Chapter XVII: War 323 (11)

His wonderful reception in Egypt and the admiring recognition shown him by kings and potentates when he emerged from his year of seclusion in the jungle are well known to the world. Emperors and monarchs and presidents vied with each other to do him honor, and never was there a more triumphant progress than that of Citizen Theodore Roosevelt through the great countries that had known him as President of the United States. His tales later of the various potentates were amusing to the last degree; everything he recounted was told in the most good-natured, although humorous, spirit, and in many cases he spoke with warm regard and even affection for the rulers who welcomed him so warmly to their homes and lives. He referred to the King of Italy as “a very intelligent and really good man.” He had never felt that the Emperor of Germany was a _great_ man, nor did he change his opinion, in spite of the many courtesies shown him by the Kaiser, although he enjoyed his experiences in Germany and was much interested when asked to review the great German army by the Emperor. Of all the reigning monarchs, he seemed to think with the most affection of the King of Norway, to whom he paid the characteristic compliment of saying that he “would enjoy having him settle down quietly near him at Oyster Bay,” and he also spoke with regard of Alfonso of Spain. He gave an especially interesting account of the funeral ceremonies of King Edward VII, to which ceremonies he was appointed special envoy; but most of all he wrote with keen delight of his “bird walk” through the New Forest and over the adjacent lowlands and uplands with that fellow bird-lover, the secretary for foreign affairs, then Sir Edward, now Earl, Grey. Nothing could have been more characteristic of Theodore Roosevelt than the way in which that walk had been arranged.

Before he left America to plunge into the African jungle, he wrote to Lord Bryce in England to the effect that on his return, practically a year and a quarter from the date on which he wrote, he would like some one versed in the bird-songs of England to walk with him for a day at least to acquaint him with the notes of the British feathered singers. He knew, he said, the appearance and habits of every English bird, but had never had the chance to match the bird to the song, and he was very anxious to do so. Lord Bryce happened to meet Sir Edward Grey, the secretary for foreign affairs, and laughingly mentioned the desire on the part of President Roosevelt to make this somewhat premature engagement, and expressed uncertainty as to whom he could choose for the President’s companion. Sir Edward immediately offered himself, saying that the knowledge of bird song and lore happened to be one of his assets, but even Sir Edward felt that the experiences with the mighty creatures of the jungle, the excitement of the political furor aroused by a certain speech of Theodore Roosevelt’s in Cairo, and the triumphal procession through other parts of Europe might, perhaps, have effaced from his memory his desire for a walk in English woodlands. But not at all. Sir Edward Grey himself told me, not long ago, that on the 1st of May, 1910, several weeks before he was expected in England, there came a note reminding the British secretary for foreign affairs that the ex-President of the United States wished to be his companion for twenty-four hours at least of remote enchantment “far from the madding crowd,” and so when the time came they started together and tramped through the New Forest, and later over lush meadows inundated by spring rains. Earl Grey told me that although he had often taken this particular walk, he had never encountered the slightest difficulty during the transit, but to be with Theodore Roosevelt was synonymous with adventure of some kind. While traversing a usually innocuous meadow, they suddenly came upon a piece of flooded lowland, in this particular case so flooded that unless they deflected or retraced their steps, it would mean walking breast-high in water for some distance. The secretary for foreign affairs referred the decision about the situation to the ex-President of the United States, and, needless to say, the man who was accustomed to swim the Potomac River in his stride, did _not_ deflect his course because of the flooded English meadow. Later, as they stood under a tree drying themselves in the afternoon sunshine, a very sweet, delicate song was heard. My brother’s keen ears caught the trickling notes, and turning with vivid interest to his companion, he said: “Of all the songs we have heard to-day, that is the only one which resembles in any degree an American-bird song,” and he listened eagerly as the obliging bird repeated its dainty music. “That,” said Earl Grey, “is the crested wren.” “It is a wren also that sings like that in America,” said my brother. Earl Grey was very much interested in this, and a few days afterward, meeting a great bird expert in the British Museum, he repeated the remark of my brother in connection with the fact that the crested wren’s song was the only one of any English bird resembling the song of an American bird, and the expert confirmed what my brother had said.

Mr. John Burroughs used to say, although he had given his whole life to ornithology, that Theodore Roosevelt, to whom in later years it became only a recreation, was almost as well informed on the subject as he was.

In June, 1910, he returned from Europe, and never in the annals of American history has such a reception been accorded to a private citizen. Frankly, I do not think that Theodore Roosevelt was ever regarded as a _private_ citizen; he was always a public possession! What a day it was! We went to meet him in a special launch, and from the moment of his landing until he finally reached his beloved home at Oyster Bay there was nothing but one great call of delight from his fellow citizens to the man who still stood to them for the whole of America. His triumphs, the adulation which he had received from foreign countries, epitomized to them the regard and respect poured out to the United States by those other countries of the world. The great crowds of his waving, cheering fellow citizens lined the avenue of his triumphant progress, but when he finally joined us at the house at which the family were assembled as a vantage-point, he seemed just the same sweet, simple, joyous, and unostentatious comrade as of yore.

