Speech Roosevelt Made While Wounded.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 15, 1912:
Talking for 50 Minutes, Without Waiting for His Wound to Be Dressed, the Colonel Says He is Uninterested in Whether He is Shot or Not, and That His Concern is for Many Other Things and Not in the Least for His Own Life.Special to The New York Times.
    MILWAUKEE, Oct. 14.— Col. Roosevelt spoke fifty minutes at the Auditorium after being wounded.
    Henry F. Cochems, who presided at the great meeting, stepped forward and said:
    "In presenting Col. Roosevelt to you, good citizens, good fathers, and good civilians, you should know that the Colonel comes to you in the spirit of a good soldier.
    "As we were leaving the hotel a few minutes ago a dastardly hand raised a revolver and fired a shot at him, and the Colonel speaks as a soldier with a bullet in his breast — where we don't know."
    A shudder ran through the audience, accompanied by cries of "Oh, Oh!" from the women present, who made up nearly half the audience.
    As Colonel Roosevelt stepped forward and started to read his notes he took his spectacle case from his vest pocket, and turning to those just about him, exhibited it. indicating where the bullet of the would-be assassin nicked it. This brought another sympathetic cheer, to which Roosevelt responded, with one of his smiles, and began his talk.
    "I do not care a rap about being shot, not a rap," said Col. Roosevelt in his speech to-night.
    "Friends," he began, "I shall have to ask you to be as quiet as possible. I do not know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.
    "But fortunately I had my manuscript (holding up the manuscript, showing the audience where the bullet had gone through), so you see I was going to make a long speech. And, friends, the hole in it is where the bullet went through, and it probably saved the bullet from going into my heart.
    "The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech. But I will try my best.

Not Concerned About Himself.
    "And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say as solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow-Americans.
    "First of all I want to say this about myself. I have altogether too many important things to think of to pay any heed or feel any concern over my own death.
    "Now I would not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life.
    "I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have had, a happier life in every way. I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things.
    "I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was Colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I cannot understand a man fit to be Colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty.
    "I am in this case with my whole heart and soul; I believe in the Progressive movement — a movement for the betterment of mankind, the movement for making life a little easier for all our people, a movement to try to take the burdens off the man and especially the woman in this country who is most oppressed.
    "I am absorbed in the success of that movement. I feel uncommonly proud in belonging to that movement.
    "Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolute truth when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success, I am not thinking of my life, or of anything connected with me personally.
    "I am saying this by way of introduction because I want to say something very serious to our people, and especially to the newspapers. I don't know who the man was who shot me tonight. He was seized by one of my stenographers, Mr. Martin, and I suppose he is in the hands of the police now. He shot to kill me. He shot the bullet I am just going to show you (Col. Roosevelt then unbuttoned coat and vest and showed his white shirt badly stained with blood.)
    "Now, friends, I am going to be as quiet as possible, even if I am not able to give the challenge to the Bull Moose quite as loudly. Now, I do not know who he was or what party he represented. He was a coward. He stood in the darkness in the crowd around the automobile, and when they cheered me and I got up to bow, he stepped forward and shot me in the breast.
    "It is a very natural thing that weak and vicious minds should be inflamed to acts of violence by the kind of foul mendacity and abuse that have been heaped upon me for the last three months by the papers in the interests not only of Mr. Debs, but of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft.
    "Friends, I will disown and repudiate any man of my party who attacks with such vile, foul slander and abuse any opponents of another party.
    "Now I wish to say seriously to the speakers and the newspapers representing the Republican and Democratic and Socialist Parties that they cannot, month in and month out, year in and year out, make the kind of slanderous, bitter, and malevolent assaults that they have made and not expect that brutal and violent characters, especially when the brutality is accompanied by a not too strong mind — they canot expect that such natures will be unaffected by it.
    "I am not speaking for myself at all, I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot, not a rap. I have had a good many experiences in my time and this is only one of them. What I do care for is my country. I wish I were able to impress on our people the duty to feel strongly, but to speak truthfully of their opponents. I say now that I have never said on the stump one word against any opponent that I could not substantiate, and nothing I ought not to have said; nothing that, looking back, I would not say again.
    "Now, friends, it ought not to be too much to ask that our opponents — [Speaking to some one on the stage:] I am not sick at all. I am all right.
    "I cannot tell you of what infinitesimal importance I regard this incident, as compared with the great issues at stake in this campaign, and I ask it not for my sake, not the least in the world, but for the sake of our common country, that they make up their minds to speak only the truth, and not to use the kind of slander and mendacity which, if taken seriously, must incite weak and violent natures to crimes of violence.
    "Don't you make any mistake. Don't you pity me. I am all right. I am all right. and you cannot escape listening to the speech either.

