The honor which these undergraduates
paid to their guest was seriously intended, was admirably planned,
and its genuineness was all the more apparent because it had a note of
pleasantry. Mr. Roosevelt spoke as a university student to university
students and what he said, although brief, extemporaneous, and even
unpremeditated, deserves to be included with his more important
addresses, because it affords an excellent example of his
characteristic habit of making an occasion of social gaiety also an
occasion of expressing his belief in the fundamental moral principles
of social and political life. The speech was frequently interrupted by
the laughter and applause of the audience, and the theory which Mr.
Roosevelt propounded, that any man in any walk of life may achieve
genuine success simply by developing ordinary qualities to a more than
ordinary degree, was widely quoted and discussed by the press of Great
Britain.
Next in chronological order comes the Guildhall speech. In the
picturesqueness of its setting, in the occasion which gave rise to it,
in the extraordinary effect it had upon public opinion in Great
Britain, the continent of Europe, and America, and in the courage
which it evinced on the part of the speaker, it is in my judgment the
most striking of all Mr.
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