That very first day he gave us the most amusing accounts of some of his European experiences, humorously describing informal lunches in Buckingham Palace, when the children of King George and Queen Mary behaved very much as “young America” is accustomed to behave. He also gave us what our family has always been pleased to term a “personal charade” of certain events, especially one moment when the Kaiser behaved rather like an arrogant schoolboy to one of the other royalties. He laughingly referred to a message from the Kaiser during his stay in London, when the above potentate sent him word that he, William, would be glad to give him (ex-President Roosevelt) three-quarters of an hour the next day of his precious time! And ex-President Roosevelt in return sent him a rapid message saying that _he_ would be delighted to see William, but he regretted that he could only give him twenty-five minutes! He regaled us for a long while with many such amusing stories, and then went home to his beloved Sagamore Hill.

The following day an incident occurred which had a certain prophetic quality about it. A great dinner was to be given to him by Robert Collier, and as usual with his loving thought of me (I had just returned from a trip around the world and was in very ill health) he wished to come to my house to spend the night so as to see me. He arranged to be with me at five o’clock in the afternoon, thus to have a long, quiet talk before the dinner. I came in from the country and had afternoon tea waiting for him in my library. A half-hour passed, and then another half-hour, and I began to get distinctly nervous, because he was the most prompt of individuals. At a little after six he arrived looking jaded and worried, and as he took his cup of tea, he turned to me and said: “A very unpleasant thing happened which made me late. As you see, I am dressed perfectly inconspicuously, and I slipped into Scribners [his publishers] a little before five to say a word or two about my ‘African Game Trails.’ [Scribners at that time was situated at 22d Street and Fifth Avenue.] When I went in there was no crowd at all, but somebody must have seen me enter the bookstore, and when I came out a short while afterward, a huge crowd had assembled, and literally would not let me pass. They wanted to carry me on their shoulders; they wanted to do utterly impossible and objectionable things; and I realized at once that this was not the friendly reception of yesterday, but that it represented a certain hysterical quality which boded ill for my future. _That type_ of crowd, feeling _that_ kind of way, means that within a very short time they will be throwing rotten eggs at me. I may be on the crest of the wave now, but mark my words, the attitude of that crowd means that they will soon try to help me into the trough of the wave.” He was so impressed by this incident that that night at the Collier dinner he repeated and enlarged upon the theme of the crest and the trough of the wave.

Yet, in looking back over my brother’s life, I do not think it can be said that in the true sense of the word he ever experienced the trough of the wave. The great movement which resulted in the Progressive party, instigated by internal dissensions in the Republican party, brought Democratic rule into our country, but, although he was defeated for public office, it did not throw him into the trough of the wave, for in reality he emerged from that great movement the leader of the majority of the Republican party, as was shown on Election day in November, 1912, when the vote for Theodore Roosevelt was infinitely larger than that cast for the “regular” Republican candidate, William Howard Taft.

XIV

THE GREAT DENIAL

Who would not be
A baffled Moses with the eyes to see
The far fruition of the Promised Land!

--C. R. R.

How can we manage with our Brother gone,
We smaller folk who looked to him to voice our voicelessness?

* * * * *

We do not call him to come back from that free plane where now he
moves untrammeled--
Un-beset by littleness, by envy of his power to read our hearts,
And blazon forth the message that he found there,
So that those in highest place among us needs must hear
And heed the will of us--the silent ones--
Who work, and think, and feel,
And are America.

--Gene Stanton Baker.

Theodore Roosevelt had been at home but a few short weeks when he realized fully that the policies so dear to his heart, and which he had left in what he considered absolutely safe-keeping, had not been carried out. Already, in Congress, a large number of the younger Republicans had combined together as what were then called “The Insurgents.” In other words, the men who had fully believed in the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, who felt that no proper progress could be made toward better government of the United States unless those policies were followed, had met on all sides with great disappointment; and although the ex-President had hoped to keep as absolutely “out of politics” as he had done in the African jungle, these disheartened and disappointed men, representing largely the younger and more ardent spirits of his country, turned to him for leadership. These reminiscences of my brother are not a biography, nor are they a political analysis of his public life, and I must therefore pass over many occurrences, the most important of which was his effort in the autumn of 1910 to defeat the Barnes-Tammany combination in New York State by running Mr. Henry L. Stimson for governor, which finally resulted in the position he took in January, 1912.

