did, to his habit of dropping the day's cares with the day itself and carrying no troubles to bed with him. Mr. Roosevelt gets too healthily tired by bedtime to have his rest broken, but the secret of his thriving so well under his many burdens is his refusal to let anything whatever interfere with his daily exercise in the open air. No affair of state, no social entertainment, no phase of the weather has power to postpone this part of the President's program of duty.

For a duty he thinks it, quite as important as the duty of studying out economic problems and satisfying politicians. He feels that his sound physique is one of the assets on which his fellow citizens banked when they bespoke his services, and that to let it deteriorate would be to rob them of their dues to that extent. Moreover, hunting big game, hard riding, bouts with the gloves and foils, twenty-mile tramps over rough roads, scaling mountain crags, polo, football, wrestling, are to the individual, in Mr. Roosevelt's view, what occasional stimulation of the war spirit is to the nation. They harden his muscles, improve his wind and steady his nerves. They bring him face to face with danger till he learns to despise it. They sharpen his senses. They

PERPETUAL READINESS

make him resourceful almost in spite of himself. They quicken his wit and strengthen his will. They teach him self-care, self-control, self-confidence. And no man knows, till he has been actually tested, how he would act in emergencies.

It is on his belief in perpetual readinessnot on any liking for the attitude of the bully -that Mr. Roosevelt founds his assurance that manly sports, and especially sports involving competition and struggle, are an essential part of every man's training for life. What is true of the individual he regards as true of the nation. No people, he believes, ever kept themselves in condition for doing their best work in the world by going out of their way to avoid trouble which was bound to come sooner or later. Among schoolboys the most efficient peacemaker is he who first by gentle words strives to soothe the passions of two combatants, but, if they do not yield, is able to seize both by the hair and knock their heads together till they consent to listen to reason.

Mr. Roosevelt's anxiety for intervention in Cuba, even at the cost of a war, was founded on his belief that Spain would never compose the troubles there, and that as long as she re

tained her hold on the island we should continue to have almost within gunshot of our southern coast corrupt government, official cruelty, revolts, bloodshed, a birthplace of plagues and a refuge for runaway criminals. It was too much like living next door to a pesthouse; and if the authors of the nuisance had shown by all their past history an unwillingness to change their ways except under compulsion, he thought that the sooner the compulsion were applied the better.

Having made up his mind that Spain, with her duelist's sense of honor, would not yield without a fight, he was impatient for the consummation. One Sunday morning in March, 1898, we were sitting in his library discussing the significance of the news that Cervera's squadron was about to sail for Cuba, when he suddenly rose and brought his two hands together with a resounding clap.

"If I could do what I pleased," he exclaimed, "I would send Spain notice to-day that we should consider her despatch of that squadron a hostile act. Then, if she didn't heed the warning, she would have to take the consequences."

"You are sure," I asked, "that it is with un