ship. Whoever serves to some extent complies; yet he managed to serve even Roosevelt in his own way. It was he whose appeal to our greatest publicity expert not to outstep the modesty of nature elicited the famous retort: "This is a poster, not an etching." With regard to the Alaska boundary dispute, Roosevelt had expressed with characteristic vigor his repugnance to arbitration. He had made up his own mind: that was enough. Then he turned mockingly on Straus and exclaimed: "Straus, you are a member of The Hague Tribunal; don't you think I'm right?" "As a member of The Hague Tribunal," replied his Secretary, "I should first have to hear what the other side had to say." "And we all had a good laugh," adds Mr. Straus.
At what did they laugh—at The Hague Tribunal or at Mr. Roosevelt? Perhaps each at his own subject of merriment; but Mr. Straus, one feels sure, in the covert of his beard smiled at his Master with some of that secret irony which Disraeli employed toward his royal Mistress. In each case I believe the Jew was by instinct and inheritance a more thoroughly "civilized" being than the Gentile. He served Roosevelt indeed most truly by pressing upon our great advocate of the Big Stick the uses of "sweetness and light" in promoting industrial peace at home and harmonious relations abroad. While his friend, relying on the prestige of his own personality, gesticulated with the navy, Mr. Straus sought to strengthen the permanent instrumentalities of arbitral justice and international law.
