Chapter I: Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

The original edition did not include a Table of Contents. For the
convenience of the reader one has been created:

Introduction i

The Presidency 1

Addresses and State Papers 14

Speech of President Roosevelt at the Reunion of the Department
Of the Potomac, G. A. R., at the New Willard Hotel,
Washington, D. C., Feb. 19, 1902 14

At the Charleston Exposition, Wednesday, April 9, 1902 18

At New York at the Banquet at Sherry’s in Honor of Dr. Nicholas
Murray Butler, President of Columbia University,
April 19, 1902 27

To the Graduating Class, Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md.,
May 2, 1902 33

At the Banquet of the Society of the Sons of the American
Revolution, Washington, D. C., May 2, 1902 36

At the Laying of the Cornerstone of the McKinley Memorial Ohio
College of Government of the American University,
Washington, D. C., May 14, 1902 39

At the Exercises of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland,
Attending the Reburial of Major-general William Stark
Rosecrans, Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, D. C.,
May 17, 1902 40

At the Centennial Meeting of the Board of Home Missions of the
Presbyterian Church, Carnegie Hall, New York, N. Y., on the
Evening of May 20, 1902 44

At the Overflow Meeting of the Centennial of Presbyterian Home
Missions, Central Presbyterian Church, New York, N. Y.,
May 20, 1902 50

On the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’
Monument at Arlington, Under the Auspices of the National
Society of the Colonial Dames of America, May 21, 1902 53

At Arlington, Memorial Day, May 30, 1902 56

At the Opening Session of the Military Surgeons’ Association,
Washington, D. C., June 5, 1902 68

At the Centennial Celebration of the Establishment of the United
States Military Academy, West Point, June 11, 1902 70

At the Harvard Commencement Dinner, Cambridge, Mass.,
June 25, 1902 78

At the Coliseum, Hartford, Conn., August 22, 1902 85

At Providence, R. I., August 23, 1902 98

At Symphony Hall, Boston, August 25, 1902 108

At Haverhill, Mass., August 26, 1902 118

At Portland, Maine, August 26, 1902 122

At Augusta, Maine, August 26, 1902 124

At Bangor, Maine, August 27, 1902 126

At Northfield, Mass., September 1, 1902 134

At Fitchburg, Mass., September 2, 1902 137

At Dalton, Mass., September 3, 1902 144

At Wheeling, W. Va., September 6, 1902 146

To the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Chattanooga, Tenn.,
September 8, 1902 156

At Danville, Va., September 9, 1902 167

At Music Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio, on the Evening of
September 20, 1902 169

At the Banquet of the Spanish War Veterans, Detroit, Mich.,
September 22, 1902 185

At Logansport, Ind., September 23, 1902 187

At the Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of
New York, at New York, November 11, 1902 196

At the Banquet Tendered General Luke E. Wright, at
Memphis, Tenn., November 19, 1902 202

At the Reception to General Wright at Memphis, Tenn.,
November 19, 1902 208

At the Founders’ Day Banquet of the Union League,
Philadelphia, Pa., November 22, 1902 211

At the Banquet to Justice Harlan, the New Willard Hotel,
Washington, D. C., December 9, 1902 221

Reception of a Delegation from the National Board of Trade,
Washington, D. C., January 15, 1903 225

At the Banquet of the Young Men’s Christian Association, New
Willard Hotel, Washington, D. C., Jan. 19, 1903 226

At the Banquet at Canton, Ohio, January 27, 1903, in Honor of
the Birthday of the Late President McKinley 231

At Carnegie Hall, New York, N. Y., February 26, 1903, Upon the
Occasion of the Bi-centennial Celebration of the Birth of
John Wesley 242

At a Meeting of the Society of American Foresters, Held at the
Residence of Mr. Gifford Pinchot, Washington, D. C.,
March 26, 1903 249

At Chicago, Ill., April 2, 1903 257

At Waukesha, Wis., April 3, 1903 268

At Milwaukee, Wis., April 3, 1903 272

Before the Minnesota Legislature, St. Paul, Minn.,
April 4, 1903 286

In the Chapel of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Minn., April 4, 1903 292

At Minneapolis, Minn., April 4, 1903 294

At Sioux Falls, S. D., April 6, 1903 302

At Fargo, North Dakota, April 7, 1903 310

At Medora, North Dakota, April 7, 1903 320

At Jamestown, N. D., April 7, 1903 321

At Laying of Cornerstone of Gateway to Yellowstone National
Park, Gardiner, Montana, April 24, 1903 324

At Omaha, Neb., April 27, 1903 329

From Address at Quincy, Ill., April 29, 1903 335

At Odeon Hall, St. Louis, Mo., Before the National and
International Good Roads Convention, April 29, 1903 336

At St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, April 29, 1903 341

At the Dedication Ceremonies of the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition, St. Louis, April 30, 1903 341

