sinned that sin he neither forgave nor forgot. For opposition to himself he cared but little; enemies he had in plenty, but they cast no shadow on his soul. He was a gallant and a cheerful fighter, willing, as he often said, to be beaten for any cause that was worth fighting for, and whether in defeat or victory, never unbalanced and never dismayed. Roosevelt lived intensely in his family life. The doer of great things himself, and the occasion of great accomplishment in others, what he did was not done alone. It is but right that we should recognize the part played by the strong and gentle, wise and loving woman, whose hand was so rarely seen yet still more rarely absent in all that was best in her great husband's finest living and most memorable achievements. The greatest of executives, he transformed the machinery of government with the flame of his own spirit. He was his own hardest taskmaster, and always unwilling to ask of his men the thing he was not ready to do himself. He was our leader because he was the better man. He worked more hours, at higher speed, with wider vision. He trusted us, and gave each man his head. Always eager to recognize good work and give due credit for it, always ready with an excuse for the man who honestly tried and failed, he had nothing but scorn and contempt for the man who never tried at all. Filled with the joy and the spice of living, afraid neither of life nor of death, thankful for sunshine or rain, never sorry for himself, never asking odds of any man or any situation, he used the powers he had as only his great soul could use them-powers seldom if ever before assembled in one individual, but nearly all of them duplicated, one here, one there, within the knowledge of us all. It was the use his soul made of his body and his mind that was the essence of his greatness. The greatest of his victories was his last, his victory over the indifference of a people long misled. He was the first to see the need for it. To gain it he seemed to throw away his future. In the event he won results and earned a name which will live while the knowledge of America's part in the Great War still endures. He was the leader of the people because his courage and his soundness made him so. More than any man of his time, he was loved by those who ought to love him, and hated by those who ought to hate him. His ideals, his purposes, his points of view, his hostilities, and his enthusiasms were such as every man could entertain and understand. It was only in the application of them that he rose to heights beyond the reach of all the rest of us. What explains his power? Life is the answer. Life at its warmest and fullest and freest, at its utmost in vigor, at its sanest in purpose and restraint, at its cleanest and clearest,life tremendous in volume, unbounded in scope, yet controlled and guided with a disciplined power which made him, as few men have ever been, the captain of his soul. Alert, glad, without meanness and without fear, free from arrogance and affectation, with few hesitations and few regrets, slow to promise but ardent to perform, delighting in difficulties, welcoming danger, sensitive to the touch of every phase of human existence, yet dominated by standards more severely set for himself than for any others, sustained by a breadth of knowledge and of sympathy and by an endurance, both physical and mental, which belonged to him alone, Roosevelt lived with a completeness that lesser men can never know. In Roosevelt above all the men of his time, the promise of the Master was fulfilled-"I came that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly." The man who had a broad vision of things spiritual.-In an address on nations and their future ("Biological Analogies," delivered at Oxford University, 1910), he points out that there are many ominous signs to warn the nations that their growth approaches the fate of the law of death of nations. He makes clear that the all-important factor is national character, that there promises a great future for the civilizations which have expanded in the course of their development, but that if it does not come, we must at least all carry forward the torch which men mighty of heart have handed on from civilization to civilization throughout recorded time "It is an incalculable added pleasure to anyone's sense of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly or imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature. All hunters should be nature-lovers. It is to be hoped that... from now on the hunter will stand foremost in working for the preservation and perpetuation of the wild life, whether big or little."-From Pastimes of an American Hunter. The invitation to get out into the western country on hunting trips for a few weeks each year came to Roosevelt neither from the delights of natural history and sportsmanship alone, nor alone from interest in conservation problems; he especially gloried in remembering the heroic part played by the pioneers, and by the nation in handling early problems of statehood: ". . . In all the history of mankind there is nothing that quite parallels the way in which our people have filled a vacant continent with self-governing commonwealths, knit into one nation. It is a record of men who greatly dared and greatly did; a record of endless feats of arms, of victory after victory and ceaseless strife waged against wild man and wild nature. . . . The old iron days have gone. . . . Let us see to it that, while we take advantage of every gentler and more humanizing tendency of the age, we yet preserve the iron quality. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done, and to persevere. . . ."-From address at the Quarter-Centennial Celebration of Statehood in Colorado With John Burroughs in Yellowstone Park, 1903.-They are on their way to the big geyser region, Roosevelt, in accordance with his habit from a boy on such occasions, sitting with the driver of the sleigh. Roosevelt was especially interested in the big game and would go entirely alone on long twenty-mile tramps for the pleasure of creeping up unawares on a band of elk or mountain sheep and eating his luncheon while he studied them. Burroughs says, in telling their experiences and laughter when racing on skis down some of the hills: "The spirit of the boy was in the air about the Cañon of the Yellowstone, and the biggest boy of us all was President Roosevelt." It was on this trip that Mr. Burroughs first came to know of Roosevelt's great natural history knowledge and of his trained powers of observation: "Born observers are about as rare as born poets. Plenty of men can see straight and report straight what they see; but the men who see what others miss, who see quickly and surely, who have the detective eye, like Sherlock Holmes, who 'get the drop,' so to speak, on every object, who see minutely and who see whole, are rare indeed. President Roosevelt comes as near fulfilling this ideal as any man I have known."-From Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt, by John Burroughs Portraits of two bird lovers in the Yellowstone.-He lived thus in the wilderness, he followed the elk and the antelope, he listened to bird songs as though there were nothing else in the world. But he emerged after a few days into a world of people, politics, and speeches again, and waged anew and strenuously the fight for a high type of national service |