The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt | Page 5

(Applause and cheers.) No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I can not understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty. (Applause and cheers.)
"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the progressive movement is for making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement.
"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolutely true, when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success. I am not thinking of my life or of anything connected with me personally. I am thinking of the movement. I say this by way of introduction because I want to say something very serious to our people and especially to the newspapers. I don't know anything about who the man was who shot me tonight. He was seized at once by one of the stenographers in my party, Mr. Martin, and I suppose is now in the hands of the police. He shot to kill. He shot--the shot, the bullet went in here--I will show you (opened his vest and shows bloody stain in the right breast; stain covered the entire lower half of his shirt to the waist).
"I am going to ask you to be as quiet as possible for I am not able to give the challenge of the bull moose quite as loudly. Now I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile and when they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the darkness.
"Now friends, of course, I do not know, as I say, anything about him, but it is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of awful mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interest of not only Mr. Debs but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft. (Applause and cheers.)
"Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such foul slander and abuse any opponent of any other party (applause) and now I wish to say seriously to all the daily newspapers, to the republican, the democratic and the socialist parties that they cannot month in and month out and year in and year out make the kind of untruthful, of bitter assault that they have made and not expect that brutal violent natures, or brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not very strong mind; they cannot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
"Now friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot not a rap. (Applause.)
"I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is one of them. What I care for is my country. (Applause and cheers.) I wish I were able to impress upon my people--our people, the duty to feel strongly but to speak the truth of their opponents. I say now, I have never said one word against any opponent that I can not--on the stump--that I can not defend. I have said nothing that I could not substantiate and nothing that I ought not to have said--nothing that I--nothing that looking back at I would not say again.
"Now friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents (speaking to some one on the stage) I am not sick at all. I am all right. I can not tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of our common country, that they make