Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| opposed mob-rule with rifles in an Arizona mining dispute, and the editors of “organs” that had not yet got through denouncing him as a time-server because of his action in the anthracite coal strike were having a hard and bewildering time of it. How many of their readers they succeeded in mixing up beside themselves, I don’t know. Some, no doubt; for even so groundless a lie as this, that President Roosevelt had jumped Leonard Wood over four hundred and fifty veteran soldiers to a major-generalship because he was his friend, found believers when it was repeated day after day by the newspapers that cared even less for the four hundred and fifty veterans than they did for Leonard Wood, merely using him as a convenient screen from behind which to hit Roosevelt. Whereas, the truth is that General Wood was not “jumped” a single number by his friend, but came up for confirmation in the regular routine of promotion by seniority of rank, all the jumping having been done years before by President McKinley for cause, and heartily applauded by the American people. Of all this his defamers were perfectly well aware; and so they must have been |