Arizona republican., 1904-04-10
PHoENIX, ARIZONA, APRIL 10, 1aOi
Mir. Roosevelt. Dictator and Usurper.

Not only amusing, but rather path etic. also, are the democratic efforts to make Mir. Theodore Roosevelt their chief issue in the coming campaign Only last week they were congratulat- ed upon finding in the service pension order an issue to their liking, but the congratulaticns were premature. There was something uncomfortably not about the pension question, and it was dropped as suddenly as it was picked up-ouite as suddenly. in fact, as the earlier campaign against the Panama treaty. It seems to be settled now ever. that Mir. Roosevelt is the real sure-enough issue; all others lack genuineness.
 Within fortnight the concentration of democratic thought upon MT. Roose- welt as the happy solution of the issue puzzle has been marked and rapid. The rapidity with which everybody has been climbing into the Parker band wagon during the past week practical lv assures the nomination of the New York judge; ten days from now the rush to his banner will probably amount to a stampede, and with equal swiftness are the democrats conclud- ing that the principal plank of their platform must be a declaration against MT. Roosevelt From every stand point he will be viewed with alarm. He will be denounced as a tyrant and dictator. as an oppressor and rough rider over congress, and as a truly bad man from whom the country must be delivered. "Usurper" will be one of the mildest terms applied to him. So much is settled, and gentlemen who hope to have a place on the platform committee might as well begin to brush up on abusive adjectives.
 And if our democratic friends are not mistaken in their discovery, they have revealed a terrible situation. Several millions of us have been stup- idly supposing that Mir. Roosevelt is about the most democratic president that has been seen at the White House since General Jackson abided therein. If he is, or has been, tyrant,' usurper or dictator, his villainy has escaped the attention of all ordinary observers. Nor have his utterances disclosed the mind of a dictator and usurper. Only the other day he at tended dinner given by the Periodi- cal Publishers association, and he dis coursed in this fashion of some of his favorite themes:
 Ut is always a pleasure to a man in public lie to meet the real govern ing classes. l wish to bid you wei come to Washington and to say but a word of greeting, and that word shall take the form Of a warning, and a hope. I did not speak in jest when I alluded to you as representatives of the governing classes. I think that we of the United States connot keep too fresh in our minds the fact that the men responsible for the government are not the representatives of the peo- pie, but the people themselves, and therefore heavy is the responsibility that lies upon the people and upon all those who do most toward shaping the thought of the people.
 'In the days of my youth I was a literary man. l have recently, in reading a book, been immensely struck by the thought developed in it by one of our greatest scholars, who was speaking of freedom and of the fact that freedom could not exist unless there went with it a sense of responsi- bility, and he used a phrase somewhat like this: That among all people there must be a restraint; if there is TO restraint there is an inevitable result-anarchy, which is the negation of all government"
 There must be more than good laws to make a good people. A man whose morality is expressed merely in the non-infringement of the law Is a pretty poor creature. Unless our average citizenship is based on a good deal more than mere observance of the laws on the statute books, then cur average citizenship can never produce the kind of government which it must and will produce. So far from liberty and the responsibilities of self-govern- ment being things which come easily and to any people, they are Iaculiarly things that can come only to the most highly-developed people, capable net only of mastering others, but of mas tering themselves, and who can achieve real government, real liberty.
 For that cultivation of the spirit of self-restraint which is the spirit of self-reliance, we must rely in no small degree upon those who furnish so much of the thought of the great bulk of our people who think most. and therefore. gentlemen, in greeting you here tonight I wish not merely to welcome you. but tO say that I trust every man of you feels the weight Of the responsibility that rests upon him.
 "The man who writes, the writer who, month in and month out, week in and week out, day in and day out, fur nishes the. material which is to shape the thoughts ot our people, is essen- tially the man who. more than any other, demonstrates the character of |