Colonel Roosevelt (172 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
26
Look now
QR, “The Greatest Gift,” ms., ca. 1918 (TRC).
27
“There is no”
TR to Edith Wharton, 15 Aug. 1918 (EW); TR,
Letters
, 8.1403.
28
Only those are fit
TR, “The Great Adventure,”
Metropolitan
magazine, Oct. 1918. The article was prepublished in newspapers on 17 Sept. 1918, and is reprinted in TR,
Works
, 21.263ff.
29
His tribute degenerated
TR,
Works
, 21.266–67.
30
Much more expressive
Charles Lee interviewed by Hermann Hagedorn, c. 1919, TRB.
31
the Roosevelts declined
TR,
Letters
, 8.1381; Kermit Roosevelt,
Quentin Roosevelt
, 203. The grave, which was elaborately rebuilt by the French after Chamery was retaken, no longer exists, since QR’s remains were transferred after World War II to the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. However, a roadside fountain in the village, installed by his mother, perpetuates QR’s memory, and the field where he died speaks for itself. Chamery is located on the modern D14 north of Jaulgonne-sur-Marne, between Cierges and Coulonges.
32
Every cent would go
TR,
Letters
, 8.1363–66.
33
One of the movies
The Fighting Roosevelts
, directed by William Nigh, was released in 1919.
34
On 4 September
The New York Times
, 5 Sept. 1918; TR,
Letters
, 8.1368.
35
Archie had become
EKR to ERD, “Wed.” [4 Sept.] 1918, photograph enclosed (ERDP);
The New York Times
, 3 Sept. 1918. ABR was still undergoing therapy at this institution four months later.
The New York Times
, 6 Jan. 1919.
36
he had become addicted
For an analysis of this phenomenon, see Ecksteins,
Rites of Spring
, 232.
37
“Fall has come”
TR to KR, 13 Sept. 1918 (WFM).
38
plenty of honor
Richard Derby was also awarded a Croix de Guerre in 1918.
39
“The Colonel sat”
Rinehart,
My Story
, 260. This was on 16 Sept. 1918.
40
he would tour
The Liberty Loan campaign used hundreds of traveling celebrities (including Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford) to publicize and sell low-yield bonds for the prosecution of the war.
41
On the twenty-eighth
Leary, notebook 9 (JJL); TR to KR, 13 Sept. 1918 (KRP).
42
As he traveled
EKR to KR, 22 Sept. 1918 (KRP). The date of syndication was 17 Sept. 1918. (Bishop,
TR
, 2.458.) TR’s most recent royalty statement from Scribners totaled only $365. Charles Scribner to TR, 19 Sept. 1918 (SCR).
43
“It’s pretty poor”
TR to Belle Roosevelt, 27 Oct. 1918 (ABRP).
44
On his way home
Hagedorn,
Roosevelt in the Bad Lands
, 410.
45
“Have you got”
Ibid., 473.
46
He arrived back
ERD to Richard Derby, 30 Oct. 1918 (ERDP).
47
If the two physicians
See below, 725.
48
“restoration of peace”
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 481.
49
a bloody mess
The American army took “three weeks and 100,000 casualties to achieve what Pershing … had thought they could do in a single day.” Cowley,
The Great War
, 427–29.
50
“I regret greatly”
The New York Times
, 13 Oct. 1918.
51
Similar statements
Cowley,
The Great War
, 430; Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 483; Strachan,
The First World War
, 324.
52
Following up, Roosevelt
TR,
Letters
, 8.1380–81.
53
The President, goaded
Warren
(Pa.)
Evening Times
, 26 Oct. 1918.
54
He had hated
[Gilbert],
The Mirrors of Washington
, 34–38.
55
Roosevelt sniffed
Longworth,
Crowded Hours
, 274.
56
“queer feelings”
ERD to KR, 27 Oct. 1918 (KRP).
57
Jokingly, he
TR,
Letters
, 8.1383; Leary,
Talks with T.R.
, 76.
58
“I can see”
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 428.
