do to prevent the ambassador with whom he rode in the procession from making an international issue of the fact that the coach assigned to them was not a glass coach, as the coaches of the kings were, and that the footmen who rode before and behind wore black livery when the footmen of the kings were wearing red.

Roosevelt was glad for the inspiration which had impelled him, after an overdose of royalties, a fortnight before, to cable to Seth Bullock, United States marshal in South Dakota, to come over to London as his guest. He wanted to see somebody who talked his own language.

He remained in England a little short of four weeks. Late in May Cambridge University conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws; early in June Oxford made him a Doctor of Civil Law.

On a day half-way between these solemn academic occasions he made a speech at the Guildhall in London that set all England by the ears.

It was about Egypt. The Lord Mayor had conferred on him the freedom of the City of London. In expressing his thanks he spoke of his experience in four English protectorates in Africa during the past year. He lauded British rule there, but declared flatly that in the case of Egypt the attitude of the British government was weak, timid, and sentimental.

Either you have the right to be in Egypt or you have not, either it is or it is not your, duty to establish and keep order. If you feel you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not

wish to establish and to keep order there, why, then, by all means get out of Egypt. Some nation must govern Egypt. I hope and believe that you will decide that it is your duty to be that nation.

The speech raised a storm. The Liberals attacked Roosevelt as a meddler who had no business to give his advice on matters which were no concern of his; the extreme radicals were wild; the extreme conservatives contemptuous; the majority of thoughtful men, however, commended Roosevelt's courage and vision. Statesmen who had the interests both of Egypt and of England at heart expressed their gratitude. The affair came up in Parliament. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, thereupon announced that he had seen the address before its delivery and approved of it; that it had, in fact, been delivered at his expressed desire.

The opposition collapsed. Roosevelt sailed for home with the cheers of Englishmen, high and low, ringing in his ears.

"Mr. Roosevelt came to a Europe which was sick and weary of talk, perpetual talk, about rights," said an American commentator on the Continent, "and it listened with avidity and hope to a man who spoke of duties, and spoke of them plainly and emphatically."

"It is, in the end, as a sort of whirlwind of purification that one thinks of him," said a notable Englishman.

And a Frenchman added: "It was a great reputation that had preceded him, that he was forced to live up to. He succeeded. He goes a greater man in the eyes of Europe than he was when he came,

CHAPTER XVIII

HE RETURNS TO HIS OWN PEOPLE AND FIGHTS A GOOD FIGHT AGAINST ODDS

HE

E returned to his own people a greater man than he had been when he went. His countrymen had been eagerly and anxiously waiting for him. During the fifteen months of his absence the struggle for popular government in which for ten years he had been the leader had been moving swiftly to a crisis. Signs of popular unrest had been plentiful, and manifest to all except those who stubbornly refused to see. While Roosevelt was President the unrest had been sporadic and local. A majority of the American people which far transcended the lines of the Republican party was satisfied that the administration of national affairs was conscientious, efficient, progressive, and free from the control of "special privilege."

His successor had inherited this popular confidence. No President for generations had come to office under more favorable auspices. On March 4, 1909, a united Republican party entered on a new term of service amid the cheers of a united and prosperous nation which asked nothing of it except

that it should continue on the road along which Roosevelt had led it.

Four months later, almost to a day, the new President signed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff bill. The platform on which he had been elected had pledged revision downward.

that the conservation policy was imperilled when Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester, was dismissed for insubordination because he protested against what he believed was the connivance of the Secretary of the Interior in the schemes of a group of coal speculators in Alaska. The American people discovered,

to their amazement, that the radical they had elected to carry on the policies of Roosevelt's administration had allied himself with the most obdurate group of reactionaries. The forces which had been struck into impotence when Roosevelt came to power were once more gaining control of the government. When Roosevelt emerged from the jungle, less than a year after the inauguration of the new President, the

were confronted by a small group

of "insurgents" under Borah, La Follette, Beveridge, and Cummins. The President stood with the "stand-patters."

All eyes were turned to Roosevelt. At Khartoum he had refused to comment on the political situation in the United States. Both factions hoped for his support. Meanwhile his triumphal journey through Europe greatly heightened his prestige. In the national enthusiasm for the returning hero party