Topic 41 
HIS BOYS' CRITICS

THE important thing," Colonel Roosevelt used to say to those who sought advice on going into the war, "is to get into the game.  Get in as you would like to get in if you can, but get in!"

One of the Roosevelt boys — Kermit — "got in" via a commission in the British army from which he later transferred to Pershing's forces.  Kermit's entering the service of another power aroused some criticism from Sinn Fein and pro-German sources.  These declared it to be unpatriotic for an ex-President's son to serve under the flag of another country, criticism which aroused the Colonel's ire.

" I do not care a hang how or where my boys or any other man's boys fight, so long as they do fight," he declared.  "The important thing is that they are fighting and that they are fighting Germany.

"Three of my boys are in the American army and in American uniforms.  This one is going to fight in a British uniform.  It does not make any difference to me what uniform they fight in.  The main point is they are fighting, and I don't care a continental whether they fight in Yankee uniforms or British uniforms or in their nightshirts, so long as they are fighting.  That's the main point — they are fighting."

Just the same the departure of the boys had its effect on the Colonel.  He was more thoughtful and at times gave little hints that he dared not hope to see them all again.  Better than most men, he realized that war means death, and that modern war justifies Sherman's famous saying.

"Those infernal jacks!" he declared one day, "criticizing me for allowing my boy to go into the British army and talking as though I permitted my boys to go to war for the personal glory that might come to me! The infernal jacks do not know what modern war is like! They do not know what shellfire is like!

" It is n't pleasant for me or any other father, who knows the fearful things a high explosive shell will do, to think of his boys being exposed to them — to think that at the moment they may be lying disembowelled in No Man's Land, but that is war.  I hope and pray that they’ll all come back, but before God, I’d rather none came back than one, able to go, had stayed at home.  I pray God will send them back to me safe and sound, but in my heart I know it is almost too much for me to hope for.  I know my boys.  I know they will do their part.  That means, danger.

"I miss them, their mother misses them, their wives miss them.  But let me tell you their wives are bricks — every one of them.  They are splendid — just as splendid as their mother.  I tell you I have been blessed not only in my boys, but in the young women my boys chose for wives.  And that goes for my one son-in-law that is able to fight.  Dick Derby is a splendid fellow and I am as fond of him and as proud of him as I am of my blood sons."

Again, an Oklahoma editor aroused his ire by charging editorially that "Roosevelt's boys were enjoying soft snaps in safe berths." A rival editor wired the attack to the Colonel with a request for an answer.

"The infernal cur!" he snapped when he read the wire; "the infernal cur who dares say that my boys, every one of them in combat service, have shirked their duty with the aid of my supposed influence.  The infernal cur — how dare he say that of an American father! That man's a ghoul! I won't dignify him by replying to his contemptible attack, but I’d like to have him here for just three minutes! He’d wish he was in a front line trench or some other comfortable place.  The infernal cur!"

The Colonel was "mad" from "toes to topknot," but in a moment he relaxed a bit.

"I'm foolish, I suppose," said he, "to allow a creature like that to annoy me, but — well, God had a reason for everything he created, and I suppose he created fellows like this that we might the better appreciate the decency in the great, big, preponderating majority."

It was on his boys — and girls — that his mind was in the dark days of February, 1918, when he was near to death in Roosevelt Hospital.

"You had us worried," I told him on my first visit to the convalescent room.

"Well," said he, "I was not worried about myself.  I was not thinking of myself.  I was thinking of my four boys.  I tell you I am mighty proud of my boys and " — after a momentary pause — "just as proud of my two fine girls."

This pride in the boys became more and more manifest as reports began to come back from the front of their valor.  Always affable to strangers, he fairly beamed  that is the best way to describe it — at the visitor who asked, "How's the boys?"

Sometimes the question would come from some one in a crowd, as in St.  Louis, where, answering it, he made ten thousand laugh.

"I met Peter Dunne the other day, "he said.  "You all know Peter Dunne — Mr.  Dooley, you know.  Well, Dunne said: 'Colonel, you want to watch out.  The first thing you know they'll be putting the name of Roosevelt on the map.'"

He enjoyed the story and the laughs it raised, but he was never without the thought that the boys were in danger.

"Gray was right," he said, when Ted, Jr., was in a hospital.  "You remember his line, 'the paths of glory lead but to the grave'? He is not dangerously hurt, but I cannot expect all will escape, I can only hope."

The end of the hope that all would return came to the Colonel one July night at Sagamore Hill.  Phil Thompson, the resident correspondent at Oyster Bay, had called to ask about various matters, among them a cable message to the New York Sun from Raymond G.  Carroll, one of its men at the front.  This, Thompson mentioned last.

"I have here," he told him, "a cable message to the Sun .  The censor has cut it some, so that it is blind.  It reads, 'Watch Oyster Bay for.' Have you any idea what it means?"

"Something has happened to one of the boys," he answered.  "It cannot be Ted and it cannot be Archie, for both are recovering from wounds.  It is not Kermit, for he's not in the danger zone at the moment.  So it must be Quentin.  However, we must say nothing of this to his mother tonight."

Confirmation of his fears came early the next morning.  The Colonel took the blow exactly as one would expect him to.

"I must tell his mother," he said.

A few minutes later he gave to Thompson the wonderful comment, expressing the joy of Quentin's parents that he had had his chance to do his bit before he was called to go.

The next day the Colonel kept an engagement to speak at the Republican Convention in Saratoga.
"It is my duty to go there," he said.

To the stranger Colonel Roosevelt gave no sign of his bitter affliction.  Those who knew him best saw, however, that the blow had slowed him down.  Not that he paraded his grief — even to them.  That grief was a secret, sacred thing — to be exhibited to none.

Not long after, Captain Archie, crippled in arm and leg, came home.  His coming gave the Colonel relief, for the young man was in much better shape than had been anticipated, and the doctors were strong in assurances that his recovery would be nearly if not quite complete.  When he was well enough to leave the hospital, he and the Colonel "chummed" about town and Oyster Bay.

"Colonel," I said in the Harvard Club one day, "Archie is making splendid progress.  I just saw him running down the street.  He runs as well as any boy.  I congratulate you."

"Thank you, Jack," he replied.  "The surgeons are working wonders.  In the early days of the war he'd have lost arm and leg if not his life.  As it is, he's coming around splendidly.

"And Ted — I 've just had a letter from a regular army officer who says Ted's as good an officer as there is in the regular establishment.  He's been made a lieutenant colonel, you know.  Is n't that fine? And Kermit's doing well too."

But the dead boy — the eagle whose fall had hurt him to the heart — he did not mention.