72 
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 second 
Peace Conference held at the Hague. His merits as a peacemaker 
were now sounded from end to end of the earth, and his .success v/as 
fully recognized in 1906, when there was awarded to him the Nobei 
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, whatever 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 work 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 word 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”: 
