Topic 61 
“MR. WILSON'S "IDEALS"

IT is a mistake to speak of ' Mr.  Wilson's ideals' or of Mr.  Wilson as an idealist.  He is merely a selfish, dishonest politician."

Shortly before he died, while he was yet in Roosevelt Hospital under treatment for inflammatory rheumatism, Colonel Roosevelt so expressed himself in commenting upon news and editorial references to the President.  Just before he died, on the Friday before in fact, he sent a letter to Ogden Mills Reid, proprietor of the New York Tribune, protesting in much the language quoted above against an editorial reference in Mr.  Reid's paper to Mr.  Wilson's idealism.

The Colonel sent Mr.  Reid, of whom he was very fond, a half bantering sort of note describing himself as "A Constant Reader" who felt he must protest against misstatement of fact.  The letter was dictated — the Colonel could not then use the pen and therefore signed and initialled by Miss Josephine M.  Strieker to the end his secretary and most devoted follower.  Mailed in New York City, it did not reach Mr.  Reid until after the Colonel had died, and was, so to speak, a voice from the tomb.

"Mr.  Wilson never had an ideal in his life; he is merely a selfish politician," was an assertion often made by him.  "One of the difficulties in the present situation (the war and immediately thereafter) is that the man in the street does not readily awaken to this fact.  Nor do many of the politicians.  Mr.  Wilson as a politician is the master of most of them, only they do not know it.  They ascribe all of his success to luck.  They do not realize that much of this that they call luck is mere opportunism on his part.  In so far as a thing may serve his end, he is absolutely unscrupulous.

"A case in point is this cry on which he was re-elected :'He kept us out of war.' No one knew better than Mr.  Wilson that Germany was at war on us and that under his direction we were backing into war stern foremost.  It was a catchzcry, a cry calculated to attract the vote of the pacifists and the peace-at-any-price people.  With its honesty, Mr.  Wilson had no concern.  His only interest was in the way it might work, might advance his political fortunes.

"He was as honest in this, however, as in his 'strict accountability' notes.  As Bryan is reported to have told Dumba, these notes were mainly intended for home consumption and were not to be taken too seriously in Berlin or Vienna.  I honestly believe that Bryan gave that word to Dumba exactly as he is understood to have done and that he was entirely honest in his statement, however doubtful the propriety of his so doing may have been."

Colonel Roosevelt many times spoke with apprehension of the effect Mr.  Wilson's policy toward Germany would have on the rising generation.

"To revert back a bit," he once said, "you spoke of your boy being a hero worshipper.  All real boys, all worth while boys, are.  Do you know that one of the regrettable things about this Administration, these four years of nightmare, is the possible effect on the boys now growing up.  What inspiration is this man Wilson to any boy? What sort of a boy would he be hero to? What has he done, what can any man of his type do to inspire in any boy a love of country? What sort of a country would he leave a boy to be proud of and loyal to? That is one of the saddest things of the Administration.

"Another thing, contempt for the man has in a way led to contempt for the office.  Only the other day a gentleman spoke of hearing Wilson described in one of our best clubs in language rarely heard outside of a bar room.  It was a shock to him.  I was as thoroughly disliked while President as any man could be by certain elements that had a good reason for disliking me, but they did not hold me in contempt, and they did not hold my office in contempt."
 
Much as he disliked Mr.  Wilson, and he was frank in saying, " I despise the man and dislike his policies to the point of hate," as he did in describing the so called Gary dinner, Colonel Roosevelt never abused Mr.  Wilson as an individual or referred to his acts as an individual.  Gossip that was common property in Washington, and the clubs and newspaper offices of the country he never referred to, and those closest to him knew better than to bring them up.  The Colonel was no gossip and no friend of gossipers.  The nearest approach to reference to such matters, and one of the two instances I know of where he indicated that he had knowledge of this talk, was one day when he deprecated the manner in which political foes of Mr.  Wilson were fighting him.

"I am not at all interested in petty gossip," said he.  " It is a waste of time.  The way to fight this man is in the open, smashing him anywhere along the line that he leaves an opening.  It is the only way to fight him.  Were I a master of ridicule, which I am not, I would rejoice in the openings he gives.  Invective and abuse would be, as it nearly always is, a mistake.  That is particularly true now, for people will resent much of that directed against the President.  That was not always the case when I was in the White House" (this with a grin), " but it is very much the case now.
 
" In time Mr.  Wilson will be the best damned man in America since the days of James Buchanan and Andy Johnson, but that time is not now.  When that time comes, I shall be sorry for Mr.  Wilson.  He, however, will not be sorry for himself.  He will figuratively gather his cloak about him and from his great height look down upon and be sorrowfully contemptuous of those pigmies of mortals unable to see things as he sees and has seen them.  It will never occur to him that those who have ceased to acclaim him may by any chance be right and he be wrong."

Just once, and once only, did I hear the Colonel use anything like profanity toward Mr.  Wilson.  This was on the morning the famous Zimmermann note was made public.  The Colonel had not read the morning papers when N.  A.  Jennings, of the New York Herald, and I called on him in his suite in the Metropolitan Magazine offices.  Jennings had an early edition of the Evening Sun which he laid on the Colonel's desk.  The great black headlines caught his eye and he grabbed the paper to get the high points of the despatch.  In an instant he was on the other side of the desk, crushing the paper in his rage and uttering words similar to those employed by the Father of his Country at the Battle of Monmouth.

In another instant, he had recovered himself.
" Boys," said he with a half smile, " I'm sorry, but you have now heard some of the more or less — mostly less — justly famed Roosevelt profanity — some of the Roosevelt capacity to rage.  I don't apologize for it — this man is enough to make the saints, and the angels, yes, the apostles swear, and I would not blame them.  My God, why don't he do something? It is beyond me."

"Oh, give him time," drawled Jennings.  " In time he'll move.  Everything will work out all right."
"Work out all right, yes, it will work out all right; it will have to work out all right; the American people will make it work out all right; but, oh, the cost, in blood, in treasure, in suffering, this delay, this policy of writing notes and doing nothing must in the end involve!"

At this meeting the Colonel declined to speak for publication, adding that he might say something later.
"Just at this moment," said he, "I feel that it is best for me to say nothing.  The facts are strong enough.  Let them sink in.  Then it may be time for me to talk."

Vastly different was the reception the Colonel gave Mr.  Wilson's appeal to the country for the election of a Democratic Congress in 1918.  The appeal, printed in the early afternoon papers, sent me hiking for Sagamore Hill.  The Colonel met me on the piazza.
 
" By Jove, Jack, I am glad to see you.  It's splendid of you to come.  Yes, I've seen that appeal to the country and I 'm just delighted.

" I am as pleased as Punch.  It is exactly as I would have ordered it.  He gives me a splendid opening, and tomorrow I will send out the fighting part of my Carnegie Hall speech."

For this meeting, called to ratify the Republican State and Congressional ticket, Colonel Roosevelt had prepared a set speech which was then in the hands of the press associations.  Naturally it did not touch on Mr.  Wilson's appeal.

"We now see the real Mr.  Wilson," he went on to say.  "It's not a different Mr.  Wilson than the one we have known, but not the Mr.  Wilson he would have us know or that all of the people have known.  Every one can now see Mr.  Wilson the politician in all his nakedness and minus his camouflage.

"It is regrettable that any American President should see fit to make such a lamentable exhibition of himself at a time like this.  It is, however, fortunate in that it will show the country Mr.  Wilson as he is — the real Mr.  Wilson.

"I shall certainly take advantage of this opening in my speech Monday.

" Did I ever tell you the story of the New Bedford whaling captain who, when called to account for
 
knocking down the mate of another ship, explained that he did so because this man 'held himself so inviting' ? Mr.  Wilson has held himself very inviting.

" I shall, of course, try to be very careful and not to abuse or seem to abuse him, but I certainly am grateful for this opening.  I am glad the real Mr.  Wilson has revealed himself."

"Colonel," I suggested, "I hope you will use that expression 'the real Mr.  Wilson."

"Exactly as I used your expression on dealing with Germany — 'compounding a felony.' By the way, I am very glad we agreed to leave politics out of that statement of October 13."

This was a statement in which the Colonel had set out to advise all good Americans who felt as Senator Miles Poindexter spoke to vote the Republican ticket.  This idea was abandoned on the ground that it left the way open to attack, and that in the course of the campaign a better opportunity for such an appeal would present itself.
"To get back to the real Mr.  Wilson," the Colonel went on, "I do not pretend to be able to predict what the people may do any more than I can predict the result of a great war, but I think the gentleman will find he has made a mistake.  There is, however, no limit as to what he will do to get or retain power.

"Do you know that they (the Democrats) are now organizing the various national elements in this country as units that may be as anti-American as they wish so long as they are Democrats? This Americanization Commission is working along those lines.  They have n't exactly lined up the pro-Germans yet, but they are getting around them via the Liberty loans.

"You know that various of these foreign groups kept aloof from the Liberty loans in the early days of the war.  Now they have found it a cheap way to become Americanized.  They take one of these groups who happens to be a Democrat, place him prominently on a committee, and seek to round up his fellows through him.  It is the opposite of what should be done.

" But, I tell you, I 'm as pleased as Punch over this latest of Mr.  Wilson's.  There'll be lots of fun in the next two years."

I told Charles T.  White, of the Tribune, of the Colonel's intention of being conservative in his treatment of Mr.  Wilson's appeal.  After the meeting, White, a veteran of many a political campaign, came to me.

" I thought you said Colonel Roosevelt was going to be conservative? Why, in a nice way, he called him everything but a dog thief.  I 'm glad he was not radical if that's his idea of being conservative."
 
The Colonel laughed when I repeated this to him.

"You may tell the Honorable Charlie White," said he, "that he's a good fellow and I like him, but that until this time I never suspected him of being a mind reader.  He has gauged my sentiments exactly."

These sentiments, Colonel Roosevelt had previously told me, were best expressed in the conclusion of his Cooper Union address at the end of the 1916 campaign.  This was the famous "ghost speech." This speech he prepared, and for once reading an address did not seem to detract from its appeal.  This, by the way, was read to as mixed an audience as one would ask to find, even in Cooper Union.  Most of the seats were reserved and were filled by up town folk in evening clothes for the most part.  The seats not claimed by the more well-to-do were taken by the East Siders who habitually attend everything in Cooper Union.  The result was, paradoxical as the statement may seem, an audience more representative of New York than one ordinarily finds at a political meeting.

Throughout the address the Colonel was frequently interrupted with cheers, but it was not until the close that the real demonstration came.  As he swung into the last paragraph he threw his manuscript to the floor and amidst silence as nearly absolute as an orator ever gets (Colonel Roosevelt was an orator that night at least) drew the final count in his indictment against Mr.  Wilson.

"Mr.  Wilson," he began, "now dwells at Shadow Lawn."

In the press box one could almost feel the house pull itself together, sensing what was to come.
"There should be shadows enough at Shadow Lawn," he went on, clipping off each word cleanly, as was his practice.  "The shadows of men, women, and children who have risen from the ooze of the ocean bottom and from graves in foreign land.  The shadows of the helpless whom Mr.  Wilson did not dare protect lest he might have to face danger; the shadows of babies gasping pitifully as they sank under the waves; the shadows of women outraged and slain by bandits.

"The shadows of Boyd and Adair and their brave troopers who lay in the Mexican desert, the black blood crusted around their mouths and their dim eyes looking upward because President Wilson had sent them to do a task and had then shamefully abandoned them to the mercy of the foes who know no mercy.

"Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; the shadows of deeds that were never done; the shadows of brave words that were followed by no action; the shadows of the tortured dead."
 
With his final gesture the house was on its feet.  It was storming the platform as he reached toward the exit, throwing himself through the group on the platform after the manner of the expert in such work and in a moment was on the sidewalk boarding the car that was to take him to another meeting on the East Side.

Two years later I referred to this speech in the course of a chat, saying his close was quite the best thing I had ever heard him do.

"Down front," said I, "you could almost see the ghosts rising at your call."

"Yes?" he answered in query form.  "Well, Mr.  Wilson is not dead yet.  He is a very fortunate man if he does not live to be tortured by many, many ghosts."

The End

A concluding word from Robert J.   Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.   Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.   He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.   We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government.  

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.   A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.   Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.   It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.   Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.   He was a visionary.   He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.   He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.   His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.   His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations.  

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.   It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.   His message is an example, clearly defined.   It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.   Join the good fight today.   You only need to read and interest others to do the same.   

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read.  ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.   It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.   Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.   America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.   The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.   Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.