So they worked their hardest and best, cross-examined him for days and searched every incident of his political life. At the end they joined that large band of disappointed men who tried to destroy Roosevelt or catch him in something disreputable. For the jury decided in Mr. Roosevelt's favor, indicating that he had uttered no untruth when he made his remarks about Mr. Barnes. As a writer, Mr. Roosevelt would have made a name for himself, if he had done nothing else. The success of his books is not due to the high offices which he held, for his best writings had nothing to do with politics. As a writer on politics he was forceful and clear. There was no doubt as to the meaning of his state papers; they never had to be explained nor "interpreted." They were not designed to mean any one of two or three things, according to later circumstances. Strength and directness were the characteristics. When writing about the by-ways of politics his enjoyment of the ridiculous made his work especially readable. When he felt deeply about any great issue, as in his last years, about the Great War, and our part in it, his indignation found its way into his pages, which became touched with the fire of genuine eloquence. He wrote about books and animals, and about outdoor life, as no President has ever done. His remarks upon literature are those of a great book-lover, sensible, well-informed and free from pose. Every one should read his "Autobiography," his "Hero Tales from American History" which he wrote in company with Senator Lodge, and his "Letters to His Children." His early accounts of hunting in the West make good reading, but in his book about his African hunt, and in the one on the South American trip, he probably reached his highest level as a writer. If any American has written better books of travel than these, more continuously interesting, fuller of pleasing detail about the little incidents, the birds and tiny animals which he encountered, and at the same time with a stricter regard for accuracy of observation, I do not know where they are to be found. [Illustration: Courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons and Lord Lee of Fareham. From a painting by P. Lazzlo. PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT] This man of politics had a true poetic feeling for the countries he visited; time and again he moves his readers in describing the wonders of the great waste places, the melancholy deserts and wildernesses, the deadly fascination of the jungle, and the awful glory of the tropic dawns and sunsets. When something awakened his imagination he could write passages full of the magic of poetry. Witness this, it is not a description of scenery, but a vision of the true historian of the future: