U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [222]
white man's burden, helped to arrest malefactors, bad men; service was bul y. Al this time he'd been writing, fil ing the maga-zines with stories of his hunts and adventures, fil ing political meetings with his opinions, his denunciations, his pat phrases: Strenuous Life, Realizable Ideals, Just Government, when men fear work or fear righteous
-143- war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom, and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and highminded. T.R. married a wealthy woman and righteously
raised a family at Sagamore Hil .
He served a term in the New York Legislature,
was appointed by Grover Cleveland to the unremunera-tive job of Commissioner for Civil Service Reform, was Reform Police Commissioner of New York,
pursued malefactors, stoutly maintained that white was white and black was black, wrote the Naval History of the War of 1812,
was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
and when the Maine blew up resigned to lead the Rough Riders, Lieutenant-Colonel.
This was the Rubicon, the Fight, the Old Glory,
the Just Cause. The American public was not kept in ignorance of the Colonel's bravery when the bul ets sang, how he charged without his men up San Juan
Hil and had to go back to fetch them, how he shot a running Spaniard in the tail. It was too bad that the regulars had gotten up
San Juan Hil first from the other side, that there was no need to get up San Juan Hil at al . Santiago was surrendered. It was a successful campaign. T.R.
charged up San Juan Hil into the governorship of the Empire State;
but after the fighting, volunteers warcorrespond-ents magazinewriters began to want to go home; it wasn't bul y huddling under puptents in the
tropical rain or scorching in the morning sun of the seared Cuban hil s with malaria mowing them down
and dysentery and always yel owjack to be afraid of.
-144-T.R. got up a round robin to the President and asked for the amateur warriors to be sent home and
leave the dirtywork to the regulars
who were digging trenches and shovel ing crap
and fighting malaria and dysentery and yel owjack
to make Cuba cosy for the Sugar Trust
and the National City Bank.
When he landed at home, one of his first inter-views was with Lemuel Quigg, emissary of Boss Platt who had the votes of upstate New York sewed into the lining of his vest; he saw Boss Platt too, but he forgot about that
afterwards. Things were bul y. He wrote a life of
Oliver Cromwel whom people said he resembled. As
Governor he doublecrossed the Platt machine (a
righteous man may have a short memory); Boss Platt
thought he'd shelved him by nominating him for the
Vice-Presidency in 1900;
Czolgocz made him president.
T.R. drove like a fiend in a buckboard over the
muddy roads through the driving rain from Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks to catch the train to Buffalo where McKinley was dying.
As President
he moved Sagamore Hil , the healthy happy
normal American home, to the White House, took
foreign diplomats and fat armyofficers out walking in Rock Creek Park where he led them a terrible dance
through brambles, hopping across the creek on stepping-stones, wading the fords, scrambling up the shaly banks, and shook the Big Stick at malefactors of great wealth.
-145-Things were bul y.
He engineered the Panama revolution under the
shadow of which took place the famous hocuspocus of juggling the old and new canal companies by which
forty mil ion dol ars vanished into the pockets of the international bankers, but Old Glory floated over the Canal Zone
and the canal was cut through.
He busted a few trusts,
had Booker Washington to lunch at the White
House,
and urged the conservation of wild life.
He got the Nobel Peace Prize for patching up the
Peace of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese
war,
and sent the Atlantic Fleet around the world for
everybody to see that America was a firstclass power. He left the presidency to Taft after his second term leaving to that elephantine lawyer the congenial task of pouring judicial oil on the hurt feelings of the money-masters and went to Africa to hunt big game. Big game hunting was bul y.