During the eighteen months previous he had been contributing editor of _The Outlook_, and my letters from him in 1911 were few and far between, as we were frequently together. They were, as usual, full of deep interest in and affection for me and mine, and as at that time I began to publish verse, first anonymously and then under my own name, he gives me generous praise in a note dated August 21, 1911: “I saw B. the other day. He told me about the acceptance of your second poem, and spoke most strongly about it, and he, just like everyone else who has talked to me about the poem, dwelt upon its power and purpose. [The poem in question was “The Call of Brotherhood.”] It is not merely pretty, pleasant, trivial, the kind of thing a boy or girl of twenty could have written; it is written about and for those who have toiled and suffered and worked, and who have known defeat and triumph; and it is written by one of them.” In his busy life, called upon endlessly in every direction, he never failed to encourage any effort of mine worthy of encouragement, nor indeed to discourage any effort of mine of which he did not approve. “If convenient,” he adds, “I will come in about five next Friday for an hour’s talk with you and to see the other verses. I am sending you a zebra skin which I hope you will like.”

On October 5, 1911, he writes, referring to a political situation in Herkimer County, where my son had run for state assemblyman, and where certain unsavory methods had been used to defeat him (later, through legal procedure, he was given his seat): “Teddy has been defrauded by as outrageous a piece of political scoundrelism as I have ever known. Of course, this scoundrelism could succeed, only because last year, the big business men, the great ‘Conservatives,’ and professional ‘Intellectuals’ and the like, joined in securing the victory of Tammany at the polls, and the consequent enthronement of the Barnes-Sherman crowd in our party. If only we could have elected Harry Stimson for governor, there would not have been an effort made to handle Teddy as he has been handled.” Already his indignation was beginning to wax hot against certain methods much in vogue in the Republican party at that time.

He had had no intention of running for the presidential nomination in 1912, and, indeed, in the autumn of 1911 told many of his most faithful supporters that he was very much averse to doing so; but already a swelling tide of disapproval of the Taft administration had increased in volume to such an extent that it swept over a large part of the country. The Insurgents pleaded for a definite leadership, and to them, and to many who did not call themselves by that name, there was but one leader whom they were willing to follow, and that was Theodore Roosevelt.

The force of this great wave culminated in the letter of the seven governors in January, 1912, a letter in which those same seven governors begged him to take, openly, the leadership of Progressive Republicanism, and to allow his name to be used as a presidential nominee in the June convention of 1912. Just before that letter was published, he writes in his usual sweet way in connection with a visit which he and Mrs. Roosevelt had intended to pay me in New York (they were at Sagamore Hill). After speaking of an illness which prevented Mrs. Roosevelt from coming to me, he said, knowing that I had made certain engagements for them: “Do you wish to have me come alone? Do exactly what you think best. I will be in for Tuesday night in any case, and will be at your house as agreed. I don’t know when I have ever enjoyed anything more than my lunch at Fannie’s [our dear friend Mrs. James Russell Parsons],--it was a real feast of Lucullus,--only far better.” This letter is very boyish and content with friends and family, and most unlike a man absorbed in schemes of sinister usurpation, schemes of which he was so soon to be accused.

In the library at my own house in New York City, a fateful meeting took place shortly after this last letter came. I confess to having had serious doubts as to what his answer should be to that request of the seven governors. Personally, I felt the sacrifice asked of him was almost too great. I realized perfectly the great struggle before him and all that it probably would mean, and it seemed to me that he had already given all that was required of just such service to his beloved country. But, just as he felt in 1898 that, having preached war upon Spain, he must take active part in that war, so in 1912 he came to feel strongly that, having inaugurated certain policies as President which had not been carried out by his successor--having preached the necessity for industrial legislation which had not been backed by those in public authority--it was his duty to bare his breast to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and accept the position of leader of Progressive Republicanism in order to try to translate into practical reality the ideals which he had upheld before his countrymen. His answer to the seven governors pledged himself to such leadership, and the great upheaval of 1912 took place.

Never before in his varied career had Theodore Roosevelt felt such a sense of loneliness, for many of his nearest and dearest friends were not in sympathy with some of his beliefs in 1912. I shall never forget the great meeting at Carnegie Hall, when he proclaimed “the faith that was in him.” He was like an inspired crusader that night when he cast away the notes from which he had occasionally been reading and made the magnificent peroration in which he proclaimed the fact that his doctrine was “Spend and Be Spent,” and that no man worthy the name of man would not be willing to be an instrument for the success of his ideals--a broken instrument if need be. He returned after that thrilling speech to my house, and we sat a long while talking over the serious step he had taken and the possibilities the future held for him, and I felt that there was a sense of dedication about him such as I believe the martyrs of old must have felt.

In spite of the storm that broke around him after this declaration, in spite of the manifold activities into which he immediately cast himself, he takes the time to write to me, March 5, 1912, when my infant grandchild, born the month before, had died of whooping-cough: “My darling Sister: You have indeed been through the waters of bitterness. The little baby! I love little babies so, and I think of my own little granddaughter, and I mourn with you and Douglas. Now, I think only with a pang of our lovely day last Sunday. [We had spent that Sunday with him at Oyster Bay.] If I could have come up to Albany I would have done so. Ever your devoted brother.”

