XVIII
“Great-Heart”
Since Roosevelt’s death there have been many suggestions made for a memorial to him. Many of the projects are highly commendable and well worthy of popular support, yet the fact remains that Roosevelt’s own works will bring coming generations their best remembrance of him.
Fortunately for posterity, this great American was a faithful recorder of his own works, and libraries and book stores are full of his writings or those of authorized biographers that give us a full range of his extraordinarily active life. Fortunately, too, for the world is the fact that Roosevelt recognized the film as another effective medium for bringing him in touch with the people, and authorized before his death the representation of his life and work in motion pictures.
The deep and permanent impression Roosevelt made on the people of his time—which will extend far into the future to influence coming generations of Americans, is due not only to his personal acts but also to his literary work. As an author and as an editor, the Colonel contributed historical writings and entertaining narratives to the literature of our country that earned him brilliant distinction and made his name and works familiar to all who read. His work as a historian led to his election in 1912 to the Presidency of the American Historical Association, and also to his admission into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Roosevelt served “The Outlook” as contributing editor from 1909 to 1914 and then joined the staff of the “Metropolitan Magazine,” remaining on its staff as contributing editor until his death. His contributions to these magazines on contemporary subjects were always interesting, forceful and constructive, and exercised a profound influence on the life and development of the nation.
That Roosevelt was born to be an author as well as a statesman is proven by the fact that no matter how busy he was he always found time to write. In college and while he was reading law in his uncle’s office, he found time to write “The Naval War of 1812,” a standard work on the subject. He wrote his “Life of Thomas Hart Benton” and his “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman” while he was pursuing his arduous career as a rancher. When his duties as Civil Service Commissioner at Washington were pressing upon him he yet found time to write several books on hunting, as well as part of his splendid work “The Winning of the West.” Thus it was throughout his career. Greater and greater grew the demands upon his time, yet the number of volumes to his credit mounted steadily.
Since his cattle-raising venture had failed, and since he knew the income from any public positions he should hold would be inadequate to the expenses of the office and generally uncertain, he determined that his pen should support him. The fact that, when he died, his income from his writings was about one hundred thousand dollars a year shows how well he kept his resolution.
Mr. J. H. Whigham, publisher of the “Metropolitan Magazine,” thus interestingly describes the way in which Roosevelt formed and kept his literary decisions:
“His first coming to the ‘Metropolitan’ was in keeping with all the Colonel said and did. The thing that worried him most in making a connection was whether he could faithfully carry out his part of the bargain. I had known Roosevelt first in Cuba when I lived for some weeks with the Rough Riders and shared the precarious but precious potatoes of the Colonel’s own mess. It didn’t require much perspicacity to see that he was the sort of leader to tie to and cherish. Naturally, therefore, when the ‘Metropolitan Magazine’ came into my control I looked around for Roosevelt. He was contributing editor of ‘The Outlook’ then, and there is no need to say that he couldn’t be weaned away from his allegiance to the Abbotts, for whom he always had the greatest affection. I managed, however, to get him interested in what we were trying to do with the ‘Metropolitan,’ and he promised to let me know if he ever changed his plans.