and I am very peaceful naturally [laughter], if you
would undertake the administration of the Police Department you would
have plenty of fighting on hand before you would get through [renewed
laughter]; and if you are true to your blood you will try to do the best
you can, fighting or not fighting. You will make up your mind that you
will make mistakes, because you won't make anything if you don't make
some mistakes, and you will go forward according to your lights, utterly
heedless of what either politicians or newspapers may say, knowing that
if you act as you feel bound according to your conscience to act, you
will then at least have the right when you go out of office, however
soon [laughter], to feel that you go out without any regret, and to feel
that you have, according to your capacity, warred valiantly for what you
deemed to be the right. [Great applause.]

These, then, are the qualities that I should claim for the Hollander as
an American: In the first place, that he has cast himself without
reservation into the current of American life; that he is an American,
pure and simple, and nothing else. In the next place, that he works hand
in hand and shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Americans, without any
regard to differences of creed or to differences of race and religion,
if only they are good Americans. [Great applause.] In the third place,
that he is willing, when the need shall arise, to fight for his country;
and in the fourth place, and finally, that he recognizes that this is a
country of laws and not men, that it is his duty as an honest citizen to
uphold the laws, to strive for honesty, to strive for a decent
administration, and to do all that in him lies, by incessant, patient
work in our government, municipal or national, to bring about the day
when it shall be taken as a matter of course that every public official
is to execute a law honestly, and that no capacity in a public officer
shall atone if he is personally dishonest. [Tremendous applause.]

* * * * *

TRUE AMERICANISM AND EXPANSION

[Speech of Theodore Roosevelt at the nineteenth annual dinner of
the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1898.
The President, William B. Davenport, in calling upon Theodore
Roosevelt to speak to the toast, "The Day we Celebrate," said: "For
many years we have been celebrating this day and looking at
ourselves through Yank