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 Book 
 
 
ROOSEVELT 
 
 THE MORALIST IN ACTION 
 
 Memorial Address 
 
 GEORGE HENRY PAYNE 
 
 Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments, City of New York; 
 
 President Eastern and Middle West Travelers' 
 
 Association 
 
 ST. JAMES' EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 FEBRUARY 9, 1919 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Eastern and Middle West Travelers' Association 
 
 47 WEST 34th STREET, NEW YORK CITY 
 
U 
 
 ROOSEVELT 
 
 THE MORALIST IN ACTION 
 
 Memorial Address 
 
 GEORGE HENRY PAYNE 
 
 Commissioner of Taxes and Assessments, City of New York; 
 
 President Eastern and Middle West Travelers' 
 
 Association 
 
 ST. JAMES' EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 FEBRUARY 9, 1919 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Eastern and Middle West Travelers' Association 
 
 47 WEST 34th STREET, NEW YORK CITY 
 

 i . ansterred from 
 Ontfjm«nt Division 
 
ROOSEVELT 
 THE MORALIST IN ACTION 
 
 The end of all moral speculation is to teach us our duty; 
 and by proper representation of the deformity of vice and 
 beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us 
 to avoid the one and embrace the other. But is this ever to be 
 expected from inferences and conclusions of the understanding 
 which of themselves have no hold of the affections, nor set in 
 motion the active powers of men? They discover truths, but 
 where the truths which they discover are indifferent, and beget 
 no desire or aversion, they can have no influence on conduct 
 or behavior. What is honorable, what is fair, what is becoming, 
 what is noble, what is generous, takes possession of the heart, 
 and animates us to embrace and maintain it. What is intel- 
 ligible, what is evident, what is probable, what is true, pro- 
 cures only the cool assent of the understanding; and gratifying 
 speculative curiosity puts an end to our researches. 
 
 Hume, "Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals." 
 
 I have chosen to-day to speak of Theodore Roosevelt 
 the moralist, and I have so chosen because all that I have 
 seen of the man, as I understood him, was inseparable from 
 the moralist. Even in the midst of a bitter campaign when 
 the political furies seemed to be let loose, and when in his 
 answer to attacks and in his own attacks, he was showing 
 an energy and dialectic skill, a physical energy and courage 
 that we do not associate with those interested humanly in 
 the fundamental things of life; even then, to me the most 
 absorbing side, the side I was not able to forget, was the 
 moralist. 
 
We could speak of Roosevelt the wit, for he had a 
 delightful wit. We could speak of Roosevelt the statesman, 
 and to-day throughout the breadth of this land he will be so 
 discussed, and history will record gratefully his achieve- 
 ments in that field. We could speak of Roosevelt the 
 soldier, and it is a thrilling thing to think that he never 
 flinched in any fight that he was in, and his last noble 
 ambition was to die on the battlefield for his country. We 
 can speak of Roosevelt the naturalist and the traveller, but 
 these are phases that may more properly be dealt with by 
 specialists. We could speak of him as an author, as a 
 scholar. But if he had any mission in life, as he surely had, 
 it was to make those who came in contact with him see 
 things deeply, to see things in their larger significance ; as 
 for myself I believe we are following more in his footsteps if 
 we try to see the deeper significance of his own life. 
 
 When we speak of moralists, we of to-day are a little 
 apt to confuse them with the metaphysical philosophers, with 
 the great intellects of the past two or three hundred years 
 who have dominated the purely intellectual world. We are 
 also apt to follow the French definition of the moralist and 
 regard the word as descriptive of a genre of writing, as 
 exemplified by La Rochefoucald. 
 
 But it is not the Adam Smith, the Kant, or the Descartes 
 type of moralist that I have in mind when I speak of Roose- 
 velt, nor yet the Ghamfort, La Bruyere moralizer, it is the 
 moralist who was also a man of action, the St. Augustine, 
 the Franklin, the Emerson type, the man of large vision 
 who not only urged the proper and lofty life, but who en- 
 deavored to make his own life an example of his philosophy; 
 who endeavored to move men not only by what he preached, 
 but by visualizing for them the benefits of his precepts. 
 
