most impossible for me to appreciate the instant and tremendous relief this gave them. They saw nothing offensive in my language and nothing ridiculous in the proposition, and Pierpont Morgan and Baer, when called up by telephone, eagerly ratified the absurdity; and accordingly, at this utterly unimportant price, we bid fair to come out of as dangerous a situation as I ever dealt with.1

XI. OREGON LAND FRAUDS

MY DEAR SENATOR, you have written me very frankly. I shall copy your frankness in this closing paragraph. It has been most unfortunate that so many of the friends upon whose behalf you have been active should be among those whose guilt is clearest and deepest. I entirely appreciate loyalty to one's friends, but loyalty to the cause of justice and honor stands above it. I think you are doing yourself an injury by permitting yourself to be made at least to seem to stand as the champion of the men who have been engaged in this widespread conspiracy to defraud the United States Government and therefore the public of your own State.... You criticize very captiously what has been done and said by all those whose efforts have resulted in the uncovering of this great wrong, and of the partial punishment of some of the wrongdoers. It is easy to ascribe such motives and to make such criticisms; but what is needed now is not

1 Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, October 17, 1902. This and the three succeeding letters by Mr. Roosevelt are from Theodore Roosevelt and His Time, by Joseph Bucklin Bishop. Copyright, 1920. Charles Scribner's Sons, publishers.

the picking of holes in those who are engaged in the great work of righteousness, but the sturdy upholding of their hands just so long as they are doing this work.

I am from my position the leader of the entire Republican Party throughout the Union, in Oregon just as much as in New York; and in Oregon and New York alike I shall count it not an attack upon, but a service to, the Republican Party if through my agents I can be instrumental in punishing in the severest possible manner any private citizen, and especially any public servant, who while claiming to be a member of that party has deeply wronged it by wronging the Nation which the party was created to serve. When the party ceases to serve the Nation it will lose its reason for existence; and most emphatically I shall never, under any pressure or for any reason whatever, permit any alleged considerations of partisan expediency to prevent my punishing any wrongdoer, whether he belongs to my party or any other.1

XII. EXPEDIENCY AND PRINCIPLE

Of course I should like to be reëlected President, and I shall be disappointed, although not very greatly disappointed, if I am not; and so far as I legitimately can I pay heed to considerations of political expediency — in fact I should be unfit for my position, or for any position of political leadership, if I did not do so. But when questions involve deep and far-reaching principles, then I believe that the real expediency is to be found in straightforward and unflinching adherence to principle, and this without regard to what may be the temporary 1 Letter to a Senator from Oregon, May 15, 1905.

effect. When the matter is one of elementary justice and decency, then there can be no compromise. Murder is murder, and theft is theft, and there should be no halfway measure with criminality. There are good and bad men of all nationalities, creeds, and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man's heart and soul, the man's worth and action, determine his standing. I should be sorry to lose the Presidency, but I should be a hundredfold more sorry to gain it by failing in every way in my power to try to put a stop to lynching and to brutality and wrong of any kind; or by failing on the one hand to make the very wealthiest and most powerful men in the country obey the law and handle their property (so far as it is in my power to make them) in the public interest; or, on the other hand, to fail to make the laboring men in their turn obey the law, and realize that envy is as evil a thing as arrogance, and that crimes of violence and riot shall be as sternly punished as crimes of greed and cunning.1

XIII. THE PLAIN PEOPLE

WELL, I have just been inaugurated and begun my second term. Of course, I greatly enjoyed inauguration day, and indeed I have thoroughly enjoyed being President. But I believe I can also say that I am thoroughly alive to the tremendous responsibilities of my position. Life is a long campaign where every victory merely leaves the ground free for another battle, and sooner or later defeat comes to every man, unless death forestalls

1 Letter to Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, September 1, 1903.

it. But the final defeat does not and should not cancel the triumphs, if the latter have been substantial and for a cause worth championing.

It has been peculiarly pleasant to me to find that my supporters are to be found in the overwhelming majority among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the plain people. As I suppose you know, Lincoln is my hero. He was a man of the people who always felt with and for the people, but who had not the slightest touch of the demagogue in him. It is probably difficult for his countrymen to get him exactly in the right perspective as compared with the great men of other lands. But to me he does seem to be one of the great figures, who will loom ever larger as the centuries go by. His unfaltering resolution, his quiet, unyielding courage, his infinite patience and gentleness, and the heights of disinterestedness which he attained whenever the crisis called for putting aside self, together with his far-sighted, hard-headed common sense, point him out as just the kind of chief who can do most good in a democratic republic like ours.

Having such an admiration for the great rail-splitter, it has been a matter of keen pride to me that I have appealed peculiarly to the very men to whom he most appealed and who gave him their heartiest support. I am a college-bred man, belonging to a well-to-do family, so that, as I was more than contented to live simply, and was fortunate to marry a wife with the same tastes, I have not had to make my own livelihood; though I have always had to add to my private income by work of some kind. But the farmers, lumbermen, mechanics, ranchmen, miners, of the North, East, and West, have felt that I was just as much in sympathy with them, just

as devoted to their interests, and as proud of them and as representative of them, as if I had sprung from among their own ranks; and I certainly feel that I do understand them and believe in them and feel for them and try to represent them just as much as if I had from earliest childhood made each day's toil pay for that day's existence or achievement. How long this feeling toward me will last I cannot say. It was overwhelming at the time of the election last November, and I judge by the extraordinary turnout for the Inauguration it is overwhelming now. Inasmuch as the crest of the wave is invariably succeeded by the hollow, this means that there will be a reaction. But meanwhile I shall have accomplished something worth accomplishing, I hope.1

XIV. HOME

I

SAGAMORE HILL takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who, as chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land two centuries and a half ago. The house stands right on the top of the hill, separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and looks out over the bay and the Sound. We see the sun go down beyond long reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in the trees round the house or in the pastures and the woods near by, and of course in winter gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the bay and the Sound. We love all the seasons; the snows and bare woods of winter; the rush of growing things and the blossom-spray of spring, the yellow grain, the ripen1 Letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, March 9, 1905.