Current Issue
- Theodore Roosevelt and the Gold Coin Designs of 1907-1908, by Michael F. Moran - pages 8-21
- September 2025 E-mail Interview of 2024 Theodore Roosevelt Association Annual Book Prize Winner Edward F. O’Keefe by TRA Annual Book Prize Committee Chair Gregory A. Wynn - pages 23-27
- TRA Police and Military Member William Stump, Profiles in Uniform #1 by Edward Scali, Jr. - pages 28-29
- Presidential Snapshot #51 - page 30
- The Theodore Roosevelt Association Gratefully Acknowledges Its Leading Financial Supporters - pages 31-33
Notes from the Editor
Theodore Roosevelt upheld a very high standard of presidential leadership, both in the substance of his domestic and foreign policies and in the thoughtful and compelling way he communicated his positions. Most other twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Presidents—even if falling short of TR’s exemplary conduct of the presidency—have also striven to uphold a high standard.
When I am feeling particularly dispirited, one very useful antidote is simply to read the words of TR, which helps me imagine that better times are ahead. In the hope that the effect may be similar for many readers of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, I am turning the remainder of my editor’s page over to TR, presenting, in chronological order, four unedited full passages from the Theodore Roosevelt
Cyclopedia—public declarations from the sections titled, respectively, “Honesty in Government,” “White House,” “Morality,” and ”American People, Obligation of the”:
The man who debauches our public life . . . is a greater foe to our well-being as a nation than is even the defaulting cashier of a bank, or the betrayer of a private trust. No amount of intelligence and no amount of energy will save a nation which is not honest, and no government can ever be a permanent success if administered in accordance with base ideals. [July 1894]
The White House is the property of the nation, and so far as is compatible with living therein it should be kept as it originally was, for the same reasons that we keep Mount Vernon as it originally was. The stately simplicity of its architecture is an expression of the character of the period in which it was built, and is in accord with the purposes it was designed to serve. It is a good thing to preserve such buildings as historic monuments which keep alive our sense of continuity with the nation’s past. [December 1902]
Morality, to count, must include the two elements of uprightness and efficiency. You need the zeal, and the knowledge without which zeal amounts to so little; and I need not say, gentlemen, that to be efficient without also being upright is merely to be additionally dangerous to the community. The abler a man is, the worse he is from the public standpoint if his ability is not guided by conscience. [December 1910]
We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us. . . . The worth of our great experiment depends upon its being in good faith an experiment—the first that has ever been tried—in true democracy on the scale of a continent—on
a scale as vast as that of the mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worth while to strive, an ideal for which at need it is worth while to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the people in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward each and every one of the people. [March 1912]
William Tilchin