Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials — Key Ideas to Explore

controversy in true Roosevelt fashion. The same day Mr. Nelson sent this telegram to the President:

It is quite worth while to have a real President of the United States.

The next day this reply came from the President:

It is even better worth while to have a real editor of just the right kind of paper.

The Star supported Taft in the campaign of 1908 because it had faith that he would carry out the Roosevelt policies. Events early in the Taft Administration weakened that faith; the Winona speech withered it. Mr. Nelson had had no correspondence with Colonel Roosevelt while he was hunting in Africa. Two letters came from the ex-President, one March 12, 1910, from the White Nile saying he expected to return in June; another from Porto Maurizio, a month later, saying, “I know you will understand how delicate my position is,” and asking for an early conference with Mr. Nelson on his return to this country. Mr. Nelson’s final, open break with President Taft was “more in sorrow than in anger”; there was never bitterness of feeling, solely regret at a mistake in believing Mr. Taft stood for principles which events early in his administration showed convincingly he did not stand for.

Writing to Colonel Roosevelt, in 1910, after his return from Africa, Mr. Nelson referred to the Winona speech and the Ballinger case, concluding: “I have wondered whether sooner or later there would not have to be a new party of the Square Deal.”

The succeeding two years there were frequent conferences and interchange of letters between Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Nelson. The latter had absolute confidence and abiding faith in Roosevelt. Late in 1910 the Colonel’s enemies were seeking to torment him from many angles. Mr. Nelson wrote him:

It has occurred to me that the opposition will constantly be prodding you and lying about you with the evident purpose of getting you angry and so putting you to a disadvantage. That is the only hope on earth they have of stopping you.

Your comment on Wm. Barnes was fine. It recalled to me an incident connected with Governor Tilden, who was the wisest politician I ever knew. As a young man I was his manager in Indiana. After the defeat of Lucius Robinson, whom he was backing for Governor of New York, I went East at his invitation to confer with him. He asked me to see Kelly, Clarkson, Potter, Dorsheimer, and Sam Cox, and some of the other men who had been fighting him, to get their views. “What shall I tell them about your position if they ask me?” I said. “Oh, tell them,” he said, “that I am very amiable.” In my adventures since that time I have often had occasion to remember that as sound advice. Amiability is a great weapon at times.

But my point is that you never need to defend yourself at all. The people will take care of your defense. Besides, it is always a bad policy, in my opinion, to get to talking about the past. You are a Progressive. Your nose is to the front. The past doesn’t interest you. So I hope you will ignore the critics, no matter how exasperating they may be. And if you can’t ignore them, laugh at them!

To this the Colonel replied:

I guess you are right; but it does make me flame with indignation when men who pretend to be especially the custodians of morals, and who sit in judgment from an Olympian height of virtue on the deeds of other men, themselves offend in a way that puts them on a level with the most corrupt scoundrel in a city government....

But this does not alter the fact that, as you say, my business is to pay no heed to the slanders of the past, but to keep my face steadily turned toward the future. Here in New York the outlook is rather dark. There are a great multitude of men, some of them nominally respectable, but timid or misled, who do certainly, although rather feebly, object to the domination of Barnes and his fellow bosses; but who do sincerely, but rather feebly, prefer clean politics to corrupt politics; but who, nevertheless, dread any interference with what they regard as the rights of big business, any assault on what I regard as an improperly arranged tariff, any effort to work for the betterment of social conditions in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln; who regard all assaults and efforts of this nature as being worse than the rule of small bosses and the petty corruption of local politicians.