Topic 12
THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES

THROUGH the 1916 campaign Colonel Roosevelt was careful, even with his intimates, to say nothing that would in any way reflect upon Judge Hughes.  Hughes was the candidate of the party, he preferred him over Mr.  Wilson, but he was not the type T.  R.  favored.  More than that, in their personal relations the Colonel felt that Judge Hughes had not treated him quite fairly.  This was in connection with the Barnes libel suit in which the Colonel had hoped Judge Hughes would be one of his most important witnesses.

Occasionally during the campaign a scornful reference to the "bearded lady" advised whoever of the inner circle was addressed that it was Mr.  Hughes who was in the Colonel's mind.  Such occasions were rare, and developed only when the Colonel, who, with all his heart and soul prayed for Republican success, was piqued by the lack of "pep" in the Hughes canvass and the failure of the candidate to take a definite position on Germany.

He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with the innermost details of the Hughes campaign, more so, some folks thought, than the candidate himself.  These details came to him from many and widely scattered sources.  For example, there was hardly a reporter on the Hughes trains or at the national headquarters but that was cold toward the candidate.  The more seasoned of them were of the T.  R.  " Old Guard," members of the " Roosevelt newspaper cabinet," and as loyal to the Colonel as the bull pup he sometimes referred to as a standard of loyalty.  These did not hesitate to tell the Colonel whenever they saw him — and they made it their business to meet him whenever possible — the inside news of the trips.

"Feeling as you do," he remarked to one of these, "you are going to find it difficult to vote for Mr.  Hughes."

"Hughes, hell," replied William Hoster, the man addressed; "I desire to save a fragment of my self-respect."

After Hoster had gone, I remarked that he seemed "to feel rather keenly on the subject of Hughes."

"I am afraid," said the Colonel, "that there are a great many like him.  Hughes is not an attractive personality at best.  Close contact with him does not make him more attractive, for he is a very selfish, very self centred man.  Those boys would like to be his friends, but he won't let them and his namby pamby policy or lack of real policy disgusts them.

"They have, as the boys would themselves say, taken his measure.

"You know as well as I do that some of the boys on that train and at Bridgehampton (Hughes's summer home) are among the shrewdest judges of politics in this country.  They see — they must see — many things on a trip any candidate will overlook however shrewd he is.  They know the psychology of crowds and the newspapers and are valuable advisers in a campaign.  Does Mr.  Hughes take advantage of all this? No, he just withdraws into his whiskers, and their advice, when they manage to force it upon him, is ignored.

"What these men hate is his cowardice — his refusal to say anything, however right, that might jeopardize his chances.  If he had consulted these men and taken their advice he would never have trafficked with Jerry O'Leary."

With the verdict of the Chicago Convention, Colonel Roosevelt never quarreled.  He accepted it loyally and whole heartedly, though, it should be said, with misgivings as to the result, and prepared to efface himself as much as possible, lest by unduly remaining in the limelight he injure the candidate's chances.  His fear was that Hughes would not make the right sort of a campaign.

"Hughes's danger," he then said, "is that he will not carry the fight to Wilson."

The declaration that Hughes would have to fight to win was made immediately after the convention and before the public at large knew what position he would take in the canvass.  He was not at all confident of the result, not wholly satisfied with Hughes as a candidate, but he never hesitated about supporting him.

When he made this declaration he had prepared his letter declining the Progressive nomination and was awaiting the meeting of the Progressive National Committee in Chicago before making public his position.  Judge Hughes knew this; so did the leaders of the Republican and what was left of the Progressive Party.

His own programme was definite.  It provided for such speeches for Hughes as might be called for, but otherwise none of the limelight for him.

"The truth is," said he, "and a fellow does not like to speak as I am going to, I have done my share.  Let some one else carry the load for a while.

"After tomorrow's meeting in Chicago I hope to be let alone.  The Committee will agree with me — there will be nothing more for me to say.  I have said it all in my letter.  Mr.  Hughes has seen it and is satisfied.  There is nothing more for me to do or say.

"Don't you see that as things are working out I took the only course open? If Burton or Harding had been named, I would have to support the nominee against Wilson.  Imagine Hughes at his very possible worst, and he cannot do worse than Wilson has done or is doing.  It is impossible.  Any change is bound to be a good one.  Hughes will develop all right if he is elected.  I can do nothing but support him.

"Hughes won't come out here.  I don't believe he will.  What will probably happen is this: I will meet Mr.  Hughes in town at dinner; speeches will come later — if they come at all.  Whatever I do depends on Mr.  Hughes.

