When the future historian traces Theodore Roosevelt’s extraordinary career he will find these embodied ideals planted like milestones along the road over which he marched. They never left him. His ideal of public service was to be found in his life, and as his life drew to its close he had to meet his ideal of sacrifice face to face. All his sons went from him to the war, and one was killed upon the field of honor. Of all the ideals that lift men up, the hardest to fulfill is the ideal of sacrifice. Theodore Roosevelt met it as he had all others and fulfilled it to the last jot of its terrible demands. His country asked the sacrifice and he gave it with solemn pride and uncomplaining lips.

This is not the place to speak of his private life, but within that sacred circle no man was ever more blessed in the utter devotion of a noble wife and the passionate love of his children. The absolute purity and beauty of his family life tell us why the pride and interest which his fellow countrymen felt in him were always touched with the warm light of love. In the home so dear to him, in his sleep, death came, and— So Valiant-for-Truth passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

—The eulogy delivered by Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, in an address to both Houses of Congress.