A Movement for Justice.
    "Now, friends, what we who are in this movement are endeavoring to do is to forestall any such movement by making this a movement for justice now, a movement in which we ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their fellow-countrymen and countrywomen suffer from a veritable misery. Now, friends, what we Progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which are the foundation of good citizenship in this great Republic of ours.
    "My friends are a little more nervous than I am. I have had an A1 time in life; and I am having it now.
    "I never in my life had any movement in which I was able to serve with such whole-hearted devotion as in this, in which I was able to feel, as I do in this, that common weal. I have fought for the good of our common country. [Applause.]
    "And now, friends, I shall have to cut short much of the speech that I meant to give you, but I want to touch on just two or three of the points.
    "In the first place, speaking to you here in Milwaukee, I wish to say that the Progressive Party is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens without any regard, to their creed or to their birthplace.
    "We do not regard as essential the way in which a man worships his God or as being affected by where he was born. We regard it as a matter of spirit and purpose.
    "In New York, while I was Police Commissioner, the two men from whom I got the most assistance were Jacob Riis, who was born in Denmark, and Oliver von Briesen, who was born in Germany, both of them as fine examples of the best and highest American citizenship as you could find in any part of this country.
    "I have just been introduced by one of your own men, Henry Cochems. His grandfather, his father, and that father's brothers served in the United States Army, and they entered it four years after they had come to this country from Germany. (Applause.) Two of them left their lives, spent their lives, on the field of battle — I am all right — I am a little sore. Anybody, has a right to be sore with a bullet in him.
    "You would find that if I was in battle I would be leading my men just the same. Just the same way I am going to make this speech.
    "At one time I promoted five men for gallantry on the field of battle. Afterward it happened to be found in making some inquiries about them that I found two of them were Protestants, two Catholics, and one a Jew. One Protestant came from Germany and one was born in Ireland. I did not promote them because of their religion, it just happened that way. If all of them had been Jews, I would have promoted them, or if all had been Protestants I would have promoted them, or if they had been Catholics.
    "In that regiment I had a man born in Italy who distinguished himself by gallantry; there was a young fellow, a son of Polish parents, and another who came across when he was a child from Bohemia, who likewise distinguished themselves, and, friends, I assure you that I was incapable of considering any question whatever but the worth of each individual as a fighting man. If he was a good fighting man, then I saw that Uncle Sam got the benefit from it. That is all. [Applause.]

No Discrimination In Citizenship.
    "I make the same appeal in our citizenship. I ask in our civic life that we in the same way pay heed only to the man's quality of citizenship — to repudiate as the worst enemy that we can have whoever tries to get us to discriminate for or against any man because of his creed or his birthplace.
    "Now, friends, in the same way I want our people to stand by one another without regard to differences or class or occupation. I have always/stood by the labor unions. I am going to make one omission to-night, I have prepared my speech because Mr. Wilson had seen fit to attack me, by showing up his record in comparison with mine. But I am not going to do that to-night. I am going to simply speak of what I myself have done and of what I think ought to be done in this country of ours. (Applause.)
    "It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes, and therefore labor must organize. My appeal for organized labor is two-fold. To the outsider and the capitalist I make my appeal to treat the laborers fairly, to recognize the fact that he must organize; that there must be such organization; that the laboring man must organize for his own protection, and that it is the duty of the rest of us to help him, and not hinder in organizing. That is one half of the appeal that I make.
    "Now the other half is to the labor man himself. My appeal to him is to remember that as he wants justice, so he must do justice. I want every labor man, every labor leader, every organized union man to take the lead in denouncing crime or violence. I want them to take the lead in denouncing disorder and inciting riot, that in this country we shall proceed under the protection of our laws, and with all respect to the laws, and I want the labor men to feel in their turn that exactly as justice must be done them, so they must do justice. That they must bear their duty as citizens, their duty to this great country of ours, and that they must not rest content unless they do that duty to the fullest degree."