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CHAPTER THIRTY ONE 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

SERIOUS ILLNESS IN HOSPITAL: 

VIEWS ON THE FUTURE OF HIMSELF AND: 

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: 

on February 5,1918, Roosevelt went to a hospital in New York for treatment of an abcess on his thigh and subsidiary abcesses in his ears which were due to the poisoning of his system by the equatorial fever that he had incurred while on his Brazilian trip. His condition was so serious at the time that on February 8 an unfounded rumor of his death was circulated.
While in the hospital, on February 21, 1918, he wrote a long letter to his friend Sir Arthur Lee, member of the British Parliament, in which he said in regard to American feeling about England's course in the war:
"I think that this country now as a whole believes England has been making and is making a great effort. The trouble is that it believes it in an aloof way, and, what is much worse, it looks with similar aloofness upon its own effort. In my judgment, the way to render help to the Allies is primarily to wake America to its own shortcomings as regards its own effort, to enlighten it as to the need of making that effort quickly and formidably felt; or in other words, to struggle as hard as possible to increase our weight in the war. It would be a far more difficult thing for me to get our country speeded to action by knowledge of England's effort than to get it speeded to action by knowledge of its own shortcomings and duties.
"Almost without exception in every speech, I speak of the tremendous nature of the British effort, as well of course as of the French effort, and say that we owe our safety purely to the British fleet and the French and British armies, that this ignoble position must end, and that, to use my exact expression, we must not be in the position of the substitute who goes into the game only as the referee blows his whistle. . . . We are still, after a year of war, much in the condition in which England was after two or three months of war. I believe that the only way by which we can get our people thoroughly aroused is by telling them the truth about their own effort, explaining to them fearlessly their shortcomings and exciting and appealing to their pride."
Roosevelt remained in the hospital till March 4, when he left in excellent condition, but with the hearing of his left ear destroyed. It was announced about this time that several years previous he had lost the sight of one eye, due to a blow that he had received during a boxing bout in the White House. In spite of these two afflictions he went about with his usual activity and energy so apparently undiminished that no observer, who was unaware of these injuries, would suspect their existence. Writing to H. Eider Haggard in England on March 12, 1918, he said of his condition and future activities:
"I am now on the high road to recovery. I feel that in my case, as you say is the case with you, age will hereafter forbid my doing certain things that I have done in the past; but there yet remains very much work of a less exposed type that I can do rather better than ever before. I am, of course, devoutly thankful that America is in the war and I bitterly regret that she did not go into the war two years previously, in which case it would be over now. We are doing much slower work than I like."
His first public speech after his recovery was made before the Republican State Convention in Maine, at Portland, on March 28, 1918. There was no perceptible lack of his former vigor in this. He announced at the outset that it had been written three weeks earlier while he was in the hospital. It was the most outspoken of all his utterances up to this time in its assertion of the right to criticize the National Administration in so far as its conduct deserved criticism, and it commanded wide attention. A few of its more notable passages should be cited as a necessary part of his record:
"This is the people's war. It is not the President's war. It is not Congress' war. It is the war of the people of the United States for the honor and welfare of America and of mankind. It is the bounden duty of the Republican party to support every public servant, from the President down, in so far as he does good and efficient work in waging the war or helping wage the war, and to oppose him exactly to the extent of his failure to do such work; for our loyalty is to the people of the United States, and to every public servant, in exact accordance with the way in which he serves the public. It is the duty of the Republican party to stand like a rock against inefficiency, incompetence, hesitation and delay no less than against any luke warmness in serving the common cause of ourselves and our allies. Sixty odd years ago Abraham Lincoln set our duty before us when he said: 'Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. In both cases you are right. To desert such ground is to be less than a man, less than an American.'
"If we are men and not children, if we have the right stuff of manhood in us, we will look facts in the face, however ugly they be, and profit by them. We must face the fact of our shameful unpreparedness before this war, and of the inefficiency with which for the first year and two months this war has been waged by us. Many of our state governments have done extraordinarily good work; but the mismanagement at Washington has been such as to cause all good parties grave concern. The policy of unpreparedness, of watchful waiting, has borne most evil fruit. For two and a half years before we drifted stern foremost into the war we were given such warning as never before in history was given a great nation. Yet we failed in the smallest degree to profit by the warning, and we drifted into war unarmed and helpless, without having taken the smallest step to harden our huge but soft and lazy strength. In consequence, although over a year has passed, we are still in a military sense impotent to render real aid to the allies or be a real menace to Germany."
