Topic 11
THAT GARY DINNER

IT is not known to many that, in 1915, Colonel Roosevelt threatened, in the event that certain contingencies became facts, to support President Wilson for reelection against the Republican nominee.

The threat was made at a luncheon given at the Harvard Club in December of that year by the late Robert J.  Collier.  Later, in explaining the famous Gary dinner to me, Colonel Roosevelt repeated the threat.
The Gary dinner may well be described as the mystery of the 1916 campaign.  Exactly what it meant, few knew then, and, publicly it has never been authoritatively explained.

The facts are that it was but an incident in the Colonel's campaign for preparedness — he attended it that he might explain so that "big business men, who have not been my friends, but who now know that I am right, might see the situation exactly as it is, and be in a position to help."

"There is," said he immediately after the dinner, "no politics in this.  We have come to a situation where all Americans must stand together — big business men and little business men, farmer and banker, artisan and longshoreman.  I have not gone to the big business men — they have come to me."

That the Gary dinner threw the politicians into a flutter and sent such "Old Guardsmen" as Boies Penrose and Murray Crane flying to New York to find out what it was all about, was entirely due to the fact that Mrs.  Harold Vivian, wife of a political writer on the New York World, had an engagement to attend a concert on the night of the dinner.

The next morning, Vivian, in the course of breakfast small talk, asked how she enjoyed the entertainment.

"I did not go," said she.  "You see" (naming the young woman with whom she was to have gone) "had to sing at the big dinner Judge Gary gave Colonel Roosevelt last night."

Vivian lost interest in the grapefruit then and there.  He knew of the Colonel's rule about attending private dinners except in his own home or in the homes of his immediate friends as well as the Colonel's horror of large private dinners anywhere.  It appealed to him as a story, and the next day the fact that there had been such a dinner, together with the names of the guests, was made public.  What happened, what was said at the dinner, was not.  In consequence, political editors and the public jumped at the conclusion that Colonel Roosevelt was preparing to run for the Presidency again.  For some days there was considerable speculation as to what it really meant, until Robert E.  MacAlarney, then city editor of the New York Tribune, suggested I see Colonel Roosevelt and end the mystery.

My reception by the Colonel was characteristic.

"I certainly will not give any interview on that dinner," he declared.  "Neither will I authorize any statement.  I will, however, tell you just what it means and what happened there, and then, if you wish, you can explain in your own way and on your own responsibility.

"It is absolutely nonsensical to assume, as some have assumed, that this dinner had anything to do with my being a candidate for President.  I am not thinking of anything of that sort now.

"All that was discussed at that dinner was what you might, for want of a better term, call' the greater Americanism.' If that is politics, then we talked politics.

"Now, let us sit down and discuss this thing.  When I am through you can tell me what you think you want to do.  You can have all the facts; you need all the facts to write of the thing intelligently.  But whatever you write, it must be understood that I must not be quoted and it must not be made to appear that I am the source of information." "How was it," I asked, "that Judge Gary, whom I know to be interested in, and an advocate of, preparedness, happened to ask you to meet the people who were at that dinner?"

" It is not my practice," said he, "to cross examine those who invite me to dine as to their motives for so doing.  But if I were to guess, I would say that one actuating motive was a feeling of ' I told you so.'

"Gary, as you probably know, has always been friendly to me.  I do not know that he voted for me in 1912, but I would not be surprised to learn that he did.  All but two or three of his guests that night were anti-Roosevelt men eighteen months ago.  They were very much opposed to my work for preparedness.  The few that were not anti-Roosevelt men were of the opinion that I was committing political hara-kiri.  The others said I was rocking the boat.

"Now they say that in preaching preparedness, I was right and am right.  And I think that Mr.  Gary had in a way a sort of desire to say to his friends in important business;

"' Come and have a look at this fellow you thought so terrible; notice that he does not shoot at the musicians; that he eats in a normal way and prefers his food cooked; that when he talks he talks sanely as you and I talk, and talks nothing but the soundest kind of Americanism.'

"That is only a guess, however.  In any event it could not have been the big motive.  Behind it all, I believe, was a desire of these men — all Americans, men who have done things and are doing big things, men who have a stake in the country — to take counsel together on the big problem of national preparedness.  Under the circumstances, was it not natural that I should be asked to attend and submit my views? I was glad to go, glad that these men were seeing the light.  That's all there was to that.

"What did I tell them? Exactly what I have been telling others for months past, ever since the war in Europe began, and what I propose to tell everybody who will listen to me — the need of preparation.

"But with all of this talk about the Gary dinner why is the luncheon Bobby Collier gave at the Harvard Club overlooked? There were politics there in plenty.  Mr.  Collier, I suspect, also, had something of the 'I told you so' idea in his head when he planned the luncheon, for, in the movement for preparedness, he was in much the same position as Judge Gary — with me, but lonesome so far as his everyday associates were concerned.

"All but one or two of the men he had at the luncheon were anti-Roosevelt men three years ago.  They were anti-Roosevelt men when I began talking preparedness eighteen months ago.  Then they said, as Judge Gary's friends had said,' Roosevelt is rocking the boat.' Three fourths of them — most of the party were writers—agreed with me before they left.

"We did talk politics there — the straightest kind of politics.  The political discussion was started by Frank Simonds referring to an editorial in the New York Tribune calling attention to the way party leaders were dodging the real issue and asking, ' Do they want Roosevelt?' meaning, as you know, for President in 1916.  That editorial was strong meat.  It appealed to me immensely.

"In the discussion that followed, I said that, much as I dislike Mr.  Wilson and despise his policies, in the event of the Republicans nominating any man on a hyphen platform or on hyphenated promises, I would support President Wilson for reelection with all of the strength at my command.

"And, by Godfrey, I mean it! If there's a mongrel platform adopted by the Republican Convention, much as I dislike Wilson, I'll stump the country for him from one end of it to the other and I won't ask his permission to do so either.

"No platform and no man who swerves in the slightest degree from absolute loyalty to the greater Americanism can have my support.  I will not be neutral if such a.  candidate is named or such platform adopted.  There is no such thing as being neutral between right and wrong.  Neutral! I do not care who the man is or who his friends are or who comes to me in his behalf, if such a candidate is named, I will fight him with every weapon at my command.

"But at neither place did I say anything to advance either my own candidacy or that of any other man.  I am not interested in candidates.  I am interested in principles.  My sole interest at these two affairs was to try and arouse the American people, to urge them and ultimately, through them, compel Congress to take the proper attitude on the question of greater Americanism and national preparedness.  If you say that I am working not for a nomination, but as every American should work to secure the peace and prosperity of the United States, you will have hit the nail on the head.

"And don't overlook the fact that any Republican who seeks President Wilson's place by pandering to the hyphens will find that he is fighting Roosevelt as well as Wilson.

"I dislike Wilson, I dislike his policies almost to the point of hate, but I am too good an American to stand idly by and see him beaten by a mongrel American or by one professing mongrel principles."