" I cannot make his fight for him or tell him how to fight.  He must do his own battling, make his own plans.  His danger is that he will not carry the fight to Wilson.  If he does that he is safe.  But if he allows Wilson to get the jump on him he is beaten.  Wilson will do it with him if he does not watch out.  As matters stand, and if the election were held tomorrow, Hughes is beaten.

"Here is the cruelty of this nomination of Hughes: For years he has been out of touch with real things; he knows nothing of the great things the Progressive Party movement stood for and did; he is out of touch with the man in the street; out of touch with national and world politics.  He is nominated at a time when we needed an advocate — not a judge.

"I cannot but support Hughes.  You see that as clearly as I do.  It is the only thing for me to do because it is the right thing to do."

A few days later, June 28, to be exact, Colonel Roosevelt motored into New York to dine with Mr.  Hughes — just as the Colonel had said some days before they probably would meet.  The two dined alone with, the Colonel told me, Mr.  Hughes doing most of the talking.

" It was," he told me the next day, " not my night to talk.  When I had pledged him my support to the limit, there was little for me to say.  As I have said to you and to others, I cannot make his fight or plan it.

"I did tell him, though, that he'd have to make an aggressive fight of it, to keep Wilson on the jump every blessed minute, and not to be any more afraid of hurting the feelings of pro-Germans, real Germans, and Pacifists than he was of hurting the feelings of race-track gamblers when he was Governor; that he must hit and hit hard."

"Will he do it, Colonel?" I asked.

" I don't know," he replied.  "A term on the bench takes the punch out of many men; it slows them up.  It may be that way with Hughes; I don't know.  But I do know that he must fight to win."

At this talk he reiterated a hope, expressed immediately after Mr.  Hughes was nominated, that the newspapers allow him to drop out of the limelight.

"There won't be a thing doing out here," he said ("here" being Sagamore Hill).  "You see I have simply got to stay out of the limelight.  These fools who want me to jump into the middle of the campaign do not know what they are talking about.

" It would lick Hughes sure.

"It could not help but make him a tail of the Roosevelt kite.  It would not be fair to him or to me.  You see that.  The most I can do is to make two or three prepared addresses.

"Furthermore, unless you boys (the reporters) keep me to the rear, allow me to go to the rear, you'll beat Hughes sure as shooting —make no mistake about that."

In the Hughes campaign Colonel Roosevelt made one trip as far west as the Rockies, the original programme of going through to California being amended.  This change in the itinerary in all probability cost Mr.  Hughes the election.  Made by the National Committee, the Colonel's intimates believed the change was due to a desire that nothing be done which might help Hiram Johnson in his campaign for the Senate or offend Harrison Gray Otis, W.  W.  Crocker, and other "Old Guardsmen" who were opposed to him.

Even then, the trip came dangerously close to ending at Denver, where on his arrival the Colonel found a messenger awaiting to ask that he confine future addresses to the tariff and Mexico and let Germany and preparedness alone.  At first the Colonel agreed to this.  Then he wired the National Committee cancelling all his engagements east of Denver.  This the Committee apparently dared not do, for he was wired to proceed as he wished.

From this trip the Colonel returned rather depressed and worried as to the result.  It was to have been his only trip, but in the last week of the campaign the Republican National Committee called on him to go to Ohio.  There had been many calls for him from that quarter early in the contest, but it was not until November I when he was started on an admitted forlorn hope.

That night, speaking of the situation, he declared the Wilson tide was receding, but he doubted if it was receding fast enough.

"I doubt it," he said.  "I have no fears for New York, but I am afraid of the West.  If Hughes would only do something!

"Hughes has not made Wilson fight.  As matters are, the people do not know where Hughes does stand — they look upon him as another Wilson when they do not look upon him as a man without a policy.

" It is his own fault.  I tell you he would have won even German votes by preaching straight Americanism.

"The campaign has lacked definite direction.  It has been like Mr.  Hughes's speeches — it has lacked the punch.  It is a fact that a lot of the aged reactionaries who have had so much to say at headquarters really think this fight could have been won on the tariff."

Coming back East after speaking in Toledo and Cleveland, he returned to the subject, declaring that Ohio was gone, that even "poor Herrick is beaten with the rest — a victim of the cowardice of others."

" Herrick " was Myron T.  Herrick, our ambassador to France in the early days of the war, and a prime favorite of the Colonel's; he was the candidate for the United States Senate.