It is not easy to attain the historical perspective. A for- 
 gotten American author, Horace Binney Wallace, once de- 
 clared that "Foreign opinion was a sort of contemporaneous 
 posterity." Foreign opinion of Roosevelt, when the present 
 great crisis in the history of the world has passed, will be, 
 I think, that he was interested in not only the problems of 
 to-day, but more than anything else in the problems of the 
 future; and in the conduct of the American public, not only 
 as it affected themselves, but as it influenced the entire 
 world — that was his absorbing thought. 
 
 He was a devoted, a vigorous, and a continuously com- 
 batant exponent of Americanism. It was not that he wished 
 his nation to have selfish advantages over other nations and 
 other peoples. It was because he felt that only through the 
 upbuilding of the great American ideal, the world would be 
 bettered. In a day when sham intellectuality was turning 
 toward the silly dream of internationalism, when Anarchistic 
 elements were endeavoring to undermine the great Christian 
 idea of democracy ; he was the rugged exponent of American 
 traditions, not that he wished her to triumph alone in ma- 
 terial ways, but that America safe, prosperous, proud and 
 vigilant, would be, as it has been in the past, the land of 
 ideals among nations, and the haven of the oppressed among 
 peoples. 
 
 As a man he typified all that he believed, and it was 
 interesting to one who had a great opportunity to listen to 
 his analysis of himself to realize that no matter what the 
 penalty or privation was, no matter how great the sacrifice, 
 or how great the concentration necessary, he neglected 
 nothing that might prepare him for good citizenship. 
 
 It was in the late summer of 1910 that I first came to 
 know Colonel Roosevelt, shortly after his return from 
 Africa. He had been President of the United States and 
 
had left that high office with prestige such as few of our 
 Presidents had enjoyed; it was, indeed, partly because of 
 his feeling that his presence in the country might be em- 
 barrassing to his successor that he had undertaken the long 
 and interesting exploration trip from which he had just 
 returned. The State of New York, as you may recall, had 
 just suffered an awful shock in the revelations that attended 
 the Allds trial during which it was discovered that men 
 high in the councils of the Republican party had been 
 guilty of the most brazen corruption. That the corruption 
 was not general it was true, but that the moral tone of the 
 party was low was equally true, and men who ordinarily 
 take little interest in politics felt that unless there was a 
 change in the management and an improvement in the tone, 
 the great party would have little right to expect public 
 support. 
 
 Men were urging Colonel Roosevelt to take a hand in 
 the State contest for the control of the party and at a time 
 when he was known to be reluctant to do so I travelled to 
 Oyster Bay as the correspondent for a New York paper, 
 with the keen interest of one of the younger generation of 
 his party who felt the disgrace that the party was under- 
 going. I shall never forget that interview. I presented my 
 letter with some diffidence, I might say timidity, for he was 
 a world character, his eight years as President had separated 
 him from New York and New Yorkers and I felt very 
 humble in the presence of the great man. I expected to 
 stay perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes, I stayed nearly two 
 hours, and when I came out it was the feeling of one who 
 had walked in high places. 
 
 Instead of the aloofness and the reserve that I had 
 expected, I was warmed and thrilled by the simplicity of the 
 man who was apparently anxious to make himself under- 
 
stood to a younger and unknown man. He had been Presi- 
 dent, he explained, in a simple, homely way, and he believed 
 that what influence he had with the people would be lessened 
 if he entered into a contest in which there were good men 
 on both sides, though the one group represented reactionary 
 ideas and had allowed evils to grow up. He pointed out 
 what was very true, that in almost every State in the Union 
 he was being called on to say something about local con- 
 tests, and that the moment he involved himself in the New 
 York contest his enemies would declare that he had political 
 ambitions and that his activity was due to self seeking. 
 
 It was a great quality of Roosevelt that he placed 
 younger men at ease, and his own warmth invectious, I soon 
 found myself in an argument with the man whom I had been 
 led to believe intolerant of all opposition. 
 
 "But," I said, "is it not your duty to do this even if you 
 are to be misunderstood?" and I remember the whimsical 
 smile with which he remarked that if he were sure it was 
 his duty the fear of being misunderstood was not going to 
 stand in his way. And it was a disagreeable duty, for he 
 finally entered the lists as the candidate for the temporary 
 chairmanship of the Republican State convention, a fight, 
 as he said himself, for the opportunity to make a speech, 
 when he spent much of his time in those days refusing invi- 
 tations to make speeches. But he went through to the bitter 
 end, misunderstood and abused a good deal for not being 
 content with having been President, and accused, if you will 
 recall, of having terrible ambitions, among them of wanting 
 to be king. 
 
 This may seem to some purely a piece of forgotten and 
 not particularly interesting political history, but I saw a 
 great deal of him in that campaign, and I never could quite 
 feel that his was solely a political activity. He had told me 
 
in that first interview at Oyster Bay that at any time I feit 
 the necessity of calling on him I should feel free to come, 
 and up to within two weeks of his death, when I saw him 
 in Roosevelt Hospital, I never had the slightest difficulty in 
 getting to him. I had in that first interview, knowing that 
 he had been reluctant to discuss State politics with some 
 who had called on him, apologized for asking some blunt 
 question ; and he stated then that I need never hesitate about 
 asking him a question, and he would always answer frankly. 
 I should like to state here that this promise, too, was always 
 kept. I say this because from that time on I enjoyed what 
 were perhaps unusual privileges for a younger man, and 
 had an insight into his motives, and, again I say, I never 
 could see his actions in those political moves except in a 
 moral light. 
 
 Think how little there was, if anything, for him to gain 
 by the disagreeable contest into which he entered. Surely 
 not fame — he had left the Presidency with the reputation of 
 being one of the greatest of Presidents. Political power — he 
 risked all he had by merely taking part in what the rest of 
 the country regarded as a local political squabble. I used 
 to hear, in those days, people say that he had the "habit" 
 of making speeches, that he had the "habit" of being in what 
 they called the "limelight." As an ardent advocate and 
 friend those criticisms annoyed me for a while, but I came 
 to realize that it was difficult for people who had never 
 known the joys of literary composition, who had never felt 
 the exaltation that comes with scholarly pursuits to under- 
 stand the Roosevelt home with its great libraryt and its 
 beautiful domesticity, to appreciate what manner of man 
 Roosevelt was at heart; and how impossible it was for the 
 uninitiated to understand, as Milton phrased it, ihe scholar's 
 "unwillingness to leave the quiet and still air of delightful 
 
studies to embark on a troubled sea of noises and harsh 
 disputes." 
 
 And yet there is a sanctification that comes in the 
 solitude of the study, that leads those dwelling there to a 
 high sense of duty, that makes them hesitate at neither 
 pillory nor prison, nor death, when the martyrdom is put 
 upon them. 
 
 I have referred at length to this incident of 1910 because 
 it led to the issues of 1912 which were so largely misunder- 
 stood, and are misunderstood to-day, as far as he was con- 
 cerned, and because it seems to me the keynote of that 
 side of him that was most dominant, and has been least 
 accented by both his friends and those opposed to him. I 
 would not on this occasion or from this pulpit wish to plead 
 any special cause, or to introduce the slightest political 
 argument, but we must look, in fact it is our duty to look, 
 for the moral issues that are sometimes involved in political 
 matters as they are involved at times in every phase of 
 life. 
 
