[untitled]
WHAT SORT OF PRESIDENT WILL HE MAKE? Every one is
asking that question, many trustingly, many hopefully, a few doubtfully.
It is an obvious truth that the responsibility of the Presidency
induces sobriety of thought and conservatism of action. In the executive
offices he has held in the past, Mr. Roosevelt has shown no lack
of moderation. He is by nature a soldier, with unconcealed admiration
for the pomp and circumstance of war, but perhaps we all have that
feeling in our hearts. But, politically, there is not a trace of
radicalism in his nature. He might be called a conservative with
a radical way of putting it. He has been an incessant student of
our national history, and especially of the history of the West.
He is not in any sense a political experimentalist. Many think he
has given too little attention to the crowding social questions
of the hour. He believes in the law—or rather the laws—above everything,
and he is impatient of philosophers who suggest that ours are not
the best possible laws of the best possible country of the pleasantest
world.
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