At Topeka, Kansas, May 1, 1903 353

From Address at Denver, Col., May 4, 1903 361

At Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 5, 1903 364

At the Catholic School, Albuquerque, N. M., May 5, 1903 368

At the Indian School, Albuquerque, N. M., May 5, 1903 368

At Grand Canyon, Arizona, May 6, 1903 369

At Barstow, California, May 7, 1903 372

At San Bernardino, Cal., May 7, 1903 373

At the Big Tree Grove, Santa Cruz, Cal., May 11, 1903 375

At Leland Stanford Junior University, Palo Alto, Cal.,
May 12, 1903 377

At Mechanics’ Pavilion, San Francisco, Cal., May 13, 1903 390

At the Ceremonies Incident to the Breaking of Sod For the
Erection of a Monument in Memory of the Late President
McKinley, San Francisco, Cal., May 13, 1903 397

_A CALIFORNIA SPEECH_

_Some of President Roosevelt’s addresses on public questions called
him across the continent. However, he always transacted an enormous
amount of public business en route_ ]

Homeward Bound Edition

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS

_February 19, 1902, to May 13, 1903_

BY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR THROUGH SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

VOLUME I

NEW YORK

THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY

MCMX

The Publishers desire to make clear to the readers that Ex-president
Roosevelt retains no pecuniary interest in the sale of the volumes
containing these speeches. He feels that the material contained in
these addresses has been dedicated to the public, and that it is,
therefore, not to be handled as copyrighted material from which Mr.
Roosevelt should receive any pecuniary return.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES
AND STATE PAPERS

FEBRUARY 19, 1902

TO

MAY 13, 1903

INTRODUCTION

BY ALBERT SHAW

The materials contained in the Addresses and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt, while President of the United States, possess far more than a transitory interest and value. It is obvious indeed that for the future student of American politics and history their preservation in convenient and authentic form is not merely an important service, but an indispensable one; for it would have been impossible to collate them in any accurate or complete way from the scattered files of newspapers, especially since many of the addresses were delivered at points remote from news centers, and some of these were very inadequately reported by the press. This observation, it is needless to say, does not apply to the formal State Papers—chiefly messages to Congress—for such official deliverances are duly preserved and published by the Government itself. It is, however, suitable as well as convenient to include these State Papers in a collection of the recent utterances of President Roosevelt, for reasons so obvious as to need little comment.

The palpable fact is that President Roosevelt’s messages to Congress and a large number of his speeches, delivered in various parts of the country in his capacity as President, pertain to the same topics and serve a like public purpose. The messages must, of course, deal with matters affecting the welfare of the nation, and with various questions of public business or policy, in those aspects that bear upon the work of Congress. It is the President’s Constitutional right and duty to present information upon such topics, or to expound them from the standpoint of the Administration. In the long series of Presidential messages one may, indeed, read the history of this country for more than a hundred years. To that official narrative these messages by Mr. Roosevelt add some of the most fascinating chapters.

The speeches here collected, on the other hand, have a much wider range. Nevertheless, a great number of the addresses and speeches do in fact deal with precisely the same topics as those presented in the messages to Congress, and were intended not merely for a particular audience but for the whole country through the medium of the press. And for Mr. Roosevelt’s full disclosure of his views and policies touching some questions of large public concern, it is necessary to read his speeches in connection with his general or special messages to Congress. Since a number of his speeches here printed, like his general messages, deal with a variety of matters, the reader who wishes to compare and collate his utterances upon a given subject—as, for example, the regulation of the trusts, the reorganization of the army, the relations of the United States to Cuba, or our methods and policies of administration in the Philippines—will find it desirable to consult the index, which is intended to make these volumes available for ready reference.

Quite apart from their obvious value for reference purposes to the student of our contemporary history and politics, or to the campaign speaker of one party or another—who may wish to know authoritatively what Mr. Roosevelt said about various public issues—this collection of addresses has several distinct merits and advantages that must give it a place among works relating to the national life and character. Mr. Roosevelt, as an exponent of the aims and ideals of a great portion of his own generation of men and women in the United States, stands unquestionably first. In two volumes of his previously collected essays and papers, one entitled _American Ideals_ and the other _The Strenuous Life_, both of which are included in the present edition of his works, Mr. Roosevelt has expressed with remarkable vigor,—as well as with an unwavering conviction and a wholesome philosophy of work and courage,—those views of politics, citizenship, and organized social and economic life to which the best conscience and intelligence of his fellow-countrymen have made sympathetic response. These essays, it is true, set forth no abstract scheme of political or social philosophy. Yet out of them there might be evolved a systematic body of doctrine relating to the duties of citizenship in a democracy, and to the ethics of administration and government. The explanation is that the doctrines and principles have come to be embodied in the character and convictions of the man himself; and thus the essays and addresses have not been the mere intellectual products of a man addicted to the use of the pen or to the phrasing of sentences, but rather the direct and wellnigh spontaneous expression of Mr. Roosevelt in relation to topics rendered timely by events and occasions.