 John Morley says that politicians and statesmen have 
 the habit of confusing one another and frequently them- 
 selves because they frequently talk of one thing when they 
 are thinking of another. It is a habit I fear that we are 
 all prone to. We are especially prone to fall into that error 
 when our passions are aroused. We frequently say that the 
 other man is wrong when we mean that we don't agree with 
 him. There is nothing morally wrong or right in believing 
 in free trade or protection. It is a mere question of eco- 
 nomic expediency. It is morally wrong, however, for us to 
 advocate laws that will permit men to work for wages that 
 will not permit them to live as human beings should live in 
 a civilized community. There is nothing moral in the ques- 
 tion of Municipal Ownership or of States Rights, or 
 
Budgetary Control, but in each and every one of those 
 questions a moral issue may develop under particular cir- 
 cumstances, if a human being is deprived of his opportunity 
 to live as God's man, or if crime and corruption may be 
 checked. 
 
 There were no moral issues involved in the main in the 
 contest of 1912, for there always will be an honest difference 
 of opinion in this country among thoughtful men as to 
 whether this country will be governed best by a representa- 
 tive body of men, rather than by pure democracy. But the 
 moral issue did become involved, when under the con- 
 trolled or representative idea of government, the tendency 
 developed to look more to the value of the property of 
 the country than to its human beings. 
 
 I rode with Theodore Roosevelt on the train from New 
 York to Boston the day after he had decided to be a 
 candidate for the Republican nomination and he was a 
 very sad man. That was in February, 1912, and he said 
 then: "I think we shall not win, but the fight must be 
 made." I was enthusiastic over his proposed candidacy, 
 the prospect of an exciting campaign and being near the 
 great man during it was very alluring, and I hopefully 
 declared that the people would rise and support him enthu- 
 siastically. 
 
 "It may be possible," he answered, "but we must be 
 prepared to lose — it is our duty to make the fight," and he 
 smiled whimsically to recall to me my own speech of a 
 little more than a year before when I had pleaded with 
 him to enter the New York State fight. 
 
 I am well aware that in speaking of a man who was so 
 often in the thick of the political discussion of his country, 
 and who so often was the center of political debate, there 
 will be those who will misunderstand this analysis of him 
 
as a moralist, and that is why I wish to emphasize the 
 necessity of our differentiating between his political and 
 economic views, and those in which ethical questions were 
 involved. 
 
 His moral attitude on public matters and with regard 
 to his own political activity cannot be made more clear 
 than he did himself on the night when he was shot in 
 Milwaukee in 1912. 
 
 You will recall that he was on his way to a meeting 
 when an insane man pushed his way through the crowd, and 
 standing a few feet from him shot him in the breast. The 
 revolver was of the type used by cowmen in the Southwest, 
 with a carriage of a larger calibre than the revolver itself, 
 the purpose of this being to give added force to the bullet. 
 The shot knocked him down, but he was on his feet in a 
 moment, and when the infuriated crowd was about to beat 
 the assailant into insensibility, he, the man who had just 
 been shot, with a bullet in his breast, ordered them to desist 
 and to bring the man nearer that he might see who he was. 
 
 "I don't know him," he said, and then ordered the 
 chauffeur to drive to the meeting place, although those in 
 the automobile with him begged him to go to a hospital. 
 When he arrived at the hall where he was to speak, he 
 was bleeding profusely, and the doctors urged him not to 
 attempt to speak, for the bullet had gone through his over- 
 coat, a copy of his speech in the pocket of his undercoat, 
 and had torn an ugly and ragged wound in his breast. 
 
 He coughed once or twice intentionally to see if he was 
 spitting blood. 
 
 "It has not touched my lungs," he said, "I shall speak, 
 it may be my last speech, but if it is my last speech it is 
 my duty to protest against this very sort of thing with my 
 last breath." 
 
 11 
 
And he did speak, and without regard to the issues of 
 that day, or the issues of any day that are purely political, 
 he voiced his magnificent belief in the American sense of 
 fair-play, in the American tradition of law and order, and 
 the American principle of liberty and democracy. 
 
