Roosevelt could use his voice for one hour in safety. Arrangements had
been made to have some one else read the lecture if at the last moment
it should be necessary; and the fact that Mr. Roosevelt was able to
do it himself effectively under these circumstances indicates that he
has some of the physical as well as the intellectual attributes of the
practised orator.
Mr. Roosevelt's first public speech in England was made at the
University of Cambridge on May 26th when he received the honorary
degree of LL.D. His address on this occasion was not, like the Romanes
lecture at Oxford, a part of the academic ceremony connected with the
conferring of the honorary degree. It was spoken to an audience of
undergraduates when, after the academic exercises in the Senate House,
he was elected to honorary membership in the Union Society, the
well-known Cambridge debating club which has trained some of the best
public speakers of England. At Oxford the doctors and dignitaries
cracked the jokes--in Latin--while the undergraduates were highly
decorous. At Cambridge, on the other hand, the students indulged in
the traditional pranks which often lend a color of gaiety to
University ceremonies at both Oxford and Cambridge. Mr. Roosevelt
entered heartily into the spirit of the undergraduates, and it was
evident that they, quite as heartily, liked his understanding of the
fact that the best university and college life consists in a judicious
mixture of the grave and the gay.
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