So President Wilson, who hoped to
go down in history as the Peacemaker of the World War, and as the
organizer of an American Army, which, without shedding a drop of
blood, had brought peace about, was compelled to send the only
too willing American soldiers, by the hundred thousand and the
million, to join the Allied veterans in France.
Persons who do not penetrate beneath the flickering surfaces of
life, regard these last years of Roosevelt's as an anticlimax
which he passed in eclipse; as if they were the eight lean and
overshadowed years, following the splendid decade in which as
Governor and President he had the world's admiration and consent.
But this view wholly misconceives him. It takes a man who had
proved himself to be the greatest moral force in the public life
of the world, and drops him when he steps down from the seat of
power. Now, of course, Theodore Roosevelt did not require to walk
on a high platform or to sit in the equivalent of a throne in
order to be Roosevelt; and if we would read the true meaning of
his life we must understand, that the years which followed 1910
were the culmination and crown of all that went before.
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