The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-04-20
WHO is ALEXANDER, PA?

said:
"EIihu Root is the ablest man I have
known in our government service. l will
go further. He is the greatest man that
has appeared in the public life OF any
country In any position, on either side
of the ocean, in my time.
Later we printed the stopping over in
praise of the President by Mr.. Riis,
whose indiscriminate and sycopnantic adj
ulation is too nauseating to reprint. We
thought both times the limit in over
putting had been reached, but a man in
Tennessee named Foster V. Brown who
spoke at the recent Republican Conven-
tion went them one better" when
he declared that Roosevelt was ''as good
as Washington and as great as Lincoln"
BY the way, when did Lincoln get to be
greater than Washington?
But the fulsome and over-praise has not
stopped with the administration folks, the
biographers and the politicians. The
disease has spread to the colleges, and
now we have Prof. Hart, of Harvard,
forgetting Jefferson and Madison who fill
ed the office of Secretary of State, say
ing:
In the annals of American diplomacy
there has been but one Secretary OF
State who can be compared with Mr..
Hay for judgment, sagacity, foresight
and public service, and posterity must
decide whether john Quincy Adams or
John Hay has been --.e greater"
But, the virulent contagion has not
stopped in the colleges, it has entered
the pulpit, and lowered there in the
rankest growth of groveling and toady-
ism, for few Sundays ago New York
city preacher, Rev. Cortland Myers, APP
propriately called "a clerical ass by the
Nashville American, disguised all the
thoughtful members of his congregation
by the following declaration
last week I was in the Presidents
private Office with him and l had the
honor-~the supreme honor-of shaking
his hand. l do not think l have washed
that hand with soap since. l do not
think / will ever wash the memory off
that hand / would like to take that
splendid grip with me out OF this world
into the next and have it as part OF my
resurrection life; for the man who has
shaken hands with Theodore Roosevelt
has shaken hands with a man.
This sort of stuff may be swallowed
by the monocrats and toadies and syco-
plants, but the sober, sensible people OF
America feel a supreme sense of disgust
when they read such slop. 1t is all right
to give high praise to men of ability
while they live. Elihu Root is a lawyer
of ability and man of large brain, but
ten years after he is lin his narrow cell
forever laid" nobody will recall him as
shining light, or as a very great states
man. If they remember him at all, it will
be to laugh at Roosevelt's extravagant
claims for him, and he will then really be
underestimate.
Mr. Hay has shown wisdom and states
manship of a high order in his great
office, and has brought more credit to
American diplomacy than any man con-
administration, and he has written his
name large upon the page OF American
diplomacy. But fifty years hence-and
that's the test of greatness-who will
rank him with Thomas Jefferson or James
Madison or John Quincy Adams, the three
greatest men who have filled that high
office?
AS to MIR. ROOSEVELT is positively
sickening to see man of his parts men
toned in the same breath with Washing
ton and Lincoln. Ability of certain
''1apdash" sort, he certainly has; physl-
cal courage, unquestioned, combined with
lot of cheap advertising; and he has
of positiveness and force; and his per.
sonal honestly is above criticism and
now and then he does something that
wins approval and admiration. But he
is so spectacular, so bullheaded, so I'M
just, SO wanting in judicial tempera-
ment, so Indifferent to constitutional
own way that no lawful BARRIERS have
weight with HMM a word so uncertain
and so "userperious and pomperious" that
the only fitting Characterization of
him is the one by Senator Carmack, who
likened him to horse in Kentucky whose
natural gait is running away"
Do these professors, preachers, and 9th
er worshippers of office and office-hold 1
ers think the American reople are dense
enough to accept this half-ripe and
gushing sentimental putting? Do they put
that low an estimate upon the intelli-
gence of the people of this country in
the blazing light of the twentieth
century? or do they feel it necessary to
oyer-praise the rulers in order to get the
people to think they are big enough Tor