Roosevelt Through English Eyes

A NOTABLE item in the brief autumn list of the Atlantic Monthly Press will be a biographical study of Theodore Roosevelt by Lord Charnwood. When an English student of history, politics, and human character writes a book like Lord Charnwood’s Abraham Lincoln, his treatment of such another American figure as Theodore Roosevelt inevitably becomes something more than merely a new book, a new item on a publisher’s list. The announcement of this volume is therefore made with a peculiar pleasure.

If so young a book-publishing house may begin to speak of its traditions, this is certainly the moment to say that Lord Charnwood’s Theodore Roosevelt will occupy the place in our 1923 list that has been held in every one of the last few years by a new biographical work of outstanding value and interest. Traditions are necessarily of slow growth, but they can hardly be expected to rear their heads until the foundations for them have been firmly established. Each new Atlantic book of biography is fixing the basis for this particular tradition more firmly.

Why another biography of Theodore Roosevelt? If this were merely a new volume of the kind of which there have already been many, the question would be difficult to answer. But the book separates itself sharply from the mass of Rooseveltiana in that it is the first careful appraisal of ‘the Colonel’s’ career and character by any but an American. It is a truism that the nearest contemporary approach to the verdict of posterity upon a great national figure must come from a contemporary with another national background. The opinion of nearly every well-known American writer on such a subject as Theodore Roosevelt could be predicted in advance with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The opinion of an Englishman is in the nature of the case much more detached, much more individual, even if, as in the present instance, he brings an essential sympathy to his biographic task. When the Englishman possesses Lord Charnwood’s remarkable qualifications for such an undertaking, the resulting book is sure to excite a lively expectation. Early in October this will be gratified — we believe to the satisfaction of a large number of Americans.