Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-21
Mr.. Roosevelt and Nature

From Christian Science Monitor
Among the many monuments that
nave been proposed, and among the
many that will be proposed as me-
MORALS to Theodore Roosevelt, none,
perhaps, could seem more natural,
more lifting, more after the heart
of the nature-lover in him, than the
| Roosevelt Memorial Fountain pro-
posed by the National Association OF
Audubon Societies. For with all that
Mr. Roosevelt was, he was first ana
always Il lover of the out of doors,
and with all that he did in the
crowded years of his public career,
, he did nothing more instinctively,
more persistently, more Zealously
than his work for the conservation
of so-called wild life. Being Pres
| Iident of the United States and first
citizen of the world, instead of les
sening his love of wild things and
[ (hindering his study, gave him lar
ger opportunity to learn and love,
/ and while President, he established
the idea of Government bird reser-
/ ivations, and created thirty eight ma
tional sanctuaries.
He had been in at the Winning of
the West; he had watched the swift
closing in of ranch, farm and camp;
the steady ripping of the plow
| through the prairie sod; the rapid
running of the coiled barbed-wire;
| had seen the dust in the wake of
herder's focks; had heard the cease
| less hum of the lumberman's saw;
and he knew that the spell of the
wild places was forever broken, and
that the extinction of all the larger
forms of bird and beast was at hand
unless something was done and done
quickly He did something, some
thing quick and large for wild things,
when, seizing his pen, he. made
iThree-Arch Rocks, in the Pacific. n
| Federal bird reservation, and
klamath Lake, and the vast tule
marshes of the Malheur, in Oregon.
These and others. he literally took
as a lover of nature and carried
them as a President to Congress for
Congress to take from the pot-hunter
and the plumer, and give back to
the whole people, a gift that for wild
| beauty, for human decency, for fair
play, and for economic value the
Nation does not yet appreciate.
For no one can fully picture one
| hundred and forty-siX square miles
thick with winging, screaming birds,
| the actual acreage of the terms, ibises,
gulls, grebes, ducks, geese. aVocets,
cormorants, and great white pelicans
| that fill the air and cover the shall
low waters of the Malheur. This is
only one of vast rookeries that Mr..
| Roosevelt snatched from the plumer
| and saved for the whole people.
And only those who know how swift
60 4,I 7
pot-hunter in those unguarded nest
ing places know by how narrow a
chance they were saved.
A thorough and lifelong student
of ornithology. and lover of the
birds about him, he was a quiet and
happy watcher of his bird neighbors
Perhaps no man in Washington
knew more of the wild birds of the
capital. not even John Burroughs
than did President Roosevelt, and
this was the more astonishing when
one thinks of the men in Washing
ton whom we knew.
Nothing in Mr.. Roosevelt's nature
was more appealing. more spontan.
eous, and natural, than his love ot
nature: and no American ever
preached and practiced the gospe'
of nature more consistently, more
eloquently, than he. Any monument
to him that fails to recognize this
elemental quality of his nature will
fail as memorial: and the National
Association of Audubon Societies
"and affiliated organizations of vari-
Gus kinds throughout the United
States" do we'll to ask that a foun-
tain be built for him, a fountain that
the birds and beasts cannot build foI
him. but which they would perhaps
delight to build, did they only know
the love that went out to them, anC
the help that went out to them from,
the heart and the hand of Theodore
Roosevelt.