nwhile, as has been said, one result has been to weaken Mr.
Roosevelt's personal influence for good. I have been assured by men of
undoubted truthfulness, who are at the head of large financial
interests, that he has, in the last few years, become as tricky and
unscrupulous in his political methods as the oldest political
campaigner; a statement which I believe to be entirely mistaken.
"Practical politics," said Mr. Roosevelt once, "is not dirty politics.
On the contrary in the long run the politics of fraud and treachery is
unpractical politics, and the most practical of all politicians is the
one who is clean and decent and upright." There is no evidence which I
have been able to find that Mr. Roosevelt does not now believe this as
thoroughly and act upon it as consistently as when he first entered the
New York State Legislature.

A more reasonable accusation against him, which is made by many of his
best friends, is that his imperious will and his confidence in his own
opinions make him at times unjust and intolerant in his judgment of
others. There have been occasions when he has seemed over-ready to
accuse others of bad faith without other ground than his own opinion or
the recollection of what has occurred at an interview. He may have been
right; but it is certain that he has alienated the friendship of not a
few good men by the vehemence and positiveness with which he has
asserted his views. And anything, independent of all questions of party,
which weakens his influence is, for the country's sake, a thing to be
deplored.

* * * * *

The negro question has contributed not a little to Mr. Roosevelt's
difficulties, as it has to the misunderstanding of the American people
in England. I know intelligent Englishmen who have visited the United
States and honestly believe that in the not very distant future the
country will again be torn with civil war, a war of black against white,
which will imperil the permanence of the Republic no less seriously than
did the former struggle. I do not think that the apprehension is shared
by many intelligent Americans.

It is perhaps inevitable that Americans should frequently be irritated
by the tone of the comments in English papers on the lynchings of
negroes which occur in the South. Some of these incidents are barbarous
and disgraceful beyond any possibility of palliation, but it is certain
that if Englishmen understood the conditions in the So