... How many times have you heard it said, “This T. R. is in the comprehension of the crowd.” This is true. The saddest conviction ever forced into the mind of genius of any age is the opaqueness of the surface which the crowd presents to light or loveliness of any kind. And T. R. is in the comprehension of the bleakest generation which this country has ever known; nor will there ever be another like it, for we are at the end of the night. That which is about to break is either dawn or doom. T. R. is still searching for the crowd through the endless folds of its obliquity. Who shall say that these folds are not endless; that he may not turn over still another fateful, if momentary allegiance, from the bowels of our materialism? Enough that he is the voice to-day of the Prussian factor in America, a voice from the throat of the militarists—that curious solution of beef, iron and wine, from which—as Thou seest the Oise and the Aisne and the Vistula flow red—oh, Lord, deliver us! I hold the conviction that if the militarists ever get in full cry after this country, we shall lose our Peace and our personality. This is an hour to stand by, and it is only in such an hour that I would venture to study a party through the character of its loudest voice. For seventeen years I have watched T. R. stand for the physical and the obvious. There has been more noise about his name in America than about any other, and yet he has never risen to a single great moment. And steadily he has mounted higher in the consciousness of T. R. Many of us thought that the crisis was reached, when for a day (a little before the last presidential nominations) the ego broke within him, and those close at hand saw a deranged creature.... A troop of us camped beside him in Tampa, and followed the Rough Riders afield above Santiago. Perhaps he has a certain animal courage—the cheapest utility of the nations—but there is no moral quality to the courage of a man who would permit himself to be cast into popular approval on a fake.... There was a reunion two years afterward of those same Rough Riders in Oklahoma. T. R. was there, campaigning on the shoulders of McKinley, much as Dr. Cook did. On the way down through Kansas for two days, we heard him on the back platform of the private coach, at every station where two or three would gather together—pouring the most terrific physical energy into political bickerings and half-truths, the same at each station—until we drew the press table as far as possible forward, and bore the oppressive heat with shut windows rather than that repeated clamor of words. He would come in conqueringly, the black coat damp with sweat.... I remember the ruffian exhibition with the cattle—steer-torturing, the brand, the snap of bone, the tightened noose, thud of poor beasts to the ground—all in a frame for him—the hat with the pinned-back brim, waving over all....