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Theodore Roosevelt
Chapter XII: Europe and America
by Pearson, Edmund Lester
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At Khartoum Mr. Roosevelt and his son were joined by other members
of his family. They all crossed to Europe, for he had been invited
by the rulers and learned bodies of a number of countries to pay
them a visit. He went to Italy, Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden,
Holland, France, Denmark, Belgium and England, receiving the
highest compliments from their rulers, honorary degrees from the
universities, and a welcome from the people everywhere which had
been given with such heartiness to no other American since General
Grant traveled round the world after the Civil War.
In Norway he spoke to the Nobel Committee in thanks for the Peace
Prize which they had awarded him after the Russo-Japanese War. In
Germany, the Kaiser ordered a review of troops for him; and he was
received by the University of Berlin. In Paris, he addressed the
famous institution of learning, the Sorbonne. The English
universities received him, and gave him their honorary degrees.
London made him a "freeman." His speeches before the learned men
of Europe might not have been extraordinary for a university
teacher, but when we think that his life had alternated between
the hustle of politics, the career of a ranchman, of a soldier,
and of a hunter of big game, it is evident that we shall have to
search long and far among our public men before we can find any to
match him in the variety of his interests and achievements.
In England, King Edward VII had just died, and Mr. Roosevelt was
appointed by President Taft as the American representative at the
funeral. There was a gathering in London of thirteen reigning
monarchs, and many curious stories are told about the occasion. Of
course the Kaiser was there, strutting about and trying to
patronize everybody. Mr. Roosevelt had been politely received by
the Kaiser and believed, as did every one, that beneath his
arrogant manners, there was a great deal of ability. But he did
not allow himself to be treated by the "All Highest" with
magnificent condescension.
A story is repeated, of which one version is that the Kaiser
suddenly called out, at some reception:
"Oh, Colonel Roosevelt, I wish to see you before I leave London,
and can give you just thirty minutes, to-morrow afternoon at two."
"That's very good of Your Majesty," replied Mr. Roosevelt, "and
I'll be there. But unfortunately I have an engagement, so that
I'll only be able to give you twenty minutes."
Another story concerns a little boy,--the Crown Prince of one of
the countries where royal folk have simpler and better manners
than in Germany. He and his parents and other persons of royal
rank were at the palace where Mr. Roosevelt was staying. As any
man would know, boys are interested in much the same things
whether they are princes or not, and this one was greatly taken by
Mr. Roosevelt's stories of hunting, and by being taught some of
the games which the American father and his boys had played in the
White House, not many years before. So it happened that as a group
of the visitors, including two or three kings and queens, stepped
out of one of the rooms of the palace into a corridor one evening,
they were astonished to see a gentleman down on his hands and
knees on a rug, playing "bear" with a little boy. The gentleman
was the Ex-President of the United States, and the boy was the
future King of one of the countries of Europe.
Roosevelt's return to New York was the signal for a tremendous
reception. New York outdid itself in salutes, parades, and wildly
cheering crowds. Nothing like it had been seen before. Even after
the excitement of the first day of his return, he could not go out
without being surrounded by cheering crowds. He knew that it could
not last, and said to his sister: "Soon they will be throwing
rotten apples at me."
He was right. A period was about to begin when he was to be
defeated in every campaign in which he engaged. All the enemies he
had made in his long fight for better government--and they were
many and bitter enemies--were to join hands with all the people
who opposed him just because they disliked him. He was to part
company from some of his nearest friends, and persistently to be
reviled, misunderstood and attacked. Yet he was to rally around
him a body of devoted friends, and make these the greatest years
of his life.
It is partly comic and partly sad, to look back and consider the
things for which Roosevelt had fought in his public life, and to
recall that a fight had to be made for things like these; that the
man advocating them had to stand unlimited abuse. He had been
abused for trying to stop the sale of liquor to children, and
opposed in his efforts to prevent the making of cigars in filthy
bed-rooms. He had been violently attacked for enforcing the liquor
laws of New York. Lawyers and public men had grown red with anger
as they denounced him as a tyrant, and an enemy to the
Constitution, because he wished to stop a dishonest system of
rebates by the railroads. A man looks back and wonders if he were
living among sane people, or in a mad-house, when he recalls that
Roosevelt was viciously attacked because he proposed that the
meat-packers of this country should not be allowed to sell to
their countrymen rotten and diseased products which foreign
countries refused even to admit. Sneers greeted his attempts to
prevent poisons being sold as medicine, and laudanum being peddled
to little children as soothing-syrup. His fight to prevent greedy
folk from destroying the forests, wasting the minerals, and
spoiling the water supplies of America had to be made in the face
of every sort of legal trickery and the meanest of personal abuse.
