of the most painful public spectacles I have ever
witnessed. As a result of that unfortunate episode,
during which for two hours the Senator rambled on,
sometimes violently, sometimes incoherently, his
friends and political managers announced his with-
drawal as a presidential candidate.

The pressure upon Mr. Roosevelt then became
greater than ever. He finally said that if there
was any evidence that a considerable body of the
Republican party wanted him to be a candidate
he would agree to follow their wishes. Whereupon



7 8 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

seven Republican governors, of the states of West
Virginia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Wyoming,
Michigan, Kansas, and Missouri, addressed a letter
to Mr. Roosevelt urging him to be a candidate and
saying:

We feel that you will be unresponsive to a plain public
duty if you decline to accept the nomination coming as the
voluntary expression of the wishes of a majority of the Re-
publican voters of the United States through the action of
their delegates in the next National Convention.

Even before this letter was sent to Mr. Roose-
velt steps had been taken in various parts of the
country to elect Roosevelt delegates to the Na-
tional Convention. Mr. Roosevelt believed that
this letter of the seven governors was voicing a
common popular demand and he replied, agreeing
to become a candidate. In his letter he said:

One of the chief principles for which I have stood and for
which I now stand and which I have always endeavoured
and always shall endeavour to reduce to action, is the genuine
rule of the people; and, therefore, I hope that so far as possi-
ble the people may be given the chance, through direct
primaries, to express their preference as to who shall be the
nominee of the Republican Presidential Convention.

On the publication of the letter of the seven
governors and Roosevelt's reply the campaign
began with a full swing. Indeed, in so far as Mr.




© Underwood & Underwood



Theodore Roosevelt addressing a* street audience with char-
acteristic gesture and emphasis



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 79

Roosevelt's political principles and policies were
concerned, it had begun some weeks before, for
early in February he had been invited to address
the Constitutional Convention in Columbus, the
capital city of Ohio, and had there stated certain
principles which he called "A Charter of Democ-
racy." He announced his belief in the short ballot;
in direct nominations by the people including pref-
erential primaries for the election of delegates to
the national nominating conventions; in the elec-
tion of United States senators by direct vote; in
the initiative and referendum "which should be
used not to destroy representative government,
but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresen-
tative"; and finally he promulgated a theory which,
because it was misinterpreted and misunderstood,
raised a tremendous storm in the campaign — the
theory of "The Recall of Judicial Decisions."
Briefly, he asserted that under this doctrine the
voters at the ballot box should have an opportunity
of saying whether a law nullified by the courts as
contrary to the Constitution was in fact uncon-
stitutional or not. On reading the speech it is
apparent he had in mind the application of this
principle or doctrine only to the individual states
with regard to laws affecting social justice and that
he doubted whether it could be adopted with re-



80 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

gard to decisions of the United States Supreme

Court.

Not long after this address, which was popularly
known throughout the campaign as the Columbus
speech, he made another at Carnegie Hall in the
City of New York. It was delivered on March
20, 1912, under the auspices of The Civic Forum,
a non-partisan organization. The Carnegie Hali
speech was notable for two or three things. In it
he took issue with Mr. Taft for the first time in
public. He said:

Mr. Taft's position is the position that has been held from
the beginning of our government, although not always so
openly held, by a large number of the reputable and honour-
able men who, down at bottom, distrust popular government,
and, when they must accept it, accept it with reluctance, and
hedge it round with every species of restriction and check and
balance, so as to make the power of the people as limited and
as ineffective as possible. Mr. Taft fairly defines the issue
when he says that our government is and should be a govern-
ment of all the people by a representative part of the people.
This is an excellent and moderate description of an oligarchy.
It defines our government as a government of all of the people
by a few of the people. Mr. Taft, in his able speech, has
made what is probably the best possible presentation of the
case for those who feel in this manner.

