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CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

STRONG CONDEMNATION OF PRESIDENT WILSON: 

roosevelt's patriotic indignation because of the sinking of the Lusitania and President Wilson's course in regard to it found expression in many private letters that he wrote at the time, as well as in articles that he wrote for the Metropolitan Magazine, and in public addresses and newspaper interviews. He felt at the time that he was foot-free politically and could speak his mind without restraint. "There is great comfort,'" he wrote on March 2, 1915, to his intimate and highly-valued friend, E. A. Van Valken-berg of the Philadelphia North American, "in being no longer responsible for the welfare of a party, so that I can tell needed truths without regard to their reacting politically upon any organization with which I am connected."
Writing to Judge Charles F. Amidon, of Fargo, North Dakota, on May 29, 1915, he said:
"As for the Lwsitania, of course I agree with you to the last point. President Wilson has failed, and has caused the American people to fail, in performing national and international duty in a world crisis. There was not the slightest occasion for diplomacy or meditation. The facts were un-controverted. Germany did what she said she intended to do and what President Wilson has informed her he would hold her to a 'strict accountability' for doing. What was needed was not thought or words but action. The time for thought or for words had passed. The thought should have come in before we sent the 'strict accountability' letter. If the President had acted at that time, then, as you say, Germany would have stood before the civilized world, not as a warrior, but as a murderer. I do not think it is an opportune time to talk.   I have expressed myself as clearly as I know how."
His profound dissatisfaction with President Wilson's course and his conviction that what he was saying publicly in criticism of it was unpopular, is revealed in many other letters, one of which was the following to John St. Loe Strachey, London, on May 29, 1915:
"You are mistaken entirely in believing that the American public will ever turn to me for leadership again, in the sense of acknowledging me to be the leader. Nevertheless, I think that things that I have said will finally influence them and that they will in the end have to acknowledge that my position has been right. Our people are ill-informed and I think they took these statements of mine in bad part. Certainly they were not popular, at the moment, and they are not popular now. But in the end, just as sure as fate, Americans will realize that what I have said was true, and this even though they entirely forget that it was I who said it."
The natural effect of Roosevelt's open opposition to President Wilson's war policy was to restore him at once to the leadership of his party. He became immediately its spokesman on all questions relating to the war and the conduct of the national administration. No other member of the party could speak with such authority, and few had the courage to speak as freely as he did. The result was that his devoted followers began to press him forward as the inevitable candidate of his party in 1916. That he had no sympathy with their efforts, or belief in their success, his letters plainly show. In a letter written on June 3, 1915, he said:
"My feeling is that harm and not good would come if I should again be a candidate. In the (Barnes) libel suit that has just ended, the thing that to me was painfully evident was that at least nine-tenths of the men of light and leading, and very marked majority of the people as a whole desired my defeat. They did not like Barnes or believe in him; but above all things they wished my defeat. The particular twelve men whose judgment was vital to me were, I think, on the whole against me at the start; but after both Barnes and I had been before them for many days they stood for me against Barnes. This was because I could reach them personally. But it is of course impossible for me to reach more than the smallest fraction of our people in such fashion. The others have made up their minds; and they are against me."
"I have been like an engine bucking a snow-drift. My progress was slower and slower; and finally I accumulated so much snow that I came to a halt and could not get through. I believe that there are some men who would support me against Wilson, for instance, or against a reactionary Republican, who would not support any one else. But I believe that there are a far larger number of men who would at once sink every other purpose, no matter what their convictions might be, for the purpose of smashing me once for all. According to the information at present before me, I believe that the bulk of our people would accept my candidacy as a proof of greedy personal ambition on my part, and would be bitterly hostile to me in consequence, and bitterly hostile therefore to the cause for which I stood.
"I have felt as regards the Lusitania business that as an honorable man I could not keep silent, although I thoroughly realized that what I said would offend the pacificists, would offend the good, short-sighted men who do not fully understand international relations, and would make envenomed enemies of the great bulk of these Americans of German descent or birth from whom in the past I have had rather more than my normal proportion of support. This was to me a matter of principle, a matter of national duty, of duty which I owed my country; and I did not think that I was warranted in considering my own personal fortune in the matter. But I do most emphatically think that when it comes to choosing a candidate the very men who agree with me in what I have done ought to realize that it often becomes impossible to nominate a man even though the very things which make it impossible to nominate him are things where he was right and where he is entitled to our respect and admiration.
