When America entered the world war Theodore Roosevelt stood among the first of those who volunteered their services. He had dealt with the grasping Prussian spirit in the Venezuelan incident in 1902, and made the sword-clanking junkers back down. He was fervently anxious to help do it again.
The Colonel announced that he had asked the War Department for permission to raise a body of troops. “In such event, I and my four sons will go,” he said, and added: “I don’t want to be put in the position of saying to my fellow countrymen, ‘Go to war.’ I want to be in the position of saying: ‘Come to the war; I am going with you.’”
Then, after a period of suspense in which the Colonel was a veritable Paul Revere in urging the nation to prepare, war actually came. On this momentous day the former President of the United States received the news in about the same spirit that Bill Jones and Henry Brown and the rest of his Oyster Bay neighbors greeted it. Colonel Roosevelt forgot that he had been twice President of the United States. He remembered only that America wanted men.
The Colonel felt himself to be fully equipped. Aside from the fact that he was a retired Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, in the Santiago campaign he had served in the first fight as commander, had earned promotion to the rank of colonel in his regiment and had ended the campaign in command of the brigade.
The Colonel followed up his previous application to the Secretary of War, with the telegram from which these words are quoted:
“To the Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.
“In view of the fact that Germany is now actually engaged in war with us, I again earnestly ask permission to raise a division for immediate service at the front. My purpose would be, after some six weeks’ preliminary training here, to take it direct to France for intensive training, so that it could be sent to the front in the shortest possible time to whatever point was desired. I should, of course, ask no favors of any kind, except that the division be put in the fighting line at the earliest possible moment.
“Theodore Roosevelt.”
Meanwhile, while Colonel Roosevelt waited with the ardor of a boy the answer to this appeal, applications for military service abroad under him were pouring in from all sections of the country. News of his desire to fight in France had spread like wildfire, and every man who had served with the Colonel at Santiago, as well as every man who wished that he had served with him, wired, wrote and telephoned his application to serve now. Authors, artists, engineers, cowboys, clerks, lawyers, ministers, wanted to go to France with “Teddy.” “Battling” Nelson and “Kid” McCoy were among the applicants. North Carolina offered to send a company. This evidence of the loyalty of the red-blooded men who had fought his civic and military battles with him touched the Colonel deeply and very naturally increased the anxiety with which he awaited the answer from the War Department.
Interesting and enthusiastic was this comment of Colonel Henry Watterson, the famous editor of “The Louisville Courier-Journal”:
“The proposal of Theodore Roosevelt to enlist in the world’s army of freedom and to go to one of the fronts in Europe leading a body of American soldiers may not be whistled lightly down the wind as a man who has a positive genius for the spectacular. It should be considered very seriously. Men are reached equally through their imagination and their patriotism, and except for the sympathetic and emotional in man there would be no armies. The appearance of an ex-President of the United States carrying the Star-Spangled Banner over a body of American soldiers to the battlefront would glorify us as will nothing else. It will electrify the world.”
After further correspondence by letter and wire, through which the Colonel pleaded with all the fervor of his patriotism and all the strength of his convictions that he be allowed to muster for service the older men of the country, who would not otherwise be called, the Secretary of War forwarded him, with assurances of appreciation of the Colonel’s patriotic spirit, the recommendation of the War College Division of the General Staff to the effect that no American troops be employed in active service in any European theatre until after an adequate period of training and that only regular officers be put in command of them.
Colonel Roosevelt’s unsuccessful effort to go to France with his proposed volunteer division was undoubtedly the keenest disappointment of his life. President Wilson, in his statement declining the offer of the Roosevelt division, did not fail to pay tribute to the patriotism and courage of the great volunteer.
The President said in part:
“I shall not avail myself, at any rate at the present stage of the war, of the authority conferred by the act to organize volunteer divisions. I understand that this section was added with a view to providing an independent military command for Mr. Roosevelt and giving the military authorities an opportunity to use his fine vigor and enthusiasm in recruiting.”
Remarking further that it would be “very agreeable” to him to confer this honor on the ex-President, the President added that “to do so would seriously interfere with the carrying out of the chief and most important purpose contemplated by this legislation, the prompt creation and early use of an effective army, and would contribute practically nothing to the effective strength of the armies now engaged against Germany.”
“Colonel, one of these days those boys of yours will be putting the name Roosevelt on the map!”
Peter Dunne’s remark to Roosevelt,
quoted in the “Metropolitan”
But although the door of active personal service was thus shut to him, there remained open four wide avenues through which the war could come to him and through which he could pour in the greatest measure the inspiration of his ideals—his four sons: Theodore, Jr., Kermit, Archie and Quentin.
Just as the sons of Bill Jones and Henry Brown were flaming with a desire to get to the firing line, so these four sons of the Colonel became dominated with a desire to do their part to save the world from reverting to the barbaric ages and incidentally to prove that they were worthy sons of the man who had led his troops in the battle of San Juan Hill.
