OCR Text |
Show A DjAXGEROUS MAX. It is neither strange nor reprehensible that the . people who have Xever(Beeu Out should look upon Prsident Roosevelt as "'a dangerous man." We" aro every one of us dangerous, in proportion to our opportunity; for we are all finite, and prone to err; and error is dangerous according to the square of our influence. Roosevelt is, from a certain point of view, a particularly "dangerous man." He stands for Xa-tiohal Xa-tiohal Youth and all of us who are unable to swap our wise years for the better thing we once' had. know how ''dangerous" youth is. out we tend to forget that its greatest tlanger the only danger it does not, on tho average, out-prow out-prow is to get old and fat and "cautious." The blunders and excesses of its virile strength it somehow some-how repairs on lives down, by stress of the same energy that caused them. Youth amends itself. It is the "easiest disease to recover from." But senile decay, and the timidity of 'the huddled hud-dled these: do. not remedy themselves. Their ti. sues, even if still sound, are no longer recuperated. If the impulse to dangerous darin gis gone, gone also is the initiative to do needful things. It is easier to sit still and tell how things should bo done, There is value even in this. Tho man of action is foolish who neglects altogether the indoor counsel of the retired; but the grave and a-cverend elders should bear in mind that while we who run are apt to stub our toes, they are apt to die which is rather more serious. lht.s country has come, with a precocity never rivaled by another, to many of the path-dog ic symptoms of age. Even its ypunger generation is old not only in experience "but in cynicism ami materialism. ma-terialism. Our . standards are becoming less and less the generous ones of youth ; more and morn tho calculating ones of middle age. W hat we need is the leader who can stir what generous pulse we have left. Wars and foreign complications are bad enough ; but no one who knows Roosevelt can soberly imagine im-agine he is any more likely to involve us than another an-other man would be. Our last war, in fact, came on under the "safest" of presidents. The one great danger of this country is not broils nor bruises, but fatty degeneration of the heart. The most tlangerous man it could .have at its head today would be one wdio was content to drift. Tho man who acts-r-an'd who acts with high intelligence, spotless honesty and a stubborn fist he will make mistakes; but he will never make tho last, worst mistake of dry rot Charles T. Lummis in Out West. i : |