To whom shall we liken Mr. Roosevelt, who landed in England yesterday, among the public men best known to us? In his gift of popular appeal he is the equal of Mr. Lloyd-George. He has nothing to learn of Mr. Balfour in the art of “hedging” or of adroitly combining discordant elements within his own party. He is another Chamberlain in his expression and stimulation of all that is grandiose in the imperialistic instinct.



In his breadth of interests, in his enthusiastic absorption in the task of the moment, and in his intense conviction of the supreme importance of his own policies his only parallel is Mr. Gladstone. All this may be said of him without prejudice to the opinion that, as a statesman, there is not one of the four to whose level he approaches.

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While a composite picture of this kind may help to make the recognition of his portrait easier for the English observer, it cannot but be inadequate for the reason that the main traits of Mr. Roosevelt’s character and temperament are distinctively un-English. Indeed, one may best understand the man himself and account for his popularity among his fellow-countrymen by regarding him as the chief exemplar of the New Americanism.

For a long time the moving power in American life was a resultant of the two dissimilar forces which had their source in the South and in New England. In the influence of Mr. Roosevelt we may see the clearest sign that the predominance has now passed to the spirit of the West. He has a certain family connection with the South, and he was educated at the most famous college of New England. But he has neither the aristocratic feeling of the one section nor the steadiness, not to say stodginess, of the other. He is sometimes called “the cowboy in politics,” but the rough-rider element is not the only Western item in his make-up. He represents Chicago as well as North Dakota, the ferment of the expanding and ambitious city as well as the abandon of the prairie.



The New Americanism of the West finds itself reflected in his indifference to precedent and tradition. He has written several historical text-books, but a true note was struck at the 1904 Convention in the nominating speech which commended him to the American people because “he gropes but little in the past.” No former President troubled himself so little about the restraints of the Constitution. Where Mr. Roosevelt thought it would be the better for stretching, he stretched it, relying upon the New Americanism to support him – as it promptly did, condoning “usurpations” as old-fashioned people call them, for which some of his predecessors would have been impeached. Mr. Roosevelt, again, brought into the White House the “hustling” spirit of the period.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theodore Roosevelt circa 1910. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Popperfoto/Getty Images



His Presidency was nothing if not resounding and spectacular. There was always a “grand high pressure of bustle and excitement.” Policy after policy was taken up with a flourish of trumpets and dropped with a bang. Where so much dust was raised, who could doubt that everything was going at express speed? As long as Mr. Roosevelt was in power, the most sedate newspaper could enjoy all the advantages of yellow journalism by merely reporting the Washington news. No wander that poor Mr. Taft’s regime seems disappointing by comparison.



In spite of his indefatigable industry and amazing energy, Mr. Roosevelt shows a lack of staying power, unless, indeed, the repetition of the same generalities in innumerable speeches may be counted to him for perseverance. This desultoriness of mind is also typical of the neo-American, who seldom takes long views but is content to deal impetuously with the need of the moment. On no important subject – the Philippines, the Panama Canal, the rights of the negro, trade unions, the tariff, the trusts – is it possible to construct any definite or consistent policy out of Mr. Roosevelt’s record.



What was black six months ago is white today, and both then and now everybody deserves excommunication who fails to sympathies with the Rooseveltian mood of the moment. It would be utterly unjust to attribute these startling changes to any moral defect. The peculiarity is simply psychological. It greatly embarrasses those who co-operate with Mr. Roosevelt for what they suppose to be a common end, but it does not seem to impair his vogue with the multitude. The average American is vastly “tickled” with such proofs of the mental alertness of its hero, and does not care very much who suffers in the process as long as he makes people “sit up.”



There was never a leader who was more truly the representative man of his nation. Besides all this, he came into his kingdom at the very hour when his fellow-countrymen were longing for some expression of the new feelings that had been aroused within them by the victory over Spain. They had become a world Power, and they wanted a President who would let everybody know it. No part could have better suited Mr. Roosevelt, and their admiration of him was renewed in every occasion – the acquisition of the Panama Canal zone, the “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead” telegram, the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War, the proposal of the Second Hague Conference, the round-the-world cruise of the fleet, when the limelight of both hemispheres was focused on Washington.



Whether he flourished the “big stick” or won the Nobel prize mattered comparatively little; he made it clear that the United States was on top, anyway. Mr. Roosevelt was no less fortunate in domestic affairs. His Presidency synchronised with a period of social unrest which gave an exceptional opportunity for the exercise – unbelievers would call it the “parade”– of that reforming zeal which is one of his most prominent traits. The time was out of joint; that he was born to set it right he has never questioned, but the call to this task, so far from provoking any lamentation, was welcomed in a spirit compounded of the sacred exaltation of a Crusader and an Irishman’s delight in a shindy. Taking the wind out of Mr. Bryan’s sails Mr. Roosevelt, who has always been a devoted Republican, won over to his own side much of the enthusiasm that would normally have brought votes to the Democratic “ticket,” and thereby gave his own party a new lease of life.

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It is perhaps too early to attempt an estimate of what Mr. Roosevelt’s work has meant in actual achievement. “Much cry and little wool” say his critics, and when one compares his recommendations to Congress – his official messages must have amounted in all to hundreds of thousands of words – with the record of completed and effective legislation, there may seem to be some reason for the judgement. It is rather on the machinery of American government that he has left his mark. His term of office certainly gave an immense impetus to the movement for centralisation, and in particular it made obsolete those chapters in the existing text-books which treat of the limitations of Presidential functions. And, whatever may be the final verdict of history, no one who lived in America during Mr. Roosevelt’s Presidency can deny that while it lasted it was a stirring time.