The Logan Republican. [volume] (Logan, Utah) 1902-1924, 1919-03-06
FAULTS AND VIRTUES OF ROOSE-
WELT AS SEEN BY A CALI
FORNIA EDITOR

AO n SftLh-
FORNIA EDITOR
Out of the beaten track of eulogy
comes an appreciation Of Col. Theodore
Roosevelt from California paper.
''Affectation, brutality, egotism-you
were full of all these thingsw cries the
editor of the San Jose News, with blus-
tering frankness that might have won
the appreciation Of his subject, and then
he rises to such tributes as zone of the
heroic gods of American mythology"
and IAN embodiment of so much that is
most crude and good and vital in our Am
erican life" Addressing the Roosevelt
spirit, which, like John Browns, is still
marching on, the far Western editor
writes:
Theodore Roosevelt, you were not
merely a man-you were great nation
al tradition, an embodiment of the
thoughts and feelings of millions of men.
You were one of the heroic gods Of the
American mythology, and with your
faults, your tremendous faults, and with
your virtues, your tremendous virtues,
you clanked your way across our nation
al consciousness even as the rough old
gods of the Norsemen clanked their way
through the consciousness Of those early
grapplers with the sea and wind and the
rough things you yourself loved so well.
Say what we may about you now that
you are gone, the fact remains that you
were product of us, the people of Amer
lea, in the latter decades Of the nineteenth
century and the early decades of the
twentieth. Your preaching of the "stren-
uous" life, your wondrous hurly-burly,
you magnificent grasping for power,
you enormous appetite for battle-battle
with anything, just so the "scrap" was
hot enough One-are not all these things
flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood, and
bone of our bone.
You charged up San Juan hill, and that
charge, even when we jest about it, is
now part of our national tradition; you
said 'Bullyw and we all cried out after
you laughing at you and hating you and
loving you; you smiled hugely, and we
built up national legend about your
very teeth; the very manner in which you
said Delighted" became as much part
of our consciousness as are the sun and
moon and stars; you invited a negro to
eat with you at the White House, and
the entire South screamed at you, and
later negro troops did something that
your considered wrong, and you were
stern, and the entire North shrieked at
you; you smashed through the jungles of
Africa and South America, and gloried
in the blood of animals like super
butcher; you paraded through all Eur
ope, with the grand old Rooseveltian
brass band blare before you; you came
back to us, fell upon politics with the old
cowboy "yip" and went down smashing
ly to defeat; throughout the European
War the sound of your blunders almost
drowned out the cannonading and the
groans of the wounded and dying-but
through it all, you were fighting, you
were living, you were vitality emDodying
huge raw sections of American psychol-
ogy, American life, tradition and aspira-
ton.
Affectation, brutality, egotism--cer-
tainly, you were full of all these things.
But there was one thing we all loved
about you-and that was your everlast-
ing outspokenness. You consigned your
enemies right and left to the Ananias
club, and you called our beloved Presi-
dent traitor in the midst Of Americas
greatest war; you scoffed at the idea Of
a league Of world peace, and brazenly as
sured us that there would always be war,
and that the Only thing to do was to arm