In like manner and in an even higher sense, these later speeches, made under the sobering sense of responsibility that must come with the holding of so great an office as the Presidency, express Mr. Roosevelt’s convictions respecting our American life and citizenship in such manner as to form a sort of record for the study of the psychology of the nation at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Furthermore, these addresses and public papers, while to some extent homely, unstudied and unconventional in their phraseology, have the quality of permanent literature in a much higher measure than the utterances of almost any other American public man of our time. The traditional American political oratory is highly stilted and artificial—overloaded with rhetoric and figures of speech, lacking vernacular force and directness. While the orotund and rhetorical method of the past has largely disappeared, there has followed it another method almost equally artificial, in which the stately periods of the old-fashioned orator have been succeeded by the illustrative amusing anecdote, the highly burnished witticism, and the pointed phrase or apothegm.

Mr. Roosevelt’s method is wholly different from either of these. Except for being at times a trifle more earnest and hortatory, it is the method of some of the best contemporary English speakers. They do not posture, and do not attempt to be either orators or mere platform entertainers. Rather, they prefer to state in a direct, conversational manner certain things that they wish to say. Their language is that which naturally, and without conscious effort, clothes their thoughts as men of culture and mature intellectual life. Mr. Roosevelt being a man of trained mind, strong conviction, historical knowledge, and wide public experience, combined with great practical energy and executive force, and buoyant physical health, has both his own opinions and his own ready and forcible way of expressing them.

Thus many of the speeches contained in this collection are as nearly extemporaneous utterances as any which have ever been put into similarly permanent form. Here are addresses made in almost every State and Territory of the Union; and they were prepared and delivered within a very short range of time, during which a far greater number of briefer and more casual speeches have been made, thousands of letters written, and innumerable statements upon matters of a public character addressed to the Cabinet (collectively and individually), to Senators and members of Congress, to various executive officials, to public men and citizens from every part of every State of the Union, to committees and deputations representing all classes and interests, and to representatives and visitors from all countries—whether a royal prince from Germany or a defeated Boer general from South Africa. And when one considers all these demands upon a President’s time, and knows something of the prodigious industry with which the Chief Executive must devote himself to the almost innumerable duties that present themselves daily in connection with his executive work, it becomes plain that these speeches and addresses have been in the main the spontaneous utterances of a richly stored mind inspired by firm conviction and resolute will, and supported by extraordinary physical strength and vigor.

Yet Mr. Roosevelt’s speeches have not been carelessly prepared. Nor have they ever been left—as some speakers profess to leave theirs—to the “inspiration of the moment.” Mr. Roosevelt has unusual powers of concentration; and his achievement of so much work is due to his ability to turn promptly from one thing to another and to give each successive task his whole undivided attention. With an excellent memory and a disciplined mind, he is able to summon to his aid at a given moment all his past resources of reading, study, and thought upon a given topic. Thus, before going on several of the long trips in connection with which a great number of addresses in these volumes were made, the more important of the speeches for which dates had been fixed were dictated one after another to his stenographers late in the evening when the day’s work was cleared away, social or official guests had departed, and an hour or two of uninterrupted time was at his disposal.

This, indeed, is the same method by which a number of the essays and addresses which have become familiar in the collected volumes entitled _American Ideals_, and _The Strenuous Life_, had been prepared at former periods when Mr. Roosevelt was under stress of much occupation. There has been no attempt to polish sentences or to make fine phrases, yet there is the orderly and the deliberate expression that results from orderly processes of thinking. And there is the assured and confident tone that reveals a steadfast mind seldom tormented by doubts or misgivings.

Again, it is to be noted that these addresses are patriotic rather than partisan, and that where they deal with matters of controversy they show a spirit as little contentious or polemic as possible. While believing in the utility of the party system, Mr. Roosevelt spoke as President of the whole country and not merely as the chief of a party. His speeches, in short, are the utterances of a man who embodies the national spirit more broadly and fully than almost any other man of his day. He expresses himself upon a wide range of topics with a larger fund of experience and direct knowledge than is possessed by any other conspicuous public man of either party.

It is only through some understanding of the career that led up to his assumption of the Presidency that the richness, the fulness, and the authoritative quality of his observations on many varied themes can be appreciated. Mr. Roosevelt’s life has, amid much variety, possessed great unity. While still in college at Harvard, his mind became centered upon the study of American life, American history, and American government and policy. Whatever he undertook after leaving college added steadily to his understanding of the people of his own country and their institutions. Almost at once he threw himself into the politics of the great State of New York, served several terms in the Legislature, and made himself known throughout the country by the vigor and courage with which he applied himself to current problems of State and municipal reform. At a time when the so-called “spoils system” was powerfully rooted in the practical government of nation, State, and city, he became a civil service reformer.

Everything that was worth while was of interest to him and everything that he undertook to do was done whole-heartedly and thus made its contribution to his own development. He was an officer in the militia, and learned lessons which became, years afterward, valuable to him as a colonel in the Spanish-American war and later as commander-in-chief of the army by virtue of the Presidential office.