In the same speech he took up the problems which would arise for solution after the war and stated his views on social and industrial reforms—views which had been undergoing development in his mind for more than 35 years, for these questions had been steadily occupying more serious consideration from him as time advanced. The substance of what he published at the time, was embodied in his book, "The Foes of Our Own Household," already alluded to.
His chief desire at the time was to bring the Republican party back to the standard that he had set for it while he was President and from which it had lapsed under President Taft. This condition of mind found expression in a letter that he wrote to William Allen White, of Kansas, on April 4, 1918, which contains also an interesting account of his experiences during his visit to Washington in January, 1918, to which allusion was made in the preceding chapter:
"I wish to do everything in my power to make the Republican party the party of sane, constructive radicalism, just as it was under Lincoln. If it is not that, then of course I have no place in it. And while I might very probably vote for its candidate as the least unattractive course open, I would not attempt any serious championship of it, or expect to have any share in guiding it. If the Romanoffs of our social and industrial world are kept at the head of our Government the result will be Bolshevism, and Bolshevism means disaster to liberty, writ large across the face of this continent.
"A couple of months ago I went to Washington, being originally asked to go by Smoot and Madden. I saw a great many Senators and Congressmen. Three of the Senators, two of them were old friends of mine and whose names I really don't think I shall write down even to you, struck me as hopelessly reactionary, as hopelessly blind, to the conditions ahead. I felt their hopelessness all the more because I am inclined to think their attitude was sincere. But the great majority of men in the Lower House and at least the large minority of the Senators either were or appeared to be sincerely desirous of accepting the fact that we were about to face a changed world and that mere negation and obstruction and attempts to revive the dead past spelled ruin. They were all of them anxious to have me take some position of leadership, and equally anxious that I should not think that this committed them to definitely following_ me, and above all that I should not think it committed them to making me the candidate in 1920. After a little thought I came to the conclusion that it was better for me to talk openly to them and I speedily devised my formula, used over and over again, to this effect, 'I am not in the least concerned with your supporting me either now or at any future time; all I am concerned with is that you should so act that 7 can support you.' ''
When in the spring of 1918, a movement was started to add 3,700 volunteers to the Twenty-seventh New York Volunteer Division, U. S. A., in order to bring it up to war strength, the enlisted men detailed for the task wrote to Roosevelt asking him to make an appeal in aid of their work. He replied at once on April 6, 1918, as follows:
"Your letter should stir the patriotism of every true American in more ways than one, and every man in New York State fit to go to the war and outside the draft limits should respond to your appeal, if by any possibility he can do so. I like what you say about the fact that 90 per cent of the officers in the division have risen from the ranks, and that Major General O'Ryan himself began his service as a private in one of the regiments now under him. This represents the true American spirit; and when we get our universal service every officer in the army and the navy will have served for a year as an enlisted man before he is eligible for appointment as an officer.
"I most earnestly hope that your appeal will be successful. Every effort is now being made to hurry our army divisions across the ocean. You inform me that you have strong hopes of being sent over within sixty days. The volunteers who come into your division will be associated with veterans, so that they will speedily learn their duties and will have the prospect of immediate service overseas in front of them. Moreover they will go in with the men of their own State, and in most cases their own friends and kinsfolk will be in the division.
"I not only respect the men who are going to the front, but I envy them! I am proud beyond measure that all my own kinsfolk of military age are at the front with the forces —sons, son-in-law, nephews, cousins. This is the greatest war in history. America must do her full duty in it. It will be a mighty sight pleasanter hereafter for the young men of to-day to explain why they did go into the army instead of how they stayed out of the army. I envy every young man physically fit and above or below the draft age who now has the chance to join your division; and unless he is conclusively able to show good reason why he does not do so he will have a whole lot to explain to his children in the future, unless he comes in."
In explanation of his course in criticizing the Wilson Administration, he wrote to Alfred Holman, Editor of the San Francisco Argonaut, on April 19, 1918:
"In this present crisis it really seemed to me that somebody had to hoist the black flag and refuse to take or give quarter; and there was nobody but myself quite in the position to do it. I need hardly tell you that I now have numerous good friends who nervously beg me not needlessly to continue offending the German-Americans, or the Sinn Feiners or the Pacifists, or the Bolshevists, or the I. "W. W., etc., etc., etc. They assure me that I will jeopardize my influence and my future by so doing. The answer is simple. As for my future these good people doubtless do not believe me when I tell them the truth, which is that I have absolutely no concern with my future unless it is conditioned upon being one of the kind of activities in which I believe; and as for my influence, the same thing applies—I don't value it in the least unless I can use it for the things in which I believe. The times are too big to warrant small motives 1"
It sometimes happened that the newspapers to which he sent his contributions objected to them as too violent in tone and asked him to modify them. He declined to yield to such requests, withdrawing the articles, but not blaming the editors for their objections. "Writing on this subject to his friend, E. A. Van Valkenberg, of the Philadelphia North American, on April 23,1918, he said:
"I appreciate to the full the reasons why they are reluctant to publish them and I am sure that they are correct in their judgment as regards themselves. On the other hand, as you know my whole concern at this time is practically the same concern that Amos and Micah and Isaiah had for Jerusalem nearly three thousand years ago! In those days a prophet was very apt to get himself stoned. Nowadays he merely excites the ire of the persons who would otherwise read the magazines or newspapers in which his prophecies appear. But he hasn't any business to damage his magazine or newspaper. I am not dead sure that the prophet business can be combined with keeping up circulation, and moreover I know that when a man with strong feelings and intense convictions reaches a certain age he is apt to get cat-a-cornered as regards the surrounding world and therefore his usefulness ceases, and I am quite prepared to feel that now that I am in my sixtieth year it would be to the interest of everybody that I should cease being a prophet and become that far pleasanter and more innocuous person, a sage. But as long as I am in the prophet business I wish to prophesy.''
A letter that he wrote to Will H. Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, on May 16, 1918, is quite remarkable for its prophetic insight, in view of what happened in mining and other labor disturbances in 1919:
May 15, 1918.
"You are in a position to do great good in the reorganization of the party. The Progressives believe you to be an open-minded and fearless-hearted man, and that you are willing to stand by absolutely what a majority of the party may decide upon as public policy. The whole trouble seems to have been that the Progressives felt that no matter how much of a majority they had in the primaries in Republican States, the Republican organization would not permit the Republican party to become the kind of party which the majority in the Republican States felt it should be. We are only interested in the organization in so far as that organization gives us a free play to make the Republican party a constructive forward moving party and we are only interested in the Republican party in so far as it is just that.
'' There is no use in trying to rally around the past. This war has buried the past. New issues are going to force themselves into American politics and those issues are going to require a party which believes in a strong centralized government that shall be strong for the purpose of construction and not for the purpose of checking the progress of things. The new issues which will require a strongly centralized government are going to revolve about:
"Transportation; price fixing; rigid public control if not ownership of mines, forests and waterways.
"And if the Republican party takes the ground that the world must be the same old world, the Republican party is lost. There can be no doubt but that labor must have a new voice in the management of industrial affairs. The right of labor to collective bargaining, and in that right, the further right to know exactly how the books stand in every industrial concern is going to be a vital political question and the Republican party should take a constructive stand. It cannot afford to talk about constitutional rights of capital and try to dam the moving current of the times. I am satisfied that many Republicans who did not believe these things three and six years ago, are going to believe them now. And I feel the t if you will give the Republican organization a free opportunity for development it will develop into a constructive liberal party."
In May, 1918, Roosevelt went on a speaking tour in the West, dwelling in all his speeches upon Americanism and loyalty to the nation. At Springfield, Ohio, on May 25, he uttered sentiments which appeared in other addresses and which may be cited as typical:
"The first essential here in the United States is that we shall be one nation and that the American nation. We are a new nation, by blood akin to but different from every one of the nations of Europe. We have our own glorious past, we are a nation with a future such as no other nation in the world has before it, if only we, the men and women of to-day, do our full duty and bring up our sons and daughters to do their full duty, as Americans, and as nothing else.
"In such a nation there can be no fifty-fifty allegiance. There is no such thing as being loyal to the United States, and also loyal to any other Power. It is just as impossible as for a man to be loyal to his wife and also equally loyal to some other woman.
"We must have but one flag—the American flag, and but one language—the English language."
On the same day, May 25, 1918, he met ex-President Taf t in Chicago and a public reconciliation took place between the two.
Two letters that Roosevelt wrote at this period to the French author, Henry Bordeaux, show how deeply he had been stirred by the events of the war and the participation of his sons in it:
May 27, 1918. My dear M. Bordeaux:
I am glad indeed to get your volume on '' The Great Hero of the Air." It seems a strange thing to say, for I suppose one ought not to take pride in the fact that another who is very dear has been wounded; but I cannot help feeling pride that one of my boys has been severely wounded in fighting for civilization and humanity beside your troops in France, and was given the Oroix de Guerre by one of your Generals. One arm and one leg were shattered. We hope he will recover entirely. His only anxiety is to recover at once so that he can get back to the trenches. Another of my sons is at this moment in the great drive, and may be dead or wounded before this letter reaches you. My other two sons have been at the front but are not now. They will, I presume, be there in three or four weeks. With very high regards,
Faithfully yours,
theodobe eoosevblt. M. Henry Bordeaux, 44, Eue de Eanelagh, Paris, France.
June 27, 1918. My dear M. Bordeaux:
I count the American people fortunate in reading any book of yours; I count them fortunate in reading any biography of that great hero of the air, Guynemer; and thrice over I count them fortunate to have such a book written by you on such a subject.
You, sir, have for many years been writing books peculiarly fitted to instill into your countrymen the qualities which during the last forty-eight months have made France the wonder of the world. You have written with such power and charm, with such mastery of manner and of matter that the lessons you taught have been learned unconsciously by your readers—and this is the only way in which most readers will learn lessons at all. The value of your teachings would be as great for my countrymen as for yours. You have held up as an ideal for men and for women that high courage which shirks no danger, when the danger is the inevitable accompaniment of duty. You have preached the essential virtues, the duty to be both brave and tender, the duty of courage for the man and courage for the woman. You have inculcated stern horror of the baseness which finds expression in refusal to perform those essential duties without which not merely the usefulness, but the very existence, of any nation will come to an end.
Under such conditions it is eminently appropriate that you should write the biography of that soldier-son of France, whose splendid daring has made him stand as arch typical of the soul of the French people through these terrible four years. In this great war France has suffered more and has achieved more than any other power. To her, more than to any other power, the final victory will be due. Civilization has in the past for immemorial centuries owed an incalculable debt to France; but for no single feat or achievement of the past does civilization owe as much to France as to what her sons and daughters have done in the world war now being waged by the free peoples against the powers of the Pit.
Modern war makes terrible demands upon those who fight. To an infinitely greater degree than ever before the outcome depends upon long preparation in advance, and upon the skillful and unified use of the nation's entire social and industrial no less than military power. The work of the general staff is infinitely more important than any work of the kind in times past. The actual machinery of battle is so vast, delicate and complicated that years are needed to complete it. At all points we see the immense need of thorough organization and machinery ready far in advance of the day of trial. But this does not mean that there is any less need than before of those qualities of endurance and hardihood, of daring and resolution, which in their sum make up the stern and enduring valor which has been and ever will be the mark of mighty victorious armies.
The air service in particular is one of such peril that membership in it is of itself a high distinction. Physical address, high training, entire fearlessness, iron nerve and fertile resourcefulness are needed in a combination and to a degree hitherto unparalleled in war. The ordinary air fighter is an extraordinary man; and the extraordinary air fighter stands as one in a million among his fellows. Guynemer was one of these.    More than that, he was the foremost among all these extraordinary fighters of all the nations who in this war have made the skies their battlefield.   We are fortunate indeed in having you write his biography. Very faithfully yours,
theodoee roosevelt. M. Henry Bordeaux, 44 Rue du Ranelagh, Paris, France.
[This letter was reproduced as a Preface in an English translation of Mr. Bordeaux's biography of Guynemer published by the Yale University Press in 1918.]