h ill-defined powers. A revolution had
tossed him to the top and made him dictator. He was bound to keep the
peace in unsettled times, to keep out the Stuarts, to keep down the
unruly factions. If Parliament would not help, he must govern without
it. Carlyle thought that he had no choice.

Roosevelt's addresses, essays, editorials, and miscellaneous papers,
which fill many volumes, are seldom literary in subject, and certainly
not in manner. He was an effective speaker and writer, using plain,
direct, forcible English, without any graces of style. In these papers
he is always the moralist, earnest, high-minded, and the preacher of
many gospels: the gospel of the strenuous life; the gospel of what used
to be called "muscular Christianity"; the gospel of large families; of
hundred per cent Americanism; and, above all, of military preparedness.
I am not here concerned with the President's political principles, nor
with the specific measures that he advocated. I will only say, to guard
against suspicion of unfair prejudice, that, as a Democrat, a
freetrader, a state-rights man, individualist, and anti-imperialist, I
naturally disapproved of many acts of his administration, of the
administration of his predecessor, and of his party in general. I
disapproved, and still do, of the McKinley and Payne-Aldrich tariffs; of
the Spanish war--most avoidable of wars--with its sequel, the conquest
of the Philippines; above all, of the seizure of the Panama Canal zone.

But let all that pass: I am supposed to be dealing with my subject as
man of letters. As such the Colonel of the Rough Riders was the high
commander-in-chief of rough writers. He never persuaded his readers into
an opinion--he bullied them into it. When he gnashed his big teeth and
shook his big stick,

... The bold Ascalonite
Fled from his iron ramp; old warriors turned
Their plated backs under his heel;

mollycoddles, pussy-footers, professional pacifists, and nice little men
who had lost their fighting edge, all scuttled to cover. He called
names, he used great violence of language. For instance, a certain
president of a woman's college had "fatuously announced ... that it was
better to have one child brought up in the best way than several not
thus brought up." The woman making this statement, wrote the Colonel,
"is not only unfit to be at the head of a female college, but is not fit
to teach the lowest class in a kindergarten; for such teachin