Mr. Roosevelt, himself, with the word Duty on every milepost as he whirled past, with suggestions of things for other people to do buzzing like bees about his head, acquired his tremendous and incredible power with us as a people because, in spite of his violent way of breaking out into a missionary every morning and every evening when he talked, it was not his talking but his singing that made him powerful—­his singing, or doing things as if he believed in people, his I wills and I won’ts, his assuming every day, his acting every day, as if American men were men.  He sang his way roughly, hoarsely, even a little comically at times into the hearts of people, stirred up in the nation a mighty heat, put a great crackling fire under it, put two great parties into the pot, boiled them, drew off all that was good in them, and at last, to-day, as I write (February 1913), the prospect of a good square meal in the White House (with some one else to say grace) is before the people.

The people are waiting to sit down once more in the White House and refresh themselves.

At least, the soup course is on the table.

Who did it, please?  Who bullied the cook and got everybody ready?

Theodore Roosevelt, singing a little roughly, possibly hurrahing “I will, I will, I won’t, I won’t,” and acting as if he believed in the world.

Bryan in the village of Chicago sitting by at a reporter’s table saw him doing it.

Bryan saw how it worked.

Bryan had it in him too.

Bryan heard the shouts of the people across the land as they gloried in the fight.  He saw the signals from the nations over the sea.

Then Armageddon moved to Baltimore.

* * * * *

And now table is about to be spread.

It is to be Mr. Wilson’s soup.

But the soup will have a Roosevelt flavour or tang to it.  And we will wait to see what Mr. Wilson will do with the other courses.

* * * * *

A poet in words, with two or three exceptions, America has not produced.

The only touch of poetry or art as yet that we have in America is—­acting as if we believed in people.  This particular art is ours.  Other people may have it, but it is all we have.

This is what makes or may make any moment the common American a poet or artist.

Speaking in this sense, Mr. Roosevelt is the first poet America has produced that European peoples and European governments have noticed for forty years, or had any reason to notice.  We respectfully place Mr. Roosevelt with Mr. McAdoo (and if Mr. Brandeis will pardon us, with Mr. Brandeis) as a typical American before the eyes of the new President.  We ask him to take Mr. Roosevelt as a very important part of the latest news about us.