The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-04-17
ROOSEVELT AND THE RAKE.

aided ''muck-rake" address, we hope he feels better. We are sure the coun- try will feel relieved that is over and that he has been safely delivered of an aggregation of sounding words. mixed with oft-repeated plstitiidss of little interest or concern to anybody
 We are pretty sure that no public man in the Union is better fitted to deliver such an address. just as we are sure that none has less excuse for doing so. Of all public men he has furnished more excuses for the class of men he denounces. and has given them more reasons for plying their trade. He excoriate the newspapers. the magazines. the correspondents and all other writers who may harshly criticise public men or measures That is. he directs his words at those who are not fair. as ne sees 1t, but in real ity he aims his shafts at all critics. and especially at all who do not write to please him.
 Yet few public men have been moro inconsistent. more undiscriminating and more unjust in criticising others He has endeavorede to belittie and be- smirch almost every President who has preceded him. with the evident desire to compare hts own greatness with their littleness. He has wronged by his clustering and haste better men than himself and refused to do them justice or to retract or apologize for his often. slanderous charges. In short. he has time and again offended against fairness and justice in exactly the way he denounces others .or doing.
 And who in high place has given greater encouragement to the class he so inveighs against? Almost as soon as he became President the vel zines and all the tribe of seekers af- ter warm stuff'' hurried to Washing ton. knowing from past knowledge and experience that he would give them something to write up that would be out of the ordinary, and would make good reading for those who revel in sensations.
 And he has not disappointed them. His bluster and blunders, his inconsis- tencies, his backing and filling on al- most every matter of importance have almost ceased to be a novelty. He makes positive assertions, issues his demands, gives unreserved assurances and then forgets them as soon as in terest or politics moves him. His apparent firmness and real fckleness have become proverbial. He can take more positions and abandon them than any public man we have. In short. he is constantly taking positions that he cannot sustain, and ought to have known in advance that he could not stand up to.
 And through it all he seems to take himself seriously. We believe he &C., tually thinks himself 8 great man and is surprised that all the world isn't convinced of it. When he stood up be- fore an assembly of eminent Bishops and clergymen from all parts of the Union and told them that they should denounce sin and wrong in high plac- es, he was merely giving an example of his overweening conceit. He should | have known that it is both their duty and practice to do just what he was | telling them to do, and telling 1t as ! one who should say Look at ME, if | you want an example to follow! I am the man who carries the big stick and who dares to knock great men!" Verify the times are out of joint when Theodore Roosevelt can stand | before an audience of the most promi- nent men in the country and utter de- nunciations against writers or speak CTS who are unjust in criticising others. And yet he is not wholly to blame for his firm belief in his own greatness. When the old English-Danish King, Canute, was at the zenith of his great ness he allowed his subservient cour- tiers to fatter him into the belief that schoolboys know the story of how he caused his -kingly chair to be placed by the edge of the sea as the tide was rising and when the waves ap- preached his feet he sternly ordered them back. They refused to obey him and he had to do the backing himself.
 Something of the same nature has been going on ever since Roosevelt un- fortunately became President. He has been surrounded by subservient poli- ticians, and fawning partisan newspa- l pers have so continually fiattered him to carry out their own purposes or to | advance their own interests that he has become so puffed up with a sense of his own importance as to be in dan ger of initiating the frog in the fable who burst himself trying to swell to | the size oi the OK. One would think | that the refusal of the Senators to | be bossed by him would ere this have somewhat reduced his bump of con- ceit, but it seems not. He still thinks | he is the great mogul of our govern ment and will not he convinced other wise as long as the tribe of fiatterers holds out.
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 GOING TO EXTREMES.
 No doubt there are many millions of