Meanwhile his first literary undertaking was the history of the naval war of 1812, which appeared in 1882, and which will always remain a vital and standard account of our last war with Great Britain, especially from the standpoint of naval strategy and actual operations. Whether taking part himself in the current life of his country and in the making of its history, or whether studying or writing about the part that others have taken in the development of the nation, there has been on Mr. Roosevelt’s part always a singleness of purpose and a harmony of effort. Thus, when he wrote about the War of 1812, as when in later years he wrote the graphic yet accurate and well-poised studies of those Western movements, military and civil, that created the Mississippi Valley (comprised in the series of volumes entitled _The Winning of the West_), there was on his part just as much a sense of dealing with realities as when in 1899 he wrote out the story of the part played by his regiment of Rough Riders in the Spanish-American war of the year before. This single work, on _The Winning of the West_, in the opinion of the authorities, justified the honorary degree conferred upon Colonel Roosevelt by the University of Norway on May 6, 1910.

The circumstances which took him to the West in 1884 to become for some years a cattle ranchman, a resident of the great plains, and an exponent of hunting and frontier life, involved in no manner an interruption of the career upon which he had made so propitious an entrance. On the contrary, this was the best possible step that could have been taken for the rounding out and development of the career of a man destined, either in letters or in action, to spend his life in dealing with American affairs from a broad standpoint.

Many of the most marked traits of the American people have been evolved through the process of pioneering. For three centuries our people have been engaged in subduing a continent that they had found a pathless wilderness. No man who has lacked contact with some concrete phases of our pioneering life can ever wholly enter into the spirit of the nation’s historical development, or perfectly understand the inherited qualities of our present day citizenship. Mr. Roosevelt’s Western life supplied that needful element of understanding, while it gave him physical hardihood and a continental breadth of view. It gave him, furthermore, that traditional American readiness with a horse and a gun, and that adaptability to the free life of field and of woods which is the heritage of the average young American, and which made the greater part of the Northern and Southern armies in the Civil War so unequaled, for effectiveness, in all military history.

Through these years of practical life in the West Mr. Roosevelt never lost the studious and literary habit, nor did he lose any of his zest for the public affairs of the country. In due time he returned to the East, took an active part in New York politics again, and was nominated for Mayor. Then he went to Washington, where for a number of years he served as Chairman of the Board of Civil Service Commissioners and became an expert in the field of national administration. After that came his two years as President of the Police Commissioners of New York City—a truly strenuous period that tested every quality of his mind and character. The navy had been at low ebb when Mr. Roosevelt in 1882 wrote his _Naval War of 1812_, and that book fairly contributed toward the revival of interest which soon set on foot the movement for the creation of our modern fleet. The author of that book had ever afterward been regarded both at home and abroad as an expert student of naval history and of sea power, and he had retained an enthusiastic interest in the whole subject. He was well fitted, therefore, for the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to which President McKinley appointed him at the very time when, more clearly than most others, he foresaw the probability of a war with Spain.

He threw his whole intense energy into the work of fitting our navy for such a test, devoting himself especially to the questions of readiness and efficiency in practical detail. And then came the outbreak of war. With the feeling that he was no longer needed in the naval department, and that it was his duty to respond to the call for volunteer soldiers, he entered the army. The history of that service he has himself told in a fascinating way in the volume entitled _The Rough Riders_, included in this edition of his works.

The war being ended, he returned to his own State of New York at a moment when his party was casting about for a candidate for Governor. The outlook was not propitious; but Mr. Roosevelt’s recent career had given him a great personal popularity, and he was accordingly nominated and elected. Great questions of administration are always pending in the State of New York, and there are few governmental offices in any country better adapted to train the incumbent for the tasks of practical statesmanship. Mr. Roosevelt took up the work of the Governorship with characteristic industry, and with results that were successful and valuable in many directions. So well had he satisfied the expectations of his party and of the State that his renomination as Governor was assured; and the whole country had its attention fixed upon him as the probable nominee of his party for the Presidency in the year 1904.

A variety of circumstances, however, most of them unexpected and some of them dramatic, led to an overwhelming demand by the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1900 that he forego his prospect of a second term as Governor of New York in order to take the nomination for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with Mr. McKinley. He was put forward by his party in that summer of 1900 as its most effective campaigner. But it has not been thought by him desirable that any of the speeches made in a hotly contested Presidential electoral campaign should be included in a collection of his public addresses. The tragic death of President McKinley, in September, 1901, occurred only six months after his entrance upon a second term, and thus it happened that Mr. Roosevelt had only a short time to serve in the office of Vice-President.

So remarkable and so rapid a succession of valuable public experiences, all of a kind to give training for the duties of the Presidency, is probably unparalleled in our history, unless in the case of his successor, President Taft. Mr. Roosevelt had been the chief Civil Service Commissioner of this great nation, the head of the police administration of our metropolis, the active official of the naval department, the most energetic volunteer officer in the Spanish-American war, the Governor of New York, and the Vice-President of the United States. The man who had succeeded brilliantly in all these positions, and who had treated every one of them in turn as if it furnished the one great opportunity for rendering public service, could but bring to the Presidency an accumulated knowledge and experience that must make itself felt in every part of the work of that supreme office.

