it was our business as a nation to do it, if we were ready to make good our claim to be treated as a great World Power; and that as we were unwilling to abandon the claim, no American worth his salt ought to hesitate about performing the task.  I feel just the same way about you in the Sudan.

* * * * *

It was with this primary object of establishing order that you went into Egypt twenty-eight years ago; and the chief and ample justification for your presence in Egypt was this absolute necessity of order being established from without, coupled with your ability and willingness to establish it.  Now, either you have the right to be in Egypt, or you have not; either it is, or it is not your duty to establish and keep order.  If you feel that you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and keep order there, why then by all means get out of Egypt.  If, as I hope, you feel that your duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own great traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the fact and the name agree, and show that you are ready to meet in very deed the responsibility which is yours.

There may be little Ciceronian grace about these passages, but there is unmistakable verbal power.  So many words of one syllable and of Saxon derivation are used as to warrant the opinion that the speaker possesses a distinctive style.  That it is an effective style was proved by the response of the audience, which greeted these particular passages (although they contain by implication frank criticisms of the British people) with cheers and cries of “Hear, hear!” It should be remembered, too, that the audience, a distinguished one, while neither hostile nor antipathetic, came in a distinctly critical frame of mind.  Like the man from Missouri, they were determined “to be shown” the value of Mr. Roosevelt’s personality and views before they accepted them.  That they did accept them, that the British people accepted them, I shall endeavor to show a little later.

There are people who entertain the notion that it is characteristic of Mr. Roosevelt to speak on the spur of the moment, trusting to the occasion to furnish him with both his ideas and his inspiration.  Nothing could be more contrary to the facts.  It is true that in his European journey he developed a facility in extemporaneous after-dinner speaking or occasional addresses, that was a surprise even to his intimate friends.  At such times, what he said was full of apt allusions, witty comment (sometimes at his own expense), and bubbling good humor.  The address to the undergraduates at the Cambridge Union, and his remarks at the supper of the Institute of British Journalists in Stationers’ Hall, are good examples of this kind of public speaking.  But his important speeches are carefully and painstakingly prepared.  It is his habit to dictate the first draft to a stenographer.  He then takes the typewritten original and works over it, sometimes sleeps over it, and edits it with the greatest care.  In doing this, he usually calls upon his friends, or upon experts in the subject he is dealing with, for advice and suggestion.