Colonel Roosevelt (170 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
10
“A general association”
WW’s original typescript text quoted in Daniel Boorstin, ed.,
An American Primer
(Chicago, 1966), 2.772ff.
11
The last point
Lloyd George had proposed many of the same ideas as WW, only three days before in London. Strachan,
The First World War
, 303–4.
12
“Le bon Dieu”
Charles à Court Repington,
The First World War: 1914–1918
(Boston, 1920), 472.
13
“I am sorry”
Leary, notebook 8 (JJL).
14
ten speeches in nine days
TR,
Letters
, 8.1493. For a charming account of TR’s tour of city child-welfare facilities on 16 and 17 Jan. 1918, see Sara J. Baker,
Fighting for Life
(New York, 1939), 176–82.
15
Witty and graceful
Baker, notebook XV.42 (RSB). Offstage, Carl Akeley found TR to be consumed that night with a sense of doom threatening one or more of his sons.
16
Republican strategists
A front-page story in the
The New York Times
, 24 Jan. 1918, reported that TR had again become “leader of the Republican Party.”
Biographical Note:
The immediate reason for TR’s visit to Washington in Jan. 1917 was a crisis in confidence in the administration’s management of the war effort. He and Senator George F. Chamberlain, a respected Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, had attacked Newton D. Baker’s War Department at a meeting of the National Security League in New York, Chamberlain sensationally announcing, “The military establishment of America had broken down.” The result was a short-lived bipartisan campaign, involving TR, to create a coalition war cabinet like that of Lloyd
George’s government in Britain. However, Roosevelt Republicans—the old term could now be revived—had been trying since Nov. 1917 to get the Colonel to come to town and help them plot ways to break the Democratic monopoly of the government. “They were all of them anxious to have me take some position of leadership,” TR reported to William Allen White, “and equally anxious that … I should not think it committed them to making me the candidate in 1920.” He was being coy when he wrote this, because Senators Smoot and Bourne had already made clear that they wanted him to run for another term as president. Alice exulted in the prospect of a resurgent GOP. “My father president again and my husband speaker.…” Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.74–75; TR,
Letters
, 8.1274, 1307; ERD to Richard Derby, 6 Dec. 1917 (ERDP); Cordery,
Alice
, 264.
17
He took Edith
TR,
Letters
, 8.1276–77; Longworth,
Crowded Hours
, 264ff.;
The Washington Post
, 22–25 Jan. 1917
passim;
Adams,
Letters
, 2.782; Cecil Spring Rice to Florence Spring Rice, 13 Sept. 1917 (CSR). Spring Rice, never popular with the Wilson administration, had been effectively sidelined as British ambassador since Balfour’s visit to Washington in the spring of 1917. He was succeeded by Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Lord of Reading, in the new year of 1918, allegedly on the grounds of ill health.
18
“Mother found”
TR to KR, 29 Jan. 1918 (TRC). TR unconsciously inverted Wilde’s original lines, from
The Harlot’s House
(1885):
The dead are dancing with the dead, / The dust is whirling with the dust
.
19
severe pain in the rectum
The following narrative of TR’s near-death experience in Feb. 1917 is largely based on information collected by John J. Leary in notebook 7 (JJL), and on daily letters sent by ERD to her husband in France (TRC). Specific medical details come from the report of Dr. Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Quotations are cited separately.
20
An abscess had formed
The abscess, inflaming his right buttock, appeared near the site of the one lanced by Dr. Cajazeira in Brazil. EKR to KR, 10 Feb. 1918 (KRP); Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
21
Around four
Josephine Stricker, “Roosevelt a Hero to His Private Secretary,” New York
Tribune
, 5 Oct. 1919; Leary, notebook 7 (JJL). Apparently, TR felt he had to keep an engagement back at his club, where a gathering of artists and writers expected to have dinner with him. They were informed that the Colonel was “ill with jungle fever.” Baker, notebook XV.73, 5 Feb. 1917 (RSB).
22
His pain
Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
23
The name of the
James R. Lathrop,
History and Description of the Roosevelt Hospital, New York City
(New York, 1893). The hospital was endowed by James Henry Roosevelt (1800–1863).