In Germany the Kaiser’s six sons, though holding high commands, were so protected that the royal family was about the only family in all Germany that had escaped wounds. Debauches, hunting trips and similar revelries filled the time of these princelings. The contrast between them and the four sons of the ex-President of the United States was indeed marked.
Sword-rattling and gold braid were foreign to the nature of this new world breed, and yet, along with millions of other young Americans, when the time came they proved their fighting qualities in a way that put outworn royalty to shame.
Quentin, the youngest, was a sophomore when America entered the war. Theodore, Jr., Archibald and Kermit were all in business, married and had children. Each entered at once the officers’ training camp at Plattsburg, seeking no promotion or honors that did not come through their own merits.
Theodore, Jr., after his Plattsburg training, received from President Wilson his commission in the Officers’ Reserve Corps. He earned his promotion to the rank of major of infantry and left Plattsburg with confidential orders to sail to France. Here he was transferred to the 26th Regiment of the line; was gassed at Cantigny, and later wounded. He received a citation for bravery. After further service with the Army of Occupation, he returned to America with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
Archie, after the same course of training, left Plattsburg with the rank of lieutenant under confidential orders to proceed to General Pershing’s headquarters in France. He was later transferred to the 26th Regiment of the line, and while leading his men in an attack was wounded by a bullet and lay for fourteen hours unattended in No Man’s Land. For his gallantry he was later recommended by General Pershing for promotion to the rank of captain. He received the French War Cross while lying on an operating table. He came back to Sagamore Hill to recover from his wounds, and he was the only one of the Colonel’s sons who was with him when he died.
Kermit was appointed a captain of the United States National Army and left Plattsburg to accept a position in the British army, where, after serving as a captain and receiving the British Military Cross, he was transferred, in accordance with his wishes, to the army in France.
Then there was Quentin—the youngest—who derived his name from an ancestor who left France 225 years ago. Quentin suffered from a defect of vision, which led to his rejection in the first officers’ training camp. He was wild to get to the front; and his next thought was to become an airman. It was natural that the father, who had ridden bucking broncos, should be pleased to see in his youngest a desire to gain mastery over a bucking airplane. And it was also very natural that the father should want to try the aerial steed for himself. Hence it was that early one morning the car of the Colonel, driven by Charley Lee, his colored chauffeur, shot down Sagamore Hill to the aviation camp at Mineola, Long Island.
The Colonel’s arrival had been anticipated, for a group of army officers left a nearby hangar and strode forward to greet him. For a moment the Colonel was a youth again, keenly interested in the mechanics of the car and as eager as Quentin to explore the virgin reaches of space. With nonchalance, yet with a heart that no doubt thumped with excitement, the Colonel climbed into the airplane and helped the pilot to buckle him in. The next moment the former President of the United States had soared away on his first air flight. After a forty minutes’ ride over and about Long Island Sound, in which all of the eccentricities of aerial travel were demonstrated, the Colonel was volplaned to the ground. Every other experience in the realm of sportsmanship had been his—and now the climactic experience had been accomplished.
Having met his own boy Quentin on his own ground, and having, as a father, learned for himself just what his son was proposing to do, he went back to that interview with Quentin, which resulted in his giving his consent to his enrollment in the most dangerous branch of the service. Quentin was on the verge of applying for enlistment in the Canadian Flying Corps when it was announced that the War Department had accepted him in the U. S. Aviation Section. He went with the first flying unit to France in July, 1917, reaching France a few weeks after Archie and Theodore, Jr.
One day, just after his brothers, Theodore and Archie, had gone to France, Colonel Roosevelt was entertaining about a thousand visitors at a patriotic rally at Sagamore Hill. An army airplane soared up the bay. The airman performed various maneuvers that thrilled the throng but the father did not know till days afterward that the daring aviator was Quentin.
It was one of the ironies of life that not long after this episode there came an overseas cable to Colonel Roosevelt which brought the war home to him in a way that can only be realized by the man who has lost a son.
Mr. Philip E. Thompson, a newspaper man stationed at Oyster Bay, has thus described how the Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt bore the news of their loss:
“At 7:30 on the following morning the newspaper man at Oyster Bay rang the bell at Sagamore Hill. The Colonel came to the door. There was no need to speak.
The two walked to the old-fashioned veranda of the Roosevelt house. And there, with the early morning breezes sweeping from the Sound, the Colonel heard the positive confirmation of the tragedy of the trenches—that the previous night’s cablegrams had been too cruelly verified.
For a long space the Colonel walked in silence, his brow furrowed. Then, turning to his companion, he said:
“But—Mrs. Roosevelt! How am I going to break it to her?”