The great convention of 1912 took place, and through the ruling of the chairman certain delegates pledged to Theodore Roosevelt were deprived of their seats, a ruling which meant his defeat as Republican candidate. I was ill at the time and could not be present on that epoch-making occasion. I only know that its result after the above ruling was considered by my brother absolutely inevitable, and that he never regarded that result, as did so many people, as the most unfortunate circumstance of his life. Writing a year and a half later for the _Century Magazine_, in October, 1913, he says: “Fundamentally the reason for the existence of the Progressive Party was found in two facts: first, the absence of real distinctions between the old parties which correspond _to_ those parties; and, second, the determined refusal of the men in control of both parties to use the party organizations and their control of the Government, for the purpose of dealing with the problems really vital to our people.... A party which alternately nominated Mr. Bryan and Mr. Parker for President, and a party wherein Messrs. Penrose, LaFollette, and Smoot, stand as the three brothers of leadership, can by no possibility supply the need of this country for efficient and coherent governmental action as regards the really vital questions of the day.” In the same article he proceeds to analyze the reasons for the formation of the Progressive Party, and continues:

“The problems connected with the trusts, the problems connected with child labor, and all similar matters can be solved only by affirmative national action. No party is progressive which does not set the authority of the National Government as supreme in these matters. No party is progressive which does not give to the people the right to determine for themselves, after due opportunity for deliberation, but without endless difficulty and delay, what the standards of social and industrial justice shall be; and, furthermore, the right to insist upon the servants of the people, legislative and judicial alike, paying heed to the wishes of the people as to what the law of the land shall be. The Progressive party believes with Thomas Jefferson, with Andrew Jackson, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is a government of the people, to be used for the people, so as to better the condition of the average man and average woman of the nation in the intimate and homely concerns of their daily lives; and thus to use the government means that it must be used after the manner of Hamilton and Lincoln to serve the purposes of Jefferson and Lincoln.

“We are for the people’s rights. Where these rights can best be obtained by exercise of the powers of the State, there we are for _States’_ rights. Where they can best be obtained by the exercise of the powers of the _National_ Government, there we are for _National_ rights. We are not interested in this as an abstract doctrine; we are interested in it concretely.... We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for _all_ our people, if _some_ of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted.”

Referring to the Industrial and Social Justice plank of the platform of the Progressive party, he continues:

“The propositions are definite and concrete. They represent for the first time in our political history the specific and reasoned purpose of a great party to use the resources of the government in sane fashion for industrial betterment....

“To sum up, then, our position is, after all, simple. We believe that the government should concern itself chiefly with the matters that are of most importance to the average man and average woman, and that it should be its special province to aid in making the conditions of life easier for these ordinary men and ordinary women, who compose the great bulk of our people. To this end we believe that the people should have direct control over their own governmental agencies, and that when this control has been secured, it should be used with resolution, but with sanity and self-restraint, in the effort to make conditions fairer and better for the men and women of the nation.”

I have inserted this quotation from his own writings in 1913, for it gives clearly the objects and aims of that party, born at Chicago amid scenes of almost religious enthusiasm in June, 1912, nor did that enthusiasm wane for one single moment during the following months; on the contrary, it rose to the heights of dedication.

There were some who lost their sense of proportion, but by far the greater number of those who followed Theodore Roosevelt in that extraordinary campaign were imbued with a high sense of a “Great Cause,” a cause which had never before been translated into the common sense of possible achievement. The New York State Progressive Convention met at Syracuse, and at that assemblage I was able to be present, and whatever doubts might have been in my breast before were swept away by a deep conviction of the fact that the Progressive Party was the true interpretation of the highest ideal of democracy.

Just about the time of the Progressive Convention at Syracuse, an article appeared, written by a citizen of Unadilla, N. Y., C. C. Penny by name, in which the above citizen gives the reasons which induced him to vote for “Teddy,” as he affectionately calls the colonel.

“_To the Editor of the Utica Daily Press_:--

“Having had the question put up to me as to what Roosevelt has
ever done politically to better conditions, I would submit the
following: First,--What did Mr. Roosevelt do as President that
he should not have done in the public interest, or that was
dangerous or hurtful to business? Mr. Roosevelt’s intervention
in the coal strike benefited all consumers; Mr. Roosevelt is
responsible for the Pure Food and Drugs Act; the open door to
American commerce with China; the settlement of the Russo-Japan
War; Panama Canal project; conservation of natural resources;
reduction of interest-bearing debt by more than ninety million
dollars; settlement of the Alaska boundary dispute; an act calling
for the extension of forest reserves; national irrigation act;
employers’ liability act; safety appliances and regulation of
railroad employees’ hours of labor.--Was Mr. Roosevelt’s work in
bringing about the settlement of the Russo-Japan War dangerous and
hurtful to business? Was Roosevelt’s Panama Canal project dangerous
and hurtful to business? Was his movement for the conservation of
our natural resources dangerous and hurtful to business? These are
a few of the things which he suggested and carried through with the
help of his followers. Besides, he recommended many other reforms
such as Postal Savings Bank, Parcels Post, and Inheritance Tax and
Income Tax which he had not time to carry through during his last
term.

