nation gets the slightest idea that I am acquiescing in faction fights in my own interests, there is the end of my accomplishing anything whatever."

To Frederick Scott Oliver, in England, author of the 'Life of Hamilton' and, later of 'The Ordeal of Battle,' he wrote on April 7, 1916:

"To chasten one's own side is an absolute necessity (one of the chief sources of our trouble here in the United States has been the persistent refusal to chasten our own side, even in dealing with past history), and yet in a crisis it exposes one to the charge of assisting one's enemies. To a very much less degree I have myself been having this difficulty for the last twenty months. French, English and Canadian editors of newspapers and reviews have kept asking me to write for them, as I have been writing and speaking in the United States, and they have apparently been unable to understand my response that the very fact that I was speaking unpleasantly of my countrymen meant that these unpleasant words must be spoken directly to them and not in some other land about them.

"I suppose each man tends to feel a particular animosity toward his tribal enemies, so to speak. I have never expected anything from the frank materialists. When they play the part of frankly selfish swine and say that they do not care what happens to Belgium as long as they can keep their own four feet in the trough, I merely try to appeal to any possible far-sightedness in their selfishness by pointing out that, if they do not make ready, they will ultimately themselves be shouldered out of the trough by the German boar or by some other equally warlike and competent competitor. But the men who really do arouse my anger are those who have been for years claiming to be idealists, claiming to be for peace and for justice and for virtue, and who have usually denounced me as not having sufficiently lofty ideals and as not being sufficiently altruistic.

"I wish to Heaven there was a better chance of de

veloping some strong candidate against Wilson. There is a real movement to nominate me, simply because I am the only man who has stood openly against him in a way to show that I meant it. But I have had to be the pioneer in this movement and as Lincoln, with his homely common sense said, the trouble with pioneers is that they necessarily get so battered and splashed that they cannot be used at subsequent stages of the movement. It would be just as hard to elect me this year as it would have been to have elected Hamilton against Jefferson in 1808. If it had been possible to run Pinckney against Jefferson, with Hamilton and Adams heartily backing him, Jefferson might have been beaten. I wish to Heaven we could develop some Pinckney now who would be put forward."

In order to bring pressure on the Republican National Convention by a demonstration of their popular strength, the Progressive managers called a national convention of their party to meet in Chicago on the same date that the Republican convention was to meet. Roosevelt had no faith in the success of this proceeding, as is shown in a letter that he wrote to C. S. Thompson, of New York City, on May 4, 1916: "I do not for a moment believe that the Chicago convention is going to nominate me. I think they are inclined to 'pussy-foot' and it is worse than useless for them to nominate me, unless they are prepared for an entirely straightforward and open campaign."

He left no possibility for any one to doubt his position during the months that preceded the assembling of the two conventions, for he continued to speak and write with undiminished force and frankness on the subjects which he considered of supreme importance-national preparedness and righteous peace. His denunciations of German outrages and atrocities were as vigorous as ever and made it absolutely certain that if nominated he would have the entire German vote of the country arrayed against him. His strongest and most outspoken addresses were made in Western cities in which the German elements of the popu

lation were most numerous, and where pacifists most abounded. In April and May he spoke to great throngs in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Detroit and other similar centers on such subjects as "Righteous Peace and National Preparedness,' "National Duty" and "International Ideals." In none of these did he speak as a Presidential candidate, but as an American devoted heart and soul to the honor and welfare of his country, and deeply stirred by the slowness of the national administration in the work of preparedness for the great war in which he believed we were destined soon to be involved.

This was peculiarly the case in his speeches in St. Louis on May 31, 1916, only a week before the two conventions, Republican and Progressive, were to assemble at Chicago. In fact the delegates to both conventions were already either in Chicago or on their way there. St. Louis had a larger number of German-born inhabitants than any other American city except Milwaukee, and it was known at the time to be a stronghold of German war sympathy. Roosevelt's first speech of the several that he made during his visit showed that he was not a Presidential aspirant who was seeking support from German-born citizens. He declared that there was no room in the United States for German-Americans, or Irish-Americans or any other hyphenated citizens, but room only for those who were "Americans and nothing else." In fact, he declared, there could be no such person as a German-American; he had the authority of the Kaiser himself for the statement, since the Kaiser had said that he knew what a German was and what an American was but he did not know what a GermanAmerican was. 66 'Whatever else may be said of me," declared Roosevelt to a great audience that had assembled to hear him, "I am no pussy-footer." That was a notification not only to his audience but to the delegates to the Republican National Convention that if he were to be made a candidate there must be no angling for German-American votes.

It is interesting to note that the sentiments of this speech

were not new with Roosevelt, were not the outcome of the European war. Like his views on preparedness, he had avowed them many years earlier. In the Preface to a 'History of New York City' which he wrote in 1890 he used these words:

"In speaking to my own countrymen there is one point upon which I wish to lay especial stress; that is, the necessity for a feeling of broad, radical, and intense Americanism, if good work is to be done in any direction. Above all, the one essential for success in every political movement which is to do lasting good, is that our citizens should act as Americans; not as Americans with a prefix and qualification;—not as Irish-Americans, German-Americans, Native Americans.-but as Americans pure and simple."

In his book on 'True Americanism,' published in 1894, he uttered similar sentiments:

"We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native or of Irish or of German ancestry. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote, and it is contemptible demagogy to put planks into any party platform with the purpose of catching such a vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans and nothing else."

In one of his St. Louis speeches on May 31, 1916, Roosevelt used his subsequently famous phrase, "weasel words.' On the preceding day, President Wilson had made a Memorial Day address, and in criticizing it, Roosevelt said: "The President said that he was for universal voluntary training, but that America did not wish anything but the compulsion of the spirit of Americanism. Now, universal

voluntary training is an expression precisely similar to that which you would use if you said, in speaking of a truant law for the schools, that you believed in universal obligatory attendance at the public schools for every child that did not wish to stay away.

"In connection with the word 'training' the words 'universal voluntary' have exactly the same effect an acid has on an alkali—a neutralizing effect. One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called 'weasel words.' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a 'weasel word' after another there is nothing left of the other. Now, you can have universal training, or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word 'voluntary' to qualify the word 'universal' you are using a 'weasel word'; it has sucked all the meaning out of 'universal.' The two words flatly contradict one another."

It was subsequently shown that Roosevelt got the term 'weasel words" from a story by Stewart Chaplin that was published in the Century Magazine in June 1900, in which this passage occurred:

"Why, weasel words are words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell. If you heft the egg afterwards it's as light as a feather, and not very filling when you are hungry, but a basketful of them would make quite a show, and would bamboozle the unwary.

"I know them well, and mighty useful they are, too. Although the gentleman couldn't write much of a platform, he's an expert on weasling. I've seen him take his pen and go through a proposed plank or resolution and weasel every flat-footed word in it. Then the weasel word pleases one man, and the word that's been weasled pleases another."

In his universal reading, Roosevelt had encountered this magazine story and his marvelous memory had retained