He reaffirmed the creed which he had uttered
before the Ohio Constitutional Convention saying :

I stand on the Columbus speech. The principles there
asserted are not new, but I believe that they are necessary



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 81

to the maintenance of free, democratic government. The part
of my speech in which I advocated the right of the people to
be the final arbiters of what is due process of law in the case of
statutes enacted for the general welfare will ultimately, I am
confident, be recognized as giving strength and support to
the courts instead of being revolutionary and subversive.

The Carnegie Hall speech contains a good ex-
ample of Roosevelt's enjoyment in occasionally-
treating his own foibles humorously, in poking fun
at himself, so to speak. William Draper Lewis,
Dean of the Law School of the University of
Pennsylvania, who afterward became intimately
associated with Roosevelt in the Progressive
campaign, had, in a newspaper article, referred to
the recall of judicial decisions with approval on the
whole. He had commended the plan as being
not only in favour of popular rights but as entirely
harmonious with the best-established legal prin-
ciples, adding, however:

I think it unfortunate that it should have been proposed
by Colonel Roosevelt. He is a man of such marked charac-
teristics and his place in the political world is such that he
arouses intense enthusiasms on the one hand and intense
animosities on the other. Because of this, the great idea
which he has propounded is bound to be beclouded and its
adoption to be delayed. It is a pity that anything so import-
ant should be confounded with any man's personality.

During his speech Roosevelt read Dean Lewis's
entire critique of the plan and said with that char-



82 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

acteristic intonation of voice which indicated his
sense of humour:

As regards the Dean's last paragraph I can only say that
I wish somebody else whose suggestions would arouse less
antagonism had proposed it; but nobody else did propose it
and so I had to. I am not leading this fight as a matter of
aesthetic pleasure. I am leading because somebody must
lead, or else the fight would not be made at all.

The Carnegie Hall speech contained one of the
most eloquent and moving passages in the whole
range of Roosevelt's public utterances. Toward
the conclusion of the speech he uttered these
words:

Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for social and
industrial justice, achieved through the genuine rule of the
people. This is our end, our purpose. The methods for
achieving the end are merely expedients, to be finally ac-
cepted or rejected according as actual experience shows that
they work well or ill. But in our hearts we must have this
lofty purpose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness
and sincerity, or our work will come to nothing. In order
to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to
whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive
to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people
with the fire from their own burning souls. The leader for
the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument,
to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he
is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than
a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in
order that the victory may be won. In the long fight for
righteousness the watchword for all of us is "Spend and be



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 83

spent." It is of little matter whether any one man fails or
succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of
mankind.

The audience, recognizing the personal implica-
tion^of these words, responded by instinctively
rising to their feet and bursting into a storm
of applause. I happened to be sitting in a box
and could look down upon the people who filled
every available seat in the body of the hall. I
noticed William Barnes of Albany, the well-known
leader of the "Old Guard" faction in the Repub-
lican party, a typical reactionary, who had fought
Roosevelt in the gubernatorial campaign of 1910
and who was later to engage in a bitter libel suit
with him as a result of their political antagonisms.
But Barnes rose and applauded with the rest. A
friend told me that when Barnes later in the evening
at one of the clubs was twitted for this public trib-
ute to his arch-enemy he replied :" Why, I was on
my feet before I knew it. Roosevelt, confound
him, has a kind of magnetism that you cannot
resist when you are in his presence !"

It is not necessary here to go into the historical
details of the Progressive campaign. Roosevelt
was the popular candidate for the Republican nomi-
nation. He was seeking not merely the nomina-
tion, but to establish the free primary system by



84 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

which the people at large could exercise their choice
directly in the National conventions. At the
Republican Convention in Chicago delegates who
were elected to vote for his nomination were re-
fused credentials and delegates whom he and his
friends believed did not represent popular will but
who were pledged to vote for Mr. Taft were seated.
Roosevelt felt that this was not merely an injus-
tice to himself but that it was a corrupt and brazen
violation of popular rights. How close he came to
the nomination was related as follows by one of
my associates on the staff of the Outlook, Mr.
Travers Carman, who accompanied Roosevelt
to the Republican Convention as a personal friend
and aide.

