The times., 1898-09-30
The onrressive ROOSEVELT.


enough before he became a war hero
and acquired sort of right to over
whelm, dominate, hector, and patroniZe
the rest of mankind, and before po-
litical exigency allowed him to aspire to
an office for which he is disqualified by
the very pugnacity that made war
hero of him. He is representative of
robust, virile Amercanism, which is
about the best thing in the world; but
even this can be made a little weari-
some when it is claimed as the almost
exclusive possession of a single person
in aggressive good health and of great
physical and vocal powers of endur-
ance. Other intense Americans
are apt to resent the impu-
is not abominably vile or superlatively
good they are disloyal and guilty of a
compromise with the placid spirit of
cosmopolitanism.
That life is a battle we all know only
too well, and that it is every mans
duty to be soldier for the right But
even soldiers are not required to be al
quiet pipe and song between fights
and sometimes furlough. Because all
of us are not always talking about our
conflicts with the Wicked, Colonel Roose-
welt, in books and speeches, and news
paper communications. complains of
the trouble he has to drag us into the
fray. This has been his pose and it has
he 70 ylp II,-
not less virile in their Americanism.
That he is a very real war hero we are
not disposed to deny. On the contrary,
we are all proud of it and are jubilant
that such picturesque figure is seen
through the smoke of the battlefield.
But 1t is taking an unfair advantage of
the situation to attempt to carry him
into a political office for which the in
herent pugnacity that is the basis of
his heroism makes him unfit
The friends and acquaintances Of Col
onel Roosevelt have been forced to listen
many times to his accounts of his bat
ties as a member of three legislatures
in New York, and his fights as TIE
president of the New York police board
The most intelligent people OF that COM
munity will say that in the latter case
he was constantly engaged in unseernly,
unnecessary, and injurious rows and
petty squabbles; that he Inundated his
friends and tickled his enemies by his
lack of dignity, by his braggadocio
and by his delight in a notor.ety that
finally wearied even the newspaper car
icaturists. In spite of kind of scholars
ship his intelligence is narrow and he is
self-centered to a degree that spoils
him for any administrative office out
side the army. He is a soldier in every
fiber. If he knows personal fear, the
sense that he is on exhibition and his
inherent love of fighting enable him to
Danish it. In war modesty is not an es-
sential. Colonel Roosevelt, by his con-
tempt for Spanish bullets, has earned
the military prominence and the pro-
motion he has received. But no heroic
dash at the enemy confers executive
qualities that We're previously lacking
That they were lacking in the case of
Colonel Roosevelt the persons best
qualified to say will not deny.
1t is wrong TO the people and no less
wrong to Colonel Roosevelt-who has
not the faintest idea of his own limita-
tions and would assume the rule of the
universe with strutful confdence-to
take advantage of the fame he has won
as a soldier TO place him in an office for
which he is conspicuously disqualified.
An unfit man with less positive traits
of character would be less mischievous.