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CHAPTER THIRTY THREE 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

UNDIMINISHBD  ACTIVITIES  OF  HIS  CLOSING YEARS: 

His grief at the death of Quentin did not permit Roosevelt to lessen his interest in the great war and the attitude of the nation toward it. He continued to write and speak with unabated zeal and undiminished force. When in the autumn news came of the deportation and enslavement of Belgians by Germany, he was among the first to utter a protest. In a letter that he wrote to Mr. F. W. Whitridge, the organizer of a great mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, New York, on December 15, 1916, that had been called to express public indignation at Germany's conduct, he said:
"This action (by Germany) is paralleled by the action of the Assyrian conquerors of Syria and Palestine; but until the present war broke out it was supposed that such hideous infamies were effectively checked by the system of international law which has grown up under modern Christian civilization. But Germany has trampled under foot every device of international law for securing the protection of the weak and unoffending. She has shown an utter disregard of all considerations of pity, mercy, humanity and international morality. She has counted upon the terror inspired by her ruthless brutality to protect her from retaliation of interference.
"The outrages committed on our own people have been such as the United States has never before been forced to endure, and have included the repeated killing of our men, women and children. The sinking of the Marina and the Cheming the other day, with the attendant murder of six Americans, was but the most recent in an unbroken chain of injuries and insults, which by comparison make mere wrong to our property interests sink into absolute insignificance. 
"As long as neutrals keep silent, or speak apologetically, or take refuge in the futilities of the professional pacificists, there will be no cessation in these brutalities. But surely this last and crowning brutality, which amounts to the imposition of a cruel form of state-slavery on a helpless and unoffending conquered nation, must make our people realize that they peril their own souls, that they degrade their own manhood, if they do not bear emphatic testimony against the perpetration of such iniquity. I am glad to be one among the Americans who thus bear testimony."
To Mr. Charles W. Farnham, the organizer of a similar meeting in St. Paul, Minn., he wrote a letter on January 19, 1917, which contains a notable expression of his views on International peace movements:
"If the men of Lexington and Bunker Hill and Trenton were right, then the Belgians are right now; and when we tamely acquiesce in such infamies as have been committed in Belgium—of course still more when we tamely acquiesce in such infamies as have been committed against our own people in cases like that of the Lusitama—we show ourselves unworthy to be the heirs of the Americans who followed Washington and upheld the hands of Lincoln. Since the days of Pontius Pilate neutrality between right and wrong has been recognized by all high-minded men and women as itself immoral.
"What we need is not to promise action in the nebulous future but to act now in the living present. Any promise of ours about entering into international peace leagues or guaranteeing the peace of the world or protecting small nationalities hereafter is worse than worthless, is mischievous and hypocritical, unless we make our words good by action in the case that is uppermost in the present. Until we can and do guarantee peace in Mexico let us not talk loudly and make empty gestures about guaranteeing the peace of the world. Unless we are willing to run some risk and make some effort to right the wrongs of Belgium in the present let us refrain from indulging in insincere declamation about protecting small nations in similar cases in the future. And  let us make no absurd promises about 'enforcing' peace at some remote period in the future until by foresight and labor and service and self-sacrifice we have shown that we have spiritually prepared ourselves to make our words good and until materially we have made ready our vast but soft and lazy strength."
A letter that Roosevelt wrote on December 19, 1917, is quite worthy of record because of its accurate prediction of the strikes and general labor disturbances, fomented by the I. W. W. and other anarchistic organizations, which occurred in 1919. In July 1916, during a parade in San Francisco, in the interest of national preparedness for the war, a bomb was thrown among the crowd along the line of march, which exploded and killed ten men and women and maimed fifty persons including several children. One T. J. Mooney, a member of the I. W. W., was arrested on the charge of throwing the bomb, was tried and convicted, and on February 24, 1917, was sentenced to death. Another member, Billings, was convicted at the some time of complicity in the act. The I. W. W. organization took up the case and called mass meetings in various parts of the country denouncing the court and declaring the case against Mooney to be a conspiracy against him among the capitalistic interests of California. At the same time the I. W. W. demanded the recall or removal of Fickert, the District Attorney who had secured the conviction. President Wilson- was appealed to and interfered three separate times in behalf of Mooney, asking the Governor of California to pardon him.
In July 1917, during a series of strikes in the copper mines of Arizona, all of which were shown to have been instigated by the I. W. W., over a thousand members of that organization were seized by the enraged citizens of Bisbee and other Arizona towns in which strikes were existing, placed in cattle cars and deported outside State limits with orders not to return,
President Wilson appointed a Mediation Commission to investigate the matter, and named as legal adviser of this body the lawyer who had investigated the Mooney case. This lawyer made a report in both cases that was in favor of the I. W. W.'s contentions. To this man Roosevelt wrote the letter mentioned above, from which I quote:
"You have taken, and are taking, on behalf of the Administration an attitude which seems to me to be fundamentally that of Trotsky and the other Bolsheviki leaders in Russia; an attitude which may be fraught with mischief to this country.
"The question of granting a re-trial is one thing. The question ot the recall is entirely distinct. Even if a re-trial were proper this would not in the least justify a recall— any more than a single grave error on your part would justify your impeachment, or the impeachment of President Wilson for appointing you. The I. W. W. and the 'direct action' anarchists and apologists for anarchy are never concerned for justice. They are concerned solely in seeing one kind of criminal escape justice, precisely as certain big business men and certain corporation lawyers have in the past been concerned in seeing another kind of criminal escape justice. The guiding spirits in the movement for the recall of Fickert cared not a rap whether or not Mooney and Billings were guilty; probably they believed them guilty; all they were concerned with was seeing a rebuke administered to, and an evil lesson taught all public officials who might take action against crimes of violence committed by anarchists in the name of some foul and violent protest against social conditions. Murder is murder, and it is rather more evil, when committed in the name of a professed social movement. The reactionaries have in the past been a great menace to this republic; but at this moment it is the I. W. W., the Germanized Socialists, the Anarchists, the foolish creatures who always protest against the suppression of crime, the pacifists and the like, who are the really grave danger. These are the Bolsheviki of America, and the Bolsheviki are just as bad as the Romanoffs, and are at the moment a greater menace to orderly freedom. Robespierre and Danton and Marat and Hebert were just as evil as the worst tyrants of the old regime, and from 1791 to 1794 they were the most dangerous enemies to liberty that the world contained. When you, as representing President Wilson, find yourself obliged to champion men of this stamp you ought by unequivocal affirmative action to make it evident that you are sternly against their general and habitual line of conduct.
"I have just received your report on the Bisbee deportation. One of the prominent leaders in that deportation was my old friend, Jack Greenway, who has just been commissioned a Major in the Army by President Wilson. Your report is as thoroughly misleading a document as could be written on the subject. No official, writing on behalf of the President, is to be excused for failure to know, and clearly to set forth, that the I. W. W. is a criminal organization. To ignore the fact that a movement such as its members made into Bisbee is made with criminal intent is precisely as foolish as for a New York policeman to ignore the fact that when the Whyo gang assembles with guns and knives it is with criminal intent. The President is not to be excused if he ignores this fact, for of course he knows all about it. No human being in his senses doubts that the men deported from Bisbee were bent on destruction and murder. If the President, through you or any one else, had any right to look into the matter, this very fact shows that he had been remiss in his clear duty to provide against the very grave danger in advance. When no efficient means are employed to guard honest, upright and well behaved citizens from the most brutal kind of lawlessness, it is inevitable that these citizens shall try to protect themselves; that is as true when the President fails to do his duty about the I. W. W. as when the police fail to do their duty about gangs like the Whyo gang; and when either the President or the police, personally or by representative, rebuke the men who defend themselves from criminal assault, it is necessary sharply to point out that far heavier blame whelming victory and accept no peace but unconditional surrender. Our whole effort must be to bring Germany to her knees and to put a stop once for all to her threat of world dominion; and to do this we must insist upon a unified citizenship at home. There is no room in this country for loyalty to but one flag—the American flag—and therefore no room for loyalty to any other flag, and still less the black or red flag."
He had promised to make one speech in New York City in support of the Republican ticket in the State election, and October 28 had been fixed as the date for this in Carnegie Hall. His speech had been prepared and advance copies of it sent to the press when, on October 26, President Wilson published an appeal to the voters of the country to elect a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress at the approaching November election. Roosevelt at once prepared an addendum to his address in which he discussed the appeal, thus increasing materially the length of his remarks. He spoke for two hours and a quarter and held the undivided and enthusiastic attention of his audience to the close. Never had his wonderful powers of mastery over a great audience been more signally displayed. From the beginning to the end, he did not for a moment lose his hold upon it. Never had he appeared to be in better physical condition, and rarely had his mental powers appeared to be more vigorous and alert. He began his speech by saying:
"I have been cautioned three times to-day not to be extreme in what I say to-night. The trouble is that my extremeness one year is another person's moderation later. But I won't be extreme to-night. By that I mean I won't go beyond the point I ought to go. There will be one advantage in what I say, however. You'll understand it and you won't need any key. You won't get a letter from me day after to-morrow explaining what I meant.''
When a voice from the gallery shouted: "Three cheers for the fighting man!" he instantly raised his hand and exclaimed: '' Don't cheer for me. I 'd have been in the fight if I had been allowed. Cheer for the fighting man at the front and let us see that his blood is not shed in vain."
In his appeal President Wilson had said: "The leaders of the minority in the present Congress have unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti-Administration. The return of a Republican majority in either House of Congress would be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership.'
In commenting on this Roosevelt quoted the words of Lincoln in March 1863, in favor of sending to Congress only "unconditional supporters of the war," and again in August 1863 appealing to "all those who maintain unconditional devotion to the Union whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life." and then added:
"Lincoln made no party test. He appealed to all loyal men of all parties. He asked that the test of fitness for Congress be, not adherence to his personal administration, but unconditional support of the war. Mr. Wilson applies the most rigid party test. He explicitly repudiates loyalty to the war as a test. He demands the success of the Democratic party, and asks the defeat of all pro-war men if they have been anti-administration. He asks for the defeat of pro-war Republicans. He does not ask for the defeat of pro-war Democrats. On the contrary, he supports such mendf although anti-war they are pro-administration. He does not ask for loyalty to the Nation. He asks only for support of himself. There is not the slightest suggestion that he disapproves of disloyalty to the nation. I do not doubt that he does feel some disapproval of such disloyalty; but apparently this feeling on his part is so tepid that it slips from his mind when he contemplates what he regards as the far greater sin of failure in adherence to himself."
This was the keynote of his speech, which is too long to quote and quite impossible of condensation because every sentence of it is vital. It had a wide circulation throughout the country and unquestionably was a powerful factor in securing a Republican majority in both Houses of Congress. ' It was the last great speech of his life. Even while making it he was feeling the first pangs of an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, which caused his return to the hospital on November 11, 1918, where he remained till December 25, suffering severely during the greater part of !the time, but maintaining complete cheerfulness and serenity of spirit and keen interest in the progress of events, seeing a few callers and keeping up the more personal portion of his correspondence. Writing to Eider Haggard, on December 6, 1918, he said: "I doubt if I ever again go back into public place. I have had to go into too much and too bitter truth telling. Like you, I am not at all sure about the future. I hope that Germany will suffer a change of heart, but I am anything but certain. I don't put much faith in the League of Nations, or any corresponding cure-all."
To a Southern correspondent, D. H. Clark, of Savannah, Georgia, he wrote on December 23, 1918: "It would be utter silliness for the Progressive Party, as such, to go into the next campaign. In spite of every effort of the leaders it died in 1914 and it is mere folly to keep it alive."
I saw him almost daily during this period, taking to him my first draft of the earlier chapters of this story of his life, which he read while sitting up in bed or in a chair. "We talked occasionally of politics. At the time his leadership of his party had become so universally recognized that there was an unbroken unanimity of opinion in favor of him as the choice of the party for the Presidential nomination in 1920. When I spoke of this to him only a short time before his death, he said rather sadly:
"I am indifferent to the subject. I would not lift a finger to get the nomination. Since Quentin's death the world seems to have shut down upon me. My other boys are on the other side of the water fighting, or being made ready to fight for their country. If they do not come back, what would the Presidency mean to me? At best I have only a few remaining years, and nothing could give me greater joy than to spend them with my family. I have been President for seven years and I am not eager to be President again. But if the leaders of the party come to me and say that they are convinced that I am the man the people want and the only man who can be elected, and that they are all for me, I don't see how I could refuse to run. If I do consent, it will be because as President I could accomplish some things that I should like to see accomplished before I die." This he had said quietly while lying back on his pillows. Then, sitting suddenly erect and clenching his fist, the old fighting Roosevelt reappeared in the declaration: "And by George, if they take me, they will take me without a single reservation or modification of the things I have always stood for!"
He left the hospital on the morning of Christmas, 1918, and went to his home in Oyster Bay. His physicians were confident of complete recovery and he shared their belief. Writing to his sister, Mrs. W. S. Cowles, on December 28, 1918, he said:

"It was very dear of you to keep writing me. I feel like a faker, because my troubles are not to be mentioned in the same breath with all you have gone through. Mine has just been a case of severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism, and a little sciatica, and while I won't be able to do much for a couple of months, I have every reason to think I shall in the end recover completely. I got out home Christmas morning, so that Edith and I, Ethel and Alice and Archie and Gracie, had Christmas dinner together. Richard and little Edie are the darlingest small souls you have ever seen. Little Edie is the busiest person imaginable, and runs around exactly as if she was a small mechanical toy."
To his friend Russell J. Coles, with whom he had gone devil fishing a few years earlier and with whom he had planned another expedition, he wrote on January 1, 1919:
"My doctors tell me that in all probability I shall be able to go with you on March 1st. There is, of course, however, the possibility that my convalescence may be slower than they suppose. At present I am utterly worthless. I hope you understand how deeply I appreciate your taking Archie along. My great desire is that he shall get a devil fish. He is a pretty good boy and of course crippling makes it hard for him to enjoy the kind of sports he loves and which you and I at his age enjoyed and I very deeply appreciate your giving him the chance as you have done."
On the same date, January 1, 1919, his profound distrust of President Wilson found expression in this outspoken letter to Mr. Ogden Reid, editor of the New York Tribune, one of the last letters he ever wrote:
'' This is a grumble from a faithful Tribune reader, over an editorial in Sunday's Tribune. For Heaven's sake never allude to Wilson as an idealist or militaire or altruist. He is a doctrinaire when he can be so with safety to his personal ambition, and he is always utterly and coldly selfish. He hasn 't a touch of idealism in him. His advocacy of the League of Nations no more represents idealism on his part than his advocacy of peace without victory, or his statement that we had no concern with the origin or cause of the European war, or with his profoundly unethical refusal for two and a half years to express a particle of sympathy for poor Belgium. His opponents are cheered when we tell about him being a misguided idealist. He is not. He is a silly doctrinaire at times and an utterly selfish and coldblooded politician always."
After Roosevelt's death various zealous advocates of President Wilson's plan for a League of Nations asserted that Roosevelt had committed himself in its favor. Nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the truth, for repeatedly he had committed himself against it. Speaking at the City Hall, New York, on September 6, 1918, at exercises on the anniversary of the birth of Lafayette and of the Battle of the Marne, he said:

"It is sometimes announced that part of the peace agreement must be a League of Nations which will avert all war for the future and put a stop to the need of this nation preparing its own strength for its own defense. Many of the adherents of this idea grandiloquently assert that they intend to supplant nationalism by internationalism.

"In deciding upon proposals of this nature it behooves our people to remember that competitive rhetoric is a poor substitute for the habit of resolutely looking facts in the-face. To substitute internationalism for nationalism means to do away with patriotism, and is as vicious and as profoundly demoralizing as to put promiscuous devotion to all other persons in the place of steadfast devotion to a man's own family. Either effort means the atrophy of robust morality. The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as the other."
The last formal utterance of his life on any public question was in an editorial article for the Kansas City Star which he dictated to his secretary on January 5, 1919, the day before his death. In this, which I reproduce in full in recognition of its historic value, he stated his attitude so clearly that no intelligent person can misunderstand it:

"It is of course a serious misfortune that President Wilson through Mr. Creel's misinformation bureau and the control exercised over the correspondents, should prevent our people from getting a clear idea of what is happening on the other side. For the moment the point as to which we are foggy is the League of Nations. We all of us earnestly desire such a League, only we wish to be sure that it will help and not hinder the cause of world peace and justice. There isn't a young man in this country who has fought, or an old man who has seen those dear to him fight, who does not wish to minimize the chance of future war. But there isn't a man of sense who does not know that in any such movement if too much is attempted the result is either failure or worse than failure.

   "The trouble with Mr. Wilson's utterances, so far as they are reported, and the utterances of acquiescence in them by European statesmen, is that they are still absolutely in the stage of rhetoric precisely like the Fourteen Points. Some of the Fourteen Points will probably have to be construed as having a mischievous significance, a smaller number might be construed as being harmless, and one or two /even as beneficial, but nobody knows what Mr. Wilson really means by them and so all talk of adopting them as basis for a peace or a League is nonsense, and if the talker is intelligent it is insincere nonsense to Root. So Mr. Wilson's recent utterances give us absolutely no clue as to whether he really intends that at this moment we shall admit Germany, Russia, with which incidentally we are still waging war, Turkey, China and Mexico into the League on a full equality with ourselves. Mr. Taft has recently defined the purposes of the League and the limitations under which it would act in a way that enables most of us to say we very heartily agree in principle with his theory and can without doubt come to an agreement under specific details. But President Wilson, seemingly in a spirit of jealousy, has condemned Mr. Taft's proposal, without advancing anything specific himself.

"Would it not be well to begin with the League which we actually have in existence, the League of the allies who have fought through this great war? Let us at the peace table see that real justice is done as among these allies and that while the sternest reparation is demanded from our foes for such horrors as those committed in Belgium, Northern France, Armenia and the sinking of the Lusitcmia, yet should anything be done in the spirit of mere vengeance? Then let us agree to extend the privileges of the League as rapidly as their conduct warrants it to other nations, doubtless discriminating between those who would have a guiding part of the League and the weak nations who would be entitled to the privileges of membership but who would not be entitled to a guiding voice in the councils. Let each nation reserve to itself and for its own decision to clearly set forth questions which are non-justiciable. Let nothing be done that will interfere with our preparing for our own defense by introducing a system of universal obligatory military training modeled on the Swiss plan. Finally, make it perfectly clear that we do not intend to take a position of an international 'Meddlesome Matty.' The American people don't wish to go into an overseas war unless for a very great cause and where the issue is absolutely plain. Therefore, we don't wish to undertake responsibility of sending our gallant young men to die in obscure fights in the Balkans or in Central Europe, or in a war we do not approve of. Moreover, the American people don't intend to give up the Monroe Doctrine. Let civilized Europe and Asia introduce some kind of police system in the weak and disorderly countries at their thresholds. But let the United States treat Mexico as our Balkan Peninsula and refuse to allow European or Asiatic powers to interfere on this continent in any way that implies permanent or semi-permanent possession. Every one of our allies will with delight grant this request if President Wilson chooses to make it and it will be a great misfortune if it is not made.
"I believe that such an effort made moderately and sanely but sincerely and with utter scorn for words that are not made good by deeds will be productive of real and lasting international good.''
This article was sent by telegraph to the Kansas City Star on January 5, 1919, but was not published till some days after his death. A letter that he wrote on January 3, 1919, two days earlier, both by its character and the circumstances of its publication, is entitled to rank as his final message to the American people. This was addressed to the President of the American Defense Society and was read at a great mass meeting under the auspices of that organization, in the Hippodrome in New York, on the evening of January 5. It was published on the morning of January 6, the day of his death. He had no thought when he was preparing this, as his letters at the time show, that it was to be his last appeal to the patriotism and loyalty of his countrymen, but had any such premonition influenced him, he could scarcely have made the appeal other than it is. In it speaks the soul of the man, who throughout his life had been "an American and nothing else." The message in full was as follows:

"I cannot be with you, and so all I can do is to wish you Godspeed. There must be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism merely because the war is over. There are plenty of persons who have already made the assertion that they believe the American people have a short memory and that they intend to revive all the foreign associations which most directly interfere with the complete Americanization of our people. Our principle in this matter should be absolutely simple. In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin.

"But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."