kaleidoscopic nature. Nobody can tell when he will be upset; and if a man is to be of real use he ought to be able at times philosophically to accept defeat and to go on about some other kind of useful work, either permanently or at least temporarily until the chances again permit him to turn to political affairs. Every office I have held I have quite sincerely believed would be the last I should hold, the only exception being that during my first term as President I gradually grew to think it probable that I should be reelected."

In the same letter, he writes of the Senate:

"It is a very powerful body with an illustrious history, and life is easy in it, the Senators not being harassed as are members of the lower House, who go through one campaign for their seats only to begin another. The esprit de corps in the Senate is strong, and the traditions they inherit come from the day when, in the first place, men dueled and were more considerate of one another's feeling, even in doing business; and when, in the second place, the theories of all doctrinaire statesmen were that the one thing that was needed in government was a system of checks, and that the whole danger to government came not from inefficiency but from tyranny. In consequence, the Senate has an immense capacity for resistance. There is no closure, and if a small body of men are sufficiently resolute they can prevent the passage of any measure until they are physically wearied out by debate. The Senators get to know one another intimately and tend all to stand together if they think any one of them is treated with discourtesy by the Executive.

"I do not see that the Senate is any stronger relatively to the rest of the government than it was sixty or seventy years ago. Nor do I think that the Senate and the lower House taken together are any stronger with reference to the President than they were a century ago. Some of the things the Senate does really work to increase the power of the Executive. They are able so effectually to hold up action when they are consulted, and are so slow about it,

that they force a President who has any strength to such individual action as I took in both Panama and Santo Domingo. In neither case would a President a hundred years ago have ventured to act without previous assent by the Senate. In this nation, as in any nation which amounts to anything, those in the end must govern who are willing actually to do the work of governing; and in so far as the Senate becomes a merely obstructionist body it will run the risk of seeing its power pass into other hands."

To an editor who had commented unfavorably on Senator Lodge, he wrote on February 23, 1906:

"Lodge has violent enemies. But he is a boss or the head of a machine only in the sense that Henry Clay and Webster were bosses and heads of political machines; that is, it is a very great injustice to couple his name with the names of those commonly called bosses. I know Massachusetts politics well. I know Lodge's share in them, and I know what he has done in the Senate. He and I differ radically on certain propositions, as for instance, on the pending rate bill and on the arbitration treaties of a couple of years ago; but I say deliberately that during the twenty years he has been in Washington he has been on the whole the best and most useful servant of the public to be found in either house of Congress.

"I say also that he has during that period led politics in Massachusetts in the very way which, if it could only be adopted in all our States, would mean the elimination of graft, of bossism, and of every other of the evils which are most serious in our politics. Lodge is a man of very strong convictions, and this means that when his convictions differ from mine I am apt to substitute the words 'narrow' and 'obstinate' for 'strong'; and he has a certain aloofness and coldness of manner that irritate people who don't live in New England. But he is an eminently fit successor of Webster and Sumner in the Senatorship of Massachusetts. He is a bigger man than Sumner, but of course he has not dealt with any such crisis as Sumner dealt with.

He is not as big a man intellectually as Webster, but he is a far better man morally; and the type of citizenship which he represents is from the standpoint of the United States better than either of theirs."

On the question of his own popularity, Roosevelt wrote as follows, on March 1, to Sereno S. Pratt in New York:

"I have felt a slightly contemptuous amusement over the discussion that has been going on for several months about my popularity or waning popularity or absence of popularity. I am not a college freshman nor that would-be popular fox-hunting hero in 'Soapy Sponge,' and therefore I am not concerned about my popularity save in exactly so far as it is an instrument which will help me to achieve my purposes. That is, in so far as my good repute among the people helps me to secure the passage of the rate bill, I value it. In so far as it fails to help me secure the adoption of the Santo Domingo treaty, I do not value it. A couple of years ago or thereabouts, a good many timid souls told me that by my action in Panama I had ruined my popularity and was no longer available as a candidate; to which I answered that while I much wished to be a candidate and hoped that I had not ruined my popularity, yet if it was necessary to ruin it in order to secure to the United States the chance to build the Panama Canal, I should not hesitate a half second, and did not understand how any man could hesitate.

"It is surprising to me that Blank should not see the real meaning of what he says about Washington when he speaks of his having become an object of dislike to the bulk of his fellow citizens at the end of his second term by refusing to side with France. Washington sacrificed a temporary popularity for the purpose of securing the permanent welfare of his country. I do not believe he was capable of being swayed in the matter by the consideration of his own permanent repute as compared with the nation's permanent good. But in any event his permanent repute stood higher

and not lower because of his willingness to sacrifice a temporary popularity.

"So, my dear sir, I should be quite unable to tell you whether I was or was not now 'popular.' If I am, I am also entirely prepared to believe that I shall be extremely unpopular before I go out. But this is not what I am concerning myself about. I am not paying heed to public opinion; I am paying heed to the public interest; and if I can accomplish, not all that I desire, but a reasonable proportion of what I desire, by the end of my term (and in the four and a half years that have gone by I have succeeded in accomplishing such reasonable proportion) why, I am more than satisfied."

At intervals during his seven years in the Presidency there was one United States Senator who appealed to the President either to promote some officer in the army over the heads of other officers, or to intercede in behalf of an officer in disgrace for some cause or other, always basing the appeal on personal grounds. Some of the President's replies to these appeals have been published in previous chapters. The following, written on March 2, 1906, is of especial interest as showing the President's devotion to absolute and impartial justice:

"I am very sorry to say that I cannot see Mrs. concerning the court-martial case of her brother. I have been obliged in cases of this kind to make a definite rule that I will not see the delinquent's mother, sister, daughter, or other kinsfolk. They are the very people who under no circumstances should ever be seen. They are of course entirely unable to express any opinion of the slightest value as to the guilt, innocence, or general worthiness of the accused; and an appeal for the accused on the ground of sympathy for his kinsfolk is one which it is simply impossible to entertain if justice is to be done or the service not to be ruined. So that to see them means nothing whatever but an entirely useless harrowing of feelings.

I have been carefully over this case, going through the brief of the counsel for the accused, going through the extracts of the testimony and the brief of the Judge Advocate General. The utmost leniency that I could show would be to allow him to resign. He is obviously entirely incompetent to remain any longer in the service. I need not say, my dear Senator, how I regret my inability to do what you request; but it would not be fair to do for one man who had influential friends anything I would not do for the man who had not a friend in the world. I try to handle the Army and the Navy on the basis of doing absolute justice and showing no favoritism for any reason, a course which I know has your hearty approval."

In the spring of 1906, there was much talk about what Roosevelt would do when he retired from the Presidency, and among various suggestions there was one that he might be chosen President of Harvard University. To a Massachusetts friend, who had written to him about it asking him if he would accept, he replied on March 7, 1906: "It is simply impossible for me to give you a definite answer three years in advance. People have spoken to me about it, of course. I had never thought of myself as president of a college. I have not the slightest idea how I would do as such, and I haven't an idea whether when I get out of here I will feel that I could immediately go into such work; nor do I know whether any work will be offered to me of any kind, or rather, whether the chance of any work will come up, and if so, what kind of work. I would hate to commit myself definitely so far in advance. Any President on retiring ought to be proud and grateful to serve as President of Harvard. But to say that I would serve is impossible for me now, simply because I do not know what the circumstances will be. It is very unlikely that other work in which I should feel that with my peculiar abilities and non-abilities I could do better, would arise, but it is always possible.