Republican managers in the State at large were resolved that he should not have it; for this reason, and in defiance of his protests, they persisted in pressing him for the vice-presidency. Never was honor forced upon an unwilling recipient as that was. He pleaded with his friends not to let him be sacrificed; he fought off every suggestion with declarations that he could not and would not accept the nomination; it was an open secret that neither Mr. McKinley nor the recognized leaders in the convention wished him on the ticket at the outset. But the New York delegation, for reasons of self-interest, were bound that he should be nominated; and delegation after delegation from the Mississippi Valley-where, report said, Bryanism had taken a fresh lease of life-seconded the efforts of New York on the ground that Roosevelt's was the only name they could conjure with in this emergency. He was elected to the office he did not wish, and had used every device except flight to avoid. Once more, though through a tragic and abhorrent medium, the hand of destiny performed its work, raising him to the highest place in a nation of eighty million people.

Call these reversals "luck," if you will; the

"GOING AHEAD"

fact remains that had Theodore Roosevelt, at any stage, been discouraged by a rebuff, he would never have reached his journey's end. It was by plunging ahead after every stumble, refusing to halt even long enough to count the stones in his path, and doing the best he could wherever he happened to be, that he gave opportunity its perfect play and lent himself to fortune. This is the epic value of his course through life. Its more commonplace interpretation was unconsciously stated by him in his testimony before the Commission to Investigate the Conduct of the War with Spain. He had been describing an incident which ended in his finding himself suddenly alone in the midst of a forward movement, with nobody from whom to take orders. At this point he paused.

"Well," said one of his inquisitors, who had been following the story with interest, "what then?"

"Why," answered the witness, "I have always found it a good rule, when in doubt what to do, to go ahead. I went ahead."

Within a few weeks we have witnessed an incident illustrative of this trait of directness in the President. I refer to the Panama episode.

It is not in my province to discuss this affair on either its moral or its legal side. Its only usefulness here is for the example it affords of the operation of a certain mental characteristic which has played a dominant part in shaping Mr. Roosevelt's career.

We may dismiss at the outset the idea that the secession of Panama was a surprise to the rest of the world. For years the tie between this state and the main body of the republic of Colombia had been drawn so tense as to be liable to snap at any moment. The failure of the canal negotiations between Washington and Bogota was simply the last straw thrown upon an already perilous burden of discontent. Any one could have forecast the result, though without being able to fix the precise date for the revolution. As long ago as the signing of the Hay-Herran treaty it was so well understood that either Colombia must ratify that instrument or Panama would take the canal business into her own hands, that the diplomatists in Washington even discussed the impracticability of the Bogota Government's sending reenforcements overland to its army on the isthmus. President Marroquin knew what the alternative was; so did Minister Herran. That is the

THE ISTHMIAN IMBROGLIO

reason both worked so hard to push the treaty through.

When their efforts failed the expected happened. Panama set up in business for herself. Nobody in the administration at Washington made any pretense of regretting this turn of affairs. There were no hypocritical tears, no perfunctory messages of condolence. On the contrary, the President lost no time in recognizing the new republic, which in its turn lost no time in entering upon treaty negotiations with the United States. Perhaps, as his critics assert, he showed indecent haste in warming over the funeral-baked meats to furnish forth the marriage tables. Be that as it may, what he did he did without concealment, without hesitancy, without quibbling, without apology. There was no secret plotting, no clandestine correspondence for his enemies to bring to light later. He was as little concerned in the revolution as disconcerted by it. As President he had always refused to discuss the likelihood of its occurrence; as a man, in the freedom of intercourse with his personal friends, he had never ignored the possibility that it would come. Every act of his in other emergencies had made it plain in advance how he would act in this one.

"If the Colombian Government had held its own on the isthmus," said a member of the administration to me after the overturn, "and the revolutionists had made the disorder, that disorder would have been suppressed forcibly and at once by the United States. As the Colombian army disintegrated, however, and the part that remained loyal to the Bogota Government embarked for home without so much as an exchange of shots, one of four courses lay open to the President. He might have done nothing, let events drift till our Congress had convened in special session, and then referred the whole subject to that body in a message; that would have satisfied the demands of decorum, but it would also have shifted responsibility from his shoulders to others. He might have put down the rebellion and restored to Colombia the authority her representatives had tamely surrendered; that course would have fulfilled the letter of the guaranty in the treaty of 1846, but would have been open to the same line of attack as the retention of the Philippines-the maintenance by force of a government without the consent of the governed. He might have taken our war-ships out of isthmian waters, and left the Bogota Government to send in its troops by