it is unwise and unjust to bar them from fellowship.  So long as they work for evil, smite them with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!  When they change and show their faith by their works, remember the words of Ezekiel:  “If the wicked will turn from all the sins he has committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.  All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him:  in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.  Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and live?”

Every man who has been in practical politics grows to realize that politicians, big and little, are no more all of them bad than they are all of them good.  Many of these men are very bad men indeed, but there are others among them—­and some among those held up to special obloquy, too—­who, even although they may have done much that is evil, also show traits of sterling worth which many of their critics wholly lack.  There are few men for whom I have ever felt a more cordial and contemptuous dislike than for some of the bosses and big professional politicians with whom I have been brought into contact.  On the other hand, in the case of some political leaders who were most bitterly attacked as bosses, I grew to know certain sides of their characters which inspired in me a very genuine regard and respect.

To read much of the assault on Senator Hanna, one would have thought that he was a man incapable of patriotism or of far-sighted devotion to the country’s good.  I was brought into intimate contact with him only during the two and a half years immediately preceding his death.  I was then President, and perforce watched all his actions at close range.  During that time he showed himself to be a man of rugged sincerity of purpose, of great courage and loyalty, and of unswerving devotion to the interests of the Nation and the people as he saw those interests.  He was as sincerely desirous of helping laboring men as of helping capitalists.  His ideals were in many ways not my ideals, and there were points where both by temperament and by conviction we were far apart.  Before this time he had always been unfriendly to me; and I do not think he ever grew to like me, at any rate not until the very end of his life.  Moreover, I came to the Presidency under circumstances which, if he had been a smaller man, would inevitably have thrown him into violent antagonism to me.  He was the close and intimate friend of President McKinley.  He was McKinley’s devoted ally and follower, and his trusted adviser, who was in complete sympathy with him.  Partly because of this friendship, his position in the Senate and in the country was unique.