Read Ebook: Day of the Comet by Jorgensen Ivar

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Ebook has 1040 lines and 30556 words, and 21 pages

"Fake," whereupon the Colonel smilingly said:

"No, it's no fake," and opening his vest, the blood-red stain upon his linen was clearly visible.

A half-stifled expression of horror swept through the audience.

About the first remark uttered in the speech, as the Colonel grinned broadly at the audience, was:

"It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose. I'm all right, no occasion for any sympathy whatever, but I want to take this occasion within five minutes after having been shot to say some things to our people which I hope no one will question the profound sincerity of."

Throughout his speech, which continued for an hour and twenty minutes, the doctors and his immediate staff of friends, sitting closely behind him, expected that he might at any moment collapse. I was so persuaded of this that I stepped over the front of the high platform to the reporters' section immediately beneath where he was speaking, so that I might catch him if he fell forward.

These precautions, however, were unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who at the close of his official service as President in 1909 left that high office the most beloved public figure in our history since Lincoln fell, and the most respected citizen of the world. As was said in an editorial in the Chicago Evening Post:

"There is no false sentiment here; there is no self-seeking. The guards are down. The soul of the man stands forth as it is. In the Valley of the Shadow his own simple declaration of his sincerity, his own revelation of the unselfish quality of his devotion to the greatest movement of his generation, will be the standard by which history will pass upon Theodore Roosevelt its final judgment. This much they cannot take from him, no matter whether he is now to live or to die."

To the men of America, who either love or hate Roosevelt personally, these words from his speech must carry an imperishable lesson:

"The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech. But I will try my best.

"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say as solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow Americans.

"First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too many important things to think of to pay any heed or feel any concern over my own death.

"Now I would not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life.

"I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have had--a happier life in every way.

"I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things.

"I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not.

"It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied, as he ought to be occupied, with the absorbing desire to do his duty.

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul; I believe in the Progressive movement--a movement for the betterment of mankind, a movement for making life a little easier for all our people, a movement to try to take the burdens off the man and especially the woman in this country who is most oppressed.

"I am absorbed in the success of that movement. I feel uncommonly proud in belonging to that movement.

"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolute truth when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success, I am not thinking of my own life or of anything connected with me personally."

The disabling of Col. Roosevelt at this tragic moment was a great strategic loss in his campaign. The mind of the country was in a pronounced state of indecision. He had started at Detroit, Mich., one week before and had planned to make a great series of sledge hammer speeches upon every vital issue in the campaign, which plan took him to the very close of the fight. He had planned to put his strongest opponent in a defensive position, the effect of which, now that all is over, no man can measure. Stricken down, an immeasurable loss was sustained. In the years that lie before, when misjudgment and misstatements, which are the petty things born of prejudice, and which die with the breath that gives them life, shall have passed away, this incident and the soldierly conduct of the brave man who was its victim will have a real chastening and wholesome historical significance.

SPEAKS TO GREAT AUDIENCE.

Standing with his coat and vest opened, holding before him manuscript of the speech he had prepared to deliver, through which were two perforations by Schrank's bullet, the ex-President was given an ovation which shook the mammoth Auditorium, Milwaukee.

Stenographic Report from The Milwaukee Sentinel.

The audience seemed unable to realize the truth of the statement of Henry F. Cochems, who had introduced Col. Roosevelt, that the ex-President had been shot. Col. Roosevelt had opened his vest to show blood from his wound.

Even then many in the audience did not comprehend that they were witnessing a scene destined to go down in history--an ex-President of the United States, blood still flowing from the bullet wound of a would-be assassin, delivering a speech from manuscript perforated by the bullet of the assailant.

Col. Roosevelt said:

"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible," he said. "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech and there is a bullet--there is where the bullet went through and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I can not make a very long speech, but I will try my best.

"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident and say a word of a solemn warning, as I know how to my fellow countrymen. First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death, and now I can not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty.

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement.

