Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate BiographyThayer, William Roscoe
History
Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography
Thayer, William Roscoe
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
followed the path of righteousness, or desired righteous ends -
for the Cause to which he had been dedicated since youth. Analyze
his acts at any period, and you will find that they were
determined by his loyalty to that Cause.
And how could so great a soul exercise itself to the full, except
by grappling with adversity? The prosperous days seemed to fit
him like a skin, but only in these days of apparent thwarting and
disappointment could he show himself equal to any blows of Fate.
At first he struggled magnificently against crushing odds, asking
no allowances and no favors. He founded and led the Progressive
Party and, in 1912, received the most amazing popular tribute in
our history. And he would have pushed on his work for that party
had not the coming of the World War changed his perspective.
Thenceforth, he devoted himself to saving civilization from the
reptilian and atrocious Hun; that was a task, in comparison with
which the fortune of a political party sank out of sight.
His work demanded of him to rouse his country men from the apathy
and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it,
and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged
it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States
which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men
might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they
trusted him. Never for a moment did they suspect that he was
slyly working for the enemy, or for special interests here or
abroad.
He, the supreme American, spoke for America and for the
civilization which he believed America fulfilled. His attacks on
the delays and the incompetence, on the faint-heartedness and
contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His
heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the
United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service
which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he
did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that
President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one,
Roosevelt's demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have
been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it
had to be driven through at top speed. And so of the other
vitally necessary things. He ceased to warn Americans that they
must be neutral "even in thought"; he ceased to comfort them by
the assurance that a nation may be "too proud to fight"; he
ceased to extol the "justice and humanity of the Germans." That
he suffered these changes was owing to the fact that American
public opinion, largely influenced by Roosevelt's word and
example, would not tolerate them any more. And President Wilson,
when he can, follows public opinion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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