"The 'Old Guard' here is not awake yet," said he; "they have simply thrown the State away.

"I have been asked tonight why I did not come out earlier in the campaign when they asked for me instead of going into the sagebrush.  I told them I went where I was sent; that they should ask that question of the National Committee."

Sometime after the campaign was ended, a visitor at Sagamore Hill remarked: "Anyway, we have n't Hughes to worry about."

"Exactly," said the Colonel; "we did not elect Hughes and we are not responsible for Mr.  Wilson.

"Hughes would have been another Wilson in many respects, only he would have surrounded himself with men of a higher grade than Mr.  Wilson has about him.  He could not well get men inferior to those about Mr.  Wilson.  But he would have considered his election an act of God, and, in the Wilson way, been careless or contemptuous of the opinions of others."

Mr.  Hughes came up for discussion again at luncheon at Sagamore Hill just before Christmas of that year.  The Colonel was, as usual, to play Santa Claus at the Cove School, and the "newspaper cabinet" was down for the occasion.  In the luncheon party, in addition to Colonel and Mrs.  Roosevelt, were N.  A.  Jennings, Mrs.  Jennings, William Hoster, Rodney Bean, S.  L.  Bate, the then resident correspondent at Oyster Bay, and myself.  As it was the first time since election that so many members of the "cabinet" had met with the Colonel, there was much discussion of that event, but more of the statement of Secretary Lansing a few days previous to the effect that "we are on the edge of war," followed by the Secretary's explanation that he did not exactly mean what he seemed to say, the whole matter complicated by rumors of "leaks" to Wall Street and bad breaks in the market.

"The antics of the last few days," said the Colonel in this discussion, "have restored to me what selfrespect I lost supporting Mr.  Hughes.'

Months later Colonel Roosevelt told something of his relations with Judge Hughes prior to 1916 that partly explained the small opinion he held of him.

"Hughes," said he, "went plumb back on his words and on me when Barnes sued me for libel.  One of Barnes's grievances was my charge of bi-partisan management of the State of New York by him and Murphy.  Hughes himself made that charge to me when the direct primary fight was on.  Later, when I needed him, he denied all knowledge of it.

"It came about in this way: In his fight as Governor for good government, Mr.  Hughes complained that Murphy and Barnes were working together to defeat legislation; that there was evidence of a definite agreement and the two machines were working as one, not only in this, but in other matters affecting the public interest.

"When the Barnes suit came up, I wanted him as a witness.  He declared that he did not recall the conversation and that he had no recollection that such a state of affairs had existed.  Even when he was shown a printed statement coming from him, he had no recollection of the matter.  That is the way Mr.  Hughes stands up.

"It was his idea in this campaign to keep away as much as possible from all reference to the war in Europe or preparation for our inevitable part in it.  He wanted to make his fight on war with Mexico, as though people could be interested in that.  The real subject he dodged whenever he could.  More than that, he tried to make me dodge it.

"To do this Garfield was sent to meet me in Denver and ask that in my speeches, especially in Chicago, I omit preparedness and national defence.  It was feared that I would alienate the women voters.  I agreed to do so, but after sleeping on the matter, decided it was not the thing for me to do.  So I wired National Headquarters canceling all of my engagements.  The answer to this was advice to proceed as I had been, talking what was in me.

"Results in Chicago proved that was the correct course.  The honest course always is.  At the stock yards, I had a most wonderful meeting and the women were the most enthusiastic of the lot.  The idea of American manhood, willing and insistent on defending its women and children even to the point of going to war to avenge their murder, was not at all abhorrent to them.  On the contrary, they took no offence at my treatment of the Lusitania affair.

"That was Mr.  Hughes's work — his idea of the way a candidate should go, the way the advocates of a candidate should go, always dodging any real issue that might cost votes."

Again, in the Mitchel campaign, Colonel Roosevelt expressed an opinion of Judge Hughes.  It was at a meeting in Madison Square Garden over which the Judge presided.  To make it a go, every device of the political showman was resorted to.  Even the old fashioned torchlight parade, dead thirty or more years, was resurrected.  Colonel Roosevelt, who had been speaking in Schuetzen Park, Astoria, came in late.  I met him in the 27th Street entrance to the hall.

"How's the meeting going?" he asked, sotto wee.

"It's cold, freezing cold, Colonel," I answered.  "You'll need your overcoat."
The Colonel grinned.

"Hughes," he replied, "must have brought his ice with him."