THE EXPECTED THAT HAPPENED

sea and handle the rebellion as best it could; but that would have been the signal for a riot of bloodshed, the interruption of a transit as well guaranteed as the sovereignty of Colombia, and an added complication from French intervention. Finally, he might have recognized any government that was for the time in peaceable possession of the isthmus and in a position to transact business; and this is precisely what he did."

It was, according to this statement, the only direct course that offered, and the President followed it. There were no precedents, so he established one. Whether his conclusion was sober or ill digested may be open to dispute between honest men and patriots; it was at least absolutely characteristic. Anybody who knows the President must have foreseen just what would happen under such conditions as confronted him. Equally, no one who knows him need be told that he would not have lifted one of his fingers to bring the situation about. The end always in view was a canal through the isthmus; the revolution placed a fresh instrumentality next his hand, and he laid hold of it; where most others would have halted for caution's sake, he

"went ahead." Posterity will be able to study this episode in the light of its remoter results. But, in any event, the President's directness and candor leave no mysteries for the historian to uncover, and when his own generation passes judgment on his conduct for good or ill it will do so with the full knowledge of the facts.

Last summer a rumor reached this country that Mr. Magelssen, the vice-consul of the United States at Beirut, Syria, had been assassinated. Without waiting for particulars, which are proverbially long in coming when anything happens in the Turkish dominions, President Roosevelt ordered a squadron of American war-ships to the scene of the supposed crime. The suddenness of this move astonished every one. Representatives of European powers had been assaulted and murdered without so quick action on the part of the governments concerned. Abroad, the President's course was set down to his impulsiveness; at home, to his jingoism. The friends of peace were alarmed lest it should bring on war. Others condemned it as a bluster which he would not attempt with a strong power, but which he felt he could safely try on poor, broken-down Turkey.

WARNING TO TURKEY

No war followed. Fortunately, the original rumor was found to be almost groundless, so there would have been no cause for active hostilities. It is true, moreover, that the same tactics would not have been tried with England or France or Germany. But why? Because we could have got from either of those countries in three days' time fuller details of the incident than we could get in three months from Turkey. England or France or Germany, if found in the wrong, would have apologized at once and offered such other and more substantial reparation as the occasion seemed to call for. Turkey would have postponed as long as possible the investigation of the affair, and then the apology; and, when it came to money damages, she would have tried to make promises pass for piastres. We should have haggled and worried over this debt for five or six years, served a series of quasi-ultimata upon the Sultan, scaled down the principal a little when he drew a poor mouth, consented to waive interest charges in consideration of prompt settlement of the remainder, and finally received-as nearly nothing as he could squeeze or coddle us into accepting. Here was where the President's directness came into play again. He

knew that with such a debtor the creditor who acts quickly acts twice. The Turk was doubtless as much surprised as any of the disinterested outsiders when he discovered that the United States Government was not deliberating what to do, but had already done it-that its war-ships were where they could begin business without a moment's delay if a needless hitch occurred in the diplomatic correspondence.

Granted that no other government has acted with such startling suddenness in a similar case; it is also true that no other government could have done so. The Sultan knew, and all the rest of mankind knew, that the errand of that squadron was precisely what it purported to be to support the American minister in his demand for immediate satisfaction for the murder of the vice-consul, if it had occurred as reported; that behind this lay no ulterior purpose on the part of the United States to find an excuse for a war or the seizure of Turkish territory. The motives of any other strong power would have been under suspicion. Possibly the order of the war-ships to Beirut was a hasty step; of that, every critic must be his own judge. The best test of its wisdom, however, will be the comparative security of foreign lives

A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

and property in Turkey for the rest of the present administration.

President Roosevelt is not a genius. He is a man of no extraordinary natural capacity. As author, lawmaker, administrator, huntsman, athlete, soldier, what you will, his record contains nothing that might not have been accomplished by any man of sound physique and good intelligence. Such prestige as he enjoys above his fellows he has acquired partly by hard work and partly by using his mother-wit in his choice of tasks and his method of tackling them. He has simply taken up and completed what others have dropped in discouragement, sought better ways of doing what others have done before, labored always in the open, and remembered that the world moves.