"I have felt that this libel suit which has just ended was really as much a fight for those who have fought with me during the last three years as for myself. It has justified in court by legal evidence all we said about boss rule and crooked business three years ago. I do not grudge the money it has cost me, but I think the service was really worth rendering; but I do very strongly feel that in a way it excuses me from doing too much more. There is an anecdote that has long been proverbial in our family which bears on the point. Doctor Polk, of New York, now an old man, was Inspector-General of the Confederate Artillery fifty years ago. Just before Appomattox, Lee sent him to the rear to hurry up the stragglers. He was sitting on a rail fence, with his horse-bridle over his arm when a lank, frowning, half-starved North Carolinian Infantryman trooped by, his feet going 'muck-murh' as he ploughed through the mud. Polk said in a perfunctory way, "Hurry up, my man, hurry up." Whereupon the North Carolinian looked gloomy at him, shook his head, and remarked as he walked by, 'if I ever love another country, damn me!'
"Now, you must not take this anecdote too literally. Of course, if it was a duty impossible to avoid, I would fight in future as I have fought in the past. But I feel I have done my share; and, what is infinitely more important, I do not feel that I can be of use in a leading position any more. I think the people have made up their minds that they have had all they want of me, and that my championship of a cause or an individual, say in exceptional cases, is a damage rather than a benefit."
That he was eager to improve every opportunity to support President Wilson Roosevelt showed by his action when Mr. Bryan resigned as Secretary of State on June 8, 1915. A statement of his reasons for resigning was made by Mr. Bryan on June 9 and published on June 10. As soon as he saw it, Roosevelt who was in Louisiana at the time, gave out the following from Breton Island, on June 11, 1915:
"According to Mr. Bryan's statement, he has left the Cabinet because President Wilson, as regards the matters at issue with Germany, refuses to follow the precedent set in the thirty all-inclusive arbitration commission treaties recently negotiated, and declines to suspend action for a year, while a neutral commission investigates the admitted murder of American men, women and children on the high seas, and further declines to forbid American citizens to travel on neutral ships in accordance with the conditions guaranteed to us by Germany herself in solemn treaty.
"Of course I heartily applaud the decision of the President, and in common with all other Americans who are loyal to the traditions handed down by the men who served under Washington, and by the others who followed Grant and Lee in the days of Lincoln, I pledged him my heartiest support in all the steps he takes to uphold the honor and the interests of this great Republic which are bound up with the maintenance of democratic liberty and of a wise spirit of humanity among all the nations of mankind."
To one of the younger generation of earnest and able writers in whom he took a warm personal interest, Julian Street, he wrote on June 23, 1915:
"Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln and Grant have occupied exactly the right position as regards our duty in international affairs; and Jefferson, Buchanan and Wilson exactly the wrong position. The way to help us in the concrete to do what is right is to point out in the concrete the men at the head of affairs who do what is wrong. The War of 1812 was for us at best a draw and was fulfilled with humiliation and disgrace because of Jefferson's attitude and above all because Jefferson's attitude represented the American attitude. If men like Washington had been in charge of this government for the first sixteen years of the nineteenth century the War of 1812 would have been an overwhelming victory and probably would have been closed in 1812. Wilson and Bryan at the present day are contending for the proud preeminence of doing everything in their power in the last two years and a half to bring this nation to both impotence and infamy in its international relations—and Taft by his universal arbitration treaties and his Mexican policy ably paved the way for them. Wilson is the one man now alive most responsible for present day unpreparedness."
On the same date, June 23, 1915, he wrote to his life-long friend Owen Wister:
"Your friend, the English pacifist, turned up. He seems an amiable, fuzzy-brained creature; but I could not resist telling him that I thought that in the first place Englishmen were better at home doing their duty just at present, and in the next place, as regards both Englishmen and Americans, that the prime duty now was not to talk about dim and rosy Utopias but, as regards both of them, to make up their minds to prepare against disaster and, as regards our nation, to quit making promises which we do not keep. Taft, second only to Wilson and Bryan, is the most distinguished exponent of what is worst in our political character at the present day as regards international affairs; and a universal peace league meeting which has him as its most prominent leader, is found on the whole to do mischief and not good.