59
A well-wisher
The New York Times
, 29 Oct. 1918. TR later learned that on his birthday, Hamilton Coolidge had been killed in action, leaving behind an unfinished memoir of QR. See Kermit Roosevelt,
Quentin Roosevelt
, 213ff.
60
Carnegie Hall was crammed
The New York Times
, 29 Oct. 1918.
61
He spoke for more
Ibid. This was not, as some accounts have claimed, TR’s last speech. He spoke again (with ABR) to a Boys’ Victory Mobilization meeting in Manhattan on 1 Nov., and returned to Carnegie Hall the next night to address the benefit for Negro War Relief.
62
Over the next
EKR to KR, 2 Nov. 1918 (KRP); Hagedorn,
The Roosevelt Family
, 422.
63
learning from newspapers
Cowley,
The Great War
, 430; Gilbert,
A History of the Twentieth Century
, 520;
Syracuse Herald
, 5 Nov. 1918.
64
On election day
The New York Times
, 6 Nov. 1918; TR,
Letters
, 8.1397.
65
“If I had been”
Quoted in John H. Richards interview (HP). See also TR,
Letters
, 8.1396.
66
Flat on his back
TR,
Letters
, 8.1390; Eleanor B. Roosevelt,
Day Before Yesterday
, 111–13.
67
Around three o’clock
The New York Times
, 12 Nov. 1918.
68
Steam whistles
Garland,
My Friendly Contemporaries
, 200; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.520–25;
The New York Times
and New York
Tribune
, 12 Nov. 1918.
69
Dr. John H. Richards
The New York Times
, 12, 14 Nov. 1918.
70
On 21 November
Garland,
My Friendly Contemporaries
, 202.
71
After some chat
Ibid., 202–3.
72
Garland came back
EKR to KR, 24 Nov. 1918 (KRP); Garland,
My Friendly Contemporaries
, 204.
73
Edith, Roosevelt said
Ibid. The idea of doing something about QR’s grave nevertheless continued to haunt TR. On 3 Dec. he wrote Ted to ask if French authorities would let him buy the field himself, and perhaps inter there the bodies of “two or three others like Ham Coolidge.” (TR,
Letters
, 8.1411.) Nothing came of this plan.
74
and a weak choice
Hammond,
Autobiography
, 640. Even Colonel House, who was a delegation member along with White, Robert Lansing, and General Tasker H. Bliss, thought that WW should have sent a team consisting of three Democrats plus Root and WHT. Ibid., 639.
75
Roosevelt was mostly
Nevins,
Henry White
, 350ff.; Biddle,
The Whitney Women
,
49; TR,
Letters
, 8.1400. During his three-month spell of illness beginning in early Oct. 1918, TR dictated 22 articles for the
Kansas City Star
, plus others for
Metropolitan
magazine and a review for
American Museum Journal
of Leo G. Miller’s
In the Wilds of South America
. (“A Faunal Naturalist in South America,” TR,
Works
, 24.525–29.) The period also saw the publication, by Scribners, of the book version of
The Great Adventure
.
76
He scoffed
TR,
Letters
, 8.1400. The phrase
self-determination
was actually borrowed by WW from Lloyd George. Cooper,
Woodrow Wilson
, 421. After the last League advocate left, a perplexed-looking TR remarked, “I want to get along with those fellows and especially Will Taft.…[But] if the League of Nations means that we will have to go to war every time a Jugo Slav wishes to slap a Czecho Slav in the face, then I won’t follow them.” Dr. John H. Richards interview, ts. (HP).
77
Two of his future
Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 167; Joseph Bucklin Bishop,
Notes and Anecdotes of Many Years
(New York, 1925), 149–50.
78
She was learning
QR to ERD, 12 Feb. 1918 (ERDP).
79
He did what
TR,
Letters
, 8.1415. See also ibid., 8.1396–1411, and TR, “President Wilson and the Peace Conference,”
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star
, 272–77.