24
“Father looks terribly”
ERD to Richard Derby, 6 Feb. 1917 (ERDP). ERD inadvertently transposed the last two words.
25
Roosevelt’s only complaint
Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
26
At 4:10
P.M
. The details of this operation, in which four surgeons participated, are in the report of Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
27
“should have no”
Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
28
On the contrary
Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP). Duel told Julian Street that he had operated on four cases similar to TR’s, and all the patients had died. Memo, “In the Roosevelt Hospital, February 1918” (JS).
29
“He’s a peach”
Leary, notebook 7 (JJL).
30
He was told
Walton Martin to Richard Derby, 16 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
31
The first he
WHT to TR, 8 Feb. 1918 (TRP); TR to WHT, 12 Feb. 1918
(WHTP). In 1902, as governor of the Philippines, WHT reported his alimentary problems to the War Department in more detail than seemed necessary for national security. See Taft file #164, Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress.
32
Edwin Arlington Robinson penned
To TR, 5 Mar. 1919 (TRP); TR,
Letters
, 8.1298.
33
“You stand”
TR to QR, 16 Feb. 1918 (TRC).
34
When, at last
ERD to Richard Derby, 27 Feb. 1918 (ERDP); QR to Flora Whitney, 16 Feb. 1918 (FWM); QR to EBR, 20 Jan., 4 Feb. 1918 (TRJP) (“How can I write ‘interesting’ letters like Arch’s when, aside from my epistolary talents, he is at the Front & I’m
embuscé?”);
Edith Normant scrapbook (FWM).
35
in Gallic tastes
Hamilton Coolidge to Flora Whitney, 18 Sept. 1918 (FWM). In another letter Ham spoke enviously of QR’s “complete mastery of the language.” (To “Mother,” 10 Mar. 1918 [TRC].) “[The Normants] say I must be half French.” QR to Flora Whitney, 13 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
36
YOUR LETTER
Original, ca. 28 Feb. 1918, in TRC. There is no record of TR reprimanding ABR for demoralizing QR. In late Apr., the latter heard from Eleanor that ABR was saying “I had more brains than any of the rest of the family, but he didn’t think I’d get as far as the rest of the family.… I lacked push.” QR to Flora Whitney, ca. May 1918 (FWM).
37
“There is therefore”
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 474. On 8 Mar. 1918, Clemenceau reminded the French Chamber of Deputies “that we are at war, that it is necessary to wage war, to think only of war.… So let us wage war.” Strachan,
The First World War
, 259–60.
38
still unsteady
John Leary compared TR’s gait at this time to that of “a landlubber on a pitching deck at sea—with his legs wide apart as though to brace himself.” Leary, notebook 8 (JJL).
39
Cove Neck exuded
ERD to Richard Derby, 24 Feb. 1918 (ERDP); TR to QR, 5 Mar. 1918 (TRC). QR had not known about his father’s near-death experience until he picked up a French newspaper and read, five days after the event, “La condition de M. Roosevelt est sérieuse, et les médicins ont conseillés une nouvelle opération.” He had had to wait three more days for a reassuring telegram from Flora. QR to Flora Whitney, 13 Feb. 1918 (FWM).
40
“I wish you”
TR to QR, 5 Mar. 1918 (TRC).
41
On 13 March
EKR to KR, 17 Mar. 1918 (KRP); TR,
Letters
, 8.1300–301. ABR, fighting in the Twenty-sixth Infantry’s first line engagement of the war, had been wounded in the Toul sector. ABR, “Lest We Forget.”
42
just given birth
On 18 Feb. 1918. In the author’s opinion, “Archie Junior” was, of all TR’s direct descendants, the one who inherited the most of the Colonel’s personal and intellectual characteristics. See Archibald Roosevelt, Jr.,
For Lust of Knowing: Memoirs of an Intelligence Officer
(Boston, 1988).
43
“At lunch Mother”
TR,
Letters
, 8.1301; ERD to Richard Derby, 12 Mar. 1918 (ERDP). TR wrote Clemenceau to say that ABR had won a French medal, and added, “I am prouder of his having received it than of my having been President!” TR,
Letters
, 8.1303.