The Republican Party had been founded during one of the greatest
efforts for human freedom ever made in our history. In its long
years in power, and in the amazing increase in prosperity and
wealth in America, if had become the defender of wealth. Many of
its highest and most powerful men could see no farther than the
cash drawer. Human rights and wrongs, human suffering, or any
attempt to prevent such sufferings, simply did not interest them.
They were not cruel men personally, but they had heard repeated
for so many years that this or the other thing could not be done
"because it would hurt business," that they had come to worship
"business" as a savage bows his head before an idol. Many of them
could give money for an orphan asylum or a children's hospital,
and yet on the same day, vote to kill a bill aimed to prevent
child-labor. To pass such a bill as that would "hurt business."
The Democratic Party was no better. It was simply weaker, and
usually less intelligent. Wherever it was powerful, it, too, was
apt to be the servant of corruption. The politicians of both
parties loved to keep up a continual fight about the tariff, to
distract public attention from other important subjects.
There had been disagreements in the Republican Party for a number
of years. These had gone on during the Roosevelt administration.
In the main, these struggles can be described by saying that
President Roosevelt and those who agreed with him were looking out
for the advantage of the many, and for the welfare and health of
great masses of the people. His opponents were more interested to
see that nothing checked the activities of great corporations,
railroads, and manufacturing interests. They sincerely believed
that this was the first concern of all true patriots. Roosevelt
wished every man to have a square deal, an equal chance, so far as
possible, to earn as good a living as he could. His opponents
thought that if the great business interests could only go on, as
they liked, without being annoyed by the government, they would be
able to give employment to almost everybody, and to all the
unfortunates, who were crushed in the struggle, they would give
charity.
Between these two groups there was a ceaseless fight all the years
Roosevelt was in the White House. He had been strongly approved at
the polls; many of the measures he advocated had been made laws by
Congress. So he thought, and the larger part of the Republican
Party thought, when Mr. Taft became President, that the measures
which they had approved were going to be advanced still further.
It soon appeared that they were in for a disappointment. Mr. Taft
proved friendly to the older politicians; the younger and
progressive men were not in favor. He made his associates, and
chose as his advisers, the men who called Mr. Roosevelt "rash," "a
socialist," "an anarchist." Many of the men who surrounded
President Taft were honest and patriotic. But there were also a
number of stick-in-the-mud statesmen,--old gentlemen who had been
saying the same thing, thinking the same things, doing the same
things, for forty years. To change, to be up with the times, to
progress, to alter methods to meet new conditions, struck them as
simply indecent. Their idea of a happy national life was great
"prosperity" for a fortunate few, a lesser degree of success for
some others who could cling to the chariot wheels of the rich,
and,--charity for the rest. That was always their answer to the
old, hard problem of wealth and poverty. Like quack doctors they
would try to cure the symptoms, rather than like wise physicians
seek to find the causes. They were like the Tories in our
Revolution who were for King George against George Washington,
because King George was the legal King of the American colonies,
or like the Northern pro-slavery men, who defended slavery because
it was permitted by the Constitution and the slaves were legal
"property." The Constitution was, for them, an instrument to be
used to block all change, whether good or bad.
Other men, near to President Taft, were neither patriotic nor
innocent. They were shrewd, powerful Bosses,--men of the type of
Platt. Only, Mr. Taft did not stand on the alert with them, as
Roosevelt had done as Governor, working with them when he could,
and fighting them when they went wrong. He allowed them to
influence his administration, and, at last, accepted a nomination
engineered by them for their own selfish purposes.
The Republicans who followed President Taft, the "stand-patters,"
believed in property rights first, and human rights second. If any
of them did not actually believe this, they joined people who did
thoroughly believe it, and so their action counted toward putting
that belief into practice. The others, the "Insurgents" or
Progressive Republicans, (later called the Bull Moose) believed in
human rights first. That is as near as the thing can be stated,
remembering that it was a disputed point, with good men on both
sides. The stand-patters said the Progressives were cranks,--
visionary and impractical; the Progressives replied that it was
better to be both of these things than to be quite so near to the
earth and selfish as Mr. Taft's followers or managers. The events
of later years have not borne out the contention that Roosevelt
was "rash" and "dangerous"; while the charge that Mr. Taft made a
President more pleasing to the Bosses than to the people was amply
proved, in the campaign of 1912.
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