Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| o’clock in the morning, they were there to meet him, and, hungry and shivering, drenched through and through by the rains and by the heavy dews, they drove him back. |
| “That is the test,” said their commander, speaking of it afterward: “to wake up men at three o’clock in the morning who have had nothing to eat, perhaps for days, and nothing to cover them; to wake them up suddenly to a big fight, and have them all run the right way; that is the test. There was n’t a man who went to the rear.” |
| The Rough-Riders were natural fighters, from the Colonel down. The science of war as they took it from him and practised it summed itself up in the simple formula to “strike hard, strike quick, and when in doubt go forward.” It was so Napoleon won his victories. But the Spaniards complained bitterly. The Americans did not fight according to the rules of war, they wailed. “They go forward when fired upon instead of falling back.” Accordingly they, the Spaniards, were compelled to run, which they did, denouncing the irregularity of the preceding. It was irregular. It was one of the several things in this extraordinary |