconquerable soul of his; so that, come what may, good fortune or ill, he stands ready with a will to "take what he conceives to be God's part; to do his evident work, stand up for good and destroy evil, and coöperate with the whole scheme here." ”

“ Even though he pours out his soul to acquaintances with an apparent abandon of all reserve, there are great depths in his nature which surface ripples do not reach. The world may never see them revealed unless future events mingle public business with the man's intimate private being on some powerfully dramatic occasion. ”

“ In his present office, where opportunity to talk is closed, his enemies—and he has many lusty ones—may resign themselves to meet the energy which Roosevelt once spent in effervescent and exhilarating language, now saved and turned to iron deeds. ”

“ It is only essential to him that his theories shall be sound and worthy, and that by standing for them he may bring his countrymen to think seriously, honestly, and nobly of public affairs. That is the moving principle, the mastering ambition of his life. The Presidency is but an incident—an important incident, because it gives him a scythe which cuts a wide.swath ”

“ Whatever he has done worth doing has been done in the good old-fashioned way; giving men a chance to be honest, which captures nine men out of ten, and forcing the tenth to be honest by fear of punishment or hope of reward. ”