It is because such notes as these recall the most interesting man of our times, "the great Achilles whom we knew," that I have heard and read with a certain languor the conventional tributes evoked by his death, and, more recently, have gone through the posthumous biographies without entire satisfaction. Excepting Mr. G. S. Viereck's saucy apology for being a pro-German, the cue of recent writers has been canonization. Mr. MacIntire, for example, prefaced by General Wood, has written a purely "inspirational" narrative with a conquering hero ready for the moving-picture screen or a Henty novel or a place on the juvenile bookshelf beside "The Boys' King Arthur." As a specimen of its critical quality, I select the following passage, with the suggestion that it be read in connection with the report of the Federal Commission on the Packers: "One shudders to think of what fate would have befallen the United States if the monopolies which Roosevelt curbed while he was President had been allowed to flourish until this era of revolution." The first three volumes of "Roosevelt, His Life, Meaning, and Messages," is a collection of important speeches, articles, and messages arranged by William Griffith; the fourth volume by Eugene Thwing is a rapid biographical compilation, journalistic, readable, and concluding with the happy thought that if the meaning of Roosevelt's life is fully appreciated we shall find in the next generation of Americans "a veritable race of moral
