Part 14

I want to say just one word suggested by the fact that Judge Rose was President of the American Bar Association and stands to-day as one of that group of eminent American citizens, eminent for their services to the whole country, whom we know as the leaders of the American bar. I want to speak as a layman about certain services that the learned profession, of which Judge Rose is so eminent a member, can render to an even greater degree than they now render to the American people. I know that there is a good deal of distrust, rightly, for the layman who speaks of law or of theology. But I am going to say just a few words on a matter that concerns good citizenship, in which the layman has a right to expect leadership both from lawyer and from theologian. Very naturally in any profession there come to be men who treat the profession as an end instead of as a means (I am not now speaking from the standpoint of the individual, but from the standpoint of the Nation, of the State). Just as we have a right to judge the man of religious profession by the output that comes as a result of that profession, so we have a right to expect from the great profession of the law, from that which is perhaps the leading among the liberal lay professions, a peculiar quantity and quality of service to the public. There are certain abuses in connection with our whole system of law to-day which the laymen can not remedy, but which I earnestly hope that the men of the law will themselves remedy. I speak merely to my fellow laymen and invite correction. I am speaking before Gamaliel, and shall expect correction from Gamaliel if I go wrong. But our law comes down from the time when the state, the government, was all-powerful as compared to the individual; when the government acted as a plaintiff and it was necessary that every possible safeguard should be thrown around the defendant, that he should be given every chance, and the fear of injustice was a synonym for fear of injustice to the private citizen against whom the state proceeded. It comes from a time, if my memory of history is right, when about five per cent of any given number of children born in England were punished by hanging, when people were hanged for the most trivial offences, and when all the machinery of the law was in the hands of the government and directed against the individual; so that the one thing that had to be done was to protect the individual. Circumstances in the past three or four centuries have wholly changed; but the law has not changed nearly as rapidly or completely. At present there is not the slightest question as to the individual’s rights being preserved. They are amply guarded. Of course there is the possibility of error in every human affair; but speaking generally, the man accused of criminal wrong, especially the man accused of criminal wrong against the public, has every possible chance secured him; but the public has by no means the chance it ought to have. No greater service is being rendered the American public to-day than by those members of the legal profession whose great good fortune it has been to stand forth as prominently identified with the prosecution of crimes against the state. When I say crimes against the state I not only refer to crimes like those of bribery and corruption committed by any public official, but I mean such a crime as murder, as any similar hideous misdeed, where the offence is not merely against the individual, but against the entire community. It is right to remember the interests of the individual, but it is right also to remember the interests of that great mass of individuals embodied in the public, in the government. It is unfortunate that we have permitted practices that were necessary three hundred years ago for the protection of innocent people to be elaborated, to be perverted, so that they become a means for allowing criminals to escape the punishment of their criminality. We urgently need in this country methods for expediting punishment, methods for doing away with delay, methods which will secure to the public an even chance with the criminal. I do not ask any more; if we can get an average of just fifty per cent of the criminals we will be pretty nearly all right; for that will give the public an even chance with the criminal whose offence is against the public. At present the right of appeal is in certain cases so abused as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to ultimately punish a man sufficiently rich or sufficiently influential to command really good legal talent. I am speaking of what I know, for I am speaking with very keenly in my mind experiences during the past three years in trying to get at certain public offenders who have been indicted, and some of whom it has been almost impossible to get into the jurisdiction of the courts in Washington in order to try them. There are others whose cases are still on appeal who profit by interminable delays. I feel that the man who offends against the state occupies a position rather worse than that of any other criminal, from the very fact that he is a man who attacks everybody instead of just one person, so that it is not the special business of any one to get at him. In consequence, if he can keep the forces of justice at bay long enough—if he can secure one or two mistrials—gradually the popular interest evaporates and the criminal gets off.

As the Judge has so well said, the minute a man becomes President he ceases being the President of a party and is the President of every man, woman, and child within the confines of the Nation. But I permit myself one particular bit of party discrimination. I am just a trifle more intent on punishing the Republican offender than the Democrat; because he is my own scoundrel, and I feel a certain sense of responsibility for him, and I intend to discharge that responsibility if I can. Of course, as we all know, offences must come; but I have endeavored to carry out the Scriptural injunction and to make it a matter of woe unto him by whom they come. I am happy to say that we have a reasonable proportion of the offenders in question with stripes on; but not up to the fifty per cent average that I would like; and I want to go a little further than we have yet gone.

If the law is reasonably speedy and reasonably sure it takes away one great excuse for lawlessness. If some horrible crime is committed and the people feel that under the best circumstances there will be an indefinite delay in the punishment of the criminal, and that the punishment will be uncertain even when the time for administering it comes, then a premium is put upon that kind of law-breaking which more than any other is a menace to the law. Long delays of justice, abuses of the pardoning power, the sluggishness with which either court or attorney moves; all of those things count in bringing about the condition of affairs which produces lynch law.