“All these, it seems to me, are reforms to better the conditions of
the great mass of people. The Progressive platform has been growing
for the last sixteen years all through the Northwest, and West and
South, only waiting for a man to come out, bold enough to take the
lead. Mr. Roosevelt, it seems, has dared to take this step, and
whether we win or lose, it is a step forward to the betterment of
the conditions of all who toil and consume. I have always voted the
Republican ticket, but I consider that true Republican principles
at this time rest with the Progressive Party, and I shall vote for
that party this Fall, and for Teddy, win or lose.”

In October that year my volume of poems called by the title of its first poem, “The Call of Brotherhood,” was published, and my brother writes me at once, though in the midst of pressing duties: “I love ‘The Call of Brotherhood’; somehow it seems to express just what we are now battling for in the political arena. Well, the feeling, the longing, the desire, the determination you have made throb in these poems, also make it impossible for us to sit in fat content and not strive for better things in _actual life_. When we felt rather inarticulately just what you have written, we simply couldn’t refrain from the effort [he refers to the Progressive Party] as a practical means to realize high ideals. That is what we must do with high ideals,--apply them and try to live up to them, and to make them work.--Joe and Teddy have done wonderful work; and so has Douglas.... I seem to have cost my friends much in all kinds of ways in this campaign; that was one of the reasons why I so hated to go into it.” Many people misjudged his motives and thought that he went into it for selfish purposes; never was there a more mistaken conception of the actions of a patriot.

In a letter written September 1, he says: “I am just leaving for the West. It has been a very interesting fight, and never was there a fight better worth making, but the exertion is tremendous, and I look forward to Election Day as the end of a battle.”

During that Western trip, he had one of his greatest personal ovations. One of the Western newspapers says:

“In Portland, Oregon, the city practically stopped business and turned out to receive its guest. In each city, the personal element of the greeting was remarkable. No one was thinking of Colonel Roosevelt in connection with his past office as President. He was ‘Roosevelt.’ It was ‘Hello Teddy’ and ‘Hurrah for Teddy’ everywhere along the densely packed streets where he appeared. His speeches to these multitudes were neither original nor new, but the people understood them. The enthusiasm of these western cities for the ex-President seems almost fabulous. At Portland, hundreds of school children escorted the automobile. Women brought their children, cripples were wheeled to horse blocks, men climbed on cornices and pediments, mothers of twins pressed to the side of the car, people literally blackened sidewalks, residence verandas, windows of houses, even the trees. At Tacoma a woman was heard to remark, ‘If this ex-President has lost his popularity, I would hate to be in a crowd that had gathered to see an ex-President who had _not_ lost his popularity,’--and everywhere he preached the common-sense doctrine:--

“Now friends, what I have said to you is pretty elementary,--so elementary that it comes mighty near being commonplace, but I will tell you that the truths that really count are the elementary truths. The individual whom we respect is not merely the brilliant individual. The man whom we wish our sons to resemble is the man who has the ordinary virtues developed to more than the ordinary degree.”

He himself believed that he was not a man of genius but only a man with average talents, talents which by sheer determination and will-power he had developed to a more than ordinary degree.

Shortly after the ovation in Oregon, he writes on September 15 from San Francisco: “Of course this trip is inconceivably wearing, but what a fine fight it is, anyhow!” To him it was a great crusade for the right, and his soul was at white heat in the cause of righteousness.

Later came the dramatic moment in Milwaukee when he received in his breast the bullet of a would-be assassin. He protected the man, believing him to be insane, from the angry crowd who would have gladly torn him limb from limb; and then proceeded, though bleeding from an open wound, to make what he fully believed would probably be the last speech that he would ever make in this world. The doctors could not influence him to give up the speech, for he said that should it prove to be his last, it was all the more important that he should make it. But, thank Heaven, it was not his last!

During his convalescence in the hospital in Chicago, he sent me one of his sympathetic letters about another recently published poem, and also replied to a letter from Sir George Trevelyan as follows: “I must say I have never understood public men who got nervous about assassination. For the last eleven years I have, of course, thoroughly understood that I might at any time be shot, and probably _would_ be shot sometime. I think I have come off uncommonly well. What I cannot understand is any serious-minded public man not being so absorbed in the great, vital questions with which he has to deal, as to exclude thoughts of assassination. I don’t think this is a matter of courage at all. I think it a question of the major interest driving out the minor interest. Exactly as with the army,--a private may have qualms,--hot so a General. He is responsible for more than his personal safety. It is not a question of courage, it is a question of perspective, of proper proportion.” Nothing has ever been more in keeping with the actions of Theodore Roosevelt than the above sentence: “it is a question of the major interest driving out the minor interest.” With him, all through his life, the sense of proportion was a prominent part of his make-up. The “major interest” always drove out the “minor interest,” and so strong was his sense of responsibility, so absorbed was he in the great affairs of his country, that the thought of possible assassination never entered his valiant breast.

