The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-15

Louisville Courier-J Journal by Coz.
 Henry Watterson.
 Y was, however, of Theodore Roose- yeit, rather than of political con- \ ditions and prospects, that we set out to speak.
 He overshot his bolt. He magnified his authority. He took too much for granted in the irresistible force of his onset and his tremendous powers of in tellectual and physical endurance; in his personality, in his luck, and In the popular credulity. Yet now. as ever, Is the line between success and failure exceeding thin.
 The new nationalism startled the country as well 1t might. Supplement- ed by visible apostle--Caesar ready to spring-it brought home to the peo- pie all that the Courier-Journal has been saying of absolutism and arbitrary power embodied by the personality and the preachments of Theodore Roose- welt.
 Even the leading college presidents were up in arms. Next to Woodrow Wilson, President Jacob G. Schurman of Cornell, the most eminent of them, g. republican and not democrat, de- liyered a notable speech.
 
 The young men or the present day seem singularly lacking in a sense of things formative, of things doctrina1 in political affairs. Happily. they did not pass through times that tried mems souls. They take their government for granted. Elections come and go. part les rise and fall, the will of the majority to them represents merely the relative of two antagonistic policies, or of two opposing aspirants. That there is any danger of the usurpation of power, or a revolution of essentials, is furthest from their thought.
 If they have read history they do not apply it-certain1y they do not take 1t home to themselves. If they have been some of the rudiments of the constitutional system under which they live they do not assimilate them to current affairs, or associate them with prevailing conditions, further than to assume that since they have endured a hundred years they will last a thou sand. and that they need no particular attention. To them the reminder that "eternal vigilance is the price Of lib- erty." has little meaning. They hold 1t simply demagogue clap-trap
 Of course they have studied human nature not at all. Nothing could be surer or plainer than that the return of Theodore Roosevelt to power, commissioned to carry out the terms of his declared programme, would be the substitution of arbitrary rule for the restraints of established law, to every intent. It would mean life tenure and autocracy, such as the French had under Louis Napoleon and as the Mar,cans have under Porfirio Diaz. Vet not one of the eo6 who voted at Cornell for Roosevelt could be made to sea or understand this, notwith- standine the splendid exposition of Dr. coburnan. their beloved and learned master.
 If was his conception of this which lured Theodore Roosevelt into an un- tenable attitude to perpetrate a gl- rantic blunder. He did not take into account the republicanism of the re- nuh,,can party. the underlying repub- ,,con onism of a great majority of his countrymen, being in point of fact a natrician at heart. and not in his na- +,ra a man of the people. He was born to a pedigree, clad as child in silks
 a .attns reared to every kind of re- enement A delicate lad, he was yet nossessed by the spirit of the aristocra' ana the cavalier. He chafed agains' tbe affeotionate and solicitous restraints ., inc sweetest of homes and the fond. eat of mothers. He put himself for ward as cock of the walk at school IIe came west and set up for 8 cow hoy. At length he loomed at the from ,n lima of war as a rough rider. Af' fectations mainly; for he Is actually fine gentleman, highly cultivated ant highly gifted--since Nape leon Bona. narte the most acute minded and active bodied man in all the universe-tt whom the airs of bullying he gives him self and the slangy words he uses. com, merely as springes to catch woodcock devices to keep up the boyish illusion O. Teddy Bear; democratic refrains to con ceal the scholarly elegance and tn, condescending spirit behind them. | He has shown a genius for affair rivaling that of any potentate who eve