Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Roosevelt and Joffre were able to take stock of each other at a private dinner in Henry Frick’s mansion in New York on 9 May. Earlier in the day, the Colonel had been excluded from a city reception for the French mission, by order of the State Department. His rapprochement with the administration would appear to be over. Joffre—a big, beaming, pink-and-white man—was overjoyed to be seated next to an American who could speak his language. Afterward it was noticed that he had learned, in return, at least one word of English: “Bul-lee.”

  “He did not tell me anything I did not know, or suspect,” Roosevelt told Leary. “France does want our men. She wants them badly, more than she wants supplies.”

  There was another dinner for the missions at the Waldorf two nights later. It was hosted by Governor Charles S. Whitman of New York, with Roosevelt seated well away from the guests of honor. But Balfour quietly arranged to come out to Sagamore Hill for “high tea” on Sunday the fifteenth. The State Department, alerted by a sudden deployment of secret service agents, was powerless to stop him.

  For four hours, he and Roosevelt renewed their acquaintance: grayer and sadder statesmen than they had been when they were respectively prime minister and president. The war they had long seen coming both joined them and separated them now. Balfour confided that he found Woodrow Wilson’s White House to be lacking in urgency. Roosevelt talked of his frustrated desire to serve. Their only auditors, as they talked far into the night, were Balfour’s parliamentary assistant Sir Ian Malcolm, and a rookie pilot from Mineola, Private Quentin Roosevelt.

  THAT SAME WEEKEND, Roosevelt received another letter from Secretary Baker. The House-Senate conference was moving toward approval of the draft bill with the Harding amendment intact, but Baker did not want Roosevelt to think this presaged well for his division. “Since the responsibility for action and decision in this matter rests upon me, you will have to regard the determination I have already indicated as final, unless changing circumstances require a re-study of the whole question.”

  The only “changing circumstance” Roosevelt could see ahead was Woodrow Wilson’s empowerment, under the pending act, to summon up five hundred thousand volunteer soldiers. Roosevelt believed he could supply almost half that number out of the pool of applications he already had in hand—but what chance was there of the President turning to him, if it was so obviously Baker’s desire to do without volunteers altogether?

  Almost none, according to a message from Cal O’Laughlin in Washington. “Tumulty tells me confidentially that the President will approve the army conscription bill, but that he will not exercise his authority for the acceptance of your division.”

  On 18 May, Wilson signed the bill into law, inflicting compulsory registration for military service upon ten million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one. The stroke of his pen made him the most powerful commander in chief in American history. In an extraordinary accompanying statement, he acknowledged that a clause in the Draft Act permitted him to give an independent command to Theodore Roosevelt. “It would be very agreeable for me to pay Mr. Roosevelt this compliment, and the Allies the compliment, of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, an ex-President who has rendered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would no doubt have a very fine effect and make a profound impression. But this is not the time … for any action not calculated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision.”

  The statement was Wilsonian in sounding like a tribute but parsing as dismissal. Roosevelt, by implication, was an old military showman who would only strut the French stage in the manner of Debussy’s “Général Lavine—excentric.”

  James Amos was with the Colonel when he received a follow-up telegram from Wilson explaining that the statement had been based on “imperative considerations of public policy and not upon personal or private choice.” Amos had never seen his boss so cast down. “He was truly in a black mood.”

  For a day or two more, Roosevelt hoped that some intervention, such as an appeal from the French government, would make Wilson grant him his desperate desire. That was nothing less than death in battle: he knew he would not come back. Denied the consummation, he would have to cede it to one or more of his sons. “I don’t care a continental whether they fight in Yankee uniforms or British uniforms or in their undershirts, so long as they’re fighting.”

  Kermit was at Plattsburg, doing some last-minute training to qualify for a commission in the British army. Ted and Archie were there too, awaiting orders as major and second lieutenant respectively in the U.S. Officers’ Reserve Corps. Their father was not so downcast that he did not press for their transfer overseas, the moment Wilson announced that John J. Pershing was to be the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.

  “My dear General Pershing,” Roosevelt wrote, “I very heartily congratulate you, and especially the people of the United States, upon your selection.” There was no need to add that he had made Pershing’s present glory possible, having promoted him in 1905 over the heads of 835 senior officers. “I write you now to request that my two sons, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., aged 27,* and Archibald B. Roosevelt, aged 23, both of Harvard, be allowed to enlist as privates under you, to go over with the first troops.”

