The Romanes lecture at Oxford University was the last of Mr.
Roosevelt's transatlantic speeches. I can think of no greater
intellectual honor that an English-speaking man can receive than to
have conferred upon him by the queen of all universities, the highest
honorary degree in her power to give, and in addition, to be invited
to address the dignitaries and dons and doctors of that university as
a scholar speaking to scholars. There is no American university man
who may not feel entirely satisfied with the way in which the American
university graduate stood the Oxford test on that occasion. He took in
good part the jokes and pleasantries pronounced in Latin by the
Chancellor, Lord Curzon; but after the ceremonies of initiation were
finished, after the beadles had, in response to the order of the
Chancellor, conducted "_Doctorem Honorabilem ad Pulpitum_," and after
the Chancellor had, this time in very direct and beautiful English,
welcomed him to membership in the University, he delivered an address,
the serious scholarship of which held the attention of those who heard
it and arrested the attention of many thousands of others who received
the lecture through the printed page.

The foregoing review of the chief public addresses which Mr. Roosevelt
made during his foreign journey, I think justifies the assertion that,
for variety of subject, variety of occasion, and variety of the fields
of thought and action upon which his speeches had a direct and
manifest influence, he is entitled to be regarded as a public orator
of remarkable distinction and power.

By way of explanation it may perhaps be permissible to add that I met
Mr. Roosevelt in Khartum on March 14, 1910, and travelled with him
through the Sudan, Egypt, the continent of Europe and England, to New
York; I heard all his important speeches, and most of the occasional