"I was immensely pleased and amused with your last Atlantic article ('Quack Novels and Democracy') and I think it will do good. I wish you had included Wilson when you spoke of Bryan, and Pulitzer when you spoke of Hearst. Pulitzer and his successors have been on the whole an even greater detriment than Hearst, and Wilson is considerably more dangerous to the American people than Bryan. I was very glad to see you treat Thomas Jefferson as you did. Wilson is in his class. Bryan is not attractive to the average college bred man; but The Evening Post, Springfield Republican, and Atlantic Monthly creatures, who claim to represent all that is highest and most cultivated and to give the tone to the best college thought, are all ultra-supporters of Wilson, are all much damaged by him, and join with him to inculcate flabbiness of moral fiber among the very men, and especially the young men, who should stand for what is best in American life. Therefore to the men who read your writings Wilson is more dangerous than Bryan. Nothing is more sickening than the continual praise of Wilson's English, of Wilson's style. He is a true logothete, a real sophist; and he firmly believes, and has had no inconsiderable effect in making our people believe, that elocution is an admirable substitute for and improvement on action. I feel particularly bitter toward him at the moment because when Bryan left I supposed that meant that Wilson really had decided to be a man and I prepared myself to stand wholeheartedly by him. But in reality the point at issue between them was merely as to the proper point of dilution of tepid milk and water."
His views at this time about an international peace league were set forth on June 29, 1915, in a letter to E. A. Van Valkenberg:
'' There is one point about those gentlemen who support a League for International World Peace that is worthwhile considering. Six months ago or more I outlined that program which they announced they had just discovered the other day. But I then very emphatically stated that it was a program for the future and that our first business was to make good the promises we had already made and to put ourselves in position to defend our own rights. These gentlemen declined to say a word in favor of our fitting ourselves to go into defensive war in our own interest; and yet they actually wish to make us at this time promise to undertake offensive war in the interests of other people! It is a striking illustration of the recklessness with which the average American is willing to make any kind of a promise without any thought of how it can be carried out. Taken concretely, they propose that we shall pledge our selves in the future to coerce Germany if it acts, say toward Switzerland, or Holland or Denmark, as it has acted toward Belgium. Either such a promise is an empty nullity or it means that we undertake to prepare in such event to send an army of a. couple of million men to Europe. Yet these same individuals praise Wilson for shirking his duty under the moderate Hague Conventions we have already signed and for failure to prepare either to protect our own citizens when murdered on the high seas or to protect them when murdered in Mexico. They won't advocate preparedness for defensive war in our own behalf but are willing to make utterly reckless promises that we will undertake offensive war in behalf of others."
Writing to Julian Street, on July 8, 1915, he said: "It is difficult to explore the hidden domain of motive. Personally, I do not believe that President Wilson's motives have been one whit better than those of Senator Hale (life-long opponent to a large navy). This is a mere matter of belief on my part; but it is a matter not of belief but of knowledge that Wilson in his very great position has done far more damage to the army and navy and has been a far greater foe to efficient preparedness than Hale was in his smaller position. I would not attack either unless it were necessary from the standpoint of the country; and it is of course a thousand times more necessary (although more disagreeable) to attack Wilson, the popular pacifist hero, than Hale, who is really dead. The excuse that can be made for one is the excuse that can be made for the other. Hale's constituents demanded, most of them doubtless sincerely, that he should see that the Portsmouth Navy Yard was kept up. Wilson's constituents who have been most active in speaking about preparedness have been the German-Americans and other hyphenated Americans, the professional pacifists, the flubdubs and the mollycoddles, all of whom have united in screaming against preparedness and in applauding him; just as their spiritual ancestors applauded Thomas Jefferson over a century ago when he announced that 'our passion was peace,' and reduced the regular army to nothing and laid up the navy and refused to continue building it and stated that the nation in arms, the militia without any training or trial, would be fit to defend us.
"For a President to announce that our passion is peace and therefore to refuse to prepare is bad. But it is not quite so bad as to announce that the nation is 'too proud to fight,' and to put men like Daniels at the head of the Navy Department and to keep him there and have the navy kept in the Gulf of Mexico under conditions that almost ruin its efficiency, and to use the army under circumstances deeply detrimental to the morale of both the officers and the enlisted men, and finally to make speeches and write an Annual Message, such as he wrote last December, which are deliberate and direct arguments against all efficiency and all preparedness. It was an elaborate argument against preparedness, excellently calculated to puzzle our people and to keep them from trying to get ready.