 I have referred to his occasional analyses of himself. 
 They were never forced and the two or three times that 
 he indulged in analytical retrospection came at the end of 
 an explanation or a defense of some matter in which he 
 desired to be perfectly understood by the few intimates 
 to whom he was talking. 
 
 "I am just the average American," he said one day, 
 "with the sympathies of the average American," and then 
 he went on to explain that all that he had accomplished 
 had been purely the result of hard work. 
 
 I quoted back to him the statement of Darwin that 
 "genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains," and he 
 added "with sympathy." 
 
 Never to those who knew him well did he take the 
 aloof attitude, never did he assume that he was greater 
 than, or superior to those with whom he differed. As 
 the Latin poet said, "nothing human was alien to him," 
 and in explaining his political success he declared that the 
 things that had seemed to be most clever politically were 
 the result of his indignation over a wrong condition, and his 
 inability to tolerate an evil condition. 
 
 It will be recalled that some years ago he sued a 
 Western editor who had printed untruthful statements as 
 to his personal habits in the matter of alcohol. I had not 
 seen the article, and had heard very little about it, although 
 I, like many other of his friends, was acquainted with the 
 fact that those who did not like him were unscrupulous in 
 their untruthful statements as to his habits. 
 
There never was a more temperate man in this country. 
 
 I went down to Oyster Bay one day, and after we had 
 discussed other things that were in the order of the day, he 
 asked me if I had heard of or seen this attack accusing him 
 of intemperance. I said I had not, and that I did not 
 believe that it was worthy of his notice. 
 
 "That might be," he said, "if it were not for the fact 
 that day after day I am receiving letters like this one that 
 I have in my hand, from mothers saying that they had 
 taught their boys to look up to me, and that it was a shock 
 to them to learn that I had been unfaithful to my trust. 
 I owe them a refutation." 
 
 And it was not because of his physical comfort, not 
 because of any desire for political advantage that he went 
 through that disagreeable trial, but because he wished to be 
 true to those who regarded him, not as a political leader, 
 but as a moral standard bearer. 
 
 Though "he touched life at nearly every point at which 
 it is possible for the human soul to put forth its tendrils 
 into the universe," the main current of his thought, the pas- 
 sionate desire of his life was for what was right, for what 
 was fundamentally true. It was this that gave him his 
 great energy and industry, it was this that made his interests 
 so broad, that made him personally so sympathetic and so 
 greatly beloved. Those who were able to look into his 
 heart and those who knew him well found there nothing 
 mysterious — they found a well of affection for humanity, 
 and especially for his own countrymen, that changed their 
 entire point of view and made them better and wiser. It 
 was the faculty of seeing clearly, and the ability to express 
 himself in simple exact English that made him so irritating 
 to his opponents in a controversy. He was above all things 
 else unselfish, the most perplexing characteristic of all, to 
 
those who did not know him and were opposed to him. I 
 have gone to him in behalf of all kinds of people and for 
 a variety of causes and I always found him sympathetic and 
 interested, always willing to assist those whose cause was 
 worthy of the slightest support. 
 
 Much was written about his ambitious nature. His 
 ambition was for his country. A month before he died we 
 talked of his possible nomination for the Presidency in 
 1920. "If the people want me I may be the candidate," he 
 said, and when I stated my belief that his nomination was 
 inevitable, he answered, "if it were to take place to-day that 
 might be so, but we can not tell what will take place in 
 the next two years." 
 
 The American people have lost a great friend, a great 
 leader — Great Heart indeed, has gone. To those to whom 
 it was given to be near him and understand him there must 
 be not so much the feeling of terrible loss as the feeling of 
 great responsibility, for that was his way, nobly, beautifully 
 his way, and his way shall be our way, as God gives us 
 strength: but 
 
 O! for the touch of the vanished hand 
 And the sound of the voice that is still. 
 
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