The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt | Page 6

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 up their minds to speak only the truth,
and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity which if taken
seriously must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence.
(Applause.) Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all
right. I am all right and you can not escape listening to the speech
either. (Laughter and applause.)
"And now, friends, this incident that has just occurred--this effort to
assassinate me, emphasizes to a peculiar degree the need of this
progressive movement. (Applause and cheers.) Friends, every good
citizen ought to do everything in his or her power to prevent the
coming of the day when we shall see in this country two recognized
creeds fighting one another, when we shall see the creed of the
'Havenots' arraigned against the creed of the 'Haves.' When that day
comes then such incidents as this tonight will be commonplace in our
history. When you make poor men--when you permit the conditions to
grow such that the poor man as such will be swayed by his sense of
injury against the men who try to hold what they improperly have won,
when that day comes, the most awful passions will be let loose and it
will be an ill day for our country.

"Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to
do is to forestall any such movement by making this a movement for
justice now--a movement in which we ask all just men of generous
hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward
which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their fellow
countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now,
friends, what we progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor,
whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the
most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights
which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great republic of
ours.
"My friends are a little more nervous than I am. Don't you waste any
sympathy on me. I have had an A1 time in life and I am having it now.
"I never in my life had any movement in which I was able to serve with
such wholehearted devotion as in this; in which I was able to feel as I
do in this that common weal. I have fought for the good of our common
country. (Applause.)
"And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I
meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or three of the points.
"In the first place, speaking to you here in Milwaukee, I wish to say
that the progressive party is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens
without any regard to their creed or to their birthplace. We do not
regard as essential the way in which a man worships his God or as
being affected by where he was born. We regard it as a matter of spirit
and purpose. In New York, while I was police commissioner, the two
men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob Ries, who was
born in Denmark and Oliver Van Briesen, who was born in Germany,
both of them as fine examples of the best and highest American
citizenship as you could find in any part of this country.
[Illustration: X-Ray Photograph Showing Bullet as it Remains in
Theodore Roosevelt.]
"I have just been introduced by one of your own men here, Henry

Cochems. His grandfather, his father and that father's seven brothers all
served in the United States army and they entered it four