man. It is surely the height of tactfulness to recognize that the British people are sane enough and sincere enough to like being told the truth. His speech is one of the greatest compliments ever paid to a people by a statesman of another country.

Mr. Roosevelt has made exactly the kind of speech we expected him to make a speech strong, clear, fearless. He has told us something useful and practical, and has not lost himself in abstractions and platitudes. . . . The business of a trustee is not to do what the subject of the trust likes or thinks he likes, but to do, however much he may grumble, what is in his truest and best interests. Unless a trustee is willing to do that, and does not trouble about abuse, ingratitude, and accusations of selfishness, he had better give up his trust altogether.

We thank Mr. Roosevelt once again for giving us so useful a reminder of our duty in this respect.

These notes of approval were repeated in a great number of letters which Mr. Roosevelt received from men and women in all walks of life, men in distinguished official position and 66 men in the street." There were some abusive letters, chiefly anonymous, but the general tone of this correspondence is fairly illustrated by the following:

Allow me, an old colonist in his eighty-fourth year, to thank you most heartily for your manly address at the Guildhall and for your life-work in the cause of humanity. If I ever come to the great Republic,

I shall do myself the honor of seeking an audience of your Excellency. I may do so on my one hundredth birthday! With best wishes and profound respect.

The envelope of this letter was addressed to "His Excellency Govern-or-go' Roosevelt." That the Daily Telegraph and that the "man in the street" should independently seize upon this salient point of the address-the "governor-go" theory-is significant.

American readers are sufficiently familiar with Mr. Roosevelt's principles regarding protectorate or colonial government; any elaborate explanation or exposition of his views is unnecessary. But it may be well to repeat that he has over and over again said that all subject peoples, whether in colonies, protectorates, or insular possessions like the Philippines and Porto Rico, should be governed for their own benefit and development and should never be exploited for the mere profit of the controlling powers. It may be well, too, to add Mr. Roosevelt's own explanation of his criticism of sentimentality. "Weakness, timidity, and sentimentality," he said in the Guildhall address," many cause even more far-reaching harm than violence and injustice. Of all broken reeds sentimentality is the most broken reed on which righteousness can lean." Referring to these phrases, a correspondent a day or two after the

speech asked if the word "sentiment" might not be substituted for the word "sentimentality." Mr. Roosevelt wrote the following letter in reply:

DEAR SIR: I regard sentiment as the exact antithesis of sentimentality, and to substitute "sentiment" for "sentimentality" in my speech would directly invert its meaning. I abhor sentimentality, and, on the other hand, I think no man is worth his salt who is not profoundly influenced by sentiment, and who does not shape his life in accordance with a high ideal.

Faithfully yours,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

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 addresses; much of the voluminous correspondence which the speeches gave rise to passed through my hands; and I talked with many men, both in public and private life, in the various

countries through which the journey was taken about the addresses themselves and their effect upon world-politics. If there is a failure in these pages to give an intelligent or an adequate impression of the oratorial features of Mr. Roosevelt's African and European journey, it is not because there was any lack of opportunity to observe or learn the facts.

LAWRENCE F. ABBOTT.