te truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether
I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I
always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some
pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not understand a
man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety
when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing
desire to do his duty. (Applause and cheers.)

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the
progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our
people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and
especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the
success of that movement.

"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as
absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I
am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally.
I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction
because I want to say something very serious to our people and
especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man
was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the
stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the
hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot--the shot, the bullet
went in here--I will show you (opened his vest and shows bloody stain
in the right breast; stain covered the entire lower half of his shirt
to the waist).

"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to
give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not know
who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in
the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered
me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.

"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him,
but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be
inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse
that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers
in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
(Applause and cheers.)

"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks
with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party
(applause) and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers,
to the rep