"Every army officer in the country who is trying to prepare is doing it against the feeling of the President and knows he has to be cautious so as not to arouse the hostility of the President, a hostility which has been incurred by every man in either the army or the navy who has fearlessly done his duty during the last year. Until we are willing to tell the truth about history, until we are willing to admit what humiliation and loss the War of 1812 (which was for us a defeat or at least a draw) caused us, and how this humiliation and loss were directly due to the action of the American people themselves, through the leaders whom they adored, Jefferson and Madison, and until we are willing to make our present-day politicians know that there is an active sentiment which will hold them responsible for failure to prepare, I am afraid we shall not make much headway.''
To Owen Wister he wrote again on July 7, 1915: "All the earlier part of your article on 'The Pentecost of Calamity' is so admirable and I feel so very strongly the service you have rendered that I cannot help feeling regret that you fail to draw the conclusion that in my view is the only conclusion to be drawn. You first of all show how dreadfully Germany has behaved, how incumbent it is upon the civilized world that she should not be allowed to succeed, that action should be taken upon her. You then say with equal truth that you 'want no better photograph of any individual man than his opinion on this war.'
"But America as a whole could speak only through the Administration at Washington; and the real test, the real photograph, of any individual is whether he does or does not keep neutral about the action of the Administration in itself preserving a thoroughly base neutrality. You praise the New York Times for its stand. The New York Times has consistently supported Wilson and is supporting him now; and that makes all that it says on behalf of the Allies and against Germany mere beating of wind, a mere added discredit. When President Eliot denounces Germany and also upholds President Wilson and says that we must not prepare for war, President Eliot is occupying the worst position that can be occupied. To denounce Germany in words and not prepare to make our words good is merely to add to our offense.
"You say that it would have been an act of 'unprecedented folly' if we had not been politically neutral. On the contrary, in my view, the really unprecedented folly was in exercising our loose tongues in a way thoroughly to irritate Germany and yet to do nothing whatever to back up these aforesaid tongues by governmental action. If it was our duty to remain neutral politically, it was emphatically our duty to remain morally neutral. Any political neutrality not based on moral reasons is no more and no less admirable than the neutrality of Pontius Pilate or of the backwoodsman who saw his wife fighting the bear. Either The Hague Conventions meant something or they did not mean something. Either they can be construed according to their spirit, or by legalistic device the letter can be twisted so as to give a faint shadow of justification for violating the spirit. If they meant nothing, then it was idiocy for us to have gone into them. If they meant anything, Wilson and Bryan are not to be excused for failure to try to make them good by whatever action was necessary; and political neutrality when they were violated was a crime against the world and a thoroughly base and dishonorable thing on our part. As for the Lusitania matter, failure to act within twenty-four hours following her sinking was an offense that is literally inexcusable and inexplicable. Of course, our people are now all confused and weakened and incapable of giving any coherent support to our own rights or the rights of others in the teeth of Germany's ruthless and cruel efficiency. This is directly due to the action of Wilson— the worst President we have had since Buchanan, an even worse President than Taft, a considerably worse President than Andrew Johnson—and he has been able to do this because papers like the Times have shown such ambidextrous morality in cordially supporting him while at the same time taking positions that were justifiable only on the theory that he had acted outrageously and should be denounced.
"This people is no worse than it was in the days of Washington and Lincoln. We were still in the gristle; and, thanks largely to the immense immigration, we have continued to be in the gristle. When we had them as Presidents or as national leaders, the people would follow them. But if, after firing on Sumter, Lincoln had made a speech in which he said that the North was 'too proud to fight,' and if he had then spent sixty days in writing polished epistles to Jefferson Davis, and if Seward had resigned because these utterly futile epistles were not even more futile, why, by July the whole heart would have been out of the Union party and most people in the North would have been following Horace Greeley in saying that the erring sisters should be permitted to depart in peace! Wilson has not had to face anything like as great a crisis; but he has faced it exactly as Buchanan faced his crisis, in exactly the spirit that Lincoln would have shown if Lincoln had acted in such fashion.
"I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds. I have a perfect horror of denunciation that ends in froth. All denunciations of Germany, all ardent expressions of sympathy for the Allies amount to precisely and exactly nothing if we are right in preserving a complete political neutrality between right and wrong. If Wilson is not wrong in his action, or rather inaction, about the Lusitanm and Belgium, then wise and proper thing for our people is to keep their mouths shut about both deeds. The loose tongue and the unready hand make a poor combination. We are justified in denouncing the action of Germany only if we make it clearly evident that Wilson has shamelessly and scandalously misinterpreted us. I don't think that the American people believe that he has misrepresented us; I think they are behind him. I think they are behind him largely because their leaders have felt that in this crisis the easy thing to do was to minister to our angered souls by words of frothy denunciation and minister to our soft bodies by taking precious good care that there was no chance of our having to turn these words into deeds."
