whole desired my defeat. They did not like Barnes or believe in him; but above all things they wished my defeat. The particular twelve men whose judgment was vital to me were, I think, on the whole against me at the start; but after both Barnes and I had been before them for many days they stood for me against Barnes. This was because I could reach them personally. But it is of course impossible for me to reach more than the smallest fraction of our people in such fashion. The others have made up their minds; and they are against me."

"I have been like an engine bucking a snow-drift. My progress was slower and slower; and finally I accumulated so much snow that I came to a halt and could not get through. I believe that there are some men who would support me against Wilson, for instance, or against a reactionary Republican, who would not support any one else. But I believe that there are a far larger number of men who would at once sink every other purpose, no matter what their convictions might be, for the purpose of smashing me once for all. According to the information at present before me, I believe that the bulk of our people would accept my candidacy as a proof of greedy personal ambition on my part, and would be bitterly hostile to me in consequence, and bitterly hostile therefore to the cause for which I stood.

"I have felt as regards the Lusitania business that as an honorable man I could not keep silent, although I thoroughly realized that what I said would offend the pacificists, would offend the good, short-sighted men who do not fully understand international relations, and would make envenomed enemies of the great bulk of these Americans of German descent or birth from whom in the past I have had rather more than my normal proportion of support. This was to me a matter of principle, a matter of national duty, of duty which I owed my country; and I did not think that I was warranted in considering my own personal fortune in the matter. But I do most emphatically think that when it comes to choosing a candidate the very men who agree with me in what I have done ought to realize that it often

becomes impossible to nominate a man even though the very things which make it impossible to nominate him are things where he was right and where he is entitled to our respect and admiration.

“I have felt that this libel suit which has just ended was really as much a fight for those who have fought with me during the last three years as for myself. It has justified in court by legal evidence all we said about boss rule and crooked business three years ago. I do not grudge the money it has cost me, but I think the service was really worth rendering; but I do very strongly feel that in a way it excuses me from doing too much more. There is an anecdote that has long been proverbial in our family which bears on the point. Doctor Polk, of New York, now an old man, was Inspector-General of the Confederate Artillery fifty years ago. Just before Appomattox, Lee sent him to the rear to hurry up the stragglers. He was sitting on a rail fence, with his horse-bridle over his arm when a lank, frowning, half-starved North Carolinian Infantryman trooped by, his feet going 'muck-murh' as he ploughed through the mud. Polk said in a perfunctory way, "Hurry up, my man, hurry up." Whereupon the North Carolinian looked gloomy at him, shook his head, and remarked as he walked by, 'if I ever love another country, damn me!'

"Now, you must not take this anecdote too literally. Of course, if it was a duty impossible to avoid, I would fight in future as I have fought in the past. But I feel I have done my share; and, what is infinitely more important, I do not feel that I can be of use in a leading position any more. I think the people have made up their minds that they have had all they want of me, and that my championship of a cause or an individual, say in exceptional cases, is a damage rather than a benefit."

That he was eager to improve every opportunity to support President Wilson Roosevelt showed by his action when Mr. Bryan resigned as Secretary of State on June 8, 1915. A statement of his reasons for resigning was made by Mr.

Bryan on June 9 and published on June 10. As soon as he saw it, Roosevelt who was in Louisiana at the time, gave out the following from Breton Island, on June 11, 1915:

"According to Mr. Bryan's statement, he has left the Cabinet because President Wilson, as regards the matters at issue with Germany, refuses to follow the precedent set in the thirty all-inclusive arbitration commission treaties recently negotiated, and declines to suspend action for a year, while a neutral commission investigates the admitted murder of American men, women and children on the high seas, and further declines to forbid American citizens to travel on neutral ships in accordance with the conditions guaranteed to us by Germany herself in solemn treaty.