It was of his wife and not of himself that the Colonel thought and pondered.
Abruptly he turned back to the house—to face the hardest task of his life. For the first time death had entered the intimate Roosevelt family circle.
A few hours later the newspaper man saw the Colonel again. With him was Mrs. Roosevelt, with eyes bright and voice steady. Yet it was plain that she had been told.
ROOSEVELT’S SERVICE STARS
Thus, with telegrams and cablegrams of sympathy flooding the little Oyster Bay office by thousands, the father and mother of the boy who had given his life above the lines—received the news that their youngest born would never return.”
The only public statement Colonel Roosevelt made concerning Quentin’s death was in every way typical of the man:
“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had a chance to render some service to his country and show the stuff that was in him before his fate befell him.”
Quentin lies buried in France. There his body will remain. No formal treaty our country could make with France would be as eloquent of the good will that exists and will continue to exist between these two great republics as the fact that in French soil lie the bodies of Americans who fought and died in the common cause of humanity. Thus Quentin’s father thought; thus the world thinks. The following letter from Colonel Roosevelt to General March, while respecting the wishes of those parents who want the bodies of their boys brought home, carried a message of comfort and agreement to those parents who desired their dead soldier sons to remain in the resting places prepared for them near the field of battle by their comrades:
My Dear General March:
The inclosed clipping states that all the American dead will be taken home after the war, according to orders received by the army chaplains. I do not know whom to write to in the matter, so I merely ask that you turn this over to whomever has charge of it.
Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most respectful but most emphatic protest against the proposed course so far as our son Quentin is concerned. We have always believed that
Where the tree falls,
There let it lie.
We know that many good persons feel entirely different, but to us it is painful and harrowing long after death to move the poor body from which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where he fell in battle and where the foemen buried him.
After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I intend to visit the grave and then to have a small stone put up saying it is put up by us, but not disturbing what has already been erected to his memory by his friends and American comrades in arms.
With apologies for troubling you,
Very faithfully yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.
It seems strange that up to the very time of America’s participation in the war there should be people in this country who did not realize the self-sacrificing work for the national cause done by the Colonel, yet such was true.
At a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden Roosevelt was talking about the part the United States should take in the war, when a man shouted:
“Why aren’t you over there yourself?”
Some men cried, “Put him out!” But Roosevelt raised his hand for silence and said, “No, don’t put him out. Let him stay. I want to answer him.”
When the audience was still he went on:
“I couldn’t go myself, but I did send my four sons, every one of whose lives is a thousand times dearer to me than my own. There, you creature, that is my answer to any man who dares to ask an American father why he isn’t engaged in this war.”
The scorching anger of the Colonel and the scorn of the audience made the heckler slink away with a rebuke he will always remember.
Long before the United States entered the war Roosevelt with his friend, Major-General Wood, vigorously advocated a policy of national preparedness, urging universal military training for the nation’s youth. In explanation of his desire to see universal military service prevail the Colonel said:
“I want to see Mrs. Vanderbilt’s son and Mrs. Astor’s son, with Pat and Jim of Telegraph Hill, sleeping under the same dog tent and eating the same food. I want to see the officers selected from among them on the strict basis of merit, without regard to anything else. Then we will have a democratic system.”
Roosevelt took a great deal of pride in the five-star service button he wore. In a conversation with newspaper men some months after his boys had gone abroad, he told them that he had received news that Theodore had been in action and a bullet had struck his trench helmet and glanced off. Theodore wrote home, his father said, that he regretted he had not been wounded, just for the experience. Later, Theodore was to receive his full share of such experiences.
COLONEL ROOSEVELT AT SAGAMORE HILL
At the time of this conversation public announcement had just been made that “Archie” had been promoted in rank from second lieutenant to captain. Roosevelt told his hearers that “Archie” had led a raiding party out into No Man’s Land at night and that the promotion had been won by gallantry under fire during this raid.
The Colonel said further that Kermit, with the Anglo-Indian forces in Mesopotamia, as the leader of “a troop of Whirling Dervishes,” Indian cavalry, had also been in action.
Later the Colonel’s pride in his family’s war record was to extend to include the women of his family. Mrs. Roosevelt, in the heart-breaking trials she passed through, had proven herself a true heroine. Her daughters and daughters-in-law proved in many ways their devotion to their country’s cause. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., did especially effective work.
She was the first American woman sent abroad for war service by the Y. M. C. A. She arrived in Paris a few weeks after Pershing. There she conducted a French class for Americans, with ambulance drivers for pupils. Then she worked in the first canteen in Paris, and was in charge of all the women’s work in establishing the first American officers’ hotel.
When she had been in Paris six months the army created “leave areas” for the American soldiers. These areas were put under the control of the Y. M. C. A., whose officials gave Mrs. Roosevelt charge of the women’s part of the work.