REALIZABLE IDEALS (The Earl Lectures)

San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., 1912. First Edition. Hardcover. Paper split to front hinge, covers tight; browning to endpapers. Spine faded a bit with tears along edges. Still Very Good. Green gilt-lettered cloth; [vi], 154 pages. SIGNED "Theodore Roosevelt" on the front endpaper. Likely signed during the "Bull Moose" Party Presidential Campaign of 1912. In 1908 Roosevelt dictated by fiat the nomination of his successor, W. H. Taft, then Vice-President. Though he was an effective reformer in his own right, Taft alienated the progressive Republicans headed by Robert LaFollette and Roosevelt. In 1912 the Republican party was fractured over the presidential nomination. The Taft faction, however, controlled the convention of 1912, and Taft was nominated for re-election. Roosevelt led his followers out of the convention and organized the Progressive Party (also called the Bull Moose Party), and Roosevelt was nominated for President on this third-party slate. In the election he ran second to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. Forced into retirement, Roosevelt denounced the policies of Wilson, and after the outbreak of World War I he attacked Wilson's neutrality policy. When the United States entered the war, he vainly pleaded to be allowed to raise and command a volunteer force. He died soon after the end of the war. REALIZABLE IDEALS, drawn from a series of lectures delivered at Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California in 1911, is a very personal and highly moral appeal to the responsibilities of educated and well-positioned college men as leaders of society. It is so powerfully phrased and well spoken that one almost hears the vigorous voice and bully heart that orated to these men of the West so many decades ago. A scarce book to find signed.