"Of course I heartily applaud the decision of the President, and in common with all other Americans who are loyal to the traditions handed down by the men who served under Washington, and by the others who followed Grant and Lee in the days of Lincoln, I pledged him my heartiest support in all the steps he takes to uphold the honor and the interests of this great Republic which are bound up with the maintenance of democratic liberty and of a wise spirit of humanity among all the nations of mankind."

To one of the younger generation of earnest and able writers in whom he took a warm personal interest, Julian Street, he wrote on June 23, 1915:

'Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln and Grant have occupied exactly the right position as regards our duty in international affairs; and Jefferson, Buchanan and Wilson exactly the wrong position. The way to help us in the concrete to do what is right is to point out in the concrete the men at the head of affairs who do what is wrong. The War of 1812 was for us at best a draw and was fulfilled with humiliation and disgrace because of Jefferson's attitude and above all because Jefferson's attitude represented the American attitude. If men like Washington had been in charge of this government for the first sixteen years of the nineteenth century the War of 1812 would have been an

overwhelming victory and probably would have been closed in 1812. Wilson and Bryan at the present day are contending for the proud preeminence of doing everything in their power in the last two years and a half to bring this nation to both impotence and infamy in its international relations and Taft by his universal arbitration treaties and his Mexican policy ably paved the way for them. Wilson is the one man now alive most responsible for present day unpreparedness.

On the same date, June 23, 1915, he wrote to his life-long friend Owen Wister:

"Your friend, the English pacifist, turned up. He seems an amiable, fuzzy-brained creature; but I could not resist telling him that I thought that in the first place Englishmen were better at home doing their duty just at present, and in the next place, as regards both Englishmen and Americans, that the prime duty now was not to talk about dim and rosy Utopias but, as regards both of them, to make up their minds to prepare against disaster and, as regards our nation, to quit making promises which we do not keep. Taft, second only to Wilson and Bryan, is the most distinguished exponent of what is worst in our political character at the present day as regards international affairs; and a universal peace league meeting which has him as its most prominent leader, is found on the whole to do mischief and not good.

"I was immensely pleased and amused with your last Atlantic article ('Quack Novels and Democracy') and I think it will do good. I wish you had included Wilson when you spoke of Bryan, and Pulitzer when you spoke of Hearst. Pulitzer and his successors have been on the whole an even greater detriment than Hearst, and Wilson is considerably more dangerous to the American people than Bryan. I was very glad to see you treat Thomas Jefferson as you did. Wilson is in his class. Bryan is not attractive to the average college bred man; but The Evening Post, Springfield Republican, and Atlantic Monthly creatures, who claim to

represent all that is highest and most cultivated and to give the tone to the best college thought, are all ultra-supporters of Wilson, are all much damaged by him, and join with him to inculcate flabbiness of moral fiber among the very men, and especially the young men, who should stand for what is best in American life. Therefore to the men who read your writings Wilson is more dangerous than Bryan. Nothing is more sickening than the continual praise of Wilson's English, of Wilson's style. He is a true logothete, a real sophist; and he firmly believes, and has had no inconsiderable effect in making our people believe, that elocution is an admirable substitute for and improvement on action. I feel particularly bitter toward him at the moment because when Bryan left I supposed that meant that Wilson really had decided to be a man and I prepared myself to stand wholeheartedly by him. But in reality the point at issue between them was merely as to the proper point of dilution of tepid milk and water.”

His views at this time about an international peace league were set forth on June 29, 1915, in a letter to E. A. Van Valkenberg:

"There is one point about those gentlemen who support a League for International World Peace that is worthwhile considering. Six months ago or more I outlined that program which they announced they had just discovered the other day. But I then very emphatically stated that it was a program for the future and that our first business was to make good the promises we had already made and to put ourselves in position to defend our own rights. These gentlemen declined to say a word in favor of our fitting ourselves to go into defensive war in our own interest; and yet they actually wish to make us at this time promise to undertake offensive war in the interests of other people! It is a striking illustration of the recklessness with which the average American is willing to make any kind of a promise without any thought of how it can be carried out. Taken concretely, they propose that we shall pledge our