Biographical Note:
TR’s vision of the postwar world included (along with harshly punitive containment of Germany), “a Zionist state around Jerusalem.” But he insisted to an American rabbi that the latter state should have “full religious freedom,” and that American Jews who felt a “kinship” for it, rather than for the United States, should immigrate there and “become emphatically … foreigners.” He also favored an independent Armenia and Ukraine, although he saw the latter joining Russia. He doubtfully agreed with James Bryce that there was “just a chance” that Arab lands freed from Ottoman oppression might develop a religious toleration to emulate that of Moorish civilization “in the golden days of Baghdad and Cordova.” Germany’s former colonies in Africa should become protectorates of strong powers experienced in colonial administration (Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal), rather than the kind of weak neutrals WW preferred, such as Holland and Sweden. The United States should remain disinterested in this reapportionment: the prime purpose of its defense and foreign policy must be to maintain a republican independence from Old World empires. (TR,
Letters
, 8.1372–97, 1400.) See also
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star
, 241–95.
79
Except for
TR,
Letters
, 8.1415; John Milton Cooper, “If TR Had Gone Down with the Titanic: A Look at His Last Decade,” in Naylor et al.,
TR
, 500, 511.
80
“Since Quentin’s death”
Bishop,
TR
, 2.468; White,
Autobiography
, 548–49. According to White, TR’s “rather radical” article draft called for an eight-hour day, old age pensions, and social insurance. It does not appear to have survived.
81
“I tell you”
Stanley Washburn Papers, Library of Congress.
82
Roosevelt woke
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919. Reviewing TR’s final illness, this article refers to him suffering “from [a] pulmonary embolism at the Roosevelt Hospital three weeks ago,” i.e., mid-Dec. 1918. Other newspaper reports suggested it occurred around 4 Dec., but all concur that he was “in a critical condition” for some time.
83
His temperature shot up
Straus,
Under Four Administrations
, 391. This may have been during “a brief thirty-six hours” attack of “pneumonia” mentioned in Robinson,
My Brother TR
, 361.
84
“Poor dear”
The New York Times
, 6 Dec. 1918 and 7 Jan. 1919; EKR to KR, 15 Dec. 1918 (KRP).
85
He was buoyed
TR,
Letters
, 8.1416–17.
86
He would have to
Ibid.
87
“I am pretty low”
Chanler,
Roman Spring
, 202.
88
He did get better
EKR to KR, 24 Dec. 1918 (KRP).
89
Corinne came in
Robinson,
My Brother TR
, 362.
90
“Well, anyway”
Ibid.
91
“Don’t do that”
Dr. John H. Richards interview, ts. (HP). According to the Roosevelt Hospital’s cautious discharge statement, the Colonel was expected to make a full recovery “in the time ordinarily taken for such cases” of inflammatory rheumatism, and should “be able to take up his usual duties in six weeks or two months.”
The New York Times
, 25 Dec. 1918.
92
Alice, Ethel, Archie
ERD to Richard Derby, 25 Dec. 1918 (ERDP); TR to KR, 27 Dec. 1918 (TRC).
93
There was a
ERD to Richard Derby, 25 Dec. 1918 (ERDP); ERD to KR, 25 Dec. 1918 (KRP); TR to KR, 27 Dec. 1918 (KRP).
94
It had been Ethel’s
Wallace,
Sagamore Hill
, 1.62–63.
95
Propped up in
1918 furniture inventory in Wallace,
Sagamore Hill
, 1.71 and 335.
96
Every morning
The New York Times
, 7 Jan. 1919; EKR to KR, ca. 30 Dec. 1918 (KRP).
97
It may have been
ERD to Richard Derby, 31 Dec. 1918 (ERDP). See also Kermit Roosevelt,
Quentin Roosevelt
, 208–9.
98
On New Year’s Day
Josephine Stricker to AP, Steubenville (Ohio)
Herald-Star
, 6 Jan. 1919; Ferdinand C. Iglehart,
Theodore Roosevelt: The Man As I Knew Him
(New York, 1919), 281.