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Show FIVE MINUTE CHATS ABOUT OUR PRESIDENTS By JAMES MORGAN o THE STRENUOUS LIFE ? C' 1858 Oct. 27, Theodore Roosevelt Roose-velt born in New York city. 1880 Graduated from Harvard. 1882-4 Member of New York l jlslature. 1884-6 A ranchman at Medora, N. D. 1889-95 Member of national civil service commission. 1895-7 Member of New York police po-lice commission. 1897 8 Assistant Secretary of the navy. 1898 Colonel of the Rough Riders in Cuba. 1899 1900 Governor of New York. 1900 Elected Vice President 1901 Sept. 14 took the oath In Buffalo as the twenty-fifth president, aged forty-two. 1904 November, - elected president. presi-dent. o Q THEODORE ROOSEVELT was the most popular of all our presidents. presi-dents. With the exception of Lincoln, his was the raciest, the most Interesting Interest-ing character that we have had In the presidency. Yet he was born apart from the multitude mul-titude whom he led and he might have lived and died a stranger to the masses af bis countrymen but for one thing: He had not the health to enjoy the life of ease which opened to him at his i ' 1 Roosevelt as a Young Man. birth. Roosevelt had to fight for his pery breath in his gasping, asthmatic childhood. Finally he took a post-graduate course in physical culture in the wild West, where the "four-eyed tenderfoot" had to fight the battle of his youth all over again, in a strange world, with entirely different standards for measuring meas-uring men. ' Roosevelt cut his eye teeth In political polit-ical leadership in the corrupt machine-run legislature of New York. He could not have chosen a more thorough thor-ough school for Instruction In the hidden, hid-den, muddy springs of parties and politics. pol-itics. His experience at Albany put realism into his idealism and made the academic reformer over into the most intensely practical politician we have had in the presidency. He decided at the outset to act In each office as if it was to be the last Hint he ever would get, and for nearly 15 years after he left the legislature, Roosevelt could . not have been elected to anything in the boss-ridden state of New York. For a long time he was "shelved" on the civil service commission at Washington, until a reform re-form mayor of New York appointed him on the four-headed police commission commis-sion ; but it was soon single-headed so far as the public could see, and that head was full of teeth for police grafters graft-ers and lawbreakers. At thirty-eight the most he could ask of the Republican Repub-lican politicians, with any hope of getting get-ting it, was the assistant secretaryship of the navy. The entire administration sighed with relief when at last he went off to lead his Rough Riders. In five months he was back from Cuba In the far more troublesome role of a popular hero. The New York machine ma-chine was in such sore need of a good name to pull it through the pending election that it met him at the wharf and humbly laid at his feet the Republican Repub-lican nomination for governor. But In the governorship, he realized the worst fears of Boss Piatt that he harbored, as the boss naively wrote him, "various "vari-ous altruistic Ideas;" and that he was "a little loose on the relations of capital capi-tal and labor, on trusts and combina-tlons combina-tlons and . . . the right of a man to run his own business in his own way." The only thing to do with this wild engine was to turn the switch and shunt it on to the side track of the vice presidency. Roosevelt loudly protested pro-tested that he wanted to be re-elected governor. And while Piatt was trying to push him on to the national ticket, McKinley and Hanna just as earnestly tried to push him back on to Piatt. The Republican national convention rose up and roared his nomination, flinging him, in spite of himself, upon e tide that led to fortune. n THE BIG STICK 1903 February 6, Roosevelt Induced In-duced Great Britain and Germany to arbitrate with Venezuela. November, the Panama revolution. 1905 May 12, brought Russia and Japan to agree to discuss dis-cuss peace. August 29, the peace of Portsmouth. 1906 Roosevelt awarded the Nobel peace prize. 1918 January 6, death of Theodore Theo-dore Roosevelt, aged sixty. o 6 AT the crackling of a twig In the still depths of the Adirondack mountains Roosevelt turned to see a guide coming out of the woods with the unexpected news that McKInley's condition was svorse. Although he hastened to Buffalo, the president had died 13 hours before the vice president arrived. At the outset of Roosevelt's administration ad-ministration a fearful citizen begged the rough rider not to permit his fighting fight-ing spirit to plunge the country into an International war. "What !" the president pres-ident exclaimed. "A war, and I cooped up here in the White House? Never!" Many forgot the first half of the old motto that Roosevelt made his own. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." No man ever had a simpler faith In the efficacy of first "talking It over," man fashion, with an adversary, whether a senator or an ambassador. The meddlesome German kaiser was the earliest to feel the "big stick" to see if It was duly stuffed with straw. Germany and a Tory government of England were on the point of seizing territory as a security for some claims against Venezuelan citizens, when Roosevelt succeeded In dissuading England Eng-land from such a step, but he failed to Induce Germany to arbitrate the matter. Thereupon he told the German Ger-man ambassador that unless the Berlin government consented to arbitration in ten days, he would send Admiral Dewey to stop the Germans from landing land-ing in Venezuela. The ambassador protesting that the kaiser could not back down now, Roosevelt replied that he was not arguing with him but was simply telling him what would happen. After waiting a week without an answer from Berlin, he told the ambassador am-bassador that he was going to cut the limit to nine days and that unless Germany agreed In 48 hours to arbitrate, arbi-trate, Dewey would sail. In 3G hours the ambassador came back with a mess-age announcing that Germany consented, con-sented, In good time, Roosevelt employed the influence of his unique position before the world to bring to an end the Russo-Japanese war. Shrewdly choosing the right moment to step In, he appealed to the two belligerents with a common sense and a simple directness that a friend would use In bringing together two quarreling neighbors. neigh-bors. Afterward he steered the peace conference at Portsmouth against its will steadily toward a peace of recon-cilition, recon-cilition, an impatient Russian declaring declar-ing tli at his "steel wrist" hammered out a treaty that neither of the powers wanted at that time and that "the terrible ter-rible American president II Strenuoso was capable of locking the conferees 1 Y x V- Edith Carow Roosevelt. Into n room and starving them into submission." Instead of starting a war, the "big stick" stopped the only great war that broke out in the period of Its sway. Wliile the Roosevelts were Its tenants, ten-ants, the White House was an example ex-ample and the center of the simple family life of America . . . "not t. second-rate palace," the president said, "but the home of a self-respecting American citizen." A few months after af-ter graduating at Harvard, Roosevelt married Miss Alice Hathaway Lee of Boston, whom he had met in his college col-lege days. This bride of his youth passed from life as her daughter Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth entered en-tered it. Nearly three years afterward h sailed from New York, directly follow, ing an unsuccessful campaign for mayor to marry a friend and neighbor of his childhood, Miss Edith Kermit Carow, who was sojourning In Europe. (Copyright, 1320. by James Mornau) |