PRESIDENT AND EX-PRESIDENT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12745, 24 April 1912, Page 7

PRESIDENT AND EX-PRESIDENT.

BITTER ARTICLE ON ROOSEVELT. "HATRED OF HIS ONCE-BELOVED FRIEND.*' The San Francisco Argonaut recently published a- bitter article on Mr Roosevelt, from which the following is taken : "It is hardly possible that Mr Roosevelt can hope in face of the many handicaps which beset his candidacy to win the party nomination at Chicago. Bright pictures of the situation and its possibilities' have no doubt been drawn foi him by his personal satellites — tlie Pinchots, Garfifelds, Loebs, et al. It is to be remembered that he has always held extravagant estimates of the worth and Wisdom' of his immediate associates. But e.en the credulity of friendship plus the credulity t of ambition and vanity can hardly have gone so far as to convince i man of long political observation that ha can fight his way to success agai.ust so many and such formidable forces. Nevertheless Mr Rosevclt's 'hat is in the "ing.' He is eagerly pleading for a third cup of coffee, though in his heart, \vt fancy, he knows he will npt get it. "'"What call be the, motive which thus leads Mr Roosevelt Vo stake his estab-lijh-ed fame upon an impossible attempt, to risk almost certain humiliation in a cause foredoomed? His hunger for the eyes and ears of the multitude, his invincible ambition to be at the centre ot things ? his lust for power and primacy — these impulses hay have something to do with it. But we believe there is. a;deeper motive— nothing less than his resentment and \ hatred of hi sonce close and baloved friend, Mr Taft. "It is a fact which cannot be denied that Roosevelt as President was both th-o sponsor and ereater of Taft as a i:;-ndidate. In the Cabinet Mr Taft had baen a willingly subordinate and even •riddable figure. In his conceit Mr Roosevelt assumed that Taft as President would be as "Taft the Cabinet Minister. ! He was not prepared for the enlargement if character, for the elevation of spirit which a great and personal responsibility often inspires in men of sluggish tomperament, and which these forces did in fact inspire in Mr 'Faft. "Mr Roosevelt undertook to 'run' Mr iyft. and in this effort he sustained the humiliation of his life — the only profound ' humiliation wliich the curious fortunes if his life had ever brought to him. He had not the philosophy, the rioise, the self-control to meet the situation as be-:;i-me a man. Resentment, tortured by an all-consuming conceit, grew into a passion to which there has been subordinated every other motive of his being. Now his consuming desire is to beat Taft — to destroy the nian whose independence so rebuked his presumption and vanity, whose character in office has - won for him a kind of approval which Roosevelt himself was never able '.o command. Here, we suspect, is the ■ecret of a candidacy which represents not so much the hope of success as a tfyeplv, fixed purpose of personal vengenncc."