[TO THE EDITOR or MO "SPEOTATOR;') SIR,—The following passage appeared
in your issue of February 20th :— "But we must quote one passage in which Mr. Roosevelt estimated the characters of Washington and Lincoln : "There have been other men as great and other men as good ; but in all the history of mankind there are no other two great men as good as these, no other two good men as great.' Surely that is an extremely good epigram which has the advantage of being true.'
It is quite conceivable, even pardonable, that Mr. Roosevelt,
with his fervid temperament and intense patriotism, should, carried away by the flood of his own eloquence, have been
betrayed into uttering the sentence you quote. But I confess I am surprised that the highly cultivated, fully informed, and patriotic editor of the Spectator should have endorsed Mr. Roosevelt's rash and inaccurate statement. Surely, Sir, our own King Alfred the Great was a still more conspicuous example of the combination of goodness and greatness than either of the illustrious Presidents eulogised by the speaker. Alfred delivered England from the Dames, himself com- /minding the British Army in the field, he made law and order prevail through the length and breadth of the hied, he founded the English Navy. He was warrior, statesman, saint, and philosopher. He was endowed with genius, to which neither Washington nor Lincoln could lay claim. But Mr. Roosevelt's challenge is to produce from "all the history of mankind" two who should be equal to his selected pair. I venture to name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus as a second who is quite their equal in conduct and wisdom, and immeasurably their superior as a thinker. So my answer to Mr. Roosevelt's challenge would be that Alfred the Great and Marcus Aurelius were at least the equals of Washington and Lincoln in goodness and greatness, and I am givinghim the benefit of the assumption that although
he challenges " ruankind," he intends to limit his reference to Sovereign rulers. I have little doubt that on reflection other worthy names will occur to you, although, owing to the narrow range of my knowledge and the treacherousness of my memory, none others suggest themselves to me,—I am, Sir,
[Or course we should only have endorsed the President's remarks in so far as they referred to modern rulers. Alfred
,unquestionably deserves a place higher than Washington, but we cannot admit that Lincoln was without genius. It vibrates in every line of his writings and speeches. Marcus Aurelius's
claim must be denied because of his persecution of the Christians.—En. /apectator.]
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