“My friend Roosevelt, I am glad to welcome you, a most distinguished American. You are the first civilian who has ever reviewed German soldiers.”
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD
FAMILY GROUP, TAKEN WHILE ROOSEVELT WAS GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. THEODORE, JR. APPEARS IN THE BACKGROUND. BESIDE HIM IS ALICE (NOW MRS. NICHOLAS LONGWORTH). WITH MRS. ROOSEVELT ARE KERMIT AND ETHEL (NOW MRS. RICHARD DERBY). THE GOVERNOR HOLDS ARCHIE IN HIS ARMS. QUENTIN WAS BORN A FEW YEARS LATER ]
There is a phrase, attributed to Napoleon, to the effect that God fights on the side of the big battalions. There is a truth in the saying that applies to big men, just as well as to big armies.
Fate seemed to battle on the side of Theodore Roosevelt through every step of his political career, though a study of the man shows that by his superhuman energy he himself was almost always the creator and molder of the circumstances that seemed to advance him.
When Roosevelt, at twenty-three, determined to enter politics, the political cards were stacked against him.
When, moved by a desire to belong to the governing class instead of to the governed, he told his folks that he wanted to join the Republican Club as his first step in politics, he relates that they told him that he would meet the groom and the saloonkeeper there; that in addition politics were low and that for this reason no gentleman could afford to join with such men in ward affairs.
Roosevelt was as ready then with an answer as he was in later life. “If that is so,” he replied, according to his close friend, Jacob Riis, “the groom and the saloonkeeper are the governing class and you confess weakness. You have all the chances, the education, the position, and you let them rule you. They must be better men!” He went to the Republican Club, leaving his would-be advisers dolefully shaking their heads.
This opposition overcome, Roosevelt found another obstacle in his way. He had transferred his citizenship from Oyster Bay, where he cast his first vote, to the fashionable Murray Hill district. He therefore was handicapped by a “silk stocking” reputation. Immediately he went to work to show the politicians that, while he had associated with wearers of silk hose, he knew how to wear a slouch hat and how to get down to a shirt-sleeves basis if by doing so he could make those with whom he mingled feel easier. Joe Murray, Roosevelt’s first political sponsor, was won to him by the genuine spirit of democracy he saw in the young aspirant.