  Pershing replied that it would be “a waste” for two such promising young officers to enlist, and undertook to find them places on his staff at no loss of rank.

  With Quentin almost certain to be assigned to the general’s force as well (Baker talked grandly of an “army of the air” leading the American attack), Roosevelt’s next, painful duty was to dismiss all his volunteers. Those eligible for the draft might yet be lucky, and serve; but those ineligible needed to hear from him, rather than the President, that they were not wanted.

  Before issuing a notice of general release, he discussed its wording with about twenty of his “ghost” commanders, including Seth Bullock, Jack Greenaway, a former Rough Rider, and John M. Parker, a still-passionate Progressive. Parker was the only man, apart from Roosevelt, who had actually lobbied Woodrow Wilson in behalf of the division. He was able to quote the President’s exact words: “Colonel Roosevelt is a splendid man and patriotic citizen, as you say, but he is not a military leader. His experience in military life has been extremely short. He and many of the men with him are too old to render efficient service, and in addition to that fact, he as well as others have shown intolerance of discipline.”

  John Leary attended the meeting. “Never, except in a house of death, have I noticed a greater air of depression. All except the Colonel showed it plainly. He, it was apparent to those who knew him best, felt worse than any other.”

  The notice went out on 21 May. It was a somber summary of the division’s aims, but stated that “as good American citizens we loyally obey the decision of the Commander in Chief of the American army and navy.”

  A WEEK LATER, Georges Clemenceau published an open letter to Wilson, appealing to him to change his mind about the volunteer division. “It is possible that your own mind, enclosed in its austere legal frontiers … has failed to be impressed by the vital hold which personalities like Roosevelt have on popular imagination,” Clemenceau wrote, in language unlikely to have been approved by the Quai d’Orsay. “The name of Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time.” Poilus were asking why the Colonel had not been sent over. “Send them Roosevelt. I tell you, because I know it—it will gladden their hearts.”

  Wilson did not reply. Roosevelt complained to fellow members of the Harvard Club that he had been cashiered by a jealous rival determined to deny him the right pro patria mori. “I told Wilson that I would die on the field of battle, that I would never return if only he would let me go!”

  “If you could really convince the President of that,” Elihu Root said, “I’m quite sure he would send you at once.�
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  QUENTIN ROOSEVELT’S POSTING to Long Island filled Flora Whitney with joy. She and Quentin were besotted with each other, to the extent that they had secretly become engaged. The Whitney estate at Old Westbury was near enough to Mineola for them to spoon whenever Quentin got an evening pass from Hazelhurst Field, and Sagamore Hill was available for weekend trysts. Edith Roosevelt had taken to Flora (as she had not to Grace). Knowing how little time the two nineteen-year-olds were likely to have together, she encouraged their closeness.

  “Ah, Fouf,” Quentin wrote from camp, using Flora’s family nickname, “I don’t yet see how you can love me,—still I feel as tho’ it were all a dream from which some time I will wake … with nothing left to me but the memory of beauty and the wonder of it all.”

  He was a year and a half younger than the youngest men who flocked to register on “Draft Day,” 5 June, and just as unready as she to face the horrifying fact that after six or seven more weeks of rapture, he might never see her again. It was difficult for Quentin to imagine himself flying solo before the end of the month. But that was the speed at which he was being flung into the air, in a lumbering, hard-to-control Curtiss Jenny that cruelly taxed his back. France was hopelessly calling for five thousand American pilots and fifty thousand aviation “mechanicians.” The U.S. Army (seventeenth in the world, packing only one and a half days’ worth of ammunition) had fewer than a hundred trained pilots. A story in The New York Times reported seventy-five British planes had been shot down in a single dogfight. Apparently, service aloft was more dangerous than life in the trenches.

  The war had so long been regarded by Americans as something they were “kept out of” that its sudden, here-and-now reality was shocking, even to the Colonel’s children. On 17 June, just as Ethel was giving birth to a little girl, Ted and Archie came to Sagamore Hill to announce, in great secrecy, under the new Espionage Act, that they would be leaving for France in three days’ time. Quentin and Flora felt impelled to reveal their own secret at the family’s final gathering before the two regulars sailed. They were so barely grown up that Edith might have reacted in horror, except that all over the country, the accelerating pace of “mobilization” had made short order of maternal scruples. She gave them her blessing.

