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Mark Hanna spoke against it. Hanna "was out of tune with the prevailing idea which permeated the country at that time." He showed this in everything he said. He

Officers' mess of the Rough Riders in Texas soon after their organization. Colonel Wood left, and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt right, at head of table.

talked about the great loss of life that would ensue, the cost of war, the necessity for moving slowly in all great undertakings. At the end of Hanna's speech, the president of the club remarked: "At least we have one man connected with this administration who is not afraid to

fight Theodore Roosevelt assistant secretary of the navy." Roosevelt then spoke: "We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba, Senator Hanna, in spite of the timidity of commercial interests." 1

As the war approached, Roosevelt hurried the prep

arations of the fleet to a degree that rather disturbed his superior, the secretary of the navy. When the declara

1 Arthur Wallace Dunn, "Gridiron Nights."

2 "Mr. Long was at the head of the Navy Department for a year before the war came and never saw the shadows that were cast before, but Assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt saw them, and every time the Secretary's back was turned he would issue some kind of an order in the line of military preparedness and prevail upon Congress to do something toward meeting the inevitable. One day, when the Secretary had left the department to prepare for a trip to Boston on the evening train, Roosevelt hurried up to Congress and had an amendment inserted in an appropriation bill providing for the furnishing of war materials, and the Secretary, learning of this action, gave up his trip and hurried back to his department to checkmate his hot-headed young assistant, but all to no purpose." -David S. Barry, "Forty Years in Washington."

tion came, Roosevelt resigned from his executive office in the navy in order to get into the actual fighting. He brought together one of the most picturesque aggregations of soldiers, amateur and professional, that ever fought in any American war. In his regiment, in the kind of men he sought and the kind who gravitated to him, one could see echoes of Roosevelt's own past, his reading, his writing, all his interests. The Rough Riders reflected Roosevelt's experiences and associations as a rancher and hunter in the West, his college associates, his "highbrow" friends and to an even greater extent those of Roosevelt's friends who would much prefer to be called "lowbrow"; and the interests and preoccupations he had picked up in his books, "The Winning of the West," "The Wilderness Hunter," "The Boone and Crockett Club Series."

The picturesqueness of the regiment thus brought together was the first of several aspects of Roosevelt's participation in the Spanish War that attracted to him the interest and, generally, the approving attention of the public. The performance of the regiment at the battle of San Juan Hill was another. Yet another was his part in a public demand on the War Department for action to conserve the health of troops.

III

At the end of the war Roosevelt was the principal leader whose politics were Republican. That caused him to fit into a situation which was gravely troubling the Republican boss of New York State, Senator Thomas C. Platt. Platt was typical of the boss domination which then existed in most States, in both parties. This story of Platt and Roosevelt can stand as a sufficient picture of the system as it was just before it began to be under

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mined by the substitution of direct primaries1 for party conventions as the mechanism for nominating candidates. The bosses stood, one foot in the world of politics and one in the world of big business, and were the medium through which each served the other. Of this system, and of the specific case of Platt, there is an adequate picture penned by Elihu Root in his later years of mellow statesmanship:

They call the system - I do not coin the phrase, I adopt it because it carries its own meaning the system they call 'invisible government." .. The governor did not count, the legislature did not count, secretaries of state and what not did not count. . . . Mr. Platt ruled the State. For nigh upon twenty years he ruled it. It was not the governor, it was not the legislature, it was not any elected officers; it was Mr. Platt. And the capital was not here [in Albany]; it was at 49 Broadway, with Mr. Platt and his lieutenants.2

In New York the Republicans were in power, but the State administration had been discredited by extravagance in connection with the Erie Canal. If Platt and the Republicans were to retain power, it was necessary to put forward the strongest possible candidate for governor. Inevitably, Roosevelt's name suggested itself to Platt's need. But there were drawbacks that caused the situation to trouble Platt greatly.

To nominate Roosevelt would insure success certainly it would go farther toward insuring success than any other choice. But, after election, what kind of governor, from Platt's point of view, would Roosevelt make? Platt was entirely familiar with Roosevelt's previous career. As he reflected back on Roosevelt as a member of the New York legislature, as a national civil service

1 The first direct primary was held in Minnesota, this very year, 1900. The following year it was introduced in Wisconsin by La Follette. The boss as an institution lingered until nearly 1925. Penrose, of Pennsylvania, who died in 1922, was the "last of the barons," the last boss with a State-wide domination. 2 Elihu Root, "Addresses on Government and Citizenship." This speech was made at a New York State Constitutional Convention.