This slight outline, which every reader can complete for himself,
will serve to show what sort of a world, especially what sort of
an American world, confronted Roosevelt when he took the reins of
government. His task was stupendous, the problems he had to solve
were baffling. Other public men of the time saw its portents, but
he alone seems to have felt that it was his duty to strain every
nerve to avert the impending disaster. And he alone, as it seems
to me, understood the best means to take.

Honesty, Justice, Reason, were not to him mere words to decorate
sonorous messages or to catch and placate the hearers of his
passionate speeches; they were the most real of all realities,
moral agents to be used to clear away the deadlock into which
Civilization was settling.



CHAPTER XI. ROOSEVELT'S FOREIGN POLICY

In taking the oath of office at Buffalo, Roosevelt promised to
continue President McKinley's policies. And this he set about
doing loyally. He retained McKinley's Cabinet,* who were working
out the adjustments already agreed upon. McKinley was probably
the best-natured President who ever occupied the White House. He
instinctively shrank from hurting anybody's feelings. Persons who
went to see him in dudgeon, to complain against some act which
displeased them, found him "a bower of roses," too sweet and soft
to be treated harshly. He could say "no" to applicants for office
so gently that they felt no resentment. For twenty years he had
advocated a protective tariff so mellifluously, and he believed