XIV
THE GREAT DENIAL

Who would not be

A baffled Moses with the eyes to see

The far fruition of the Promised Land!

-C. R. R.

How can we manage with our Brother gone,

We smaller folk who looked to him to voice our voicelessness?

We do not call him to come back from that free plane where now he moves untrammeled

Un-beset by littleness, by envy of his power to read our hearts, And blazon forth the message that he found there,

So that those in highest place among us needs must hear And heed the will of us-the silent ones

Who work, and think, and feel, And are America.

-Gene Stanton Baker.

T HEODORE ROOSEVELT had been at home but a few short weeks when he realized fully that the policies so dear to his heart, and which he had left in what he considered absolutely safe-keeping, had not been carried out. Already, in Congress, a large number of the younger Republicans had combined together as what were then called "The Insurgents." In other words, the men who had fully believed in the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, who felt that no proper progress could be made toward better government of the United States unless those policies were followed, had met on all sides with great disappointment; and although -the ex-President had hoped to keep as absolutely "out of politics" as he had done in the African jungle, these disheartened and disappointed men, representing

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largely the younger and more ardent spirits of his country, turned to him for leadership. These reminiscences of my brother are not a biography, nor are they a political analysis of his public life, and I must therefore pass over many occurrences, the most important of which was his effort in the autumn of I9I0 to defeat the Barnes-Tammany combination in New York State by running Mr. Henry L. Stimson for governor, which finally resulted in the position he took in January, 1912.

During the eighteen months previous he had been contributing editor of The Outlook, and my letters from him in 1911 were few and far between, as we were frequently together. They were, as usual, full of deep interest in and affection for me and mine, and as at that time I began to publish verse, first anonymously and then under my own name, he gives me generous praise in a note dated August 21, 1911: "I saw B. the other day. He told me about the acceptance of your second poem, and spoke most strongly about it, and he, just like everyone else who has talked to me about the poem, dwelt upon its power and purpose. [The poem in question was "The Call of Brotherhood."] It is not merely pretty, pleasant, trivial, the kind of thing a boy or girl of twenty could have written; it is written about and for those who have toiled and suffered and worked, and who have known defeat and triumph; and it is written by one of them." In his busy life, called upon endlessly in every direction, he never failed to encourage any effort of mine worthy of encouragement, nor indeed to discourage any effort of mine of which he did not approve. "If convenient," he adds, "I will come in about five next Friday for an hour's talk with you and to see the other verses. I am sending you a zebra skin which I hope you will like."

On October 5, 1911, he writes, referring to a political situation in Herkimer County, where my son had run for state assemblyman, and where certain unsavory methods had been used to defeat him (later, through legal procedure, he was given his seat) : "Teddy has been aefrauded by as outrageous a piece

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