t the wicked should die?
saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and
live?"

Every man who has been in practical politics grows to realize that
politicians, big and little, are no more all of them bad than they are
all of them good. Many of these men are very bad men indeed, but there
are others among them--and some among those held up to special obloquy,
too--who, even although they may have done much that is evil, also show
traits of sterling worth which many of their critics wholly lack. There
are few men for whom I have ever felt a more cordial and contemptuous
dislike than for some of the bosses and big professional politicians
with whom I have been brought into contact. On the other hand, in
the case of some political leaders who were most bitterly attacked as
bosses, I grew to know certain sides of their characters which inspired
in me a very genuine regard and respect.

To read much of the assault on Senator Hanna, one would have thought
that he was a man incapable of patriotism or of far-sighted devotion to
the country's good. I was brought into intimate contact with him only
during the two and a half years immediately preceding his death. I was
then President, and perforce watched all his actions at close range.
During that time he showed himself to be a man of rugged sincerity of
purpose, of great courage and loyalty, and of unswerving devotion to the
interests of the Nation and the people as he saw those interests. He was
as sincerely desirous of helping laboring men as of helping capitalists.
His ideals were in many ways not my ideals, and there were points where
both by temperament and by conviction we were far apart. Before this
time he had always been unfriendly to me; and I do not think he ever
grew to like me, at any rate not until the very end of his life.
Moreover, I came to the Presidency under circumstances which, if he
had been a smaller man, would inevitably have thrown him into violent
antagonism to me. He was the close and intimate friend of President
McKinley. He was McKinley's devoted ally and follower, and his trusted
adviser, who was in complete sympathy with him. Partly because of this
friendship, his position in the Senate and in the country was unique.

With McKinley's sudden death Senator Hanna found himself bereft of his
dearest friend, while I, who had just come to the Presidency, was in his
view an untried man, whose trustworthiness on many public questions