Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
Page 291
| that a frank and honest man cannot in the long run be entangled by plotters, and his life is proving it every day. To say that the world can be run on such a plan is merely to own that the best there is in it, the cynics to the contrary notwithstanding, is man himself, which is true and also comforting in the midst of all the trickery contrived to disprove it. |
| It was the simplest thing in the world, when the nation was justly up in arms about the Kishineff atrocity, to do what Roosevelt did, and that was why he did it. Friends from all over wrote to me to warn the President not to get into trouble with Russia by mixing up in her domestic troubles. Mischief would be sure to come of it. The Czar would n’t receive the Jews’ petition, in the first place, and we would have to take a rebuke if we tried to send it. But the President did not need my advice or theirs. I laughed when I read in the paper how he cut that Gordian knot that was so full of evil omen: merely telegraphed the whole petition to the American minister in St. Petersburg, with orders to lay it before the Czar and ask whether he would receive it if transmitted in the usual way. To which the Czar returned |