particularly regretted his inability to attend the meeting of the Governors in May, because that meeting was in part the fruit of seed he had sown years before. (The meeting was called at the White House by President Roosevelt.) The name of Grover Cleveland will always be prominently identified with the movement to protect the forests of the United States, and it seemed to me eminently fitting that one of the forests which he created should bear his name throughout all time.

To Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson.

My dear Mr. Stetson:

WHITE HOUSE, November 9, 1908.

I regret that it is not possible for me to be present in person at the meeting held under the auspices of the Cleveland Memorial Committee. I wish you all success in your efforts. I was a member of the Legislature when Mr. Cleveland became Governor of the State of New York at the beginning of the year 1883, and for the next twentyfive years on several different occasions I was brought into close contact with him. For two years during his second administration I served under him as Civil Service Commissioner. Like all others who were thrown closely with him I was much impressed by his high standard of official conduct and his rugged strength of character. Not only did I become intimately acquainted with the manner in which he upheld and enforced the civil service law, but I also saw at close quarters his successful fight against free silver, and the courage with which he, aided by men like the late Senator Cushman K. Davis of Minnesota, supported the judiciary at the time of the Chicago riot; and, finally, I happened to be in a position in which I knew intimately how he acted and the reasons why he acted in the Venezuelan matter. This knowledge gained at first hand enables me to bear testimony, which I am more than glad to bear, to the late President's earnest purpose to serve the whole country, and the high courage with which he encountered every species

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of opposition and attack. Owing to a peculiar combination of circumstances he went out of office assailed even more bitterly by his own party than by the opposing party, and shortsighted people thought that the great mass of American citizens had repudiated him and disbelieved in him. Six years later it happened that I was at St. Louis as President when Mr. Cleveland, then a plain private citizen, arose to make an address in the great hall of the Exposition; and no one there will ever forget the extraordinary reception given by scores of thousands present to the man who, six years before, had left the White House with seemingly hardly a handful of friends and supporters. It was an extraordinary testimony to the esteem and regard in which he was held, an extraordinary testimony to the fact that the American people had not forgotten him, and, looking back, had recognized in him a man who with straightforward directness had sought to do all in his power to serve their interests.

Moreover, all Americans should pay honor to the memory of Mr. Cleveland because of the simplicity and dignity with which as ex-President he led his life in the beautiful college town wherein he elected to live. He had been true to the honorable tradition which has kept our Presidents from making money while in office. His life was therefore of necessity very simple; but it was the kind of life which it is a good thing to see led by any man who has held a position such as he held.

Roosevelt had a warm regard for Baron Speck von Sternburg, who for several years was the German Ambassador at Washington. The news of his death in September 1908 was, as his correspondence shows, the cause of genuine grief to him:

TO HON. HENRY WHITE,

The American Ambassador,
Paris, France.

OYSTER BAY, September 10, 1908.

I sincerely mourn Speck's loss, though I can not be sorry for the gallant little fellow himself, for life was one long

torture for him. I have never met a man for whom I had a higher respect or regard. It is very hard on the Baroness.

TO AMBASSADOR DAVID J. HILL,

Berlin, Germany.

OYSTER BAY, September 10, 1908.

It was kind of you to write me in full of the funeral of my dear friend Sternburg. He was just that to me—a dear friend-and I mourn his loss. A more upright, fearless, and disinterested public servant, a more faithful and loyal friend, I have never seen.

One of the last letters Roosevelt wrote from the White House was in relation to the baseless rumors that had been circulating freely for a year or more about his drinking habits. To a gentleman in New York who was disturbed by them, he wrote on February 25, 1909:

"It happens that in the matter of drinking I am an extremely abstemious man; I suppose that no man not a total abstainer could well drink less than I do; and whiskey and brandy I practically never touch. The accusation that I ever have been addicted in the slightest degree to drinking to excess, or to drinking even wine-and liquor, as I say, I practically never touch-in any but the most moderate way, is not only the blackest falsehood but an utterly ridiculous falsehood; it does not represent any distortion or exaggeration; it has no slightest base in fact; it is simply malignant invention-just as sheer an invention as if they had said that at the age of five I had poisoned my grandmother or had been mixed up in the assassination of Lincoln by Wilkes Booth. One accusation would be exactly as infamous and exactly as ludicrous as the other."

Several years later, in October 1912, when the editor of a Western newspaper published an article making definite charges that Roosevelt was an intemperate man, he, thinking the time had arrived to put a stop to such slanders once

and for all, brought suit against the editor for libel. The suit was tried in May 1913, when Roosevelt attended with a large number of witnesses and so completely refuted the charges that at the conclusion of the testimony the editor withdrew them, stating that he had been unable to find any witnesses to give evidence in support of them, and admitting that in making the charges he had been mistaken. When the editor had concluded his retraction Colonel Roosevelt asked the court for permission to make a statement, and when it had been granted he said:

"Your Honor, in view of the statement of the defendant, I ask the Court to instruct the jury that I desire only nominal damages.

"I did not go into this suit for money. I did not go into it for any vindictive purpose. I went into it, and, as the Court has said, I made my reputation an issue, because I wished, once for all during my lifetime, thoroughly and comprehensively to deal with these slanders, so that never again will it be possible for any man, in good faith, to repeat them. I have achieved my purpose, and I am

content."

Roosevelt's final and, so far as his correspondence shows, only appeal that he made to his successor before leaving office was in the following letter to Mr. Taft on March 3, 1909, in behalf of his beloved navy:

"One closing legacy. Under no circumstances divide the battleship fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans prior to the finishing of the Panama Canal. Malevolent enemies of the navy will try to lead public opinion in a matter like this without regard to the dreadful harm they may do the country; and good, entirely ignorant, men may be thus misled. I should obey no direction of Congress and pay heed to no popular sentiment, no matter how strong, if it went wrong in such a vital matter as this. When I sent the fleet around the world there was a wild clamor that some of it should be sent to the Pacific, and equally wild clamor that some of it should be left in the Atlantic.

I disregarded both. At first it seemed as if popular feeling was nearly a unit against me. It is now nearly a unit in favor of what I did.

"It is now nearly four years since the close of the Russian-Japanese war. There were various factors that brought about Russia's defeat; but most important by all odds was her having divided her fleet between the Baltic and the Pacific, and, furthermore, splitting up her Pacific fleet into three utterly unequal divisions. The entire Japanese force was always used to smash some fraction of the Russian force. The knaves and fools who advise the separation of our fleet nowadays and the honest, misguided creatures who think so little that they are misled by such advice, ought to take into account this striking lesson furnished by actual experience in a great war but four years ago. Keep the battle fleet either in one ocean or the other and have the armed cruisers always in trim, as they are now, so that they can be at once sent to join the battle fleet if the need should arise."