It was known that Mr. Roosevelt lacked twenty-eight
delegates (my recollection is that this was the number) to
secure the nomination. The most memorable conference I
ever attended (and I was there merely in the capacity of
"doorman") was held that night at the Colonel's headquar-
ters on the second floor of the Congress Hotel, and attended
only by those most concerned in the success of Mr. Roose-
velt's campaign. The entire situation was carefully dis-
cussed, analyzed, and dissected. By questionable means the
Colonel would not, and by fair means apparently he could not,
secure the nomination, and then came the memorable climax;
a delegate to see Mr. Roosevelt, on a vitally important mat-
ter, who, when admitted to the conference, announced with
ill-concealed excitement that he represented thirty-two South-
ern delegates to the Republican Convention who would



k\



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 85

pledge themselves to vote for the Colonel as the Presidential
candidate, provided that they would be permitted to vote
with the old-line Republicans on all motions with reference
to party organization, platform, etc. Here were thirty-two
votes, and all that Mr. Roosevelt needed was twenty-
eight.

Without a moment's hesitation and in the deathlike silence
of that room the Colonel's answer rang out, clearly and dis-
tinctly: "Thank the delegates you represent, but tell them
that I cannot permit them to vote for me unless they vote
for all progressive principles for which I have fought, for
which the Progressive element in the Republican party stands
and by which I stand or fall."

Strong men broke down under the stress of that night.
Life-long friends of Mr. Roosevelt endeavoured to persuade
him to reconsider his decision. After listening patiently
he turned to two who had been urging him to accept the offer
of the Southern delegates, placed a hand on the shoulder of
each, and said: "I have grown to regard you both as brothers;
let no act or word of yours make that relationship impossible."

While the formalities of Mr. Taft's nomination
were as yet incomplete the delegates supporting
Mr. Roosevelt, who were convinced that they were
a true majority of the Republican Convention,
gathered almost spontaneously in Orchestra Hall
and nominated Roosevelt for the Presidency. The
Progressive party was thus born. It was com-
pletely organized in every state in the Union dur-
ing the next few weeks and cast more than four
million votes in November. It was a political
achievement, solely the fruit of Roosevelt's ex-



86 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

traordinary personality, unparalleled in the his-
tory of this country — or any other for that matter.

The Progressive campaign was one of very deep
feeling and earnestness and of some bitterness,
although I do not think that the bitterness was
greater — perhaps it was even less — than that of
the presidential campaigns of my boyhood and
early manhood. Possibly the very fact that they
had formerly been close friends led both Mr. Taft
and Mr. Roosevelt to feel especially strongly about
the personal contest in which they had become in-
volved. This peculiar feeling of antagonism found
vent in two speeches, both made in New England,
one by Mr. Taft, and one by Mr. Roosevelt, in
which some invective was employed on both sides.
I think it is only fair to Mr. Roosevelt's memory
to say that it was not he who cast the first stone,
but that he struck back only when he felt that he
had been himself "hit below the belt." And dur-
ing the rest of the campaign, although his own mo-
tives were repeatedly attacked, he never resorted
to aspersing the motives or personal character of
his opponents.

That, however, is happily an episode of the past,
and it is a satisfaction to all their friends, many of
whom shared their friendship with each man, that
the two ex-Presidents were reconciled before the



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 87

end came. Whatever harshness of language Mr.
Roosevelt may have employed in the one speech to
which I have referred, acrimony was not at all
characteristic of him. Indeed, there may well be
repeated of him what Lord Rosebery, in his life
of William Pitt, said of Charles James Fox:

The mastering passion of Fox's mature life was the love of
liberty; it is this which made him take a vigorous, occasionally
an intemperate, part against every man or measure in which
he could trace the taint or tendency to oppression; it is this
which sometimes made him speak with unworthy bitterness;
but it was this which gave him moral power, which has neu-
tralized the errors of his political career, which makes his
faults forgotten and his memory sweet.