It is this wide range of experience and knowledge that has given Mr. Roosevelt the easy mastery of many subjects exhibited in the addresses and public papers that make up these volumes. Further, it is these speeches and messages, far more than anything else contained in his writings, that show him in his capacity as a practical statesman. They afford the unconscious but inevitable expression of the man in his relation to public affairs.

To sum up and to conclude: These addresses reveal the unity and consistency of Mr. Roosevelt’s character and career. He is indeed a many-sided and versatile man, but there is nothing mutually contradictory about the different phases of his nature or of his past undertakings. His vital Americanism is shown equally in his historical studies of the pioneer movement that built up our great West and in his accounts of ranching life and his studies of the big game of America.

In his varied literary work, as in his other efforts and activities, there is little or nothing of an incidental or _dilettante_ nature; all of it is the frank expression of the man himself. The book on the War of 1812 was written when he was still very young. It might well have proved to be the merely boyish effort of a young man who had said to himself, “Lo, I will go to work and write a book!” But, on the contrary, it was in fact the outgrowth of vital interest and of strong conviction regarding his subject; and so the book lives and will continue to live. Thus all of his work, whether literary in its character or active and official, has been done in the same direct, straightforward way as simply pertaining to the task in hand; and the task, whether great or small, has always been deemed worthy of the whole vital energy of the man.

The great assemblage of public papers and addresses which we are presenting in the eight volumes that follow, herewith, belong for the most part to the period of Mr. Roosevelt’s Presidential service, which ended March 4, 1909. Upon his reelection to the Presidency in 1904, Mr. Roosevelt had declared that he would not be a candidate in 1908 for another term. Although great pressure was brought to bear upon him in 1907 and in the first half of 1908 to permit the party to place his name again at the head of the Presidential ticket, he remained firm in the view that no President should serve for more than two consecutive terms. One of the last, as it is also one of the best, addresses of his memorable Presidential period is the one delivered at the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, on February 12, 1909, and contained in the last of these volumes. For a period of more than a year there is no speech or paper of Mr. Roosevelt that finds record in this collection. Almost at once after retiring from the White House, Mr. Roosevelt, in pursuance of a long-cherished plan, accompanied by his son Kermit and several scientific experts, departed for Africa. He had been commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution to obtain a collection of African fauna, particularly the larger animals, for the Government’s museum at Washington. Mr. Roosevelt’s carrying out of this great project was with all his familiar vitality and enthusiasm, and with results as successful as could have been desired. His return by way of Egypt, and his experiences as traveler and lecturer in Europe, preliminary to his return to America in June, 1910, were matters of interest everywhere. Mr. Roosevelt, throughout Europe as well as in his own country, had been fully recognized for those qualities which these introductory pages have tried to set forth. His European travels, as originally planned, were to have been those of a private citizen seeking no honors or publicity. But wherever he went governments and rulers, as well as the masses of plain people, accorded him so great a welcome that it can fairly be said that few men have ever received such ovations at any time in history. The death of King Edward led to the appointment of Mr. Roosevelt as special ambassador to represent the American government in the formalities of the funeral. The diplomatic character thus given to his presence in England added a final touch to the varied experiences of this remarkable foreign journey. Our concluding volume contains the chief addresses delivered by him in Europe, notably those at the Sorbonne in Paris, the University of Berlin, and the University of Oxford.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

THE PRESIDENCY

EDITOR’S NOTE.—Although this volume is devoted almost entirely to
addresses made after Mr. Roosevelt became President, it is believed
that this essay on the office of the President, which has not
elsewhere appeared in book form, has a fitting place as introductory
to the materials which follow herewith. The article was written
by Mr. Roosevelt in 1900, while he was Governor of New York, and
previous to the Republican National Convention, which nominated
him for Vice-President. The views expressed in the article are,
therefore, those of an outside observer, and are not to be regarded
as those of an incumbent of the office. It will be clear to all
readers that the writer of the article could not at the time of its
publication have foreseen the place he was destined to occupy.

This article was written expressly for “The Youth’s Companion,” and
is reprinted by courtesy of that publication. Copyright, 1902, by
Perry Mason Company.

The President of the United States occupies a position of peculiar importance. In the whole world there is probably no other ruler, certainly no other ruler under free institutions, whose power compares with his. Of course a despotic king has even more, but no constitutional monarch has as much.

In the republics of France and Switzerland the President is not a very important officer, at least, compared with the President of the United States. In England the sovereign has much less control in shaping the policy of the nation, the Prime Minister occupying a position more nearly analogous to that of our President. The Prime Minister, however, can at any time be thrown out of office by an adverse vote, while the President can only be removed before his term is out for some extraordinary crime or misdemeanor against the nation.

