restraining hand of the toastmaster. Finally, when the Senator finished he jumped to his feet and struck back, but he did not have time, nor could he find words to retort effectively. But he was mad clear through when he declared, between clinched teeth, that the only place the Brownsville battalion could get justice was at the White House-the Senate could not mete it out to the discharged negroes, because the power lay with him, and him alone."

ROOSEVELT AND FORAKER.

(From Washington Herald.)

Ability is going to waste in public life because it lacks that essential accompanying component-courage. Rooseveltian courage has not become contagious. There are statesmen who at heart cordially approve the Administration's domestic policies, but who dare not say so. Other statesmen, apparently the majority, are negatively arrayed against the President, but dare not publicly make known the fact. Calling themselves conservatives, they are called reactionaries. They would have a President who would “let well enough alone;" they would give the Presidential pendulum a backward swing.

In this interesting political crisis it is refreshing to find one Republican-a solitary commanding figure out in the open, standing for something and unafraid; a statesman of convictions; of courage to express them, even if they do happen to run counter to the views of the powers that be. The Hon. Joseph Benson Foraker of Ohio, is that Republican. He is the bravest man in public life today-outside the White House. Right or wrong, as to Brownsville or the railroads, he is challenging his country's admiration. He challenged it a year ago. We have no doubt he challenges the admiration of the President himself. A manly man respects a manly foe. There is scant manliness, we regret to say, in the present-day trend of Republican politics.

Call him reactionary, if you like, but in the United States Senate, when it comes to courage, Foraker looms up "the noblest Roman of them all." *

Since the text was in print Arthur W. Dunn's "Gridiron Nights" has relieved me of all the misgivings I had in publishing what I have said about the Gridiron dinner-debate with the President by giving an account so nearly in accord with my own that I feel I am neither abusing the confidence enjoined upon the guests of the Club nor misrepresenting in the slightest any of the facts I have stated.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE BROWNSVILLE AFFRAY-Continued.

HE relations of President Roosevelt and myself were

THE

strained before the Gridiron Club encounter. They were practically broken off by that incident. I heard a few days afterward warlike reports from the White House; among other things, that it had been determined that I must be "eliminated" from public life.

I hoped as time passed the wounds would heal, but I was disappointed. Active hostilities soon commenced. The President fired the first shot when he sent me the following letter:

WHITE HOUSE.
WASHINGTON.

March 18, 1907.

My Dear Senator Foraker:-After careful consideration of the different candidates for appointment as judge in the newly created district in Ohio, I have come to the conclusion that Mr. John E. Sater, of Columbus, Ohio, best meets the requirements, and I shall accordingly give him a recess appointment. Sincerely yours,

HON. J. B. FORAKER,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

United States Senate.

This was not the first trouble I had had with him on account of patronage, but I think it was the last, for the reason, among others, that I never afterward made a recommendation to him of anybody for anything.

April 14, 1904, following a personal interview with him regarding patronage, in accordance with his request, I wrote him a letter in the nature of a memorandum as to three or four different appointments I had recommended. I concluded that letter as follows:

These cover all the matters, so far as I can recall, about which I was to send you a memorandum.

I do not think you have any idea, Mr. President, how exceedingly disagreeable this matter of patronage is to me. It would be disagreeable under any circumstances, but it is particularly so under those which have heretofore obtained and which seem to continue. I do not wish to be impatient or to add in any manner to your cares and burdens and troubles, but I hope it will not be necessary for me to trouble you again with a personal interview in regard to these or any other appointments. If the situation heretofore obtaining can not be changed, or at least greatly improved, I shall respectfully decline to have anything to do with the appointments from Ohio except only as it may be my privilege and duty to take action with respect to them in the Senate. Very truly yours, etc.,

J. B. FORAKER.

What I thus said to him expressed exactly my attitude with respect to all appointments throughout my service in the Senate. I disliked exceedingly that particular part of my official duty. I was always absorbed in the study and preparation for discussion of the great questions that were from time to time before the Senate. That not only made it impossible for me to give much attention to patronage, but made the whole subject of patronage disagreeable; so disagreeable, in fact, that I would not have had anything whatever to do with it had it not been that I had a duty to discharge in connection therewith.

