Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1909 — STOPS ATTACK ON ROOSEVELT [ARTICLE]

STOPS ATTACK ON ROOSEVELT

House Halls WIMt While Vilifying President. NEW YORKER’S HOTSPEECH While Talking to the House on "the Passing of Roosevelt" the Empire State Representative le So Bitter In His Attack That Members by a Vote of 126 to 78 Refuse to Let Speaker Proceed.

Washington, Jan. 19.—Characterizing President Roosevelt aa “a gargoyle” and as “this pigmy descendant of Dutch tradespeople,” and charging him with having “established a court to the White House which would have delighted the heart of his admired Alexander Hamilton,” Representative William Willett Jr., of New York, in the house of representatives, made one of the 'most bitter attacks on the chief executive ever heard. Before he could finish Willett was halted by the house, which, by a vote erf 126 to 78, held he was vilifying the president. Willett protested, but was not allowed to proceed. The house was in a turmoil. Mr. Willett took for his theme “The Passing of Roosevelt,” and in a speech of great length, dealt with numerous of the president’s acts since he came into oliice. Hits Race Suicide Pleas. After declaring that in the face of all sorts of conditions, Americans were possessed of a universal sense of humor, Mr. Willett said that to such a people "it must be confessed, a chief magistrate cannot be an unmixed nuisance, who has himself no sense of humor, moving like a horse-tedder over a hay field of American activities; stirring up every dryiiig blade of oncegreen grass, to let it fall drier than before; quarreling one day with the practical politicians, then with the part-your-hair-in-the-middle reformers, then with the socialists, then with the great industrial corporations; wrestling in agony of spirit with Noah Webster and our glorious English tongue; taking a fall out of nature fakers; exhorting our women to avoid race suicide.”

Mr. Willett gave a brief biography of Mr. Roosevelt’s life, beginning with bis experiences as a cowboy down to the present time, and accused him, in his early manhood, of having had preposterous notions, of having “knifed" Secretary Long, of being ‘a warrior alone in Cuba,” of having won the governorship of New York by a mere fluke, "when the false halo of San Juan hill was above his head and of having reached the White House only because the hand of an assassin had made the opening.” Recalls Horseback Accident. “He boasts' of Irish blood, but no historic Irishman would have treated an allay as he treated Mr. Harrlman,” said Willett. “He exults in a strain of the old Huguenot, but the French gentlemen doesn’t fly into a passion and lash the horse of a timid young girl whose only offense is inadvertently passing the royal party in a public highway. Even Louis XIV. was not that sort of a .tyrant, and Henry IV.. Henry of Navarre, the great Huguenot king, wore the white plume of Noblesse Oblige.” The president, Mr. Willett declared, showed his teeth to all real heroes, “because real heroes are gall and wormwood to bogus ones." \