During the entire summer of 191 2, while he was
involved in a contest that cost him friendships
and associations that meant much to him, he
preserved his poise and equanimity in a very
marked degree. He went through the National
campaign of 191 2 as he went through the state
campaign of 1910, in a vigorous, alert, undismayed,
and actually happy frame of mind. I think he
was sustained by the knowledge that there
were thousands upon thousands of Americans,
whom he had never seen or spoken to, who liked
him and trusted him. My brother who once
made a campaign trip with him, during the period



88 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

in which the Progressive party was gradually
developing, has described as follows, for a French
periodical, this affection of the plain people for
the man whom they delighted to call "Teddy":

It was my fortune to accompany him on this journey in a
private car. He was not then President, for he had retired
from office the year before; he was not a candidate for elec-
tion. He was simply a private citizen; but everywhere
people came in throngs to greet him. He was their man.
I remember one night, while the train was rushing through
one of the great central prairie states, I looked out of the
window just before I went to sleep and saw in the lighted
doorway of one isolated farmhouse a little family group gath-
ered and waving a flag; as I watched, another farmhouse
flashed by and there was another little group waving their
salute. It was as if they had waited up to bid a welcome and
a good-bye to a brother, though they knew in advance he
would be unseen and unseeing. And in the morning I
waked up very early; it was scarcely dawn; but as I looked out
the people were up and greeting their friend. All night long,
apparently, these friends of Theodore Roosevelt whom he
never saw, one family group after another, had been giving
him their benediction.

Another day on this same journey stands out in my mem-
ory. It was a Sunday. Mr. Roosevelt had stated positively
that he would make no speeches that day. The special train
was to run from the morning until almost dusk without a
stop. It had not run far when I heard a strange sound. It
swelled suddenly into a confusion of voices and then subsided.
I looked out. We had just passed a railway station in a
wide stretch of country. Around the station I saw a crowd
of people. Where had this crowd come from? Every farm-
house for miles must have contributed its entire household.
Again as we passed another station came the crescendo and



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 89

diminuendo of the sound of voices. Mr. Roosevelt came out
from his stateroom where he had been reading. He could
not pass these friends of his, friends he had never before seen,
but friends who had cared so much for him that they had
driven for miles over the rough country roads, in all sorts
of vehicles, simply in order to be beside the track as his train
went by. So thirty times that day the sound of cheering
voices swelled, thirty times the train stopped, thirty times
Mr. Roosevelt left his reading to be out on the rear platform
and greet those who had for the most part never seen him,
and had no hope of seeing him, but who came just to show
their friendship.

I am reminded, by my brother's account of
Roosevelt's genius for friendship, of an incident
which came under my own observation.

During the gubernatorial campaign of 1910,
which resulted in the defeat of Mr. Roosevelt's
object, a defeat which I think he foresaw, he
maintained his good spirits and even gayety of
humour, although it must have been a very trying
summer. The days that he spent at his office were
constantly interrupted by an interminable pro-
cession of callers with all of whom he was patient,
although in only a few cases could he have had any
interest in seeing them. One day while I was
seated in his private office, which was a fairly good-
sized room, his secretary announced Senator Carter
of Montana. The Senator was shown into the
room. He was dressed, as I recall it, in a gray



9 o IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

frock coat. His round face, surmounted with red
hair, shone with pleasure.

To my intense amazement Mr. Roosevelt leaped
out of his chair, seized the Senator by the hands
and they began dancing back and forth across the
room, chanting the following doggerel in unison :

"Oh, the Irish and the Dutch :
They don't amount to much,
But huroo for the Scandinoo-vian!"

