against those whom
you have professed to liberate, acted as a distinct check upon the
enthusiasm for such experiments.

After the conclusion of the Spanish war, McKinley was elected for a
second time; almost immediately afterwards he was murdered by an
Anarchist named Czolgosz, sometimes described as a "Pole," but
presumably an East European Jew. The effect was to produce a third
example of the unwisdom--though in this case the country was distinctly
the gainer--of the habit of using the Vice-Presidency merely as an
electioneering bait. Theodore Roosevelt had been chosen as candidate for
that office solely to catch what we should here call the "khaki"
sentiment, he and his "roughriders" having played a distinguished and
picturesque part in the Cuban campaign. But it soon appeared that the
new President had ideas of his own which were by no means identical with
those of the Party Bosses. He sought to re-create the moral prestige of
the Republican Party by identifying it with the National idea--with
which its traditions as the War Party in the battle for the Union made
its identification seem not inappropriate--with a spirited foreign
policy and with the aspiration for expansion and world-power. But he
also sought to sever its damaging connection with those sordid and
unpopular plutocratic combinations which the nation as a whole justly
hated. Of great energy and attractive personality, and gifted with a
strong sense of the picturesque in politics, President Roosevelt opened
a vigorous campaign against those Trusts which had for so long backed
and largely controlled his party. The Republican Bosses were angry and
dismayed, but they dared not risk an open breach with a popular and
powerful President backed by the whole nation irrespective of party. So
complete was his victory that not only did he enjoy something like a
national triumph when submitting himself for re-election in 1904, but in
1908 was virtually able to nominate his successor.

Mr. Taft, however, though so nominated and professing to carry on the
Rooseveltian policy, did not carry it on to the satisfaction of its
originator. The ex-President roundly accused his successor of suffering
the party to slip back again into the pocket of the Trusts, and in 1912
offered himself once more to the Republican Party as a rival to his
successor. The Party Convention at San Francisco chose Taft by a narrow
majority. Something may be allowed for the undoubtedly prevalent