The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1910-09-06
Modest Mr.. Roosevelt
The New York Post Seems to Stand in no Awe OF its For
mer Neighbor, Our Elk President.

There is widespread interest and
curiosity concerning the editorial art
icle in recent Issue of the New York
Evening Post in reference TO Colonel
Roosevelt which called forth such
indignant denial from that gentleman.
The full text OF the article is as fol-
lows:
). We should like TO think of Mr..
RooseveIt's performances yesterday
as those of the ever boyish. He re-
minds one of a college athletic hero
who. after graduation. simply cannot
live without the old heart-tilling
Z cheers, and SO shows himself on the
football field in order to hear the
glad sound once more 1t is two
+ years since Mr. Roosevelt has fed on
the yells of the crowd in railroad
+ stations. and yesterday he made up
for long ahstention ty gluttony. Yet,
as we say. we should prefer to think
OF all this as comic. There is I'M
deniably an amusing side to Mr..
Roosevelt's wayside oratory. II re
calls the political speaker preserved
in the amber of James Whitcomb
/ Riley's verse, who
'6elt the banner up'ards from trail
in in the dust.
And cut loose on monopoly, and cuss-
ed and cussed ana cussed
But laughter cannot help passing
into anger and q sense of gross out
rage. w.cn the real significance of
Mr. hoosevelt's car-end harangues is
fully taken in. For here is a private
citizen assuming that he has supreme
political power Here is an ex-presi-
dent showing aside the actual Prcsi-
dent as if he were a truckman. Here
IS a man who forever chatters about
the square deal, yet who treats his
own friend and the chief of his own
party with absolute unfairness, pushes
himself forward. announces what Il
will do just as though his being
elected President next time were al
ready settled, and bears himself
throughout as peculiarly repellent
combination of demagogue and dicta-
tor.
The thing goes beyond display of
bad taste. AS such it is hooking,
but it is, besides, an exhibition of
L,oral impudence. I will make the
corporations come to time shouted
Roosevelt to the mob But did he
not really mean hat he would make
them come down with the cash to
elect him, as he did before? For a
man with Mr.. Roosevelts proved rec
ord it is simply disgusting humbug
for him to rant about the corpora
ed when he was President and want
ed their money for his campai IN.
Does he think that nobody has a
memory which goes back to the life
insurance Investigations, and that
everybody has forgotten the $4,000
taken from widows and orphans and
added to Theodore Roosevelt's polite
al corruption fund? Did he not take
big check from the beef trust, and
glad to get it? And now he is going
to make the corporations come to
time One can have respect for a
sincere radical, for an honest fanatic,
for an agitator or leveller who be-
lieves that he is doing Gods will;
but it is hard to be patient with a
man who talks big but acts mean,
whose eye is always to the main
chance politically, and who lets no
friendship, no generosity, no princi-
pie, no moral scruple stand for a mo-
ment between himself and the goal
: upon which he has set his oyer-mas-
tering ambition.
+ Such wild and whirling words as
7 Mr.. Roosevelt uttered yesterday are
curse to public life. They arouse
passion without directing it. They
give no one clear idea of what the
speaker meant. except that he sought
to infame the crowd and make mis-
chief He Eliminates against crook
/ ed men. He is going to 'cinch' the
4 crooks. Why not be specific? Whom
does he mean? Even Mr.. Roosevelt
cannot intend Us to understand that
he will be detective. police, magis
trate, jury, jailer, all in one, and will
4 get after every burglar and swindlel
\ in the land. No, his crooks are pc
litical crooks. What he wants the
crowd to understand is that he is
with them in their present wrath
against men who go into politics tc
make money. or who advance by 20
litical corruption. or who are notori
GUS as interruptions machine polite
ians Yet this champion of purity
this roarer for political virtue, is the
man who was for years, when il
public life, hand In glove with the
worst political corrnptionists of his
day; who toadied to Plat, who praised
Quay, who paid court to Hanna; un
der him as President, Aldrich rose tc
the height of his power always or
good terms with Roosevelt; 1t wa:
4 Roosevelt who, in 1906 wrote an oper
letter urging the reelection OF Speak
er Cannon. against whom muttering:
had then begun to rise; it was Roose
Yelt who asked Hartman to come e