Now, a layman can do but little more than to give utterance to the feeling that so many laymen have. I earnestly hope that the bench and the bar of the United States will in all proper ways see to it that the customs—for some of these things of which I complain are merely customs and not laws—inherited from the past when conditions were totally different, shall not be perverted so as to wrong the whole public by giving the criminal an advantage to which he is not entitled, and that some substantial improvement shall be made in the direction of securing greater expedition and greater certainty in the administration of justice, and especially in the administration of criminal justice.

TO A DELEGATION OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, AT NEW ORLEANS, LA., OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Comrades_:

I want to thank you for coming here to greet me. I can not say how much it means to me to be greeted as I have been greeted by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray in this trip through the Southland. At Little Rock my escort was composed of Union and Confederate soldiers, riding side by side, in pairs.

As I said at Richmond, second only to the man who wore the blue, I hold the man who wore the gray, and we should indeed consider ourselves fortunate as a Nation that, forty years after the Civil War, we find all of our people can challenge as the possession of all every memory of valor left by both sides in the great contest. Now we know but one rivalry—the rivalry to see which of us can do most for the flag of a united country.

TO A DELEGATION OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS, AT NEW ORLEANS, LA., OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Gentlemen: Rather, if you will allow one who took part in a very small war to call you so, Comrades_:

I accept your gift with pleasure. Although sometimes we have difficulties in this country that we have to battle against, and sometimes things that we are not quite satisfied with, yet we are pretty good people. I have felt this almost as never before during the past weeks. Now think what it means in a Nation for the President of that Nation, forty years after one of the greatest wars of all time, to be able to come and speak as I spoke in the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and to feel that I was addressing a people as loyal to the flag of our reunited country as can be found in this broad land of ours.

I passed in the shadow of the monument of Admiral Semmes in Mobile—under whom one of my uncles fired the last gun that was discharged from the “Alabama,” which another uncle built. The daughter of that admiral is now the wife of our Governor in the Philippines.

Gentlemen, this is an honor I appreciate. I thank you not only for the gift and the words which accompany it, but for the spirit which lies behind the words.

AT THE LUNCHEON, NEW ORLEANS, LA., OCTOBER 26, 1905

_Governor; Mr. Mayor; and You, My Hosts_:

Let me, at the outset, express through you my profound gratitude, my deeply moved appreciation of the way in which the people of New Orleans and of Louisiana have greeted me to-day. Gentlemen, no President of the United States could be greeted as I have been greeted to-day and not go back to take up the duties of his office with a stronger and more earnest purpose to try faithfully to represent all the people whom he serves. And, Governor, as you have so well said, when a man is President, when he holds any public office, questions of a merely partisan character sink into absolute insignificance compared with the mighty questions upon which all good Americans should be united.

And now, gentlemen, as you have greeted me so well, you have given me the opportunity to indulge myself in a luxury. There have been moments in the past when I was afraid of saying how well I thought of the Senators and Representatives in the National Congress from Louisiana for fear I might damage them! I did not know but that, may be, the best service I could do them was to keep still about my feeling for them. Now, I am emboldened by your generous kindness and confidence to say that it has been indeed a pleasure to deal with Louisiana’s representatives in the Senate and in the Lower House of Congress, because whenever I had to do with a great question of national importance I could go to them, convinced that if I could show them that it was really for the good of the Nation they would stand for it. That is all I ask of any man. I do not want any Senator or any Congressman to vote for anything I favor just because I favor it; but I do not want him to vote against it just because I favor it. There have been certain very worthy men in both Houses of Congress among the colleagues of the Louisiana representatives who instantly strove to prevent the realization of their most cherished projects as soon as I strove to bring it about! Now, from the representatives of Louisiana I was sure of support in such matters, whether it was a question of building up and keeping at a high point of efficiency the United States Navy, or whether it was a question of building the Panama Canal. And mind you, gentlemen, the two things go together. One thing that, as President of this country, I will not do, is to make a bluff that I can not make good. I do not intend, on behalf of the Nation, to take any position until I have carefully thought out whether that position will be advantageous to the Nation, but if I take it I am going to keep it, and I am going to keep it no matter what outsider goes the other way. And I am sure that you, gentlemen, know that it has been an utter mistake to think of me as a man desirous of seeing this Nation quarrelsome; this Nation eager to get into trouble. I have no respect either for the nation or for the individual that brawls, that invites trouble. I want to see this Nation do as the individual men in the Nation, who respect themselves, should do, that is be scrupulously regardful of the rights of others and honestly endeavor to avoid all cause of difficulty with any one. But I want, on behalf of this Nation, the peace that comes, not to the coward who cringes for it, but to the just man armed who asks it as a right.

