virtually forever. And yet your boy does not count this going as a hardship at all, but as an honor.

The President then suggested, on his own initiative, that he was going to put Uncle Sam back of the boy by writing a letter of introduction to Mr. Lloyd Griscom, the United States minister to Japan. Some time after that Dr. Iglehart told the President that the letter had given the "boy" an unusual start, since they concluded him to be a distinguished person when he could bring a letter from "so great a man," and that as a result, they gave him unusual liberties. After Dr. Iglehart had thanked him the President remarked:

You noticed that I sent the letter to Mr. Griscom as an official document and asked him as a representative of our government to stand behind your son in his mission? I Idid not consider that America had any relation to Japan which is higher or more far-reaching than the education, morals, and religion that the missionary carries to that country (Iglehart, pp. 296-298).

At the close of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 China agreed to pay our government an indemnity of $25,000,000. Dr. Arthur H. Smith, a long-time missionary in China, later suggested to Dr. Lyman Abbott that since that sum more than met our "claims" it would be a strategic and profitable thing to return one half of the money to China. He proposed, however, that China pledge to use the money to send students to America and to educate others in a Chinese institution. Dr. Abbott presented the plan to President Roosevelt, who was much interested and

made an appointment to see Dr. Smith, who presented the plan as it was later adopted by America.

Mr. Lawrence Abbott accompanied Dr. Smith on this visit to the President. Ten years afterward he attended a luncheon given at Princeton for Professor Robert McNutt McElroy, who was going out as the first American exchange professor to China. The Professor asked Mr. Abbott about the reported origin of the "returned indemnity" so that he might speak authoritatively in China. Mr. Abbott wrote Mr. Roosevelt at Oyster Bay, on January 24, who replied:

My memory agrees with yours about Dr. Arthur H. Smith. I had forgotten his name; but I know that it was through your father that I first became interested in using that indemnity for educational purposes. The idea was suggested to me as you describe it; and then I asked Root to take it up and put it in operation.

The friendship of China was insured and a chain of influence started which is rapidly building a Christian republic there. A large school was erected by the government with part of the money, and every teacher in it is a Christian. It is liberally patronized. In addition the fund enables scores of Chinese students to study in this country. And all of it came about through the vision of a foreign missionary and the President's confidence in a representative of that profession.

The Colonel, in his world trip, saw much of missions and most heartily approved them and went out of his way many times to aid in dedicating mission buildings. Concerning Africa, he said:

The great good done by missionary effort in Africa has been incalculable. The effort is made consistently to teach the natives how to live a more comfortable, useful and physically and morally cleanly life, not under white conditions, but under the conditions which he will actually have to face when he goes back to his people to live among them, and if things go well, to be in his turn an unconscious missionary for good.

He shows how Christianity saved Uganda from limitless suffering:

The figures will show this, that out of about ten millions of people, nearly seven millions were killed during the years of the Mahdi uprising. Now, that is what Christianity saved Uganda from; that is what missionary effort saved Uganda from. It saved it from sufferings of which we, in our sheltered and civilized lives, can literally form only the most imperfect idea, and I wish that the well-meaning people who laugh at or decry missionary work could realize what the missionary work has done right there in Middle Africa (The Daily News' "New Stories of Roosevelt").

While he did encourage the medical mission work he readily saw that this kind of work, if it endured, must ultimately reach and stir the soul and so he gives encouragement to believe that this will be the result as he describes a visit to Sobat, while speaking at Khartum:

I stopped a few days ago at the little mission at the Sobat. . . . From one hundred and twenty-five miles around there were patients who had come in to be attended to by the doctors in the mission. . . . I do not know a better type of missionary than the doctor who comes out here and does his work well and gives his whole heart to it. He is doing practical work of the most valuable type for civiliza

...

tion. If you make it evident to a man that you are sincerely concerned in bettering his body, he will be much more ready to believe that you are trying to better his soul.

The Chicago Tribune commissioned John Callan O'Laughlin to proceed up the Nile and meet Mr. Roosevelt at the first possible point after he came out of the "wilds." Mr. O'Laughlin used rare ingenuity and spared no expense in being the first one to greet him and found him at "Reuk." Soon afterward he was eating dinner with Mr. Roosevelt on his boat The Dal. Mr. O'Laughlin recounts the first things Mr. Roosevelt mentioned at this dinner:

He spoke of the various missions he had visited, of the white souls and dauntless courage of these agents of Christianity who are martyrs to the call of duty (O'Laughlin, Through Europe with Roosevelt, p. 36).

Mr. Roosevelt's high estimate of the church and her work is the calm tribute of a great and experienced man of entire sincerity. His sturdy health, masculine traits, and mental independence would preclude the church from his strong commendation if, as some so easily assert, it is merely a crutch for the weak or a subterfuge for the thoughtless. His regular patronage, high praise, and earnest advocacy underwrite the church as a vital institution.

BOOKS USED AS REFERENCE

Theodore Roosevelt, the Man as I Knew Him. By Ferdinand C. Iglehart. Christian Herald.

Bill Sewall's Story of Theodore Roosevelt. By William Wingate Sewall. Harper and Brothers.

The Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt. By Herman Hagedorn. Harper and Brothers.

Theodore Roosevelt. By William Roscoe Thayer. Houghton Mifflin Company.

The Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

Lewis. The John C. Winston Co.

By William Draper

Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt. By Lawrence F. Abbott. Doubleday, Page & Company.

Theodore Roosevelt-The Logic of His Career. By Charles G. Washburn. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Oliver Cromwell. By Theodore Roosevelt. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man. By James Morgan. The Macmillan Company.

Talks with T. R. By John J. Leary, Jr. Houghton Mifflin Company.

Personal Memoirs of the Home Life of the Late Theodore Roosevelt. By Albert Loren Cheney. Cheney Publishing Company.

Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children. Edited by Joseph B. Bishop. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Theodore Roosevelt. An Autobiography. Charles Scribner's Sons.

American Ideals and Other Essays. By Theodore Roosevelt. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Theodore Roosevelt. By Edmond Lester Pearson. The Macmillan Company.