The greatest moment of all that inspiring period of his life came late in October, at the end of the campaign, when Theodore Roosevelt, the bullet still in his breast, but miraculously restored to health and strength, came to the city of his birth to make the final speech of the Progressive campaign at Madison Square Garden. Not only was the spirit of the Crusade higher than ever, but the danger so lately experienced by their leader had given to his followers an exaltation never surpassed at any time in our political history. I have always been glad that for some unexplained reason the pass which had been given to me that night for my motor was not accepted by the policeman in charge, and I, my husband, my son Monroe, and our friend Mrs. Parsons were obliged to take our places in the cheering, laughing, singing crowd which formed in line many blocks below the Garden to walk up to the entrance-door. How it swayed and swung! how it throbbed with life and elation! how imbued it was with an earnest party ambition, and yet, with a deep and genuine religious fervor. Had I lived my whole life only for those fifteen minutes during which I marched toward the Garden already full to overflowing with my brother’s adoring followers, I should have been content to do so. We could hardly get into the building, and indeed had to climb up the fire-escape, which we were only allowed to do after making it well known that I was the sister of the “Colonel.” (There never was but one “Colonel” in American history!) The whole meeting was one of an ineffable and intense emotional quality. We could hear the singing and the cheers of the thousands outside on the street, as inside my brother came forward to the platform, and the vast audience rose to its feet to acclaim its hero. Such moments do not often occur in a lifetime, and when they do, they leave in their wake a wonderful sense of what the highest type of religion should mean--a religion selfless as the Christlike faith upon which all true religion is founded.

A few days later, Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic though minority candidate, was elected President of the United States.

XV

WHISPERINGS OF WAR

SAGAMORE HILL

He is a moose,
Scarred, battered from the hunters, thickets, stones:
Some finest tips of antlers broken off,
And eyes where images of ancient things
Flit back and forth across them, keeping still
A certain slumberous indifference,
Or wisdom, it may be.

--Edgar Lee Masters.

Rightly to be great
Is not to stir, without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When Honour’s at the stake.

--Hamlet.

No man in America ever received the backing of so large a personal following as did Theodore Roosevelt in the election of 1912, but owing to the fact that opinion was divided, the Democratic party, although a minority party, was put in power. It has been the habit of some to speak of my brother as having split the Republican party. This has always seemed to me an unfair criticism. It was proved by the actual vote at the polls that the larger half of what up to that time had been the Republican party was in favor of Theodore Roosevelt for President. His majority over Mr. Taft was unquestioned. A minority, not a majority, disrupts a party. Nothing is truer, however, than that a really great man cannot be defeated. He can lose official position, he can see the office which he craved because of its potential power for right doing pass into the hands of another; but in the higher sense of the word he cannot be defeated if his object has been righteousness, if his inner vision has been the true betterment of his country.

And so during the years that followed 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, although holding no official position, became more than ever the leader of a great portion of the people of America. Loyal as he was, he felt that having (as he phrased it) “led a vast army into the wilderness,” he must stand by them through thick and thin.

In 1913, having been asked to make certain addresses in South America, he decided to accept the invitation. But before sailing he went to Rochester, N. Y., to make a speech, and arranged that my husband and I should meet him and have an evening quietly with him. Immediately after that there was a great farewell dinner to him in New York, at the Hotel Astor. The crowd was suffocating. It seemed as if the enthusiasm for him and for Progressive principles was even more poignant than the year before--perhaps the realization that their leader was to leave them, even for a comparatively short time, increased the ardor of the convictions of his followers--and the spirit of that evening was so vital, so dedicated in quality, that it will never fade from my mind. The next day he and Mrs. Roosevelt sailed for the Argentine Republic, and within a few months she returned home, and he again lost himself in a new adventure. The little boy of six in the nursery at 20th Street had read with fervent interest of the adventures of the great explorer Livingston. He had achieved his ambition to follow those adventures as a mighty hunter in Africa; he had achieved many another ambition, but none was more intense with him than the desire to put a so-called “River of Doubt” on the map of the world.

Again Kermit was his companion, and the latter has given, as no one else could give, the most vivid description of that trip in his book called “The Happy Hunting Grounds.” In that book he describes his father’s desperate illness, and his heroic and unflinching courage when, with a temperature of one hundred and five, he struggled on through the mazes of the jungle, weak and weary, unselfishly begging his companions to leave him to die, for he felt that his condition endangered the possibility of their escape alive from their difficulties. As in Africa, so in South America his tireless energy, even when weakened by illness, never failed to accomplish his purpose, and not only did he put the “River of Doubt” on the map--a river which from that time forth was called Rio Teodoro, after Theodore Roosevelt, the explorer--but during those suffering, exhausting weeks he never once failed to keep his promise to his publishers, and to write, on the spot, the incidents of each day’s adventures. Robert Bridges, of Scribners, has shown me the water-soaked manuscript, written in my brother’s own handwriting, of that extraordinary expedition. In several places on the blotched sheets he makes a deprecatory note--“This is not written very clearly; my temperature is 105.” Such perseverance, such persistence are really superhuman; but perhaps it is also true that the _human_ being must eventually pay the price of what the superman achieves.

