EUROPE AND AMERICA
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.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1902, by Clinedinet, Washington, D.C.
President Roosevelt in the Saddle]
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.