• On Friday week Mr. Roosevelt opened the Jamestown Exhibition
in honour of the tercentenary of the landing of the first English settlers. " We celebrate," said Mr, Roosevelt, " the birthday of this nation." In an eloquent speech he then traced the development of the United States, showing how the character of Americans to-day arose out of its various constituents. "The fact," he said, "that so many of our people, of whom as it happens I myself am one, have but a very small portion of English blood in our veins in no way alters the other fact that this nation was founded by English- men—by the Cavalier and the Puritan." Mr. Roosevelt, it seems, used the word " English " here in its restricted sense. His mother was Scotch. Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and Swedes, and, later, Germans, Irishmen, and Scotchmen, in an unceasing tide of immigration, superimposed themselves on the original English stock. Nevertheless, the mark of the Cavalier and the Puritan, according to Mr. Roosevelt, has remained deeper than that of any other element in the nation. " The newcomers are soon absorbed into our eager national life, and are radically and profoundly changed thereby, the rapidity of their assimilation being marvellous." Speaking of present problems, the President said that the greatest of all was how to control the business use of vast wealth without discouraging initiative. American government must be neither a plutocracy nor a government by mob. " What we care for most is the character of the average man."
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