Of course, in the case of each there is the enormous personal factor of the incumbent himself to be considered, entirely apart from the power of the office itself. The power wielded by Andrew Jackson was out of all proportion to that wielded by Buchanan, although in theory each was alike. So a strong President may exert infinitely more influence than a weak Prime Minister, or _vice versâ_. But this is merely another way of stating that in any office the personal equation is always of vital consequence.

It is customary to speak of the framers of our Constitution as having separated the judicial, the legislative and the executive functions of the government. The separation, however, is not in all respects sharply defined. The President has certainly most important legislative functions, and the upper branch of the national legislature shares with the President one of the most important of his executive functions; that is, the President can either sign or veto the bills passed by Congress, while, on the other hand, the Senate confirms or rejects his nominations. Of course the President can not initiate legislation, although he can recommend it. But unless two-thirds of Congress in both branches are hostile to him, he can stop any measure from becoming a law. This power is varyingly used by different Presidents, but it always exists, and must always be reckoned with by Congress.

While Congress is in session, if the President neither signs nor vetoes the bill which is passed, the bill becomes a law without his signature. The effect is precisely the same as if he had signed it. Presidents who disapproved of details in a bill, but felt that on the whole it was advisable it should become a law, have at times used this method to emphasize the fact that they were not satisfied with the measure which they were yet unwilling to veto. A notable instance was afforded in President Cleveland’s second term, when he thus treated the Wilson-Gorman tariff bill.

The immense federal service, including all the postal employees, all the customs employees, all the Indian agents, marshals, district attorneys, navy-yard employees, and so forth, is under the President. It would of course be a physical impossibility for him to appoint all the individuals in the service. His direct power lies over the heads of the departments, bureaus and more important offices. But he does not appoint these by himself. His is only the nominating power. It rests with the Senate to confirm or reject the nominations.

The Senators are the constitutional advisers of the President, for it must be remembered that his Cabinet is not in the least like the Cabinet of which the Prime Minister is head in the English Parliament. Under our government the Secretaries who form the Cabinet are in the strictest sense the President’s own ministerial appointees; the men, chosen out of all the nation, to whom he thinks he can best depute the most important and laborious of his executive duties. Of course they all advise him on matters of general policy when he so desires it, and in practice each Cabinet officer has a very free hand in managing his own department, and must have it if he is to do good work. But all this advice and consultation is at the will of the President. With the Senate, on the other hand, the advice and consultation are obligatory under the Constitution.

The President and Congress are mutually necessary to one another in matters of legislation, and the President and the Senate are mutually necessary in matters of appointment. Every now and then men who understand our Constitution but imperfectly raise an outcry against the President for consulting the Senators in matters of appointment, and even talk about the Senators “usurping” his functions. These men labor under a misapprehension. The Senate has no right to dictate to the President who shall be appointed, but they have an entire right to say who shall not be appointed, for under the Constitution this has been made their duty.

In practice, under our party system, it has come to be recognized that each Senator has a special right to be consulted about the appointments in his own State, if he is of the President’s political party. Often the opponents of the Senator in his State do not agree with him in the matter of appointments, and sometimes the President, in the exercise of his judgment, finds it right and desirable to disregard the Senator. But the President and the Senators must work together, if they desire to secure the best results.

But although many men must share with the President the responsibility for different individual actions, and although Congress must of course also very largely condition his usefulness, yet the fact remains that in his hands is infinitely more power than in the hands of any other man in our country during the time that he holds the office; that there is upon him always a heavy burden of responsibility; and that in certain crises this burden may become so great as to bear down any but the strongest and bravest man.

It is easy enough to give a bad administration; but to give a good administration demands the most anxious thought, the most wearing endeavor, no less than very unusual powers of mind. The chances for error are limitless, and in minor matters, where from the nature of the case it is absolutely inevitable that the President should rely upon the judgment of others, it is certain that under the best Presidents some errors will be committed. The severest critics of a President’s policy are apt to be, not those who know most about what is to be done and of the limitations under which it must be done, but those who know least.

In the aggregate, quite as much wrong is committed by improper denunciation of public servants who do well as by failure to attack those who do ill. There is every reason why the President, whoever he may be and to whatever party he may belong, should be held to a sharp accountability alike for what he does and for what he leaves undone. But we injure ourselves and the nation if we fail to treat with proper respect the man, whether he is politically opposed to us or not, who in the highest office in our land is striving to do his duty according to the strength that is in him.

We have had Presidents who have acted very weakly or unwisely in particular crises. We have had Presidents the sum of whose work has not been to the advantage of the Republic. But we have never had one concerning whose personal integrity there was so much as a shadow of a suspicion, or who has not been animated by an earnest desire to do the best possible work that he could for the people at large. Of course infirmity of purpose or wrong-headedness may mar this integrity and sincerity of intention; but the integrity and the good intentions have always existed. We have never had in the Presidential chair any man who did not sincerely desire to benefit the people and whose own personal ambitions were not entirely honorable, although as much can not be said for certain aspirants for the place, such as Aaron Burr.

