"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that sort of thing would be established."
2 This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just been victorious in the Congressional elections.
3 In a letter written me just before I became Assistant Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; his letter running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three o'clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign functions—for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . . The aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it, for to do so does me good." After quoting one of Poe's stories the letter continues: "The world will come out all right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks out from its rank and file and demands action or expression, and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman were about to disturb the game, and protests until American patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to do—why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment together on the things we don't like, and together indulge in hopes that I believe are prophetic."
4 To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality. The New York Evening Post, on June 18, gave expression to the following gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers. In addition to all this, like the regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range rifles. There have been few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals." A week or so after this not wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty was consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan fighting.
5 General Wood writes me: The representative of the Associated Press was very anxious to get a copy of this despatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible for him to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and stated the case to him, handing him the despatch, saying, 'The matter is now in your hands.' He, General Shafter, then said, 'I don't care whether this gentleman has it or not,' and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had given the Press representative a copy of the despatch, and that he had gone to the office with it.
6 I quote this sentence from memory; it is substantially correct.
7 In a letter to me Mr. Quigg states, what I had forgotten, that I told him to tell the Senator that I would talk freely with him, and had no intention of becoming a factional leader with a personal organization, yet that I must have direct personal relations with everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so desired, because I could not have one man speaking for all.
8 Each nation has its own pet sins to which it is merciful and also sins which it treats as most abhorrent. In America we are peculiarly sensitive about big money contributions for which the donors expect any reward. In England, where in some ways the standard is higher than here, such contributions are accepted as a matter of course, nay, as one of the methods by which wealthy men obtain peerages. It would be well-nigh an impossibility for a man to secure a seat in the United States Senate by mere campaign contributions, in the way that seats in the British House of Lords have often been secured without any scandal being caused thereby.
9 To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899. He had been trying to get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another Judge Y. I wrote: There is a strong feeling among the judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at 8:30.
10 Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees, and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.
11 I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to my enemies to attest the truth of this statement. The New York Sun, shortly before the National Convention of 1904, spoke of me as follows: President Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the National Republican Convention of 1904 is an assured thing. He makes no concealment of his conviction, and it is unreservedly shared by his friends. We think President Roosevelt is right. There are strong and convincing reasons why the President should feel that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that he found or created, and he has used them with consummate skill and undeniable success. The President has disarmed all his enemies. Every weapon they had, new or old, has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable Roosevelt arsenal. Why should people wonder that Mr. Bryan clings to silver? Has not Mr. Roosevelt absorbed and sequestered every vestige of the Kansas City platform that had a shred of practical value? Suppose that Mr. Bryan had been elected President. What could he have accomplished compared with what Mr. Roosevelt has accomplished? Will his most passionate followers pretend for one moment that Mr. Bryan could have conceived, much less enforced, any such pursuit of the trusts as that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue? Will Mr. Bryan himself intimate that the Federal courts would have turned to his projects the friendly countenance which they have lent to those of Mr. Roosevelt? Where is 'government by injunction' gone to? The very emptiness of that once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest dreams of Bryan's campaign orators. He has outdone them all. "And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and of the whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor! How empty were all their professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the face of the simple and unpretentious achievements of the President! In his own straightforward fashion he inflicted upon capital in one short hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Bryan could have visited upon it in a century. He is the leader of the labor unions of the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above the Constitution, because for him they are the American people. [This last, I need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation.] Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following my leaving the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows: Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a large extent against its will. He has played a large part in the world's work, for the past seven years. The activities