After Senator Carter had left, Mr. Roosevelt,
amused at the look of surprised interrogation on my
face, volunteered the following explanation: "Tom
Carter is a good friend of mine, although we have
often disagreed radically on political principles and
issues. He is something of a standpatter and I am
afraid he sometimes thinks I am something of a
visionary crank. Some years ago, during a politi-
cal campaign, he and I were scheduled to speak on
the same occasion in a town of the Northwest.
When we came out of the hall and were walking
along the boardwalk of the little village to our
hotel we met a huge Swede or Norwegian who was
somewhat exhilarated from pouring too many liba-
tions in honour of the Republican party. As he
zigzagged his way along the narrow sidewalk, we
had to step aside to avoid a collision. He was



THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 91

singing at the top of his lungs that song about the
Irish and the Dutch. Now Senator Carter is
Irish and I am Dutch and we thought it was a
very good joke on us. So every time we have met
since, unless there are too many people about, we
are apt to greet each other as we did just now.
It has become a kind of ritual."

The Progressive campaign of 191 2, with its ex-
hausting work and its depressing disappointments,
was a severe test for any man. Roosevelt came
through it with two of his marked and engaging
personal qualities unimpaired — his capacity for
friendship and his unquenchable sense of humour.



CHAPTER IV
STATESMANSHIP

THEORETICALLY, the words "statesman-
ship" and " politics" are synonymous. The
primary meaning of " politics" is given in the Cen-
tury Dictionary as: "The art or science of govern-
ment"; and the same authority defines "states-
manship" as: The qualifications of "a man who is
versed in the art of government." But the devel-
opment of democracy among English-speaking
peoples has given rise to secondary meanings of the
terms which involve a marked differentiation be-
tween them. The Century Dictionary adds to
its first definition of "statesmanship" that it is:
"Political skill in the higher sense" and asserts
that "politics" usually means, in American prac-
tice at least, "the art or vocation of guiding or in-
fluencing the policy of a government through the
organization of a party among its citizens; the art
of influencing public opinion, attracting and mar-
shalling voters; in an evil sense, the schemes and
intrigues of political parties, or of cliques or in-
dividual politicians." The same lexicographers

92



STATESMANSHIP 93

who tell us that the word "politics" is derived from
the Greek word xoXIttqs, citizen, emphasize the
degraded side of politicians. Is this because of
the instinctive distrust of democracy on the part
of the French and English intellectuals who made
our earliest dictionaries?

For some reason or other, which it would be
interesting to inquire into but which is not germane
to my purpose, mankind has always looked some-
what superciliously upon the mechanics of any art.
The poet is more highly honoured than the gram-
marian, the painter than the chemist, the violinist
than the physicist, the aviator than the machinist.
And yet we could not have the poetry of Keats
without the men who have grubbed out the' rules
of syntax and prosody; the paintings of Monet
without the workers who have toiled over the
chemistry of colours and the laws of light; the music
of Fritz Kreisler without those who have discov-
ered in the workshop and laboratory the principles
of harmonies and resonance; the heroic "aces"
on the western front without the grimy artisans
in overalls who adjusted and tuned up the engines
of the battle-planes. So, too, we could not have
statesmen if there were no politicians to create the
machinery without which statesmanship would be
inoperative. Nevertheless, it has long been the



94 IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

fashion to treat politics and politicians as if they
were necessarily contemptible. James Russell
Lowell once said: "I always hated politics in the
ordinary sense of the word." James Bryce, in his
classic and monumental "American Common-
wealth/' speaks of "the local and dirty work of
politics," and gives one of his chapters the signifi-
cant title: "Why the best men do not go into
politics."

Now with this secondary — although, unfortu-
nately, customary — interpretation of the terms
"politics" "politicians" "political parties ," Theo-
dore Roosevelt had no sympathy whatever. He
knew, of course, that politics is often corrupt;
that politicians are often ignorant, selfish, and dis-
honourable; that political parties are often narrow,
hide-bound, and short-sighted. But he did not
believe that these evils are essential to and in-
separable from politics any more than reactionary
dogmatism and inquisitorial cruelty are essential
and irremediable characteristics of the Church.
He believed that politics and political activity in
the administrative sense — in the machine sense, so
to speak — are the very basis of democracy. Poli-