-looking into the very soul of me. For the first startled moment. I did not know what they said to me. Then it came upon me, with a dumb, paralyzed, ineffectual horror. 'You know me,' they said; and I - and I

closed upon his throat in a gesture that mine obeyed with an actual grip that sent the blood to my face, and stopped my breath. The eyes still glared at me, with 5 a pitiless determination. I fought, within myself, with all the strength that there was in me and all the time my fingers tightened on my throat. My breath was gone my heart beat like a trip-hammer 10 and then suddenly like a flash of lightning, there came a quick, realizing sense of the death that was so near; and with one frightful struggle, I freed myself, and sprang to my feet.

The unspoken threat grew to be a reality. As those eyes glared into mine I felt the power of a stronger will that held mine captive. My dull, captured, observant gaze noted a slow movement of the thin, muscular hand that lay on the coverlid that right hand that still could move. Slowly slowly slowly I saw it rise, trembling and uncertain, but in- 15 stinct with nervous strength. I saw it rise till it neared his throat — and then I saw my own hand raised, as his was raised, and knew that it was moving closer and closer to my own throat, and that no 20 power of mine could stay it. That iron will had closed upon mine in a mighty grasp. His fingers, long, lean and strong,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919)

To none of the Presidents of the United States can the title man of letters' be so properly applied as to Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth occupant of the presidential chair. The list of his books includes upward of thirty titles not counting the various volumes of his official correspondence and state papers. Nor were his literary efforts all in a single field. He wrote history,- The Naval War of 1812. 1822, The Winning of the West, 1889-96. A History of New York, 1890; he wrote biography, lives of Thomas Hart Benton, Gouverneur Morris, and Oliver Cromwell; he published an interesting set of books of travel and adventure, records of his own hunting and exploring trips in the Rocky Mountains, in Africa, and South America; he produced many essays which he collected in volumes like American Ideals. 1907, and History as Literature, 1913; he wrote much on natural history, producing books like The Deer Family, and Life History of African Game Animals; and in addition to all this were his autobiographical writings, his various lectures, and his orations.

Like the man himself, all his work is characterized by earnestness, by emphatic power, and by insistence upon truth and the moral fundamentals. He was clear rather than elegant; forceful rather than polished. His Winning of the West, is a valuable historical study and it is to be regretted that the manifold duties of his later public life did not permit him to finish it. In all that he wrote there was a sturdy Americanism. His vigorous addresses like "The Strenuous Life' should be read by all young Americans.

THE STRENUOUS LIFE1

5

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil 10 and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bit- 15 ter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practise such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research - work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In 30 this life we get nothing save by effort.

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after 20 great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation 25 as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes - to 1 From the Strenuous Life; Essays and Addresses, copyright by the Century Co.

pensable element, it is, after all, but one of the many elements that go to make up true national greatness. No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid 5 deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great

All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our debt is still greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier duties duties to the nation and duties to the race.

and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill. In 1898 we could not help being brought face to face 10 if it relied upon material prosperity alone. with the problem of war with Spain. All we could decide was whether we should shrink like cowards from the contest, or enter into it as beseemed a brave and high-spirited people; and, once in, whether 15 failure or success should crown our banners. So it is now. We cannot avoid the responsibilities that confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. All we can decide is whether we 20 shall meet them in a way that shall redound to the national credit, or whether we shall make of our dealings with these new problems a dark and shameful page in our history. To refuse to deal with 25 them at all merely amounts to dealing with them badly. We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to re- 30 fuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright. The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the 35 great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills 'stern men with empires in their brains all these, of 40 course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a navy and an army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work, by bringing 45 order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are the men who fear the strenuous life, who fear the only national 50 life which is really worth leading. They believe in that cloistered life which saps the hardy virtues in a nation, as it saps them in the individual; or else they are wedded to that base spirit of gain and 55 greed which recognizes in commercialism the be-all and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though an indis

We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West.

So much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not have begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform, and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be the course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some

stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work, and we would have shown ourselves weaklings, unable to carry to successful completion the labors that great and high-spirited nations are eager to undertake.

The work must be done; we cannot escape our responsibility; and if we are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the work-glad of the 10 chance to show ourselves equal to one of the great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled by vainglory into underestimating 15 the strain it will put on our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own selfrespect, face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage, and high resolve. We must demand the highest or- 20 der of integrity and ability in our public men who are to grapple with these new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the 25 nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and

our resources.

Of course we must remember not to judge any public servant by any one 30 act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster. Let me illustrate what I mean by the army and the navy. If twenty 35 years ago we had gone to war, we should have found the navy as absolutely unprepared as the army. At that time our ships could not have encountered with success the fleets of Spain any more than nowa- 40 days we can put untrained soldiers, no matter how brave, who are armed with archaic black-powder weapons, against well-drilled regulars armed with the highest type of modern repeating rifle. But in 45 the early eighties the attention of the nation became directed to our naval needs. Congress most wisely made a series of appropriations to build up a new navy, and under a succession of able and patri- 50 otic secretaries, of both pitical parties, the navy was gradually built up, until its material became equal to its splendid personnel, with the result that in the summer of 1898 it leaped to its proper place as one 55 of the most brilliant and formidable fighting navies in the entire world. We rightly pay all honor to the men controlling the

navy at the time it won these great deeds. honor to Secretary Long and Admiral Dewey, to the captains who handled the ships in action, to the daring lieutenants 5 who braved death in the smaller craft, and to the heads of bureaus at Washington who saw that the ships were so commanded, so armed, so equipped, so well engined, as to insure the best results. But let us also keep ever in mind that all this would not have availed if it had not been for the wisdom of the men who during the preceding fifteen years had built up the navy. Keep in mind the secretaries of the navy during those years; keep in mind the senators and congressmen who by their votes gave the money necessary to build and to armor the ships, to construct the great guns, and to train the crews; remember also those who actually did build the ships, the armor, and the guns; and remember the admirals and captains who handled battle-ship, cruiser, and torpedoboat on the high seas, alone and in squadrons, developing the seamanship, the gunnery, the power of acting together, which their successors utilized so gloriously at Manila and off Santiago. And, gentlemen, remember the converse, too. Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the navy, and, for the sake of the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the Congressional Record. Find out the senators and congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships; who opposed the purchase of armor, without which the ships were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance for the Navy Department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did all these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea-captains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor, and we won in spite of their sinister opposition.

Now, apply all this to our public men of to-day. Our army has never been built up as it should be built up. I shall not discuss with an audience like this the puerile suggestion that a nation of seventy millions of freemen is in danger of losing