"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally. I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction because I want to say something very serious to our people and especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot--the shot, the bullet went in here--I will show you .

"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.

"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him, but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.

"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the republican, the democratic and the socialist parties that they cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.

"Now friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot not a rap.

"I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is one of them. What I care for is my country. I wish I were able to impress upon my people--our people, the duty to feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said one word against any opponent that I can not--on the stump--that I can not defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said--nothing that I--nothing that looking back at I would not say again.

"Now friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents I am not sick at all. I am all right. I can not tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of our common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity which if taken seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence. Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all right. I am all right and you can not escape listening to the speech either.

"And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred--this effort to assassinate me, emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of this progressive movement. Friends, every good citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the 'Havenots' arraigned against the creed of the 'Haves.' When that day comes then such incidents as this tonight will be commonplace in our history. When you make poor men--when you permit the conditions to grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won, when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it will be an ill day for our country.

"Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do is to forestall any such movement by making this a movement for justice now--a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their fellow countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great republic of ours.

"My friends are a little more nervous than I am. Don't you waste any sympathy on me. I have had an A1 time in life and I am having it now.

"I never in my life had any movement in which I was able to serve with such wholehearted devotion as in this; in which I was able to feel as I do in this that common weal. I have fought for the good of our common country.

"And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or three of the points.

"In the first place, speaking to you here in Milwaukee, I wish to say that the progressive party is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens without any regard to their creed or to their birthplace. We do not regard as essential the way in which a man worships his God or as being affected by where he was born. We regard it as a matter of spirit and purpose. In New York, while I was police commissioner, the two men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob Ries, who was born in Denmark and Oliver Van Briesen, who was born in Germany, both of them as fine examples of the best and highest American citizenship as you could find in any part of this country.

"I have just been introduced by one of your own men here, Henry Cochems. His grandfather, his father and that father's seven brothers all served in the United States army and they entered it four years after they had come to this country from Germany . Two of them left their lives, spent their lives on the field of battle--I am all right--I am a little sore. Anybody has a right to be sore with a bullet in him. You would find that if I was in battle now I would be leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this speech.

"At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the field of battle. Afterward it happened to be found in making some inquiries about that I found that it happened that two of them were Protestants, two Catholics and one a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them because of their religion. It just happened that way. If all five of them had been Jews, I would have promoted them, or if all five had been Protestants I would have promoted them; or if they had been Catholics. In that regiment I had a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by gallantry, there was a young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and another who came here when he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise distinguished themselves, and friends, I assure you, that I was incapable of considering any question whatever, but the worth of each individual as a fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit from it. That is all.

"I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I ask in our civic life we in the same way pay heed only to the man's quality of citizenship to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever tries to get us to discriminate for or against any man because of his creed or his birthplace.

"Now, friends, in the same way I want our people to stand by one another without regard to differences or class or occupation. I have always stood by the labor unions. I am going to make one omission tonight. I have prepared my speech because Mr. Wilson had seen fit to attack me by showing up his record in comparison with mine. But I am not going to do that tonight. I am going to simply speak of what I myself have done and of what I think ought to be done in this country of ours.

"It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

"My appeal for organized labor is twofold, to the outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborers fairly, to recognize the fact that he must organize, that there must be such organization, that it is unfair and unjust--that the laboring man must organize for his own protection and that it is the duty of the rest of us to help him and not hinder him in organizing. That is one-half of the appeal that I make.

"Now the other half is to the labor man himself. My appeal to him is to remember that as he wants justice, so he must do justice. I want every labor man, every labor leader, every organized union man to take the lead in denouncing crime or violence. I want them to take the lead in denouncing disorder and inciting riot, that in this country we shall proceed under the protection of our laws and with all respect to the laws and I want the labor men to feel in their turn that exactly as justice must be done them so they must do justice. That they must bear their duty as citizens, their duty to this great country of ours and that they must not rest content without unless they do that duty to the fullest degree.

"I know these doctors when they get hold of me they will never let me go back and there are just a few things more that I want to say to you.

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