44
A few days
TR,
Letters
, 8.1301; Richard Derby to TR, 13 Mar. 1918 (ERDP).
45
now wished to fight
TR,
Letters
, 8.1310.
46
“Father had 2”
ERD to Richard Derby n.d., ca. Mar. 1918 (ERDP). The Sagamore Hill farm raised cows, hogs, and chickens, and was therefore self-supporting in milk and eggs. Crops included standard vegetables and fruits, plus hay, corn, and apples for sale. TR,
Letters
, 8.1352.
47
It was intended
TR,
Letters
, 8.1299.
48
poisonous phosgene fumes
Strachan,
The First World War
, 295.
49
Under the circumstances
The New York Times
, 28 Mar. 1918.
50
He returned home
On his way back, TR stopped in Boston to admire Archie, Jr. TR,
Letters
, 8.1494.
Biographical Note:
TR flattered himself that his mammoth Portland speech, which took three hours to deliver, “amounted to the acceptance, by the Republicans of Maine, of the Progressive platform of 1912 developed and brought up to date.” (TR,
Letters
, 8.1307.) But its title (“Speed Up the War and Take Thought for After the War”) made clear what his current priorities were. He berated the administration for its unpreparedness and consequent slow pace of mobilization, recommended the creation of a five-million-man army (on the assumption the war would last another three years), demanded that Congress revoke the charter of the German-American Alliance, and called for a declaration of war against Turkey. Although he did, in fact, lay out a domestic policy plan far more detailed and progressive than that of the Democrats in 1918, his bellicose rhetoric naturally got most coverage in the national press. The speech was printed and widely circulated. See
The New York Times
, 29 Mar. 1918.
51
A terrified Jules Jusserand
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 474.
52
“Wilson always follows”
ERD to Richard Derby, quoting an attendee at the dinner, 27 Mar. 1918 (ERDP); Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 475. McAdoo’s remark was particularly striking because he happened to be WW’s son-in-law.
53
a place for Kermit
TR,
Letters
, 8.1316.
54
He calculated
QR to Flora Whitney, 24 Mar. 1918 (FWM).
55
As for your getting killed
(handwritten)
TR to QR, 17 Mar. 1918 (TRC).
56
Quentin foresaw
QR to Flora Whitney, 27 Mar. 1918 (FWM).
57
When Quentin next heard
TR,
Letters
, 8.1311.
58
What information reached
Richard Derby to TR, 13 Mar. 1918 (ERDP); medical report, 12 Mar. 1918 (ERDP); Eleanor B. Roosevelt,
Day Before Yesterday
, 95; QR to Flora Whitney, 30 Apr. 1918 (FWM).
59
Quentin was lucky
QR to Flora Whitney, 30 Apr., 2 May 1918 (FWM); Eleanor Roosevelt to mother, 19 Apr. 1918 (TRJP); Richard Derby to TR, 13 Mar. 1918 (ERDP).
60
Roosevelt chafed
TR,
Letters
, 8.1311; ERD to Richard Derby, 22 Apr. 1918 (ERDP); TR,
Letters
, 8.1312. Shipments of men and matériel, Stout wrote, were in fact accelerating at a compound rate. By June, the flood should be overwhelming. “Neither a newspaper or a public man,” he cautioned TR, “can afford to be too far ahead of the people.” Quoted in ERD to Richard Derby, 22 Apr. 1918 (ERDP).
61
Ethel wrote Dick
, 17 May 1918 (ERDP).
62
Two days later
Edith Normant scrapbook (ERDP).
63
Roosevelt had the
Leary, notebook 8 (JJL).
64
Roosevelt took his
Ibid.
65
“Theodore!”
Ibid.; Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 435 (eyewitness account).
66
“He feels”
Leary, notebook 8 (JJL). See also TR’s follow-up letter to WHT: “What a dreadful creature he [WW] is!… In this really very evil crisis, we need a leader and not a weathercock.” (TR,
Letters
, 8.1336–37.) WHT, evidently no longer a pacifist, believed that WW was more interested in talking than fighting, and was a Bolshevik sympathizer to boot.