NAVAL SECRETARY AND ROUGH RIDER 53 



Roosevelt, "the man will fight. He is the man for the place. He has 

 a lion heart." 



He not only kept Dewey in Chinese waters, but held his fleet 

 together. The "Olympia" was ordered home, but Roosevelt secured 

 the repeal of the order. "Keep the 'Olympia,' " he cabled him, "and 

 keep full of coal." 



He saw clearly what was in the air. And when the day for 

 fighting came the blood throbbed strongly in his veins. "There's 

 nothing more for me to do here," he said. "I've got to get into the 

 fight myself. I have done all I could to bring on the war, because it 

 is a just war. Now that it has come I have no business to ask others 

 to do the fighting and stay at home myself." 



The fact is, chains could not have kept him at home. There was 

 in him too much of the berserker strain for that. He had been fighting 

 all his life. Whether in the legislature, on the ranch, in the hunting 

 field, in the police service; it was not in him to lose the chance to feel 

 the blood-boiling sensation of the battlefield. 



It was a happy idea of his that suggested the Rough Rider regi- 

 ment. The name "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" struck the popular 

 fancy, and helped greatly to make Roosevelt's name a household word. 

 Before the regiment was organized it had become famous. The taking 

 title, "Roosevelt's Rough Riders," was on every one's tongue. 



Never before had such a body of athletes and daredevils been got 

 together. Only America could have furnished them. The cowboy, 

 the Indian trailer, the hunter, the Indian himself, the pick of the West, 

 formed the bulk of the regiment, but with them were mingled the 

 athletes of the East, the college football player, the oarsman, the polo 

 champion, the trained policeman, even the wealthy society man of 

 athletic training. The one pity is that they were not able to show 

 their prowess as horsemen, for such a body of cavalry as they would 

 have made the world has rarely seen. 



They were out of their native element afoot, and their humorous 

 title for themselves, "Wood's Weary Walkers," after their long 

 marches in the Cuban jungle, had more truth than poetry in it. 



Roosevelt had been for four years a member of the Eighth Regi- 

 ment of the New York State National Guard, and had risen to the 



