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What Roosevelt did was to visit the various naval reserves throughout the country, inspecting and inquiring into conditions and actively pushing repairs upon the ships. As for the practice of the men at the guns, there is afloat an anecdote that shows in picturesque outline the work of the Assistant Secretary in this direction.

Not long after his appointment he asked Congress for an appropriation of $800,000 for ammunition. The appropriation was made, but, to the surprise of the lawmakers, before many months had passed he asked for a second appropriation for the same purpose, this time demanding $500,000.

"What has become of the other appropriation?" he was asked.

"Every cent of it has been spent for powder and shot, and every ounce of powder and shot has been fired away," he replied.

"And what do you propose to do with the $500,000 you now want?” "I will use every dollar of that, too, within the next thirty days in practice shooting."

It was costly practice, but it paid, as was soon to be shown by the effectiveness of American gunnery at Manila and Santiago.

Another thing done by Roosevelt in the same direction was to help in passing the personnel bill, which did away with the standing cause of bitter feeling between the officers of the line and staff.

"It is useless," he said, "to spend millions of dollars in the building of perfect fighting machines unless we make the personnel which is to handle these machines equally perfect."

The time was soon to come when his work would tell. In February, 1898, occurred that criminal disaster which blew up the battleship "Maine," with all her crew; in Havana harbor. Diplomacy was called in to settle this, if possible, but Roosevelt, like most of his countrymen, felt sure that war would follow, and he redoubled his efforts to put the navy into first-rate fighting trim.

We have told how Roosevelt helped Dewey when the war broke out. That was not all. It was due to him that Dewey was on the ground at the time. When a man was wanted to command in the East, Roosevelt selected Dewey, and stuck to his choice in spite of those who said that the Commodore was only a well-dressed dude. "It does not matter what kind of clothes and collars he wears," said

Roosevelt, "the man will fight. He is the man for the place. He has a lion heart."

He not only kept Dewey in Chinese waters, but held his fleet together. The "Olympia" was ordered home, but Roosevelt secured the repeal of the order. "Keep the 'Olympia," he cabled him, "and keep full of coal."

He saw clearly what was in the air. And when the day for fighting came the blood throbbed strongly in his veins. "There's nothing more for me to do here," he said. "I've got to get into the fight myself. I have done all I could to bring on the war, because it is a just war. Now that it has come I have no business to ask others. to do the fighting and stay at home myself."

The fact is, chains could not have kept him at home. There was in him too much of the berserker strain for that. He had been fighting all his life. Whether in the legislature, on the ranch, in the hunting field, in the police service; it was not in him to lose the chance to feel the blood-boiling sensation of the battlefield.

It was a happy idea of his that suggested the Rough Rider regiment. The name "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" struck the popular fancy, and helped greatly to make Roosevelt's name a household word. Before the regiment was organized it had become famous. The taking title, "Roosevelt's Rough Riders," was on every one's tongue.

Never before had such a body of athletes and daredevils been got together. Only America could have furnished them. The cowboy, the Indian trailer, the hunter, the Indian himself, the pick of the West, formed the bulk of the regiment, but with them were mingled the athletes of the East, the college football player, the oarsman, the polo champion, the trained policeman, even the wealthy society man of athletic training. The one pity is that they were not able to show their prowess as horsemen, for such a body of cavalry as they would have made the world has rarely seen.

They were out of their native element afoot, and their humorous title for themselves, "Wood's Weary Walkers," after their long marches in the Cuban jungle, had more truth than poetry in it.

Roosevelt had been for four years a member of the Eighth Regiment of the New York State National Guard, and had risen to the

grade of captain in its ranks. He might have been the colonel of the new regiment if he had chosen, but he felt that in actual war a man who had seen service in the field was needed, and he selected his friend, Colonel Leonard Wood, of the Regular Army, to command, contenting himself with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

How to get to Cuba was the first important question that arose. Of the enlisted men only a small proportion could go on the projected expedition to Santiago. Mounted men were debarred and the horses had to be left behind, one squadron remaining to take care of them. The Rough Riders were among the last of the regiments that received permission to go, and might have been left behind but for "Teddy" Roosevelt's insistence. Then, when orders came to move to Tampa, transportation was refused. In his usual mode of cutting the Gordian knot, he seized a train, jumped aboard the engine, and demanded that it should move. The train moved.

