certain others by the demagogue. The reactionary is always
strongly for the rights of property; so am I . . . . I will not
be driven away from championship of the rights of property upon
which all our civilization rests because they happen to be
championed by people who champion furthermore the abuses of
wealth . . . . Most demagogues advocate some excellent popular
principles, and nothing could be more foolish than for decent men
to permit themselves to be put into an attitude of ignorant and
perverse opposition to all reforms demanded in the name of the
people because it happens that some of them are demanded by
demagogues.

Such an attitude on the part of a man like Roosevelt could not
fail to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and assailed. Toward
the end of his Presidential career, when he was attacking with
peculiar vigor the "malefactors of great wealth" whom the
Government had found it necessary to punish for their predatory
acts in corporate guise, it was gently intimated by certain
defenders of privilege that he was insane. At other times, when
he was insisting upon justice even to men who had achieved
material success, he was placed by the more rabid of the radical
opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the
golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way
exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn
from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him
into the arms of the other.

The best evidence of the soundness of the strategy with which he
assailed the enemies of the common good, with whirling war-club
but with scrupulous observance of the demands of justice and fair