I recognized that this duty required me to make recommendations and that the dignity of my position required that my recommendations should be respected. Disregard of them involved not only disrespect, but also serious political disadvantage.

In March, 1907, when the President informed me that he had concluded to appoint Judge Sater, there was a recommendation made by me pending before him for the appointment of Judge John J. Adams of Zanesville, Ohio. It had been published in all the newspapers of Ohio that I had indorsed Judge Adams and it was apparently assumed that, inasmuch as I was the senior Senator from Ohio and a member of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and the judgeship in question was for the Southern District of Ohio, in which I resided, he would, of course, be appointed.

No better man for the position lived in the district. He had served successfully, even with distinction, as a Judge of

our State Circuit Court. He had the confidence and respect of everybody and he had already been congratulated by friends and the members of the bar generally upon his forthcoming appointment. To deny him that appointment meant, therefore, humiliation and mortification for him, and it meant a serious impairment of my political standing and prestige with the people of Ohio, because the position was one of so much importance and my recommendation of Judge Adams was so widely known that refusal to appoint him was practically an official declaration that my recommendations would no longer be honored.

I had the satisfaction of knowing that practically every member of the Senate, Democrat and Republican alike, felt that the President's action involved political mistreatment on account of which Judge Sater's appointment could not be confirmed until I saw fit to request it.

If I had asked the Senate to do so, his appointment would doubtless have been rejected promptly and well-nigh unanimously, but I did not wish to show my resentment of the President's affront by visiting on the Judge such a severe consequence, and, therefore, contented myself with simply delaying confirmation until shortly before my term of office expired.

Returning now to the Brownsville affray, the investigation called for by my resolution commenced a few days after the Gridiron Club dinner, and with slight interruptions, continued during the sessions of Congress for more than a year, until March, 1908, when a majority of the committee reported that the shooting had been done by members of the battalion, but that they were unable to identify any of the guilty parties.

There were eight Republicans on the committee, four of them joined with the Democrats, all of whom were against the Negroes before a word of testimony was heard, and made the majority report. The other four Republicans on the committee, Senator Scott of West Virginia, Senator Hemenway of Indiana, Senator Bulkeley of Connecticut, and myself made a minority report, in which we found that the testimony failed to prove that anybody in the battalion had participated

in the shooting, or was guilty of having entered into a conspiracy of silence to suppress the truth.

Senator Bulkeley and I made a separate report, in which we not only found that the testimony was insufficient to implicate the men in the shooting, but that the weight of the testimony was clearly and overwhelmingly to the effect that the men had nothing whatever to do with the shooting, and, therefore, of course, were also innocent of the charge that they had withheld any knowledge about it from the authorities.

This report, signed by Senator Bulkeley and myself, reviewed all the testimony in great detail. We not only quoted from different witnesses who supported our conclusions, but we analyzed the circumstantial evidence and pointed out that when properly interpreted it showed beyond any doubt whatever the innocence of the men.

I would quote from this report if it were not that a few days later I made a speech in the Senate, in which I carefully reviewed it and all the facts in the case from the beginning.

This speech was, as I think, so absolutely fair and so entirely conclusive in favor of the men, that I deem it a duty to them and to all who may hereafter seek the truth, to quote from it at length.

I made my speech April 14, 1908, and, among other things, said:

Mr. President, before discussing the proposed legislation I desire to review and analyze the testimony that has been taken before the Committee on Military Affairs.

The resolution under which the investigation was had precluded the committee from considering the question of the authority of the President to make the order under which the troops were discharged without honor, and confined the committee to an investigation of the facts and a report of the same to the Senate.

The committee observed this direction. While this direction probably does not preclude me from discussing the constitutional right and power of the President to make such an order, yet I have fully discussed that subject on other occasions and do not for that reason care to repeat that argument now. I shall confine myself, therefore in what I have to say at this time, as the committee did, to the facts, and it will be my endeavor to show the effect of the facts that have been established by the testimony that has been taken.

Before entering upon this labor, it may not be amiss to remark, in view of the many misstatements that have been made, that the purpose