BOOKS.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIME.*

THE biography before us does not profess to be a final Life or appreciation of Theodore Roosevelt. It is simply, as the title- page tells us, Theodore Roosevelt and his Tim?, shown in his own Letters. The book is exactly what it sets .out to be. The biographer is really, and not merely nominally, content to let Roosevelt speak for himself. He gives us of his own whatever is necessary to make the story intelligible, and no more. At the same time, he eliminates from the letters, besides things of too private a character to be published just now, a certain amount of perishable matter such as is to be found in all corre- spondence.

As Roosevelt was a man universally trusted, not only by his fellow-countrymen but by his English friends and by a very great number of crowned heads and foreign statesmen, Mr. Bishop is to be heartily congratulated on his discretion. He might very easily and with the best intentions have published things which would have done great harm, or at any rate have given great pain to Mr. Roosevelt had he thought it possible that the confidence shown him might be betrayed. As far as we can see, there is nothing in the book which could cause legitimate complaint. Even the German Emperor is spared. Mr. Roosevelt was probably one of the greatest letter-writers in the matter of quantity who ever lived. He was also high up in quality. He probably liked letter-writing, and he certainly expressed himself not only with vigour but with ease and distinction. If not a faultless writer, he wrote well enough 'for his purpose, and showed his largeness and fineness of character. Though a well-educated man, with a strong tradition of culture behind him, and, further, with a very marked love of good literature, he was too busy and too practical to find time to turn or tune his phrases. His letters are very readable and from many points of view very attractive, but they do not possess the kind of fascination which belongs to the corre- spondence of some of the elder statesmen of England or America —the kind of fascination which we may feel sure will be exercised when (we hope we need not say " if ") Lord Rosebery's letters are given to the world. Finally, they have not that inspiration in word and thought of which the history of personal and political correspondence affords us an example in the letters of Lincoln.

One of the delightful things about Roosevelt's correspondence is, as his biographer notes, that he touched life at so many sides. He struck the hand of a great gentleman and great statesman, and of a man of the world, into the hands not only of kings and emperors, statesmen and soldiers, but of authors, poets, artists, men of science, explorers, naturalists, and last, but not least, men of action in all ranks. And he attained to this freedom of the Great World early in life. He had in effect that great advantage which belongs to Kings. For twenty years of his life at least he had always at his command the best brains in the world. He had only to make a sign to get en rapport with the man who knew most on the subject of the hour. Besides this, as again his biographer reminds us, Roosevelt had the essential mark of a great man. As Emerson truly said, " He is great who never reminds us of others." Certainly Roosevelt stood alone. Though he touched many men of the Old World and the New, and the old age and the new, he was intensely individual.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about Roosevelt is that, in spite of the fierce conflicts of his political life, no one ever seriously accused him of a mean or ignoble act. Though with no professions to be a political saint, he ran as straight as any statesman of whom we have record. Not Pitt or Lord Grey here, or Washington or Lincoln in America, had a finer sense of honour and political rectitude. He not only preached the square deal, he practised it. To do that in party politics and with a democracy so vast and so full of cross-currents and stormy elements as that of America is not nearly as easy as it sounds. Roosevelt was of course no plaster saint. He dared to look at life as a whole, and without its trappings and disguises, and yet all the time he made men feel that it was not only right but quite possible, in Burke's great phrase, " to remember so to be a patriot as not to forget that you are a gentleman."

One of the most interesting chapters of Mr. Bishop's book is

• Theodore Roosevelt and his Time. By .Theeph Bucklin Bishop. London : Hodder and Stoughton. 2 vols. LS2 2s. net.l

that entitled " Rebukes to Riotous Strikers and Lynchers.* Here is the letter in which he gave Senator Lodge an account of a visit which he paid to Chicago during the time of a riotous strike and disorder

" When I came to Chicago I found a very ugly strike, on account of which some of my nervous friends wished mo to try to avoid the city. Of course I hadn't the slightest intention of doing so. I get very much puzzled at times on questions of finance and the tariff, but when it comes to such a perfectly simple matter as keeping order, then you strike my long suit. The strikers were foolish enough to come to me on their own initiative and make me an address in which they quoted that fine flower of Massachusetts statesmanship, the lamented Benjamin F. Butler, who had told rioters at one time, as it appeared, that they need have no fear of the United States army, as they had torches and arms. This gave me a good opening, and while perfectly polite, I used language so simple that they could not misunderstand it ; and repeated the same with amplifications at the dinner that night. So if the rioting in Chicago gets beyond the control of the State and the City, they now know well that the Regulars will come."

Commenting on the President's visit to Chicago, Mr. Secretary Hay said : " It requires no courage to attack wealth and power, but to remind the masses that they, too, are subject to the law, is something few public men dare to do." That of course is perfectly true. But it is equally true that when a public man does dare speak the truth it always turns out to be the best and most paying policy that he could have adopted. Roosevelt did not lose popularity with the mass of his countrymen but gained it by his honesty.