A letter that he wrote on August 7,1915, to Baron Rosen, former Russian Ambassador at Washington and one of the Russian envoys to the Portsmouth Peace Conference, is worthy of record as containing an outline of what he would have done to bring the war to a close had he been President when Germany invaded Belgium in 1914. Baron Rosen had sent to him a copy of a published interview with himself in which he had declared that it was "in the interest of all concerned to bring the war to conclusion as soon as possible," and had added:
"The surest way of reaching such a result would be to bring about a general coalition such as crushed the power of the first Napoleon, still leaving France intact and an honored member of the family of nations. Failing this, how ever, a large league of neutrals, especially if headed by the United States, might bring to bear upon Germany moral pressure sufficient to make her realize the futility of continuing a struggle that could certainly never lead to a realization of her ambitions."
To this Roosevelt replied:
"How I wish I were President at this moment! That won't strike you, I know, as an expression of personal ambition. I would be quite willing to accept the Presidency now with a guaranty of being removed from it at the very instant I had succeeded in doing what I had started out to accomplish; and the first thing I would like to do, aside from the subordinate incident of aiding civilization and decency in Mexico, would be to interfere in the world war on the side of justice and honesty, by exactly such a league _4as you mention. I do not believe in neutrality between right and wrong. I believe in justice.
"When I had the great pleasure and honor of being associated with you and other men whom I highly regarded in the effort to bring about peace between Russia and Japan, I could in good faith act as a neutral. But neutrality in the present war is a crime against humanity and against the future of the race. . . . As you probably know, if I had had the power I would have made this nation actively interfere, if possible at the head of all neutral nations, on the ground of the violation of The Hague Conventions as regards Belgium. I had been preaching preparedness for years; but for the last year I have been earnestly advocating that we prepare in such fashion as to make ourselves able to count decisively if we do have to interfere."
As shown in early chapters of this history, Theodore Roosevelt had been a persistent and earnest advocate of national preparedness from the moment of his entrance upon public life. Indeed, in the preface to his history of the War of 1812, written while he was still a student in Harvard University, he had taken his position in favor of it, and he adhered to it unvaringly throughout his life. While he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, in June 1897, as I have shown in the chapters upon that portion of his career, he defined his attitude on this and other questions of national policy with great clearness and force. While he was President, in every annual message that he sent to Congress, he urged adherence to the same policy. In his annual message of December 1906 he called attention to the universal military service system of Switzerland as a model for the United States to follow. As soon as it became likely that the United States would be drawn into the European war he began to advocate the immediate adoption of measures of preparedness which should enable the country to defend itself and meet with military force any assaults of Germany on its rights and the rights of its citizens. He shared with General Leonard Wood the honor of originating military training camps, and with General Wood took the lead in arousing public interest in them as a necessary step in national preparedness. For many months the Wilson Administration not only refused financial support for these camps, but openly opposed them. The boys and men who went to them paid the expenses. Later an association of business men paid for their support.
The hostility of the Wilson Administration to both Roosevelt and General Wood was openly disclosed by an incident that occurred in the summer of 1915. An officers' training camp, the first of several, had been established at Plattsburg, N. Y., and was in operation under General Wood's direction. By invitation from General Wood, on August 25, 1915, Roosevelt visited the camp and made an address to its members who, with visitors from the neighborhood, made up an audience of several thousand persons. The address was confined to an earnest appeal for national preparedness along the lines that Roosevelt had followed for many years. He made no mention of the President or of the national administration in it, but dwelt upon the subject as a great national need which was being perilously neglected. After leaving the camp, Roosevelt made a statement to the reporters who had been present which he asked them to publish. In this he said:
"I wish to make one comment on the statement so frequently made that we must stand by the President. I heartily subscribe to this on condition and only on condition that it is followed by the statement so long as the President stands by the country.
"It is defensible to state that we stand by the country, right or wrong; it is not defensible for any free man in a free republic to state that he will stand by any official right or wrong, or any ex-official.
