Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1910-04-14
ROOSEVELT LIKE NAPOLEON.
Henry WdtteTson, Of Kentucky, Warns The
Nation to Give Thought.

HdllOn 10 Dive thought
Louisville, KY, April SIN an edito-
rial in the Courier-Journal headed:
"Whither?" Henry Watterson said this
morning:
The time has come for the people of
the United States to consider Theodore
Roosevelt as they have never consider
ed him before; to take him more seri-
ously than they have ever taken him:
to realize that he is altogether the most
startling figure who has appeared in
the world since Napoleon Bonaparte, a
circumstance not without significance
or portent.
de must be poor American whose
heart does not glow with pride at the
unwonted honors bestowed upon this
representative of his country and swell
with exultant admiration at the splen-
did way he is carrying himself. 1t is
too late, If it were not personally often
slve, to talk about self-exploitation.
Let no one fancy this as unmeaning.
or an idle compliment. Taken in con-
nection with what appears to be the
hopeless breakdown of the Taft admin
istration, it constitutes an event of first
consequence
IF we are to return Theodore Roose-
Welt to power let there be no mistake
about the terms of the new commission
which is to be issued to him.
History has agreed that the best of
all government is wise and benevolent
despotism. If the Government of the
United States under our written Consti-
tuition of checks and balances be a fail
ure-as many think it-and if there be
needed for its executive head a strong
man having the courage to take all the
bulls of corruption by the horns. and
regardless of obsolete legal restraints
to shake the life out of them, then. in
deed Theodore Roosevelt would seem
one fltted by temperament, education.
and training for the work. He is a pa
trIotic American with humanitarian
Procllvitles. He is an incorrectibIe
man. He has shown himself fearless of
| consequences.
IL the people are sick and tired of
the slow processes of constitutional
procedure; if they want in the White
House President who, disregardinp
the letter of the law, will substitute his
own Interpretation of its spirit and in
tentlon; If they think that the reign of
hypocrisy and cant and graft which
marks our professional politics NAV be
ended by the absolutism of a ruler who
as Roosevelt himself puts it, translates
his words into deeds, and who, charged
with the cleansing of the Augean sta
bles by an election putting the seal of
popular approval upon conceded excess
es IN the use of power and bidding him
to go forward and apply the same rem
edies to disease otherwise incurable.
then Theodore Roosevelt fills the bill to
perfection, for he comes directly from
the family of the kings of men and is a
lneal descendant of Caesar and Crom-
WELL
Before we get into the acrimonies
of party conflict, the Courier-Journal
asks Its contemporaries throughout the
country to reflect without passion or
Ievlty, and to answer to themselves
amid the blaze of light which casts an
aureoie about our wandering Ulysses,
whether representative government in !
America is failure, and whether the
only cure for the evils which are admit
ted IS the one-man power; because they
may be sure that the return of Theo- |
dore Roosevelt to power will be SO con-
strued by Europe, and that on this &C.
count the demonstration of monarchism |
has its chief significance"