Corruption, in the gross sense in which the word is used in ordinary conversation, has been absolutely unknown among our Presidents, and it has been exceedingly rare in our President’s Cabinets. Inefficiency, whether due to lack of will-power, sheer deficiency in wisdom, or improper yielding either to the pressure of politicians or to the other kinds of pressure which must often be found even in a free democracy, has been far less uncommon. Of deliberate moral obliquity there has been but very little indeed.

In the easiest, quietest, most peaceful times the President is sure to have great tasks before him. The simple question of revenue and expenditure is as important to the nation as it is to the average household, and the President is the man to whom the nation looks and whom it holds accountable in the matter both of expenditure and of revenue. It is an entirely mistaken belief that the expenditure of money is simply due to a taste for recklessness and extravagance on the part of the people’s representatives.

The representatives in the long run are sure to try to do what the people effectively want. The trouble is that although each group has, and all the groups taken together still more strongly have, an interest in keeping the expenditures down, each group has also a direct interest in keeping some particular expenditure up. This expenditure is usually entirely proper and desirable, save only that the aggregate of all such expenditures may be so great as to make it impossible for the nation to go into them.

It is a good deal the same thing in the nation as it is in a State. The demand may be for a consumptive hospital, or for pensions to veterans, or for a public building, or for an armory, or for cleaning out a harbor, or for starting irrigation. In each case the demand may be in itself entirely proper, and those interested in it, from whatever motives, may be both sincere and strenuous in their advocacy. But the President has to do on a large scale what every Governor of a State has to do on a small scale, that is, balance the demands on the Treasury with the capacities of the Treasury.

Whichever way he decides, some people are sure to think that he has tipped the scale the wrong way, and from their point of view they may conscientiously think it; whereas from his point of view he may know with equal conscientiousness that he has done his best to strike an average which would on the one hand not be niggardly toward worthy objects, and on the other would not lay too heavy a burden of taxation upon the people.

Inasmuch as these particular questions have to be met every year in connection with every session of Congress and with the work of every department, it may readily be seen that even the President’s every-day responsibilities are of no light order. So it is with his appointments. Entirely apart from the fact that there is a great pressure for place, it is also the fact that in all the higher and more important appointments there are usually conflicting interests which must somehow be reconciled to the best of the President’s capacity.

Here again it must be remembered that the matter is not always by any means one of merely what we call politics. Where there is a really serious conflict in reference to an appointment, while it may be merely a factional fight, it is more apt to be because two groups of the President’s supporters differ radically and honestly on some question of policy; so that whatever the President’s decision may be, he can not help arousing dissatisfaction.

One thing to be remembered is that appointments and policies which are normally routine and unimportant may suddenly become of absolutely vital consequence. For instance, the War Department was utterly neglected for over thirty years after the Civil War. This neglect was due less to the successive Presidents than to Congress, and in Congress it was due to the fact that the people themselves did not take an interest in the army. Neither the regular officer nor the regular soldier takes any part in politics as a rule, so that the demagogue and the bread-and-butter politician have no fear of his vote; and to both of them, and also to the cheap sensational newspaper, the army offers a favorite subject for attack. So it often happens that some amiable people really get a little afraid of the army, and have some idea that it may be used some time or other against our liberties.

The army never has been and, I am sure, it never will be or can be a menace to anybody save America’s foes, or aught but a source of pride to every good and far-sighted American. But it is only in time of actual danger that such facts are brought home vividly to the minds of our people, and so the army is apt to receive far less than its proper share of attention. But when an emergency like that caused by the Spanish War arises, then the Secretary of War becomes the most important officer in the Cabinet, and the army steps into the place of foremost interest in all the country.

It is only once in a generation that such a crisis as the Spanish War or the Mexican War or the War of 1812 has to be confronted, but in almost every administration lesser crises do arise. They may be in connection with foreign affairs, as was the case with the Chilean trouble under President Harrison’s administration, the Venezuelan matter in President Cleveland’s second term, or the Boxer uprising in China last year. Much more often they relate to domestic affairs, as in the case of a disastrous panic, which produces terrible social and industrial convulsions. Whatever the problem may be, the President has got to meet it and to work out some kind of a solution. In midwinter or midsummer, with Congress sitting or absent, the President has always to be ready to devote every waking hour to some anxious, worrying, harassing matter, most difficult to decide, and yet which it is imperative immediately to decide.

An immense addition to the President’s burden is caused by the entirely well-meaning people who ask him to do what he can not possibly do. For the first few weeks after the inauguration a new President may receive on an average fifteen hundred letters a day. His mail is so enormous that often he can not read one letter in a hundred, and rarely can he read one letter in ten. Even his private secretary can read only a small fraction of the mail. Often there are letters which the President would really be glad to see, but which are swamped in the great mass of demands for office, demands for pensions, notes of warning or advice, demands for charity, and requests of every conceivable character, not to speak of the letters from “cranks,” which are always numerous in the President’s mail.

