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A TRIAL OF COURAGE

States," one read, "New York, Albany, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware"; another, "England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Cork"; while still another duplicated this last except for substituting Belfast for Cork.

Yet two of the men who made Lincoln President of the Southern Confederacy, getting in by a close shave on their other qualifications, proved among the best officers on the force. Valuable as examinations are as means of weeding out the hopeless cases, and scrupulously as the law requiring them should be guarded against violation or neglect, Mr. Roosevelt's theory has always been that they are of more real importance to the public service in testing a candidate's intelligence than in discovering his erudition. No scholastic examination-no paper test of any sort-would have given his proper rank as a subject for promotion to one patrolman who was on the force when Mr. Roosevelt was Police Commissioner. One night, while on his uptown beat, this officer saw a man leap out of the window of a house and run down the street. He promptly gave chase. The man was a burglar, and armed. The policeman, however, dashed after him alone, and was overtaking him when they came to the

New York Central Railroad tunnel. Through one of the big openings in the top of the tunnel the burglar plunged. It was a long leap, and there was danger from the trains underneath, but a man whose liberty is at stake will take a heavy risk. The patrolman was following close. He was inspired by nothing but duty. His liberty was not at stake, and he could not have been punished or reprimanded for failing to risk his neck by jumping into the tunnel. Nevertheless, jump he did. The burglar had the wind knocked out of him by the jump. The patrolman, more skilful or lucky in jumping, got off scot-free, seized the prisoner, brought him in, and thereby earned his promotion.

The stand taken by so eminent a champion of the merit system against the conventional tests of fitness, where these tests were themselves unfit, naturally startled many good persons. Perhaps in the same category we might place the shock Mr. Roosevelt gave his more sedate associates in the civil-service-reform movement when he declared, in 1890, his belief that the corps of inspectors of customs on the Texas border might very well be recruited from the line-riders in the cattle country, by giving a large weight to athletic tests. To fill such a

ATHLETIC TESTS

position most acceptably a man ought to know brands, be a first-rate horseman, and a good pistol-shot with both hands. If he were thoroughly qualified in these particulars, knew enough of reading, writing, and arithmetic to make an intelligible report, and could furnish substantial recommendations as to character, Mr. Roosevelt thought that he ought to make a pretty good inspector.

The idea, at the time it was first broached, was made the subject for not a little censure as frivolous and undignified; its author was criticized for letting his flippant humor run away with his sense of his serious obligations as adviser to the President in setting the competitive merit system on its feet; and the newspaper paragraphers all over the country took merry shies at it. Yet after the lapse of only a few years we find an announcement published under the auspices of the Civil-Service Commission in a Southwestern journal, that "an examination will be held in Brownsville, Texas, for the position of mounted inspector in the customs district of Brazos de Santiago, with headquarters at Brownsville. The examination will be of a light educational character, but applicants will be required to file special vouchers

showing their knowledge of the Mexican language and of the country embraced in the district, as well as their ability to read brands and their experience in horsemanship and marksmanship."

CHAPTER IV

A FEW FRIENDS

Premature alarm of the conservatives-Senator Lodge's relations with the President-Other men who have helped—" My regiment"-Familiarity and faith-The case of Ben Daniels.

ON the day of President McKinley's death I met a number of gentlemen interested in the foreign relations of the United States. One question was on every lip: "Will not Senator Lodge be Secretary of State in President Roosevelt's Cabinet?"

They were evidently much alarmed. Mr. Lodge's premiership, they reasoned, would mean an aggressive foreign policy, the probability of another war before long with either Germany or England, and the acquisition of additional territory whenever and wherever possible by conquest. There was a general chorus of surprise when I reassured them by saying that Mr. Lodge would not become Secretary of State.

"You are perfectly certain of that?" they

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