Port reached, he did not wait for an official assignment to a transport, but put his men without hesitation on board the nearest vessel. Much the same thing happened when the landing place in Cuba was reached. Following the same bold tactics, he did not wait for orders to land his men, but got them ashore among the first, and on the night of the landing began to march to the front. He even passed General Lawton, who was holding the advance guard position under orders from General Shafter.

In all these active movements we hear the name of LieutenantColonel Roosevelt, not that of Colonel Wood. The two men, however, were of much the same calibre and were intimate friends. They worked together as one man. Later on Colonel Wood was promoted to the rank of general and his subordinate took the post of colonel. Throughout he was identified with the Rough Riders and they with him.

Readers of the war know what followed, how the regiment passed the advance outpost-without orders, it is said—and at daylight the next morning encountered the Spaniards at Las Guasimas and began the first fight of the short war. When General Shafter received the news of this fight he was not pleased, for he was told that the Americans had been cut to pieces. He swore roundly and declared that he

"would bring that damned cowboy regiment so far in the rear that it would not get another chance." But when later on news of the cowboy victory reached him he wrote a flattering letter to Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, in command, congratulating him on the brilliant success of his attack.

Roosevelt and his men were not to be kept back. They fairly struggled to the front. On July 1st a correspondent saw them moving in columns of twos through a densely wooded roadway leading to the "Bloody Angle," and while his men were falling wounded around him Roosevelt answered the correspondent's "Hello, there!" with a wave of his hand and an exclamation that showed that his heart was in the fight.

Up San Juan Hill they went, Roosevelt leading the charge, the Spaniards, from their intrenchments at the top, pouring down a thick hail of shells and Mauser bullets. This is the way the charge was described in press despatches from the field:

"Roosevelt was in the lead waving his sword. Out into the open and up the hill where death seemed certain, in the face of the continous crackle of the Mausers, came the Rough Riders, with the Tenth Cavalry alongside. Not a man flinched, all continuing to fire as they ran. Roosevelt was a hundred feet ahead of his troops, yelling like a Sioux, while his own men and the colored cavalry cheered him as they charged up the hill. There was no stopping as a man's neighbor fell, but on they went faster and faster. Suddenly Roosevelt's horse stopped, pawed the air for a moment, and fell in a heap. Before the horse was down Roosevelt disengaged himself from the saddle and, landing on his feet, again yelled to his men, and, sword in hand, charged on afoot.

"It seemed an age to the men who were watching, and to the Rough Riders the hill must have seemed miles high. But they were undaunted. They went on, firing as fast as their guns would work. At last the top of the hill was reached. The Spaniards in the trenches could still have annihilated the Americans, but the Yankees' daring dazed them. They wavered for an instant and then turned and ran. The position was won and the blockhouse captured. In the rush more than half of the Rough Riders were wounded."

Let us go on to another incident a month or more later. The war was ended. That charge up San Juan Hill had practically ended it. During this month the victorious army had been kept in Cuba, doing nothing and suffering from a malarial attack that had put more than 4,000 of the men on the sick list. If an attack of yellow fever, indig. enous to that climate, had broken out among the weakened troops, it would have proved ten times more fatal than the Spanish bullets.

Colonel Roosevelt-he was a colonel then-chafed and fretted. Doing nothing did not agree with his constitution. He broke out at length in the famous "round robin," which he wrote and his fellow officers signed, protesting against keeping the army longer in Cuba, exposed to the perils of that pestilential climate. People shook their heads when they heard of this and talked of precedents. They did not recognize that he was a man to break and make precedents.

Whatever their opinion, the "round robin," and letter which he wrote to General Shafter, making a powerful presentation of the perils of the army, had the intended effect. The men were recalled and shook the malarial dust of Cuba from their feet. With that event closed the war experience of Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Rider regiment.