One President, who was very anxious to help people whenever he could, made the statement that the requests for pecuniary aid received in a single fortnight would, if complied with, have eaten up considerably more than his entire year’s salary. The requests themselves are frequently such as the President would like to comply with if there was any way of making a discrimination; but there is none.

One rather sad feature of the life of a President is the difficulty of making friends, because almost inevitably after a while the friend thinks there is some office he would like, applies for it, and when the President is obliged to refuse, feels that he has been injured. Those who were closest to Abraham Lincoln have said that this was one of the things which concerned him most in connection with his administration. It is hardly necessary to allude to the well-known fact that no President can gratify a hundredth part of the requests and demands made upon him for office, often by men who have rendered him real services and who are fit to fill the position they seek, but not so fit as somebody else. Of course the man does not realize that his successful rival was appointed because he really was more fit, and he goes away sour and embittered because of what he feels to be the President’s ingratitude.

Perhaps the two most striking things in the Presidency are the immense power of the President, in the first place; and in the second place, the fact that as soon as he has ceased being President he goes right back into the body of the people and becomes just like any other American citizen. While he is in office he is one of the half-dozen persons throughout the whole world who have most power to affect the destinies of the world.

He can set fleets and armies in motion; he can do more than any save one or two absolute sovereigns to affect the domestic welfare and happiness of scores of millions of people. Then when he goes out of office he takes up his regular round of duties like any other citizen, or if he is of advanced age retires from active life to rest, like any other man who has worked hard to earn his rest.

One President, John Quincy Adams, after leaving the Presidency, again entered public life as a Congressman, and achieved conspicuous successes in the Lower House. This, however, is a unique case. Many Presidents have followed the examples of Jefferson and Jackson, and retired, as these two men retired to Monticello and The Hermitage. Others have gone into more or less active work, as practicing lawyers or as lecturers on law, or in business, or in some form of philanthropy.

During the President’s actual incumbency of his office the tendency is perhaps to exaggerate not only his virtues but his faults. When he goes out he is simply one of the ordinary citizens, and perhaps for a time the importance of the rôle he has played is not recognized. True perspective is rarely gained until years have gone by.

Altogether, there are few harder tasks than that of filling well and ably the office of President of the United States. The labor is immense, the ceaseless worry and harassing anxiety are beyond description. But if the man at the close of his term is able to feel that he has done his duty well; that he has solved after the best fashion of which they were capable the great problems with which he was confronted, and has kept clean and in good running order the governmental machinery of the mighty Republic, he has the satisfaction of feeling that he has performed one of the great world-tasks, and that the mere performance is in itself the greatest of all possible rewards.

ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

SPEECH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT THE REUNION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
THE POTOMAC, G. A. R., AT THE NEW WILLARD HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
FEB. 19, 1902

_Mr. Chairman, Commander-in-Chief, and you, my Comrades_:

I can say that there is nothing else of which I am quite so proud as having won, in a sense, the right to claim comradeship with you. And, gentlemen, I recollect speaking with a friend at the time of the Spanish War as to why we went, and it was agreed that it was simply because we could not stay away. We had taken to heart the great object-lesson that you gave. I am very glad to have the chance of seeing you this evening and of being with you. I would be but a poor American if I did not appreciate to the full the debt under which America rests to you, not alone for the lesson in war that you have given, but for what that lesson teaches as to peace. I meet you here and I see the general and the man from the ranks honor one another by the highest title either knows—comrade. I see you applying the great lesson of brotherhood—the lesson that must be applied in civil life no less than in military life if we are to work out, as we shall work out, aright the problems that face the Republic. The war in which I was engaged was a small affair; but it gave us an understanding of what you had done and of what you had been through. I know pretty well what kind of memories you have. I know what you did, what you risked, what you sacrificed. I know what it meant to you, and I know why you did it. There are two or three lessons that you taught that I hope this country will not only never forget, but will never cease applying. In the first place the motive—the tissue of motives that spurred you on—the love for liberty, love for union, and the love for the stable and ordered freedom of a great people. You braved nights in the freezing mud of the trenches in winter, and the marches under scorching midsummer suns; fever cots, wounds, insufficient food, exhausting fatigue of a type that those that have not tried it can not even understand. You did it without one thought of the trivial monetary reward at the moment; you did it because your souls spurred you on. And that is the reason why to this day, when any man speaks to a body of veterans he speaks to a body of men who are instant to respond to any call for adherence to a lofty ideal. In other words, you practiced, and by practicing preached, in the strongest manner, the ideal of doing your duty, of doing duty when duty calls, without thought of what the reward might be. In the days when the sad, kindly, patient Lincoln—mighty Lincoln—stood in the White House like a high priest of the people, between the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood of the bravest and best, it was because only by that sacrifice could the flag that had been rent in sunder once again be made without a seam. You taught the ideal of duty—duty, a word that stands above glory, or any other word. Glory is a good word, too, but duty is a better one.