, the Magnificent, made men great with a word, and his
words were many. His great were many likewise, great statesmen,
great public servants, great writers, great magazine editors, great
cowboys from the West, great saints and great sinners, great
combinations of wealth and great laws to curb them; everything in
scale and that a great scale. Mr. Root acquired his taste for
public life in that "age" just as Mr. Hoover, Mr. Baruch and a
dozen others did theirs in the moving period of the Great War. It
is easy to understand how.

Like all remarkable ages this age was preceded by discoveries. The
United States had just fought a war which had ended in a great
victory, over Spain. The American people were elated by their
achievement, aware of their greatness, talked much and surely of
"destiny," the period in Washington being but a reflection of their
own mood. Their mental horizon had been immensely widened by the
possession, gained in the war, of some islands in the Pacific whose
existence we had never heard of before.

Until that time there had been for us only two nations in the
world, the United States and England, the country with which we had
fought two wars, and innumerable national campaigns. Historically
there had of course been another country as friendly as England had
sometimes been inimical, France, but France had ceased to be a
nation and became a succession of revolutions.

Manila Bay had been a series of revelations, besides teaching us
that Philippines is spelled with two "ps" and only one "l." We had
there discovered Germany, a country whose admirals had bad sea
manners. We knew at once that our next war would be with Germany,
although the day before Dewey said, "You may fire when you are
ready, Gridley," we would as soon have thought that our next war
would be with Patagonia.

There too we had an interesting and surprising experience with
England, hitherto known chiefly for her constant designs on the
national dinner pail. She behaved in striking and pleasing contrast
with Germany. Blood, on that bright day, May 1, 1898, began to be
thicker than water. Learning once more had come out of the East.
From Manila Bay flowed such a tide of new ideas, such a
reassessment of old conceptions as had not visited the world since
the discovery of Greek and Latin letters put an end to the Middle
Ages.

Perceiving our widened interest, John Hay, as Secretary of State,
took our foreign relations on a grand Cook's