Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 100, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1904 — ROOT ON ROOSEVELT [ARTICLE]

ROOT ON ROOSEVELT

The President Has Taken the Whola People Into His Confidence. As we gather in this convention, our hearts go hack to the friend—the never to be forgotten friend, whom when last we met we acclaimed with one accord as our universal choice to bear a second time the highest honor in the nation’s gift; and back still, memory goes through many a year cf leadership and loyalty. How wise and how skillful he was! how modest and self-effacing' hew deep his insight into the human heart! how swift {he Intuitions of his sympathy! how compelling the charm of his gracious presence! He was so unselfish, so thoughtful of the happiness of others, so. genuine a lover of his country and his kind. And he was the kindest and tenderest friend who over grasped another’s hand. Alas, that his virtues did plead in vain against cruel fate! Yet we may rejoice, that while he lived he was crowned with honor; that the rancor of party strife had ceased; that success in his great tasks, the restoration of peace, the approval of his countrymen, the affection of his friends —gave the last quiet months in his home at Canton repose and contentment. And with McKinley we remember Hanna with affection and sorrow—his great lieutenant. They are together again. But we turn as they would have us turn, to the duties of the hour, the hopes of the future; we turn as they would have us turn, to prepare ourselves for struggle under the same standard borne in other hands by right of true inheritance. Honor, truth, courage, purity of life, domestic virtue, love of country, loyalty to high ideals—all these, with active intelligence, with learning, with experience in affairs, with' the conclusive proof of competency afforded by wise and conservative administration, by great things already done and great results already achieved — all these we bring to the people with another candidate. Shall not these

have honor in out land? Truth, sincerity, courage! these underlie the fabric of our institutions. Upon hypocrisy and sham, upon cunning and false pretense, upon weakness and cowardice, upon the arts of the demagogue and the devices of the mere pci- . itician —no government cau stand. No system of popular goremmen: can endure in Which the "people 'do HE lieve and trust. Our pres; ienr has taken the whole people : r-. : confidence. Incapable of deception, he has put aside concealment. Frankly and without reserve, he has told them what their government was iains. and the reasons. It is no campaign of appearances .upon which- w.e enter, for this people know the good and bad, the success and failure, to be credited and charged to our account. It is no campaign of sounding words and specious pretences, for our president has told the people with frankness what he believed and what he intended. He has meant every word he said, and : the people have believed every word he said, and with him this convention agrees because every word has been sound Republican doctrirfe. No people can maintain free government do not in their hegrts value the qualities which have made the present presi- | dent of the United States conspicuous j among the men of his time as a type jof noble manhood. Come what may here—come what may in November, j God grant that those qualities of bravo I true manhood shall have honor ' throughout America, shall be held for an example in every home, and that the youth of generations to come may ; grow up to feel that it is better than wealth, or office, or power, to have the honesty, the purity, and the courage of Theodore Roosevelt.