IN the selection of the speeches included in the present volume special attention has been given to the subjects which seem likely in themselves to possess continued importance, and to those speeches which should prove of special interest to the citizen and the voter during the present year (1904), as expressions of the methods of thought and of the principles of action of the President. The volume is published with the full approval of President Roosevelt, and the selection of the addresses has been made under his supervision. The publishers desire to make clear, however, that in Mr. Roosevelt's opinion these speeches have been dedicated to the public, and he has declined, therefore, to derive any business advantage from their publication.

INTRODUCTION

BY HENRY CABOT LODGE

DR. JOHNSON wisely said that no man was ever written down except by himself. It is equally true that no man was ever written up except by himself, and although advertisement and notoriety are so often mistaken for fame, there is no doubt that a solid and lasting reputation can only be made by what a man says and does himself and not by what others may say about him. Despite, therefore, the great extension of the interview and of the habit of "writing people up" in the newspapers, whether favorably or unfavorably, the formal political or campaign biography, so much in favor in former days, has of late largely disappeared. It is still the custom in England to publish for political purposes biographies of living men who are in the full tide of public activity, but in this country such works have gone very much out of fashion. It used to be the inevitable as well as the conventional practice to write and publish the lives of Presidential candidates in more or less serious and elaborate books when the time for their election approached. These volumes were prepared often with much care, and in at least two instances men of the highest literary reputation were called upon to perform the task. Hawthorne wrote the campaign life of Franklin Pierce, and Howells that of President Hayes. But even their great reputations could not save these biographies from oblivion, and what they failed to make of permanent value, in the hands of lesser men were utterly ephemeral. It is no doubt a sense of

this failure, joined to the further fact that all the incidents, both real and imaginary, in the career of a Presidential candidate are now put within every one's reach by the daily newspapers, that has caused the practical disappearance of these biographies, which were written to enlighten voters and attract votes to their subject.

The case, however, is widely different when we come to what Dr. Johnson considered the only real foundation of a man's reputation-that which he has done or said or written himself. It is most important that people should be able to read and, let us hope, ponder well what has been written or said by any man to whom they are asked to intrust the Presidency of the United States. For that reason this volume has far more significance than that of being merely an addition to the collected works of President Roosevelt. Here have been brought together certain important speeches and messages which express the President's opinions upon subjects with which he has felt it his duty to deal since he has been charged with the highest public duties. In the still distant future they will form a most important contribution to the history of the time, as is always the case with the words and thoughts of men who have had the largest share in their day in directing the course and fortunes of the country. It will also be for that distant future to decide what place these speeches shall take and hold in that very small group which are remembered and repeated among men, not as history, but as literature. At the present moment, however, they have the peculiar and most important interest of being the utterances of a man who has not only filled the highest place in the gift of the American people, but who now stands before that people for their direct approbation and for re-election to office. This is neither the time nor the place to analyze or criticise these speeches from the point of view of their permanent position as examples of literature or of oratory, or even to