OCR Text |
Show THE ROOSEVELT MYTH. Boston Pilot: Already the industrious workmen in the Great American Myth Factory who call themselves contemporary contem-porary historians, of whom Mr. Maclay, the inventor of the battle of Santiago fiction, is a fine example, have begun to construct an ancestry for President Roosevelt calculated to please their several sev-eral patrons. The ingenious MacArthur, he of the self-written threatening letters, was first in the field to proclaim in the pages of a cheap magazine that Mr, Roosevelt is a fine type of the brawny Scot. Another writer, in another magazine of the same calibre, promptly filed a caveat declaring that the president is "Scotch-Irish.'- Now comes a gentleman in the Century Cen-tury Magazine for December, calling himself "An Old Acquaintance" of the chief executive, and says: "Born of northern father and southern south-ern mother; commingling in his veins the blood of the English, Dutch, Scotch and Huguenot; reared in New York, and educated in New England; living a part of his life in the far west, and a part in Washington, where all sections meet on a common plane, Theodore Roosevelt is the most catholic, cosmopolitan cosmo-politan and non-sectional American in public life since Henry Clay." The writer last quoted comes nearer the truth than either of the other 1m-aminative 1m-aminative gentlemen, save in one niost important particular. The "English" strain to which he gives the first place is entitled to no place at all in Mr. Roosevelt's pedigree. As his friend and classmate, Mr. Francis Lowell, said in Introducing the future president to a Boston audience at Huntington hall on Nov. 15, 1893: "He is one of the truest Americans in the country, and his chief boast is that he has not a drop of English Eng-lish blood in his vein3." The Scotch and French elements are not very strong in the presidet's blood each being mer ; what analytical chemists call "a . . ace," President Roosevelt himself, no longer ago than last June, speaking on commencement day at Harvard college, said: "I am particularly glad that I should be allowed to speak here with my good friend, if he will allow me to call him such, the German ambassador. Mr. Ambassador, when the president of the college was speaking of the part played by Germans and Scandinavians, I felt that I would like to put in a modest mod-est plea for the Dutch. As far as I know, Mr. Ambassador ,the two stocks I represent are the only ones omitted the Dutch and the Irish. Mr. President, Presi-dent, those of us who have known as I have known the German ambassador, place a peculiar value upon what he has said today of speaking for his people peo-ple in the words of cordial friendship to the' United States, because we know he means every word he has said. I agree with every word of the appreciation apprecia-tion of the ties that bind us towards your ancestor in England (turning to Mr. Bellows). I only want to make a plea that there are a great many more of us who are also bound by ties of blood to other nations of the old world." "The two stocks I represent, the Irish and Dutch." It is a splendid mixture of fire and phlegm, daring and coolness. B'ended together, they make an Ideal soldier and ruler. No wonder the English Eng-lish try to claim him, even as they claim Burke and Wellington,' and as their "Anglo-Saxon" cousins this side of the water claim everybody of distinction dis-tinction in American history. The scrubby literary jackals who camp on the trail of the bolder Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon marauders claim every prize overlooked by these, and many not overlooked, as their proper prey, which they label "Scotch-Irish." Generally they wait until the distinguished subject. sub-ject. Is dead, because it is embarrassing even to their audacity to be contra, dieted by the subject himself. The present subject has spoken with-' out any ambiguity on several occasions. occa-sions. For instance, at the New England Eng-land dinner at Brooklyn, N. Y., on Dec. 31, 1S98, he said: "I always feel at- the banquets of the New England society that I and the president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick whom I so often find here with me, represent at this feast the victims who are dragged at the wheels of the conquering Roman's chariot. I'm half Irish myself, as well as half Dutch. I have had occasion to tell a New England senator, a very Intimate friend, when he has reviled me, saying that the Dutch are a conquered race, that ' what he says is perfectly true, but that the other half of me. the . Irish, has avenged the Dutch." "So well do I know the Irish race," said he, speaking about his famous rough riders at Albany on March 17, 1900, "that I could have wished that my men all had some Irish blood in their veins." Surely the Anglomaniacs and the "Scotch-Irish" Jabberwocks are overdoing over-doing the matter in claiming this mart as one of their tribe while he is yet alive and so very able and ready to expose ex-pose the impudent fabrication. |