CHAPTER XIV

HIS GREATEST VICTORY

One of the solemn, though somewhat vague vows assumed by neophytes in sundry religious orders is the vow to "renounce the devil and all his works." This pledge would be easier of fulfillment if the diabolic presence and efforts were always easily distinguishable. Cloven hooves and forked tail and sulphurous fumes do not much attract us; but when money or a palace or a throneor the United States Presidency - beckons alluringly then the renunciation becomes difficult.

But this renunciation is what Theodore Roosevelt achieved. He renounced a reëlection to an office and an opportunity which he desired intensely; he did this because he believed that it was right for him to do it. The Republican Party leaders, left to their own wishes, were not only ready to place William Howard Taft in the White House, but they would have been glad to place anybody there rather than Roosevelt.

This was fully understood by Roosevelt, Taft, and the party leaders. And the Convention was

held and Taft was nominated. Under these conditions, his nomination was equivalent to an election. But I wish to make clear what has been allowed to rest obscured or neglected, that Theodore Roosevelt's renunciation of a second "elected" term marked the highest moral and spiritual level that he attained, lofty as his life was throughout.

There are several letters given in Mr. Bishop's collection which make the situation perfectly clear. One to Doctor Lyman Abbott, on May 29, 1908; one to Judge Dayton, on May 28, 1908; one to Frank H. Hitchcock, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, on June 1, 1908. These and other published letters make clear the fact that Roosevelt not only could have had the nomination, election, and Presidency without more effort than signifying a "Yes", but that he made every possible effort to prevent the convention from forcing it upon him as the Vice-presidency had been forced upon him.

This splendid renunciation of a scepter of power which fairly leaned toward his now trained hand, this I conceive to mark the highest point morally, spiritually, of my beloved classmate's greatness. A negation has not the prestige of an affirmation in the popular mind; but this in form only; in practice it often rises into sublime preeminence. What would Julius Cæsar, or Bonaparte, or Frederick

the Great have done, if in Roosevelt's place, at the end of one glorious term and with another term offering itself? No answer need be given. And I wonder the more at Roosevelt's decision when I reflect that he, of all men, was a man of deeds; and for him to deny himself the dazzling privilege of a continuance of his patriotic public service, that self-control, that self-denial was a refutation of all those charges of insatiate ambition ever launched against him by his envious, baffled, unscrupulous enemies.

History and biography furnish no situation equal in solemn significance to Roosevelt's stand, as he renounced that third term. If ambition is the last lingering "infirmity of noble minds", then he had indeed purged himself of all human infirmities. He had thoroughly weighed the merits of the case. His extremely frank letters to Trevelyan show this. But his deeds tallied with his words; his will and conscience backed his idealistic perceptions; and he compelled the wish and will of a grateful, admiring nation to turn toward William Howard Taft, believing this course to be best for the country.

That was his great renunciation, unparalleled in all the past. And with it was involved a smaller renunciation, far less important, yet a real selfdenial and a wise self-restraint. Denying himself

the pleasure of all oversight of the new incoming régime, he planned and carried out his trip into Africa. Outwardly this trip was only one of his many adventurous excursions into the wild regions of the globe. But inwardly there was in his large, generous nature the wish to give his friend and successor, Mr. Taft, full and unconstrained sweep for the exercise of his new executive powers. That was always Theodore Roosevelt's way from childhood, through college, throughout his life,—always the large, generous way.

Roosevelt's departure from American shores brought relief to several groups of American citizens. Among them were the "Interests", so called, that is the powerful "team-players" of high finance. The mot went the rounds of the press at this time that "Wall Street expected every lion in Africa to do his duty."

On March 23, 1909, Roosevelt set sail from New York with several companions, naturalists and others, and a complete equipment for the work before him. The work was, summarized, the procuring of mammals, birds, plants for the National Museum at Washington. As he afterward wrote, "Every animal I have shot, except six or eight for food, has been carefully prepared for the National Museum."

In a reception speech made in Cambridge,

England, on Roosevelt's return from Africa, eleven months later, Doctor Henry Goudy put his own humorous interpretation on the ex-President's African trip, thus: "He is a statesman, a noted sportsman, and a naturalist. His onslaughts upon the wild beasts of the desert have been not less fierce, nor less successful, than his warfare on the hydra-headed corruption in his own land.”

And Lord Curzon addressed Roosevelt, soon after, in a more rhetorical but equally eulogistic way: "Peer of the most august kings, queller of wars, destroyer of monsters wherever found, yet the most human of mankind, deeming nothing uninteresting to you, not even the blackest of the black."

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On the whole, that was what Roosevelt stood for in the eyes of all European nations, a vigorous successful reformer, a practical idealist, impelled by a burning passion to make his native land, and indirectly the whole world, more habitable, more civilized, because more just, righteous, and humane.

The Roosevelt party followed the shortest route possible: across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal and Red Sea, then down the coast of British East Africa and landed at Mombasa. Thence by rail through a game country where wild animals were so abundant that had it not been for the danger involved in getting the