THEODORE ROOSEVELT GREAT AMERICAN QUALITIES BY HERMANN HAGEDORN HE story of Theodore Roosevelt is the story of Testul boy who read about great men and de eided that he wanted to be like them. He had vision, he had will, he had persistence, and he succeeded. What the final historical estimate of Theodore Roosevelt will be we do not know. We only know that when he died he was known not only to Americans, but to the people of the four corners of the earth, as one of the world's greatest men. He was not a second Washington. He was not a second Lincoln. He was not a second Andrew Jackson. He was not a second anybody. He was Theodore Roosevelt, himself, unique. There has never been anybody like him in the past, and, though the world wait a long while, there will never be any one like him in the future. For he had something of the Prophet Ezekiel in him and something of Natty Bumppo, something of Hildebrand the valiant warrior, something of Olaf the sea-king, something of Cromwell, something of He belongs to the Heroic Line, and Charlemagne. we need not ask what those grand fellows would have thought of him. For eight years before he died Theodore Roosevelt was beaten in every political campaign he entered. During those years he made "mistakes" that would have killed and buried twelve ordinary public men. He was placed on the shelf as a mummy a half-dozen times, yet, to the end, every word he spoke was "news"; and when he went to a health farm and lost fourteen pounds, the newspapers carried the tidings, column-long, on the front page, because they knew that the least thing that happened to "T. R." was more interesting to the average American citizen than a diplomatic secret or a battle. He was more conspicuous in retirement than most of our Presidents have been under the lime-light of office. For Theodore Roosevelt was the epitome of the Great Hundred Million; the visible, individual expression of the American people in this first quarter of the twentieth century. He was the typical AmeriHe had the virtues we like to call American, and he had the faults. He had energy, enterprise, chivalry, insatiable eagerness to know things, trust in men, idealism, optimism, fervor; some intolerance; vast common sense; deep tenderness with children; can. |