'' The President has the right to have said of him nothing but what is true; he should have sufficient time to make his policy clear; but as regards supporting him in all public policy, and above all in international policy, the right of any President is only to demand public support because he does well; because he serves the public well, and not merely because he is President.
"To treat elocution as a substitute for action, to rely upon high-sounding words unbacked by deeds, is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of shame."
On the following day, the Secretary of War published a formal rebuke to General Wood for permitting Roosevelt to make an address, declaring that its effect was certain to be harmful rather than helpful to the training camp project. The assumption of the rebuke was that the address had been an attack on the national administration, and the newspapers that were regular supporters of the President took this view. Roosevelt replied sharply to the Secretary, saying that in his address he had not mentioned the President or the national administration, and that if calling attention to the fact that for thirteen months no steps had been taken in the direction of national preparedness was regarded by the national administration as an attack upon itself, it was a confession of guilt on its part.
    In a letter that he wrote to Dr. Henry S. Drinker, President of Lehigh University, on September 1,1915, he said in justification of Ms address:
"Of course you have absolutely the right to send me the letter you have just sent me. . . . But let me ask you if you are sure that you have seen my address. I can hardly believe it. I think that you must have seen an account of what I am alleged to have said or else an account of some article of mine or interview of mine not given in the camp. You say first that you 'heartily agree with and endorse all (I) say in support of the need, the great immediate need, of national preparedness and in condemnation of the folly and worse, of those young and old who favor a supine action.' You then say that you greatly disapprove of my 'attack on the Administration.' But, my dear Sir, I never mentioned the Administration or the President, and the only way of construing what I said into an attack is by construing the attack I made upon the nation because it did not 'favor a policy of supine action,' as an attack on the Administration.
"Now the prime reason why we are at present unprepared, is that you, my dear Mr. President, and the men like you, from the highest motives, persists in making general statements in favor of preparedness in the abstract, and then utterly undoing everything you say by repudiation of these principles when applied in the concrete; and even, as now appears, by repudiation of abstract statements if, as in the present instance, the Administration shows sensitiveness when they are made. In your letter, for instance, you say, as I have quoted above, that you utterly condemn the folly and worse of those who favor a policy of supine action. By far the most conspicuous man who has favored it is the President himself. The whole weight of his Message to Congress last year, when the war had lasted four months, was put in the demand that there should be no preparation. He actively discouraged Congress doing anything last year. He, chiefly, positively but partly without directness, discouraged even such activities of General Wood as were included in the formation of the American Legion, and then in the assembling of these camps. But I did not directly or indirectly refer to all this in my speech. I merely said that during these last thirteen months we as a nation had absolutely failed to prepare. I said that the results of our weakness had been evident in the murder of our women and children on the high seas.
"Now, either these camps are justified or they are not. If we are utterly unprepared, then they are justified and required. Otherwise they are not, for of course they are only makeshifts, adopted because of the lack of proper governmental action. This improper failure of the government to act may be due either to the Administration leading the people wrong or to the people not permitting the Administration to lead it right. In my speech I was most careful to put the responsibility on the people, on the nation. As a matter of fact, I do not think that that is where it primarily belongs. I think it primarily rests on the shoulders of Mr. Wilson; but I agreed with the view you expressed, that the camp was not the place to say so.
''However, if there is to be any speechmaking at all at the camp, then that speechmaking should be truthful and to the point. To support the great immediate need of national preparedness is of course by implication to condemn the Administration to whose supine action we owe our present utter unpreparedness. To condemn the folly and worse of those who favor this policy of supine action is of course to condemn the Administration. You say you approve of both. Then you approve of all that I have done. If it is not proper to say these things which should be said to all patriotic Americans, to such a camp, then in my judgment it is wholly improper to hold these camps at all, and the sooner they are abandoned the better."
A rather despairing note is discernible in this letter, August 28, 1915, to Frederick Palmer, then with the British Expeditionary Force in France:
"I am sick at heart about Wilson, and therefore about the American people. The only thing to say in defense of the people is that a bad colonel always makes a bad regiment. If, the day after the firing on Sumter, Lincoln had stated that he was too proud to fight and if he had then carried on a four-months' correspondence with Jefferson Davis, well written from the rhetorical standpoint but without a deed to back any word, and if Seward had resigned because these notes were too stiff, by midsummer of '61 the northerners as a whole would have said that Greeley was quite right and they would let the erring sisters go. Yet even then I think somebody would have roused them in the end. I have done everything I can to rouse them. I have the skeleton of a division already outlined, with acceptances from my Chief of Staff, my brigade commanders, colonels, etc. My three sons have been in camp at Plattsburg under General Wood this summer."