Another example of Roosevelt's political honesty was the way in which he treated the question of negro-lynching in the South. As this is delicate ground, and as we have been accused by a Southern newspaper most absurdly, as we are certain all reason- able Americans will agree, of attacking America and the American people because we have spoken out in regard to lynching, we will quote without comment. Here is Mr. Bishop's account of Roosevelt's plain speaking

" The President gave another illustration of his courage in October, 1905, when he made a tour of the South, speaking at various points in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, including a visit to the home of his mother at Roswell, Georgia. At Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 25th, he was introduced by the Governor of the State to a large concourse of citizens in the City Park. In his intro- ductory remarks the Governor made a quasi defence of the lynching of coloured men for supposed outrages upon white women. In opening his speech, the President declared that he had been fortunate enough to have spoken all over the Union and had never said in any State or any section what he would not have said in any other State or in any other section. Turning a few minutes later directly to the Governor, he said : ' Governor, you spoke of a hideous crime that is often hideously avenged. The worst enemy of the negro race is the negro criminal, and,

above all, the negro criminal of that type; he has committed not only an unspeakably dreadful and ifamous crime against the victim, but he has committed a hideous crime against the people of his own colour ; and every reputable coloured man, every coloured man who wishes to see the uplifting of his race, owes it as his first duty to himself and to that race to hunt down that criminal with all his soul and strength. Now for the side of the white man. To avenge one hideous crime by another hideous crime is to reduce the man doing it to the bestial level of the wretch who committed the bestial crime. The horrible effects of the lynchings are not for that crime at all, but for other crimes. And above all other men, Governor, you and I and all who are exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law.' "

We have never gone, and do not want to go, one hair's-breadth beyond what Mr. Roosevelt said in condemnation of the lynchers.

Further, we fully realize that the best men in the South detest lynching and are as anxious to put down lynching as indeed were the best men in the South to get rid of slavery. Whatever else is right, and whatever ought to be the relations between white men and black, lynching must be wrong, and must tend to make the difficulties of a mixed population even greater than they are already. The question of Mr. Roosevelt's final candidature for tho Presidency and his breaking-away from his old ties is too com- plicated to deal with in a review. Again, the attitude assumed

by Mr. Roosevelt towards Germany, the Allies, and to President Wilson during the war involves too much controversy to: be

treated by those who, like ourselves, do not want to take any part in the disputes which revolve round the action of President Wilson. We prefer to choose for comment the extremely interesting autobiographical study which took the form of a letter from President Roosevelt to his English friend1 Sir George Trevelyan. This curious piece of self-portraiture was written sixteen months after the or-President's tour in the British parts of our African Empire. To put it in the President's own language, he wrote " an account of the intimate side of my trip from Khartum to London "—an account only intended at the time of writing for the eyes of Sir George and his family. Characteristically, the President added :- "I-am not quite sure I ought to write it even to you ! How- ever, I shall, just for the satisfaction of telling you things most of which it would be obviously entirely out of the question to make public, at any rate until long after all of us who are now alive, are dead. By that time in all probability this letter will have been destroyed ; and in any event interest in what it relates will have ceased. Meanwhile, if you enjoy reading what I have set down, I shall be repaid ; and moreover, I am really glad for my own sake to jot down some of the things that occurred, before they grow so dim in my mind that I can no longer enjoy the memories, and look back at some with laughter and at others with sober interest."

Perhaps the most interesting part of the letter in which every sentence is interesting is the account of the visit to Berlin. Very curious, too, is the study of the Kings, and especially the minor Kings, encountered by the President. For example, take the following.:— " It would be very attractive to be a king with the power of a dictator, and the ability to wield that power, to be a Frederick the Great, for instance, or even a man like the old Kaiser William, who if not exactly a great man yet had the qualities which enabled him to use and be used by Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon. But the ordinary king—and I speak with cordial liking g of all the kings I met—has to play a part in which the dress parade is ludicrously out of proportion to the serious effort ; there is a quite intolerable quantity of sack to the amount of bread. If he is a decent, straight, honourable fellow, he can set a good example—and yet if he is not., most of his subjects, including almost all the clergymen, feel obliged to be blind and to say that he is ; and he can exercise a certain small influence for good on public affairs in an indirect fashion. But he can play no part such I I 9 is played by the real leaders in the public life of to-day, if he is a constitutional monarch. Understand me. I do not mean that he fails to serve a useful purpose, just. as the flag serves a useful purpose. Only a very foolish creature will talk of the flag as nothing but a bid of dyed or painted bunting, because it is a symbol of enormous consequence in the life and thought of the people. Similarly, the king may serve a purpose of enormous usefulness as a symbol, and I have no question that for many peoples it would be a misfortune not to have such a symbol, such a figurehead. I am not speaking of the king from the standpoint of his usefulness to the community, which I fully admit ; I am merely saying that from his own standpoint, if he is a man of great energy, force and power, it must be well-nigh intolerable to have to content hung& with being simply king in the figurehead or symbol fashion."

Apropos of his German visit are some very curious statements as to the attitude assumed by the German public towards him when compared with that of the people of every other country. In addition to Mr. Roosevelt's account of the Kings are some very interesting letters from King Edward to the President, and also from the Kaiser. Both seta of letters are characteristic. King Edward writes with admirable taste, temper, and good sense. Nothing could be less provocative of ill-feeling or of any attempt to " use " the American statesman. Of the Kaiser's letters we can only say that they are exactly the opposite.

With so much of comment we must take our leave of a very interesting book on a really great man. Unless we are much mistaken, Mr. Roosevelt's fame will grow with the years. He will be regarded as the beau-ideal of the young and adventurous American who loves his country, and therefore is never foolish enough or base enough to take the line that politics are too dirty a job with which to soil white and languid hands.

Our readers may be interested to find in the book one or two memorable passages quoted from the many letters addressed by the President to the Editor of the Spectator. He was always a sympathetic as well as a diligent reader of the Spectator.