New York made no festival for him on this second homecoming. The city and the country welcomed him, but not effusively. The American people, how ever, felt a void without Roosevelt. Whether they always agreed with him or not, they found him perpetually interesting, and during the ten or eleven weeks when he went into the Brazilian silence and they did not know whether he was alive or dead, they learned how much his presence and his ready speech had meant to them. And so they rejoiced to know that he was safe and at home again at Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt insisted, imprudently, on accompanying his son Kermit to Madrid, where he was to marry the daughter of the American Minister. He made the trip to Spain and back, as quickly as possible, and then he turned to politics. That year, Congress men and several Governors were to be elected, and Roosevelt allowed himself to be drawn into the campaign. As I have said, he was like the consummate actor who, in spite of his protestations, can never bid farewell to the stage. And now a peculiar obligation moved him. He must help the friends who had followed him eagerly into the conflict of 1912, and, in helping them, he must save the Progressive principles and drive them home with still greater cogency. He delivered a remarkable address at Pittsburgh; he toured New York State in an automobile; he spoke to multitudes in Pennsylvania from the back platform of a special train; he visited Louisiana and several other States. But the November elections disappointed him. The Progressive Party, if not dead, had ceased to be a real power in politics; but Progressivism, as an influence and an ideal, was surviving under other forms. Probably the chief cause for this wane was the putting into operation, by President Wilson and the triumphant Democrats, of many of the Progressive suggestions which the Democratic Platform had also contained. The psychological effect of success in politics is always important and this accounted for the cooling of the zeal of a certain number of enthusiasts who had vociferously supported Roosevelt in 1912. The falling-off in the vote measured further the potency of Roosevelt's personal magnetism; thousands voted for him who would not vote for other candidates professing his principles. Finally, other issues--the imbroglio with Mexico, for instance--were looming up, and exciting a different interest among the American people. Before we discuss the greatest issue of all, in which Theodore Roosevelt's career as a patriot culminated, we must recall two or three events which absorbed him at the time and furnished evidence of vital import to those who would appraise his character fairly.