CHAPTER IX

PUBLIC DUTIES FEARLESSLY PERFORMED

"Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife... resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods."-Theodore Roosevelt.

Who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me. -Isa. 6. 8.

T

HERE was no sly stepping, nor subtle speech, nor smooth subterfuges in Mr. Roosevelt's life plans. He walked and worked in the open. He cared nothing for personal cost when righteousness was under consideration.

When first a candidate for the Legislature he visited a saloon with the "ward leader." When asked by the saloonist to support a lower license, he made inquiries concerning the prevalent rate, and being convinced that it was too low, he promptly declared that he would work for a higher one. After being elected he introduced such a bill, and the Republicans were panic-stricken, as it was as "advanced" as prohibition legislation would have been on the East Side in 1900.

He was just as frank in other directions, and as late as 1915 opposed a New York State bill making Bible-reading in the schools compulsory. He called it a fanatical move. While a member of the Legislature, he risked the vigorous opposition of the Catho

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MR. ROOSEVELT'S FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH

(AND THE CHOICE OF HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS)

lics by blocking a long-permitted grant to a "Catholic Protectory."

When refusing to announce himself as a candidate for President in 1912, he said that his decision was not final, for, "If the people should feel that I was the instrument to be used at this time, I should accept even although I knew that I should be broken and cast aside in the using."

Senator Platt tried to frighten him away from his "franchise bill" by classing him with the then much-condemned and greatly ridiculed Populists of Kansas and warned him that he could never be elected again since the corporations would not contribute to his campaign and without their aid it was thought that a successful campaign could not be conducted. He cared not for the threatened penalty but drove the bill through the Legislature and caused the first break-which never closed-with the stand-patters.

He wanted no special consideration even when misfortune struck him. For example, when he was shot, Governor Wilson magnanimously offered to cease campaigning, but he promptly replied:

Whatever could with truth and propriety have been said against me and my cause before I was shot can with equal truth and equal propriety be said against me now, and it should so be said; and the things that cannot be said now are merely the things that ought not to have been said before. This is not a contest about any man-it is a contest concerning principles.

When his death was announced, Mr. John Woodbury, the secretary of the class, sent to the class of

1880 as applying to Mr. Roosevelt, a section from Bunyan, as follows:

Then he said, "I am going to my Father's, and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder."

He, like Paul, had his scars; and he was sore weary, as was Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, concerning whom the above was written.

He never made a test for others he was not willing to endure himself. When he discovered that army officers were loafing physically and so were incapable of prompt out-door leadership if needed, he issued an order requiring every active officer to ride horseback one hundred miles in three days. When vigorous protests were made to arouse sympathy for some corpulent generals, the President himself, in company with Surgeon-General Rixey, rode one hundred miles in one day over the Virginia roads, which were frozen in ruts and while a snowstorm held sway for half the day. In the same way he was submerged for about seventy minutes in one of the first of the modern submarines, during which time he calmly made a thorough examination of the vessel. Concerning this trip, he said: "I went down in it chiefly because I did not like to have the officers and enlisted men think I wanted them to try things I was reluctant to try myself."