The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

130 HOW ROOSEVELT BECAME PRESIDENT
prise, and to a less phlegmatic temperament it might have
been a shock.
BEGINNINO OF HIS LEADERSHIP
One does not have to go back so far in an effort to trace the
genesis of Theodore Roosevelt's leadership or to analyze the
cause of his present commanding position before the country.
Only to the campus at Harvard, where he was a student
leader, as he has since been a leader of full fledged men. He
took life seriously then, but not too seriously. There was a
flippant side to his nature. There is a flippant side to his
nature now, but not too flippant.
He has been all his life a boy and man to do things, to
initiate and to initiate on his own responsibility, accepting with
equipoise whatever of praise or blame might come his way.
He is not impervious to criticism, and has been known to lose
his temper, almost his head, over a newspaper article which,
from his viewpoint, was not justified.
HOLDS TO HIS PURPOSE
But once his hand is set to the plow no amount of adverse
comment swerves him a hair's breadth. Look at his attitude
toward the Panama Republic. He was assailed not only by a
vindictive and partisan press— that was to be expected—but
by men of his own party, like the venerable and unbesmirched
Hoar of Massachusetts, and yet he lost none of his faith in
self, which is but another way of saying he lost none of his faith
in that Union, loyalty to which is as the breath of his nostrils.
This is one of the things that helped to make Mr. Roose-
velt President—a supreme self-confidence without losing confi-
dence in his fellow men; a sublime egoism widely differentiated
from self-conceit.