Listening to the greeting of the Governor and the Mayor this afternoon, I felt at once very proud and very humble. I have been greeted with words far above my worth, far above what is merited by what I have done. (Cries of “No, No!”) I did not say that for the purpose of asking your dissent from it. I do not say anything unless I mean it, and I do not say anything to flatter any audience or speak well of them unless I think well of them, and would speak well of them anywhere.

I come down to see you of this State and city with a heart full of gratitude to you for having displayed, through the trials of the hard summer that has passed, those qualities of heroism which we like to think of as distinctly American. Gentlemen, in coming among you this afternoon, I have the feeling of a man who, having been at headquarters, but not in action, goes to see a regiment that has been in action. I know that you understand, gentlemen, that the Governor and Mayor, at any time during the past summer, had but to request my presence, and I would have come down here at once, at any time when I could have been of the slightest assistance to you in the magnificent struggle you were waging. I wish to express the profound appreciation and gratitude of all Americans toward you, our fellow-Americans, who have borne the heat and burden of the contest during the long day that is now passing. In actual war there can be no greater or more effective heroism than was shown by those who stayed here at their posts; by those who, being away, came back; and by those who, having planned to go away, instantly gave up going away and stayed here to aid in the fight for their fellows in distress. You have had your martyrs, among them my lamented friend, Archbishop Chappelle; but you have also your proud memories of service rendered, and the thrill that comes with the victory you have already won. I have been both amused and irritated at the criticisms sometimes made on you, by people who lived in other communities that were not in danger. Among the younger men here are some who when younger still have played football, and they will remember how very much easier it was to play the game from the side lines than on the field. Now, Louisiana and New Orleans, this summer, did what, so far as I remember, has never before been done in the case of a similar epidemic of yellow fever in the United States. They took hold of it after it had started and when it had got well under way, and they controlled and conquered it without waiting for the frost to come. The highest gratitude is due to the officials of the State, to the officials of the city, and to the private individuals, clergymen, educators, philanthropists, and business men, who have spent their time and money and risked their lives freely in organizing and achieving success. It was the greatest privilege to me to contribute what I was able to the work. Mr. Mayor, Governor, you can hardly realize the pleasure I felt when a request was made upon me that gave me the chance of doing something for you; and I am glad to find how well you think of the work that was done by the United States Public Health and Marine Hospital Service under Dr. White. It gives me pleasure now to announce that in response to the request of the Governor and Mayor I have told them that Dr. White shall be detailed down here just as long as his services are needed. Now, just one word of warning to you, Dr. White. We have excellent Scriptural authority for the statement that it is well to beware when all men speak well of you; because it is an unfortunate feature of human nature that when they have appreciated a man up to the very last limit, they tend to go a little bit the other way, after a while. The time when one is praised very much is the time one should walk guardedly and carefully and work with all one’s soul and strength. Gentlemen, that applies to Presidents quite as much as to doctors!

The Governor spoke of the Panama Canal. It is a very big work, and it is only a very big nation that can do that kind of work. I expect soon to have a report from the engineers as to the exact shape the work will take. I will then be able to make more definite forecasts as to the time, but of this I can assure you, the work will be done well, it will be done as speedily as possible, and it will absolutely and surely be done.

One more point: New Orleans and Louisiana are vitally interested in the levee system. The Mississippi, which flows through the State, drains portions of twenty odd other States, and the control of that river must, in my opinion, be, in good part, a national object. The National Government now does something toward the erection and care of the levees. In my judgment it should do not only more, but very much more.

I was greeted to-day by your school-children, clustered around the monument erected to that pure and upright man and mighty General, Robert E. Lee; and as we drove away from the square in which his statue stands we passed by a house in this old Confederate city in which there was prominently displayed a picture of Abraham Lincoln, and underneath it the words, “With malice toward none, with charity toward all.” I have been greeted by a special guard of honor, composed of men who, in the great war, wore the Confederate uniform. I have also been greeted by men who, in that war, wore the blue. I saw before me many of my comrades of the lesser war. I had in my own regiment, from Louisiana as well as from many other States, men whose fathers had worn the gray, just as I had other men whose fathers had worn the blue, all united forever in loyalty to one indissoluble union, and acknowledging only the rivalry of trying to see which could do the most for the flag of our common country. Oh, my fellow-countrymen, think what a fortune is ours, that we belong to this Nation, which, having fought one of the mightiest wars of all times, is now reunited forever, in an indissoluble union, under one flag; so that we claim as ours the heritage of honor and glory, left by every man who, on whichever side he stood, when the days came which tried men’s souls, did all that in him lay—did his whole duty—according to the light that was given him to see that duty.

SPEECH TO THE OFFICERS AND CREW OF THE U. S. FLAGSHIP “WEST VIRGINIA,” AT SEA, OCTOBER 29, 1905

_Admiral, Captain, Officers and Ship’s Company of the “West Virginia”_: