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TALKS WITH T.  R.

PREFACE

Riding across Indiana shortly before his death, Colonel Roosevelt began a brief discussion of the manner in which tradition and some historians had treated Washington and Lincoln.

The talk was predicated on Barnard's statue of the emancipator, then the subject of much discussion.  The paper he held in his hand referred to the controversy and he voiced annoyance that any person could think of portraying "Lincoln as a clod."

"Lincoln to me," said he, "has always been a living person, an inspiration and a help.  I have always felt that if I could do as he would have done were he in my place, I would not be far from right.  And at times when I have been troubled by some public question, I have tried to imagine Lincoln in my position and to do as he would have done.

"I do not understand," he went on, "why some persons like to portray Lincoln as rude and uncouth — to suggest that he was a lineal descendant of the Pithecanthropus, always telling funny stories.  It is as bad as the refining process Washington has gone through.  Washington was a very human sort of person with a fair share of the weakness of man.  He is presented to us as possessing all of the virtues and lacking all suggestion of sin, original and acquired.  As a matter of fact, he was a strong man, with all of a strong man's virtues and many of a strong man's faults, who lived in an age when it was not bad form to offer the minister a drink.

"Lincoln was not a handsome man — he did not have very much on me in that respect — but he was by no means first cousin to the cave man in appearance any more than he was always slapping strangers on the back and telling them funny stories.  He did have the saving grace of humor, but he was no clown.

"In my office in the White House there was a splendid portrait of Lincoln.  Ofttimes, when I had some matter to decide, something involved and difficult to dispose of, where there were conflicting rights and all that sort of thing, I would look up at that splendid face and try to imagine him in my place and try to figure out what he would do in the circumstances.

" It may sound odd to you, but, frankly, it seemed to make my troubles easier of solution.  Yes, to me, Lincoln has ever been a living person, an inspiration and a help.  If I ever envied any man, it was John Hay, who had the wonderful privilege of knowing Lincoln so intimately.

"Lincoln must be — will be always — a living thing to our people, an inspiration and a landmark, to the living and to those yet to live.  Our danger lies in the fact that at times our public men are inclined to stray from the path he blazed, if, indeed, some of them ever trod it."

It had been my habit to transcribe carefully in my notebooks these informal talks with the Colonel.  Until this little talk, through which ran a note almost wistful and that all but expressed the hope that he, in turn, would not be caricatured or whitewashed, my idea as to what I would do with them was vague.  Eventually, I half thought, the notebooks and their contents might find a resting place, perhaps, in Harvard College Library, where in after years the student, seeking material for theme or thesis, might find something of value.

After Colonel Roosevelt's death a year ago, in the days that followed, my thoughts recurred to that day in the Pullman diner riding across Indiana.  It then became clear that, instead of trusting to chance and the years that these talks might be given the public after the Roosevelt tradition had become fixed, the time is now while the tradition is in a state of flux.

Hence this little book, offered to the public in the hope that it will help those who were not privileged above their fellows in knowing him in the flesh, to visualize and know the real Theodore Roosevelt.

JOHN J.  LEARY, JR., NEW YORK CITY, January 1,1920
 
The following is a transcribed hand written letter by TR of recommendation.

Sagamore Hill 
November 10th  1917
Lt.   Colonel R. H. Van Deuran, 
General Staff Chief Military Intelligence Section 
War Dept.

Dear Sir, 
I have long known Mr. John J. Leary Jr. well and intimately. I vouch for him absolutely. He is a man of exceptional intelligence and energy, of entire discretion, of excellent judgment; a dead game man, and absolutely straight; and a through and tough American, of the best type in character and in single-minded loyalty. I would put him in any confidential position under me if I were given command.

Very Respectfully
Theodore Roosevelt

Topic 1
ROOSEVELT AND 1920

All that is near to me in the male line is in France.  If they do not come back, what is the Presidency to me?

" If they do come back, and the Republican Party wants me, and I can see where, by accepting the nomination, I can advance the ideals for which I stand, I will be a candidate.  But I will not lift my finger to secure the nomination."

That was Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's position as expressed to me in June of 1918, when it began to appear that nothing could prevent his nomination.  It was his position in December, when, convalescing from rheumatism, he talked politics with me in Roosevelt Hospital.  I had remarked that it had begun to look as though he would be nominated by acclamation.

"That may be," said he, " but if I am, I will accept only because I see where as President I can do things, can advance those ideals for which all right-thinking Americans stand.  And if I accept, it will be because the platform is one hundred per cent American.  Nothing less would induce me to consider the nomination for a single minute.

"To be President is an honorable and commendable ambition in any man.  I have been President.  Per se it would mean nothing to me to be President again.  Its only value would be in what I could do, what I could accomplish."

This was substantially his position in 1916 when, it will be remembered, the issue at the Republican Convention in Chicago was Roosevelt or Hughes, and the Republican Convention deadlocked with the Progressives on this point; a deadlock broken by Colonel Roosevelt's declination to run as a Progressive and his declaration that he believed it his duty and the duty of all Americans, who felt as he did, to support Justice Hughes.

With Judge Hughes's nomination, Colonel Roosevelt abandoned, temporarily at least, any thought of again running for the Presidency.  Two days before the decision of the voters for Mr.  Wilson over Mr.  Hughes, my notebook says, he declared he would be out of it in four years.

"We can," I remarked, after he had bemoaned the probable reelection of Mr.  Wilson, " look forward to 1920.  There will be nothing to it then but Roosevelt.  No one can stop it."

"You are wrong there," he answered.  "This was my year — 1916 was my high twelve.  In four years I will be out of it.  This was my year to run.  I did not want to run in 1912.  Circumstances compelled me to run then.  This year it was different.  This was my year."

" Colonel," said I, " I know that many things may happen in four years, but I also know that everywhere I go it is the one thing: 'If they had only named Roosevelt.''

"True," he countered, "but don't you see that you are merely proving what I say — this was my year to run.  I have no doubt the mass of the people wanted me to run.  The gang did not.  To beat me they had to take Hughes — they hated him only in a lesser degree than they hated me."

Following the defeat of Judge Hughes he made no effort toward securing the 1920 nomination, for himself or any other man.  His efforts were directed first, last, and all of the time to bringing the Republican Party and its leaders around to what he believed to be the real American ideals and needs of the hour, and to make the party the instrument through which the real will of the American people might be registered and the ancient landmarks defended.

If, in doing this, the party should nominate him, well and good.  If the nomination went to another, well and good, provided that other was one hundred per cent American and dependable in his Americanism.

" It was," he said to me early in 1916, " the necessity of saving the Union that called the Republican Party into being.  It accomplished that purpose, and for many years governed the country wisely and well.  Then it became fat, and soft, and lazy.  It ceased to be the party of all of the people and it has been punished for its sins.

" Now another crisis is at hand.  The danger to our institutions is as great today as it was in 1861.  Then we faced disunion.  Now we face disgrace and worse.  The party now in power is the same party the people, acting through the Republican Party, hurled from power in 1860.  It is as unfit to govern this country now as it was then; it is just as sectional and it is fully as inefficient.  The only difference is this: in 1860 the country was facing war and the Democrats deliberately and criminally did their best to so arrange matters that it would not be ready for war, while now, with the country facing war, it is doing nothing to prepare for war.

"In the one case it was criminal intent, in the other it is congenital inefficiency; in one instance they were crooked, in the present case they are foolish.  The results to the country will be the same.

"The Democratic Party cannot wreck the country, but it can do damage that a generation won't be able to repair.  Under Mr.  Wilson's leadership it is backing us into war stern foremost.  There are men in his party that see the danger, that feel as we do, but they are helpless.  There is no hope for the country in that party.

"If, when we finally get into the war, formally and officially as we now are unofficially, and the Democratic Party happens to be in power, it will be just as inefficient in war as it is in peace.

"The hope of the country is in the Republican Party.  Through it the mass of the people will have to work, will express their real opinions.

"The mass of the people are all right.  Just now they are suffering from a false sense of security into which they have been lulled by sweet words and beautiful phrases.  They will be, they must be awakened.  And when they are awake they must turn to the Republican Party for leadership, for there is none in the other party.  They will turn to it when they realize the needs of real preparedness and the plight they face through false leadership.

"For that reason, and that reason only, I am interested in party politics.  I would not give a snap of my finger for the nomination.  I would take the nomination only because of the chance to do things, were I again President, that must be done."

With this background it is easy to see why, following the defeat of Justice Hughes in 1916 he began a campaign to bring all wings of the Republican Party together.

This campaign began the last Saturday of the 1916 campaign.  It began in Bridgeport where the Colonel closed his speaking tour, with a wholehearted appeal for the election of Mr.  Hughes.  Incidentally it is worth noting here that it was Bridgeport's big vote (Bridgeport is the chief city of Fairfield County) which saved Connecticut to the Republicans and made California's vote so all-important.

After this meeting Colonel Roosevelt went to the Stratfield Hotel where John T.  King, the Republican National Committeeman, had a light supper waiting.  King had been anti-Roosevelt, but had come around to Mr.  Roosevelt's way of thinking, and between bites of supper the two talked organization.

"I am not against the organization and never have been against it because it was a party organization," he declared, "but I have been against it because it was an organization for private plunder.  That is what I am against.

"You have the right idea here — taking the working-men into the organization and making it a popular institution in which the idea of social justice for all is uppermost.  It is a splendid idea, that of insisting that the man who takes a place in the organization must quit drinking and start a savings bank account.

" I want to see that sort of an organization everywhere — an organization where the workers and the small farmers sit in and really belong.  That sort of an organization will not stand for plunder.  It will stand for what is right and decent in public life.  You can call such an organization a machine if you will and I'll still approve of it.  Calling it a machine will not make it offensive to me.  A machine is just as necessary for successful party work, for a party to serve the public, as organization is in the army or in a bank.

" I have no quarrel with any man who has been in the organization for what he has done in the past if he's straight now.  There are a good many things everybody sees are improper now that only a few thought were improper a short time back.  It's like the lottery — Harvard College and many of your old churches about here were financed by lotteries in the old days.  Times have changed.

"If the organization is straight, runs straight, if its leaders and the men in it run straight, I have no objection to it.  I will work with it just so long as it is straight and I won't worry over the possibility that some of its members have not always held as high views as they do now."

"Well," laughed King, "that would let Barnes
in."

"By Godfrey!" exclaimed the Colonel, "I'll work even with Barnes if he's working for the public good.  Yes, I'll even take Barnes in when he is ready to run straight and so long as he is working for the party and the people, and not for Barnes."

"If we had known you as well before Chicago as we do now," remarked King, "Connecticut would have been in a different position there."

The Colonel laughed, asked more questions about King's methods which had made Bridgeport a banner Republican city, and the local situation generally.

"I like King," he told me afterwards.  "He has the right idea of organization — clean men, close to the people, with the working men well up to the front and in front if they have the ability to get there.  Organizations like that won't go wrong."

This conversation not long after resulted by Mr.  King becoming the closest of Colonel Roosevelt's political advisers.  Through King he worked for the reorganization of the Republican National Committee which made Will H.  Hays, of Indiana, National Chairman.  King was his choice for that place, but when on the eve of the St.  Louis meeting of February, 1918, at which Hays was chosen, it became evident King would have to fight for the place, the Colonel advised him to keep out.

"The place is not worth a fight," he advised, " especially where there is so much at stake."

This was his last political act before the serious operations which brought him to the doors of death that winter.  He was semi convalescent when he was told of Hays's election and insisted on wiring him immediately.  He saw Hays before he was out of bed and he was much impressed with him.

"Hays," he told me before leaving the hospital, "is a trump.  He is all right.  He may make mistakes, but he won't make many.  The party seems to be united on him and that's something well worth while.  Now we've got to back him up.  With Hays at work and on the job, I think we'll get results.  For one thing, there's only one party now.  Most of the Progressives have come back.  Most of the others will follow.  Those that won't return would sooner or later have quit even the Progressive Party — they 're just natural born Mavericks who won't stay long in any herd, and won't stay branded.

"Hays will, I'm sure, weld the party firmly together.  The day of factions has gone.  But we have all got to help him."

Colonel Roosevelt's desire to help sent him to Maine a few weeks after he left the hospital to address the state convention.  He had bullied his doctors into a reluctant consent, had a "bully time," and came back confident the trip was worth while.

"It looks more and more like Roosevelt in 1920," I told him on his return.

"I'm not so sure about that," said he.  "I don't know that Roosevelt will care to be a candidate in 1920.  He certainly will not be if he has to scramble for it, and he won't take the nomination if it's handed him on a silver platter, unless he sees where by accepting he can be of real service, can do real things.

"Otherwise — you couldn't drag me into an acceptance."

"I don't believe you'll have to scramble for it; there will be a chance to do things and there won't be any doubt as to the platform — all of your conditions will be met," I replied.

"In that case," he replied, "I'll have to run, but remember this: almost anything can happen between now and 1920."