Theodore Roosevelt returned from that Brazilian trip a man in whom a secret poison still lurked, and although his wonderful vitality, his magnificent strength of character, mind, and body, seemed at times to restore him to the perfect health of former days, he was never wholly free from recurrent attacks of the terrible jungle fever, which resulted in ill health of various kinds, and finally in his death.

True to his loyal convictions, he was determined to give all the aid possible to the candidates on the Progressive ticket for the election of 1914. His wife writes, August, 1914: “Theodore seems really better, although I scarcely think he will have voice for the three speeches he has planned for the last of the month. I asked him if I could say anything from him about the War, and he simply threw up his hands in despair.” This letter was written nine days after the cataclysm of the Great War had broken upon the world. From the beginning he said to his family what he did not feel he could state publicly, owing to the fact that he did not wish to embarrass President Wilson. Having been President himself, he knew it was possible for one in high authority to have information which he could not immediately share with all the people, and he hoped this might be the reason of President Wilson’s failure to make any protest when the enemy troops invaded Belgium.

To his family, however, he spoke frankly and always with deep regret that the President enjoined a neutral attitude in the beginning. He felt, from the very first, that the Allies were fighting our battles; that the British fleet was the protector of the United States as much as it was the protector of Great Britain; that a protest should have immediately been made by the United States when the Germans marched through Belgium. All these views he stated to his family and to his friends, but for the first few months after August 1, 1914, he felt that, as an influential citizen, he might hurt the fulfilment of whatever plan the President might have in view in connection with the Allies were he openly to criticise the President’s course of action. Later in the war he told me how much he regretted that, from a high sense of duty toward the Executive, he had controlled himself during those first few months when we were asked by President Wilson to be neutral even in thought.

In my sister-in-law’s letter, quoted above, she speaks of her doubt as to whether my brother would be strong enough to make the speeches which he had agreed to make. The Philadelphia _North American_ published, about that time, an editorial called “The Amazing Roosevelt,” a few paragraphs of which run as follows:

“On April 30th, there came out of the seething jungles of Brazil to a river port 1000 miles up the Amazon, a man who was heralded by cable dispatches as broken in body and permanently impaired in mind.... On his arrival at home, there were grave dicta from former critics that never again would this man be a force in public life. The solemnity of these pronouncements scarcely concealed the gratification which they gave to some who promulgated them. Unbiassed stories of the hardships suffered in the tropical forests appeared to be cumulative evidence to support the belief that Theodore Roosevelt was ‘done for’ as a factor in public life.

“A sick man had virtually dragged himself through the most obdurate jungle still unmapped.... It had looked as if the entire party might be sacrificed and he had begged his followers to go on and leave him to take care of himself. On his return, he was warned by an eminent specialist that he must eschew speech-making if he hoped to avoid permanent injury to his throat. Another specialist warned him that impaired vital organs necessitated his withdrawing altogether from public activities. This was the Roosevelt who went to Pittsburgh to speak to the Progressives of Pennsylvania this week. What was it the Progressives gathered there to hear? Was it a swan song,--was it the plea of a broken man,--what was the character of the gathering? Was it a congregation of saddened and disheartened people, come to pay a kindly tribute to a passing leader? It was none of these things. The demonstration for Roosevelt and Progressive principles surpassed anything in the 1912 campaign, and the Roosevelt who greeted this great demonstration was the vigorous, fighting Roosevelt who so long had led the people’s battles. He was never received with more enthusiasm. The New York _Times_, not a paper in favor of Colonel Roosevelt, said: ‘The Pennsylvania Progressives gave Colonel Roosevelt a welcome tonight which must have reminded him of 1912. The demonstration was a remarkable one.’ And _The World_ said: ‘The Colonel enjoyed every minute. Malaria was forgotten and all physical weakness along with it as he stood at the vortex of the night’s enthusiasm.’

“No one can read the speech which Roosevelt made that night without being convinced that the dismal forebodings that came out of that Amazon port last April, have already been discredited, and that the man who in 1912 stood with an assassin’s bullet near his heart, and insisted upon delivering a message which might be his last, is not to be broken or even impaired in 1914 by the hardships of a South American jungle. It is but another example of the amazing Roosevelt.”

