should not bind themselves never to take action which
under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great
interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety
of a democracy that in time of real peril it should be able to command
the service of every one among its citizens in the precise position
where the service rendered will be most valuable. It would be a
benighted policy in such event to disqualify absolutely from the
highest office a man who while holding it had actually shown the highest
capacity to exercise its powers with the utmost effect for the public
defense. If, for instance, a tremendous crisis occurred at the end of
the second term of a man like Lincoln, as such a crisis occurred at the
end of his first term, it would be a veritable calamity if the American
people were forbidden to continue to use the services of the one man
whom they knew, and did not merely guess, could carry them through the
crisis. The third term tradition has no value whatever except as it
applies to a third consecutive term. While it is well to keep it as
a custom, it would be a mark both of weakness and unwisdom for the
American people to embody it into a Constitutional provision which could
not do them good and on some given occasion might work real harm.

There was one cartoon made while I was President, in which I appeared
incidentally, that was always a great favorite of mine. It pictured an
old fellow with chin whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his
boots off, sitting before the fire, reading the President's Message. On
his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up by the dozen in
Joe Ferris's store at Medora, in the days when I used to come in to town
and sleep in one of the rooms over the store. The title of the picture
was "His Favorite Author." This was the old fellow whom I always used to
keep in mind. He had probably been in the Civil War in his youth; he had
worked hard ever since he left the army; he had been a good husband and
father; he had brought up his boys and girls to work; he did not wish to
do injustice to any one else, but he wanted justice done to himself and
to others like him; and I was bound to secure that justice for him if it
lay in my power to do so.[*]

[*] I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to
my enemies to attest the truth of this statement. The New York _Sun_,
shortly before the National Convention of 1904, spoke o