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William McKinley
The circumstances attending the passing
of our President are even more perverse than pitiful. Grieve as
we must for the man, we are appalled more by the tragedy’s cruel
lack of logic. There have been times in our history when the assassination
of a President might have been apprehended. And we have had Presidents
whose personalities were calculated at least not to disarm the intending
assassin. But this time and this man were so wholly what times and
men should be that no fear was left. No one could have looked for
such a deed at such a time; and, even had the time been less propitious,
no one could have dreamed that a man so lovable as William McKinley
would have become an assassin’s victim. Probably no other President
has been warmly liked by so many of the people. There have been
others as lovable, but it was William McKinley’s fortune to serve
during an epoch when the people were to become more nearly united
than ever before, and when those who disagreed most widely with
him in matters political could and did feel a genuine affection
for him. That in a time of peace and unmatched prosperity this most
kindly and winning of men should meet a fate that sometimes overtakes
tyrants when their tyranny has reduced a people to desperation—this
has made the thing hideously incongruous. We shall fail to comprehend
how the slayer could do his deed; but at least we may see that he
is as alien to our humanity as he was to our institutions, and that
he need not be reckoned one of us. A little relief is in that.
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The secret of McKinley’s wide popularity,
of the affection felt for him by all classes of men, undoubtedly
lay in the fact that he achieved with a finished grace the best
current ideals of citizenship. In his private life not less than
in his public he did the things which we agree that men should most
strive to do. He showed himself to be really the man which most
men try, or believe they ought to try, to be. This approximation
of the great average ideals of domestic and civic virtue made him
understanded of the people. Instinctively they were companionable
with him, recognizing him as only another of themselves. What has
occurred is as if a bit of the national life-blood had been drawn
for analysis, to show us that we are still sound in our ideals and
still safely steady in our devotion to them.
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So apparently commonplace were the
virtues of the man, so unassumingly flawless his democracy, so little
was he badged with the conventional markings of greatness, that
time must go before we sense his worth. We do not yet realize how
admirable a President he made, nor how greatly we shall profit by
his labors. When the history of the past three years has gone deeper
into perspective we shall know better both the difficulties he had
to meet and the genius he displayed in their handling. His country
was to have a second birth and he was required to be godfather and
guardian in a time that tried the best statesmanship. Almost from
the day of his first inauguration a deadly strain was put upon him
which was not to end while he lived; though, for the pleasanter
memory of him, it had lightened appreciably in his later months.
This strain he not only bore with a spirit unbroken, but he showed
under it a quality of statesmanship so wise that the whole world
has come honestly to admire it. Nor is that the most of the man.
For this crushing, killing succession of cares, that would have
vexed and crabbed the minds of most executives, seemed in his case
to stimulate and make the mind flexible, so that he actually grew
at an age when most men have long lost the way of growth. That he
was at the last a broader, bigger man than when he took office is
not the least of the tributes to be paid him.
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To his country and to his party the
name of William McKinley should long be an inspiration to the best
endeavor. It should bring to every public man, great or small, a
new sense of his responsibility; and to every private citizen a
new and wholesome thrill of pride in his country,—and in himself
as a part of the country that can grow such men.
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