Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| eloquence exhorted his audience to “Follow ma colonel! follow ma colonel! and he will lead you, as he led us, like lambs to the slaughter!” I think not unlikely there mingled with the cheers and the laughter the secret hope in the breasts of some that it might be so. It was but natural. They knew right well, the politicians did, how much they had to expect from him; it was but a lean two years they were looking forward to with Roosevelt as Governor. They might have comforted themselves in defeat by the thought that he was killed and out of the way at last. Who knows? |
| When I speak of politicians here, I am thinking of the spoilsmen who played the game for keeps. They ran the machine, and they took him, with their eyes open, to save it. And then we saw the curious sight of the good-government forces, his natural allies, who were largely what they were because of the example he had all along consistently set, sulking disconsolate because he, who had always been a loyal party man without ever surrendering his conscience to his partisanship, went with his party; instead of rejoicing, as they might well have done, that the party had been forced |