Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1919-01-15
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Rev Tribute ExPesden in Able Address de-
yered in Court Sunday Morning. January H. 1918.

"And David went on, and grew
great; for Jehovah, the God OF hosts
was with him."-IISam. $40.
The first phrase in the text applies
to every man-"he went on" There is
no such thing as standing still in life
Like Dickens poor Joe Of Tom ALL
Alones, we must continually keep
a1movin'" We go on from one year
to another, from one stage of physical
growth to another, from one mental
state to another, from one point OF
Observation-Disclosures to another. OF
every man it must be said, whether
for better or worse, The went on"
But the second phrase, "he went on,
and grew great" applies to COMPARE
lively few men, The majority of men
80 on without getting anywhere in par
ticuiar. Their progress is approx
mately on level The end of their
journey simply marks the distance
from the point at which they started,
but there has been little change in al
titude. They live and die on about the
same plane.
with the reasons for this we are not
aoncerned this morning. Sometimes
men are to blame, sometimes they are
not. for not achieving some sort OF
greatness. Here simply deal with
the fact that all we can say OF most
men Is that they went on"
But now and then there is man Of
whom it may be said, "he went on. and
grew great" His progress was not
along the line Of the horizontal but on
an inclined plane. He not only went on,
but up. Such man, according to the
Bible, was David; such man, accord
ing to the annals of recent years, was
Theodore Roosevelt.
That Roosevelt was great man is
now generally conceded, even among
those who during his lifetime found
it difficult to speak Of him in any 9TH
er than vein of disparagement Now
that death has set the seal of its dig
nifty upon him, the voice of detraction
Dc stllled, and the sober second thought
OF men compels them to acknowledge
That in spite Of all his defects, imagin-
airy and real, great man has gone
from us. -
What were some of the elements OF
his greatness? Twill mention, first
some of the more superficial elements,
those that fill the public eye. For
nearly eight years he filled the high
est office to which this nation or any
other can call man. He received
the highest honors which the Ameri-
can people and the world can bestow.
For the last twenty years he has been
more continuously in the lime-light of
publicity than any other man in Ameri-
ca. He was the one man above all
others in this country whom the
kaiser feared . He was the one man
beyond all others whom his political
opponents feared, and many of them
have breathed sigh Of relief at his
sudden elimination. He was hated by
large section Of our populace as no
other man in this generation has been
hated; and he was loved by multitudes
as no other man of today has been low
ed. He was one of the few great
Americans since the revolutionary
times upon whom the people bestowed
one or more popular nick-names. He
was one of the few men in private life
of whose daily movements the papers
always kept the world informed At
the news of his death, flags all over
the world dropped at half-mast, air
planes brought flowers from afar and
scattered them over his home, and in
many nations memorial services will
be held in his honor There is not a
half-dozen living Americans, whose
death would call forth such tributes.
But should do him a great injustice
were to point out only these surface
indications of his greatness; vfor that
is all they are. It's truer elements are
something deeper. -
10, He was great because of his wonder
full physical and mental energy.
think it was Horace Walpole who once
described Daniel Webster as "a steam
engine in trousers" In the lingo of
our electrical age we might say that
Roosevelt was human dynamo. file
was physically irrepressible and MEN
tally indefatigable One of his favorite
recreations was to go into the open
~country select an object in the dis
lance, and then make for it in a bee
line, regardless Of fields, fences, brush
boys, boulders, or other obstacles.
Most of his friends dreaded an in
Vitation to take a walk with him They
usually returned from it in state Of
physical collapse.
He was great also, because of the
many-sidedness of his ntture ROose-
welt never found life stale and monot-
onous. 1t was always full of mex
haustible interest to him, because he
was interested in all that goes to make
life. He was ranchman, horseman,
a soldier, stateman, politician, a
journalist, historian, an explorer, a
hunter and traveller; and with it all
he was human enough to take delight
in presenting a Christmas tree with
little speech every year to the public
school at Oyster Bay where his chill
dren had attended Ar editorial para
graph in one of our dailies gives him
this characterization:
THUS we had in Roosevelt the
most phenomenal physical and