1919
In finishing the correction of the last proofs of this sketch, Iperceive that some of those who read it may suppose that Iplanned to write a deliberate eulogy of Theodore Roosevelt. Thisis not true. I knew him for forty years, but I never followed hispolitical leadership. Our political differences, however, neverlessened our personal friendship. Sometimes long intervalselapsed between our meetings, but when we met it was always withthe same intimacy, and when we wrote it was with the same candor.I count it fortunate for me that during the last ten years of hislife, I was thrown more with Roosevelt than during all theearlier period; and so I was able to observe him, to know hismotives, and to study his character during the chief crises ofhis later career, when what he thought and did became an integralpart of the development of the United States.
After the outbreak of the World War, in 1914, he and I thoughtalike, and if I mistake not, this closing phase of his life willcome more and more to be revered by his countrymen as an exampleof the highest patriotism and courage. Regardless of popularlukewarmness at the start, and of persistent official thwartingthroughout, he roused the conscience of the nation to a sense ofits duty and of its honor. What gratitude can repay one whorouses the con science of a nation? Roosevelt sacrificed his lifefor patriotism as surely as if he had died leading a charge inthe Battle of the Marne.
The Great War has thrown all that went before it out ofperspective. We can never see the events of the precedinghalf-century in the same light in which we saw them when theywere fresh. Instinctively we appraise them, and the men throughwhom they came to pass, by their relation to the catastrophe. Didthey lead up to it consciously or un consciously? And as we judgethe outcome of the war, our views of men take on changedcomplexions. The war, as it appears now, was the culmination ofthree different world-movements; it destroyed the attempt ofGerman Imperialism to conquer the world and to rivet upon it aPrussian military despotism. Next, it set up Democracy as theideal for all peoples to live by. Finally, it revealed that theeconomic, industrial, social, and moral concerns of men aredeeper than the political. When I came to review Roosevelt'scareer consecutively, for the purpose of this biography, I sawthat many of his acts and policies, which had been misunderstoodor misjudged at the time, were all the inevitable expressions ofthe principle which was the master-motive of his life. What wehad imagined to be shrewd devices for winning a partisanadvantage, or for overthrowing a political adversary, or forgratifying his personal ambition, had a nobler source. I do notmean to imply that Roosevelt, who was a most adroit politician,did not employ with terrific effect the means accepted ashonorable in political fighting. So did Abraham Lincoln, whoalso, as a great Opportunist, was both a powerful and a shrewdpolitical fighter, but pledged to Righteousness. It seems nowtragic, but inevitable, that Roosevelt, after beginning andcarrying forward the war for the reconciliation between Capitaland Labor, should have been sacrificed by the Republican Machine,for that Machine was a special organ of Capital, by which Capitalmade and administered the laws of the States and of the Nation.But Roosevelt's struggle was not in vain; before he died, many ofthose who worked for his downfall in 1912 were looking up to himas the natural leader of the country, in the new dangers whichencompassed it. "Had he lived," said a