That he believed sincerely at this time that the course he was taking was unpopular because of the anti-war sentiment of the country at large, is shown in his letters, a few of which are appended:
September 3, 1915.
To George W. Perkins, New York City: "It is my deliberate judgment that if the Republicans ever come to entertain the thought of nominating me next year, it will be because they know they will be defeated under me and intend that I shall receive the heaviest defeat they can give me, and they will nominate me with this purpose in view, thereby not only crushing the Progressives but definitely getting rid of me and enthroning the standpatters in the Republican party.
"It is perfectly evident to me that this people have made up their minds not only against the policies in which I believe but finally against me personally. The bulk of them are convinced that I am actuated by motives of personal ambition and that I am selfishly desirous of hurting Taft and Wilson and have not the good of the country at heart. Anything that you or any of my other close friends do that can be construed into putting me forward for the Presidency will absolutely confirm this opinion and will do me real and grave damage. My experience with the libel suit convinced me that nine-tenths of the people of leadership and influence, big and little, in New York are utterly against me."
October 9, 1915.
To John St. Loe Strachey, London: "Don't get it into your head that there is the slightest possibility of my returning to public life. Even the men who on the whole agree with me in my position, would be almost a unit against me if I again was a candidate for public office. It is against our traditions as a nation; and, while I myself think these traditions are foolish, yet they exist, and that is all there is to it. I intend to continue writing and now and then speaking until this war is through; but after that I believe that I shall probably stop both speaking and writing, for I do not think I can get any audience or do good to the country."
December 7, 1915.
To Senator Lodge: "As you know, I feel that the course I have followed about Hyphenated-Americanism, and especially the German-American vote, is such as absolutely to preclude the possibility of nominating me as a candidate, even though there had been such a possibility before, which in my judgment was not the case. I have followed the course I have followed in the last year, because I thought someone ought to say the kind of things I have said, and that without regard to his own future, and I was the man peculiarly blocked out for the task."
January 29, 1916.
To Wayne MacVeagh: "I am a strong believer in being practical and working with your fellows, which is another way of saying of working with the organization. But now and then the time comes when it is quite impossible to compromise and do your duty to the nation, and now and then the time comes when a man must hoist the black flag and sink or swim, without regard to what his fellows think, for the cause in which he with all his heart believes. In my judgment we are in a great world crisis. No other public man has ventured to tell the truth of Germany, of the pacifists, of the German-Americans, of Wilson. I have told it and shall tell it as strongly as I know how and without regard to its effect upon me. When I adopted this course I did it deliberately, believing that in all human probability it would render me unavailable for any office. I did not wish any office; but it is a man's duty, before he takes a position, to consider whether or not his taking it renders it impossible for him to be run for a position where he could do good service. I did consider this. I felt that the pacifists, the professional German-Americans, the shortsighted and uninformed and ease-loving people generally, needed to be told what their duty was and that it would have to be told in ways that would make it impossible for the man telling it to avoid incurring their bitter animosity. I have followed this course, believing that it would in all probability render it out of the question to nominate me for the Presidency. It would be quite impossible to nominate and elect me unless this nation were in heroic mood and it were possible to appeal to that mood. I see no signs of such possibility."
January 29, 1916.
To Henry Ford, Detroit, Michigan: "I thank you for your kind letter of January 20th. If I get to Detroit it will be a great pleasure to accept your invitation to look at the work you are doing. As I have so frequently stated, I believe that you are one of the men, the successful business men, who can do far more than any outsiders like myself in bringing about the right relations between the men who work with their hands and those who supply the capital or the management in the business.
"But, my dear Mr. Ford, I trust you have not extended this invitation in ignorance of the position I have publicly taken about your attitude on behalf of pacifism. If you did not know my attitude when you wrote, I shall of course understand absolutely if you withdraw the invitation, for, as I supposed you knew, I am emphatically out of sympathy with you (just as I am radically out of sympathy with my friend, Miss Addams), as regards this pacifist agitation. If you do know my attitude and have sent the invitation knowing it, I wish you would give me the chance when I see you to make a very earnest appeal to you to use your good influence, not on behalf of a peace that will not bring righteousness, but on behalf of righteousness; for if that is obtained the peace worth having comes with it."
February 4, 1916.
