The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-04-29

he quits the White House. This is, ln fact, a phase of the situation which he has often considered. Besides, his idea is that he has entered on a war for economic reforms, as he considers them and that his Presidential term is merely the first battle iii that war. He does not intend to end it as long as he lives.
 What will be the area in which he will carry on the war after his term ends is question about which he is much more reticent, His repeated and earnest declarations that he would not run in 1908 have been accepted at their face value in Washington, at least. He has not said however, that he would never run for President again, and in 1912 he will be only 56 years old That he would not refuse an election to the Senate to succeed Mir. Platt is common knowledge and if he got it he would step from the White House to the Senate chamber on March 1, 1909.
 The President, while he has high idea of the dignity of the office has no ldlS6 Dl lQt dBOul IL tlllNA NlpEo llpL NplA7 slider that the dignity of the office after his term expires. John Quincy Adams became a Representative after he left the White House. Andrew Johnson went to the Senate, and it was general ly understood that President Arthur would have accepted a Senatorship if the New York Legislature had shown any disposition to give it to him when Evarts was elected. President Roose- welt has been an officeholder all his life, with an intermission of about four years which he enlivened by running for Mayor of New York. Politics is his chosen field. He does not dream for moment of abandoning 1t merely be- cause his term of office as President has come to an end.
 Rightly or wrongly the President is convinced to the bottom of his boots that the problem which now press upon reforms urgently demanded; that they cannot be attained all, at once or even in a few years; that it is a mans duty in this age to do what he can toward bringing them about. And all 1 his life long he is determined to fight 1 for them wherever he may be, in office
 or out of it. He often talks of this de- 1 termination or ambition of his, and talks of 1t as settled thing. His way of talking about it gives one a bet l ter understanding of that which is a | mystery to many-the question of how | he can reconcile himself easily to a de- l parture in 1909 from the White House | work which he so enjoys. In his plans Q White House term seems an incident
 It is impossible to divest ones self of the idea that even a departure from the
 White House in 1909 would not neces- 1 sarily mean that Roosevelt would ne- yer come back there. That would all
 depend on how far he was right in
 thinking that the reforms he demanded
 were really demanded urgently by the
 people,
 The amazed and discomhted corpor-
 ation men have never got the clue to I Roosevelt. They have never consid-
 cred his acts as the product of a defl- I nite and consistent line of policy, aimed
 at the accomplishment of a particular l result, but have regarded each attack
 on them as a separate and detached event having no relation to the others | and merely indicating a vagary of the moment To oppose an adversary sue cessfully, it is well to understand him, | and, therefore, the finauclaI people
 should get a correct line on Roosevelt.
 His policy is that of one step at a time,
 but beginning the next step as soon as the first is taken. The men who op-
 posed his railroad rate bill imagined
 that this was a mere whim of his, and
 that when he got it he would be satis-
 fled. The fact was that all the time he
 was battling for the Hepburn bill he re-
 garded it only as a prelimnary step
 The next thing he wins from Congress
 will be to him merely another step, and
 before he has won it he will be planning
 the step after that. His fundamental
 idea is that the problems of the tWen-
 tieth century are economic; that there
 are inequalities of the law which have 1 given rise to discontent and that is the
 duty of a patriotic statesman to find g l remedy for these defects and to grapplt
 with these problems. He holds that i
 is not wise to sit on the safety valve
 lest there should be an explosion, no of reforms, like his but of anarchic anC
 violent radicalism.
 Toward these ends of his he presses
 steadily forward. His impulsivenes. , is more in manner than in plain. FoI instance, there was the matter of tht Brownsville order. It came like a sho from behind bush. Nobody was look , ing for it. The general idea was tha the President, in fit of passion ove, the refusal of the soldiers to give u , the rioters, had settled the whole thing
 in five minutes with an impetuous or | der. The fact was that the Presiden
 had gone over the case with the utmos 1 care for a long time, and had full! 5 satisfied himself of his powers. Secre t tary Taft, who was away at the time returned to Washington in consterna } tion. He looked into the subject, con l vinced himself that the order wa ; wrong, and ordered itheld up. Then h $ telegraphed to the President q numbe