Rough Riders

Rough Riders is a classic biography of Theodore Roosevelt and his early days as a member of that historical unit. This book includes this snippet:DURING the year preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. While my party was in opposition I had preached with all the fervor and zeal I possessed our duty to intervene in Cuba and to take this opportunity of driving the Spaniard from the Western World. Now that my party had come to power I felt it incumbent on me by word and deed to do all I could to secure the carrying out of the policy in which I so heartily believed; and from the beginning I had determined that if a war came somehow or other I was going to the front.Meanwhile there was any amount of work at hand in getting ready the navy and to this I devoted myself.