The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt Part 6

(Signed)

"Robert M. La Follette."

"Let me see that again," he said, after turning it back to Martin. When he had read it a second time he said: "Here, take this," and dictated:

"Senator Robert M. La Follette--Thanks sincerely for your kind expressions of sympathy."

Half an hour the colonel spent looking over and answering private telegrams, dictating always in a clear, strong voice. When he had done he talked with the newspaper men of former experiences of the kind he had just gone through and of cranks at Sagamore Hill and at the White House.

"But I never had a bullet in me before," he said.

CHAPTER VI.

GETS BACK INTO CAMPAIGN.

October 17, convinced that he was beyond all possible danger, Col.

Roosevelt resumed the active campaign from his sick room in Mercy Hospital by dictating a statement in which he requested his political opponents to continue the fight as if nothing had happened to him.

The colonel awoke feeling as he expressed it, "like a bull moose." In the afternoon he overcame Mrs. Roosevelt's objections to work long enough to send for Stenographer Martin and dictate the statement that put him back into politics.

Then he answered dispatches from President Taft, Cardinal Gibbons, and several other of those who had sent messages of sympathy.

He carefully reread the dispatch from President Taft and dictated this reply:

"I appreciate your sympathetic inquiry and wish to thank you for it."

"Sign that Theodore Roosevelt," he said to Martin.

To Cardinal Gibbons he sent this:

"I am deeply touched by your kind words."

To Woodrow Wilson: "I wish to thank you for your very warm sympathy."

His statement dictated to Stenographer Martin asking the campaign to continue despite Schrank's shot was as follows:

"I wish to express my cordial agreement with the manly and proper statement of Mr. Bryan at Franklin, Ind., when in arguing for a continuance of the discussion of the issues at stake in the contest he said:

"'The issues of this campaign should not be determined by the act of an a.s.sa.s.sin. Neither Col. Roosevelt nor his friends should ask that the discussion should be turned away from the principles that are involved. If he is elected President it should be because of what he has done in the past and what he proposes to do hereafter.'

"I wish to point out, however, that neither I nor my friends have asked that the discussion be turned away from the principles that are involved. On the contrary, we emphatically demand that the discussion be carried on precisely as if I had not been shot. I shall be sorry if Mr. Wilson does not keep on the stump and feel that he owes it to himself and to the American people to continue on the stump.

"I wish to make one more comment on Mr. Bryan's statement. It is of course perfectly true that in voting for me or against me, consideration must be paid to what I have done in the past and to what I propose to do. But it seems to me far more important that consideration should be paid to what the progressive party proposes to do.

"I cannot too strongly emphasize the fact upon which we progressives insist that the welfare of any one man in this fight is wholly immaterial compared to the greatest fundamental issues involved in the triumph of the principles for which our cause stands. If I had been killed the fight would have gone on exactly the same. Gov. Johnson, Senator Beveridge, Mr. Straus, Senator Bristow, Miss Jane Addams, Giffford Pinchot, Judge Ben Lindsay, Raymond Robbins, Mr. Prendergast and the hundreds of other men now on the stump are preaching the doctrine that I have been preaching and stand for, and represent just the same cause. They would have continued the fight in exactly the same way if I had been killed, and they are continuing it in just the same way now that I am for the moment laid up.

"So far as my opponents are concerned, whatever could with truth and propriety have been said against me and my cause before I was shot can with equal truth and equal propriety be said against me and it now should be so said, and the things that cannot be said now, are merely the things that ought not to have been said before.

This is not a contest about any man; it is a contest concerning principles.

"If my broken rib heals fast enough to relieve my breathing I shall hope to be able to make one or two speeches yet in this campaign; in any event, if I am not able to make them the men I have mentioned above and the hundreds like them will be stating our case right to the end of the campaign and I trust our opponents will be stating their case also.

"Theodore Roosevelt."

October 19, Gov. Hiram W. Johnson, of California, candidate for Vice-President on the National Progressive ticket, was summoned to Mercy Hospital by Col. Roosevelt.

The governor hastened to the hospital and conferred with Roosevelt for an hour. The ex-President urged upon Johnson that he return to California to hold his office as governor. Johnson had two years to serve of his term and under the law he would forfeit the governors.h.i.+p if he did not get back. The law there provides that no governor shall absent himself from office for more than two months running. Johnson had been away all but a few days of that period.

"Governor, I realize the sacrifice you have made in keeping so long away from your office," began the colonel, in serious tone. "I am told that if you do not hurry back they will take the governors.h.i.+p away from you. Now, I want you to go back. Leave the campaign to me. I can handle it all right. Soon I'm going out on the stump and I'll lead the fight myself."

Gov. Johnson marveled at the bold idea that Roosevelt, convalescing from the bullet wound, would take command again.

"You can't do it, colonel," he protested. "You will need to build up your strength. I won't----"

"Fiddlesticks," interrupted the colonel. "You'll do what I say. I never felt any stronger in my life. It's all a matter of being able to breathe easier with this splintered rib. That won't bother me more than a few days. Then they can't hold me back."

Flatly Gov. Johnson informed Col. Roosevelt that he wanted to stay in the fight.

"I'm needed," he went on. "I'm going to let them take the governors.h.i.+p.

I'll resign."

Leaning out from the arm chair in which he sat, Roosevelt whacked his right fist down on the table before him. A sharp pain went through the breast pierced by the bullet.

"I tell you, governor, you'll not do it," fairly cried the colonel, so vehemently that Mrs. Roosevelt, in the next room, stepped to the doorway.

"You must be quiet, Theodore," spoke Mrs. Roosevelt, lifting a warning finger.

"Yes, that's right," agreed the colonel, "but the governor here is recalcitrant and I've got to speak roughly to him."

After a brisk interchange of opinion as to the feasibility of the governor giving up the campaign the two violently taking opposite sides, bidding the colonel an affectionate good-bye, Gov. Johnson left the hospital. As he pa.s.sed out to an automobile, Johnson said he had promised the colonel to talk the matter over with other leaders before deciding what to do.

"He insists that I return to California and I insist I won't,"

explained the governor. "We couldn't agree."

Later Gov. Johnson conferred at his hotel with William Allen White, Francis J. Heney and other Bull Moose leaders. The governor was obdurate in his decision to stick in the race.

"Col. Roosevelt is in no shape to take up the responsibility," he maintained. "It is but an evidence of his magnanimity that he urges me to return to California. I'd rather lost the job than desert the colonel now."

Attorney General U. S. Webb of California on October 20 issued the following opinion, however, which did away with possibility of Gov.

Johnson losing his office:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Elbert E. Martin.]

"There is a code section in the state limiting the absence of the governor and other officials from the state to sixty days, but the legislature of 1911 by resolution, removed the limitations on the governor and other high state officials. In addition to that the const.i.tution of the United States specifically provides the conditions under which a state official may be removed, and it does not include this particular condition. There is no reason why Gov. Johnson cannot remain outside the state as long as he sees fit and there is nothing the legislature can do to remove him for remaining away more than sixty days."