That same autumn of 1914 he came to our old home in Herkimer County once more, but this time he was the guest of my son Theodore Douglas Robinson, and stayed at his house, which adjoins the old home. From there Mrs. Parsons and he and I joined the candidate for governor on the Progressive ticket, State Senator Frederick A. Davenport, and former State Senator Newcomb, for a short speaking tour to uphold the candidacy of Senator Davenport. We knew there was very little hope of success, but my brother had recuperated apparently from the Brazilian trip, and we spent two merry days dashing through Herkimer and Otsego counties. In spite of anxiety and a deep sense of distress about Old World conditions, for a brief moment we threw off all care, and in the glorious autumn sunshine, followed by cheering crowds, we enjoyed one of the triumphal processions which were almost always a _sine qua non_ wherever he appeared. One specially merry afternoon and evening was spent at the home of James Fenimore Cooper. My brother was to speak at Cooperstown in the afternoon, and Mr. Cooper invited us to dinner, but I told him that the party must reach Oneonta for dinner, so that we could only take afternoon tea at his house. I had not confided this refusal to Theodore, simply taking it for granted that it would be impossible for us to accept the Cooper invitation and reach Oneonta in time for his evening speech. The Cooper home, full of treasures that had descended from Mr. Cooper’s grandfather, the author of “The Last of the Mohicans,” etc., and equally full of charming people, gave us so warm a welcome, and we had such an agreeable time there, that my brother was very loath to leave, but at 6.30 I insisted that we must start for Oneonta. We were already in the motors when Mr. Cooper, leaning over to say good-by, assured Colonel Roosevelt of his regret that he could not stay to dinner. “Dinner?” said my brother. “I didn’t know I was asked to dinner.” “Yes, you were, of course,” said Mr. Cooper; “but your sister, Mrs. Robinson, refused to let you stay for dinner, saying that you would have to reach Oneonta at 8 o’clock.” “May I ask,” said my brother in a high falsetto, “what business my sister, Mrs. Robinson, had to refuse a dinner invitation for me?” And, with a bound, he leaped from the automobile, shaking, laughingly, his fist at me, and said, “Dinner with the Coopers! Well, of course, I am going to stay to dinner,” and returned rapidly to the house, followed meekly by his party. The hospitable and resourceful Coopers, who naturally, after my refusal, had not expected seven extra people to dinner, turned in, assisted by Theodore himself, and proceeded to scramble eggs and broil bacon, much to the amusement and delight of the cook, who had never had an ex-President in her kitchen before, and of all the merry dinner-parties that I have ever attended, that one, forced upon the delightful Fenimore Coopers, was about the merriest.

Senator Davenport had been in poor health at the time, and my brother called him entirely “Little Eva,” after the angel child of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” both because of his rather transparent appearance and his high-minded principles (upon which the Colonel dilated in his speeches). He called himself “Uncle Tom,” and Senator Newcomb “Simon Legree,” and those cognomens and no others were used throughout the entire trip, which proved a veritable holiday.

But neither that trip nor any other trip could have changed the fate of the Progressive candidates in 1914, and New York State showed at election time, as did various other states in the country, that America was not prepared for a third party, even though that party stood, more than did any other party, for the practical common sense and high idealism of Theodore Roosevelt.

Just before Election day I accompanied him to Princeton, where Doctor John Grier Hibben, president of the university, received him with distinction, and asked him to speak to the body of students there not only on political faiths but on “Preparedness.” Unless I am very much mistaken, the first speech on that subject in the United States during the Great War was that very address made in the auditorium of Princeton in November, 1914, by my brother. His young and eager listeners among the student body applauded him to the echo. The cause of preparedness and true Americanism had no stancher upholder at that time, nor in the difficult years to come, than President Hibben of Princeton University. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Leonard Wood, John Grier Hibben, Augustus P. Gardner, and other far-seeing patriots, stood from the beginning for the Allies against the Huns, and for “Preparedness” of a thorough kind. Had their advice been followed, Germany would very soon have sensed how formidable an influence in the war America could be. I am convinced there would have been no sinking of the _Lusitania_, and hundreds of thousands of gallant young men would not have lost their lives on Flanders Fields.

On November 12, 1914, after Election day, my brother writes me: “Darling Corinne:--That is a very dear letter of yours! I shall make no further statement. Did you see my quotation from Timothy II, Chapter 4, verses 3 and 4? It covers the whole situation. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt.”

The verses referred to are as follows:

(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

He was very apt to sum up a situation in some pregnant verse from the Bible.

The winter of 1915 was trying to him in certain ways, especially on account of the Barnes libel suit. He had made the statement that Mr. Barnes had, politically, a bipartisan attitude, and indeed more than attitude, and Mr. Barnes decided to bring a suit for libel against him. In spite of this annoyance, however, he writes me various letters, some merry, and all dealing with subjects where he or I could be of help to others less fortunate. In one case, in connection with a certain French pastor, to whom I could not be of assistance in the way in which he had hoped, he writes: “I understand perfectly. I felt like a swine when I wrote you, but the poor, dear pastor was such a pathetic figure that from sheer mushy weakness I yielded, and strove to do something for him.” And later, in connection with a penniless poet: “Can you give me any advice? I wish I knew some wealthy creature who was interested in poor struggling poets and could help them, and also help their poor wives and children after their deaths. Lord! how hard life is!” That time I was able to help him, and raised quite a sum for the struggling individual in question, whom I thought truly deserved help.