7i REFORMER AND PEACEMAKER 



had acted, and Roosevelt's suggestion bore its legitimate fruit in the 

 Portsmouth Peace Treaty of September 5, 1905. 



In 1904 President Roosevelt had taken steps to have a secono 

 Peace Conference held at the Hague. His merits as a peacemaker 

 were now sounded from end to end of the earth, and his success was 

 fully recognized in 1906, when there was awarded' to him the Nobel 

 Peace Prize, annually given to the one who had done the most in bring- 

 ing about peaceful relations among the nations of the earth. 



We are not attempting here more than a passing glance at Presi- 

 dent Roosevelt's activities during his term of office. There is one 

 more of them of which we must speak. In May, 1908, there was held 

 in the White House, at his suggestion, a conference of the governors 

 of all the states and territories to consider the highly important sub- 

 ject of how best to conserve the natural resources of this country. 



These were disappearing at an alarming rate. The forests were 

 being destroyed by wasteful methods of lumbering and by devastating 

 fires. The coal supply was being wastefully handled. Ignorance and 

 greed were exhausting the fisheries. The soil was being washed away 

 through the removal of its natural covering and the beds of streams 

 were being filled up with it. This and other things needed wise and 

 honest treatment and the conference led to the formation of a National 

 Conservation Commission to take these matters in hand. 



Such were some of President Roosevelt's multitudinous activities 

 and their results. Now let us say something of the man himself. If 

 we come to investigate the manner of his life we can but say that there 

 was never a more thorough democrat. The bane of aristocratic pride 

 had never infected his blood. All men, w'hatever their station, were 

 alike to him. He had but one criterion of respect. Is the man honest ; 

 is he taking his due part in the w^ork of life? He would grasp the 

 grimy hand of the railroad engineer with much more comradeship than 

 that of the pampered scion of wealth. In traveling he preferred the 

 cowcatcher of the locomotive, with its sweeping outlook, to the most 

 comfortable palace car seat. The w^ord strenuous, of which he made 

 so much use and which so aptly fitted him, was first made his slogan in 

 his speech at the Hamilton Club of Chicago in 1899. Here is the 

 sentence which contained his dogma of the "strenuous life" : 



