ent request of Colonel Roosevelt,
continued to act as Secretary of State (to which position he had
been appointed by President McKinley) until his death in 1905.
John Hay was the most accomplished diplomat, in my judgment, who
ever occupied the high position of Secretary of State.

I knew him from his boyhood, and knew his father and all the members
of his family. The Hon. Milton Hay, whom I have mentioned elsewhere,
and who was my law partner, was an uncle of John Hay. John was a
student in our law office in Springfield, and as a student of the
law he showed marked intellectual capacity and grasp. It was from
our law office that President Lincoln took him to act as one of
his private secretaries when he left Springfield for Washington to
be inaugurated as President of the United States, and Mr. Hay
continued to act as such until the President's death. He abandoned
the law as a profession and became finally the editor of _The New
York Tribune_. I probably knew him more intimately than any one
else in public life, and when Mr. McKinley became President I urged
him to appoint Hay as Ambassador to Great Britain. He served in
that position with great credit to himself and his country. He
was very popular with the members of the British Government, and
seemed to have more influence, and to be more able to accomplish
important results, than any of his predecessors in that office.
When it was rumored that there was to be a vacancy in the State
Department, by the retirement of Mr. Day, who was ambitious to go
on the Federal Bench, I wrote Mr. McKinley a letter, in which I
told him that he could find no better man to succeed Mr. Day as
Secretary than his Ambassador to Great Britain, John Hay. And he
was appointed.

As Secretary of State, Mr. Hay was successful in carrying to a
triumphant conclusion our Far Eastern diplomacy. For years the
situation in the Far East, and especially in China, had been delicate
and critical to an extreme. The acquisition of Hawaii and the
Philippines gave to the United States an extraordinary interest in
events occurring in the Orient. The United States stood for the
"open door" in China; and as the result of the diplomacy and
influence of Secretary Hay, freedom of commerce was secured, and
the division of China among the powers has been prevented. In our
relations with China, we have pursued a disinterested policy of
disavowal of territorial aggrandizement, and a disposition to
resp