To Mrs. Mary T. Bays, Ellisville, III: "It does me good to hear from an American woman who is a real patriot. You say you are 'only an old, ignorant country woman.' I wish to heaven that all wealthy and cultivated people had your good sense and courage and devotion to the country. It is right that you should feel as you do, when your husband fought gallantly throughout the Civil "War and came home wounded and broken in health. You tell me that last Sunday, at church, you heard the preacher speak for 'Peace at any Price,' and that he said that if our flag was insulted or spat upon it did not matter, and that the church was full of men and boys and that not one protested.
"Such a preacher is a foe of this country, and a foe of humanity, and a foe of Christianity. He represents the type which, if he had lived in Judea during the life-time of the Saviour, would have attacked the Saviour for breaking the peace by driving the money-changers from the Temple. The men and boys who listened to him without protest are no better than he is."
February 4, 1916.
To Rev. Gustavus E. Hitter, Pastor, First German Methodist Episcopal Church, Indianapolis, Indiana: "I thank you for your personal kindness toward me, but, my dear sir, I am not a candidate, and if I were I would most emphatically refuse to receive the votes of those whom you speak of as ' German-Americans, who are getting ready to throw their solid support to one or the other candidate, something that has never occurred before.' I do not want any man's support if it comes because that man is acting as a German-American, or an English-American, or an Irish-American, or a Jewish-American, or a native American. If he cannot act as a plain United States citizen, then he has no business to vote in our country at all. There is no room for a 'solid German-American vote' in this country, or a solid English-American vote, if we are to conduct things on a really healthy basis. I have in me German, French and English blood, as well as Dutch blood, but I am an American and nothing else. I can only refer you to my published statements and to the enclosed pamphlet 'Americanism,' to give my position. I believe the. Americans of German blood have formed a peculiarly valuable element in this country. In the great crisis of the Civil War, a greater proportion went right than was the case with the Americans of old Colonial stock. But they must vote as Americans and nothing else, or they will be positive sources of danger and detriment to the community.
"It is exceedingly unlikely that I shall ever again be a candidate for office, but, if I am, no man will be wise who votes for me under the idea that I am anything but a straight-cut American. I care nothing for a man's creed, or his birthplace, or descent! but I regard him as an unworthy citizen unless he is an American and nothing else."
In commenting upon President Wilson's address to Congress, in December 1915, Roosevelt aroused much curiosity and caused an active searching of dictionaries by saying: "His (Wilson's) elocution is that of a Byzantine logothete —and Byzantine logothetes were not men of action."
In the early part of 1916 a subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the Authors' League of America, of which Colonel Roosevelt was honorary vice-president, brought in a report advocating affiliation with the American Federation of Labor. Colonel Roosevelt was asked to approve the report, but refused to do so. So strong was the feeling in the League upon this matter that the organization itself was threatened with disruption. In answer to the report of the subcommittee, some of the more conservative members of the League issued a protest against affiliation. The protest was sent by Julian Street to Colonel Roosevelt with a request that he sign it if he saw fit to do so. Instead of signing, Roosevelt sent to Mr. Street a letter addressed to the subcommittee, authorizing him to make any use of it he thought best.
The letter was as follows:
sagamore hill,
July 28, 1916. To the Subcommittee of the Executive Committee of the
Authors' League, gentlemen :
Since our correspondence I have carefully considered the matter, and I have now read the "protest" against the proposed action.
Not only does this protest contain some very strong arguments against your proposed action, but the mere fact that so many of our leading members sign it makes it in my view inadvisable and improper to take the proposed action.
The Authors' League should be kept a united body and not required to deal with burning questions remote from its proper interests, and as to which its membership would be bitterly divided, and in view of the facts as they now appear, I would regard the proposed action as equivalent to the disruption of the Authors' League, and I therefore most earnestly hope that it will not be taken.
theodore Roosevelt.
Mr. Street decided, after some reflection, not to send the letter because he thought it might tend to antagonize organized labor. He announced his decision to Roosevelt and received the following reply on August 4,1916:
"I don't care a rap whether the Federation of Labor does or does not understand my position. I am getting to be too old to count in the cost of such matters! If that letter is of service to you you are welcome to use it, and in any event you had better send it now to the subcommittee, even although you do not publish it until later—so that they may not claim that they were under any misapprehension as to my attitude."
Mr. Street sent the letter and soon afterwards the affiliation scheme was dropped.