And therefore we turn scornfully aside from the paths of mere ease and idleness, and with unfaltering steps tread the rough road of endeavor, smiting down the wrong, and battling for the right; as Great Heart smote and battled in Bunyon's immortal story.

-NATIONAL DUTIES.

CHAPTER V

THE ROOSEVELT LAW OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

We

Theodore Roosevelt was the author of a number of original expressions. These expressions, always forceful, have survived, and several of them are established maxims. have spoken of one of them. Two others that have passed into common use are, "The square deal," and "Play the game fair."

Speaking of his readiness to share with his friends, his sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, said in a lecture, "He liked to share with others, and was always ready to give them the best he had, the best of his intellect, his courtesy, his vitality, and his goods."

He gave freely, no man more so, but in his philosophy of life giving implied something. He believed implicitly that the person is most benefited who gives in proportion as he has re

ceived. That was his way of interpreting the square deal. "Play the game fair," he insisted, "but hit the line hard." In his emphasis on equality of giving and receiving, Roosevelt gave the philosophy of service a new interpretation, an interpretation that was more honest than that state of mind that gives, disclaiming desire of reward, but none the less expects reward and is disappointed if it does not receive it.

Roosevelt was a mighty hunter; he hunted and killed about every specimen of big game on this continent and in Africa. But in his hunting the spirit of fair play invariably entered. He was what is known among hunters as a good sportsman, that is, he gave the animal a fair chance. His books on hunting are filled with this idea of fair dealing. The hunt with him was not a pursuit for the mere purpose of killing, but a contest between the wit of the animal and the wit of the man, and he frequently wrote in glowing language of the wily animal that had outwitted him.

He did not condemn the capitalist because

he was a capitalist, nor the man of power because he was a man of power, nor the captain of industry because he was a captain of industry. He condemned capitalism only when the capital had been fraudulently acquired; power only when the power was misused; captains of industry only when they were unscrupulous. He would as readily consider guilty the poor man if in his poverty he was meanly disposed, recalcitrant to his family obligations or idle. He applied the simple test of right and wrong, as Washington had done in the matter of independence for the Colonies, as Lincoln had done when he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation, as his father had done when he organized the charities of New York.

He expressed himself freely about the iniquity of favoring the big interests. "Nothing is sillier," he said once, "than this outcry on behalf of the 'innocent stockholders' in the corporations. We are besought to pity the Standard Oil Company for a fine relatively far less great than the fines every day inflicted in the police courts upon multitudes of pushcart ped