  “HE WAS ASSIGNED TO THE NINETY-FIFTH AERO SQUADRON.”

  Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt. (photo credit i25.2)

  Flora was as sure as Quentin that their engagement was a commitment for life. Outside of that, and the flamboyant “freshness” with which she dressed, bobbed her hair, and rode horses, she was an insecure girl, tongue-tied when the Roosevelts quoted poetry to one another, and in awe of the public figures who constantly visited the Colonel. She adored her father, but Harry Whitney had the globetrotting restlessness of the wealthy, and she saw little of him. Her famous mother was interested only in art and artists. Roosevelt, in contrast, embraced Flora as he did anyone who passed Edith’s muster, radiating such affection that she understood Sagamore Hill would remain “home” to her, however long Quentin stayed away.

  Ted and Archie sailed on the twentieth, with orders attaching them to General Pershing’s advance headquarters in Paris. Roosevelt was overjoyed to be able to boast that they were among the first in line for the Front. He pushed to have Kermit similarly placed in Mesopotamia, writing to Lloyd George, “I pledge my honor that he will serve you honorably and efficiently.” Early in July, an acceptance call came through from Balfour’s roving ambassador in New York, Lord Northcliffe. Kermit was tracked down in Boston, where he was sitting for a portrait by John Singer Sargent, and by mid-month he was gone too.

  Quentin simultaneously graduated as a first lieutenant in the Flying Corps. He was assigned to the Ninety-fifth Aero Squadron, with orders to proceed overseas at once. Fanny Parsons watched him emerging khaki-clad from Christ Church after communion with his mother, and got a sick feeling they might never share the sacrament again. His departure was set for Monday, 23 July. He told Edith that he wanted to spend his last night with Flora, on the Whitney yacht. Helpless against the rush of events, she could hold him at Sagamore Hill only through Saturday.

  Before going to bed that evening, she went to his bedroom and tucked him in.

  FLORA WROTE QUENTIN a farewell letter to take with him.

  Dearest …

  With every breath I draw there will be a thought of you and a wish for your safety, success and good luck.…

  All I do from now will be for you.… There is nothing in me that could make you care for me as much as I care for you—and you couldn’t anyway, because it’s absolute worship on my part.

  And be careful and don’t take any unnecessary risks—or do anything solely for bravado—please, please, dear?

  On Monday morning, Theodore and Edith went into Manhattan to see their youngest son off on the SS Olympia. Alice joined them at the Cunard dock. The Whitney family was there en masse. None of them knew Flora was engaged, but they were showing rare support for her and her soldier boyfriend.

  The liner, war-painted troopship gray, was in no hurry to leave. Humid heat built up along the waterfront. Quentin seemed to want to do nothing but sit on a bale of hides holding hands with Flora. By lunchtime, his parents and sister could stand it no longer and said goodbye. They left the young couple in care of the Whitneys and drove home to Sagamore Hill. Alice sensed Roosevelt’s utter desolation.

  She murmured to herself, The old Lion perisheth for lack of prey and the stout Lion’s whelps are scattered abroad.

  * Ted was in fact twenty-nine.

  CHAPTER 26

  The House on the Hill

  They are all gone away,

  The House is shut and still,

  There is nothing more to say.

  HAVING LITTLE RELIGION, Roosevelt was confessedly fatalistic. “I have always believed in the truth of the statement that ‘He who seeks his life shall lose it.’ ” Perhaps the same applied to seeking a soldier’s death. He was being punished for the fatal insolence of wanting to go gloriously.

  Sagamore Hill had been a lonely place before, after his various political defeats and the marriages and resettlements of his children. But he had always been able to count on the politicians returning, and even when Ted and Kermit had tried to seek their lives, on the West Coast and in South America, somehow or other the same flame kept bringing them back. Alice, too. Although she was now a fixture of the Washington establishment, she was never happier than when she could leave Nick to his violin and his mistresses and revisit the home of her childhood.

  But the diaspora of four sons to the war—not to mention Eleanor and Belle, hurrying to beat an imminent law against the wives of servicemen going overseas—plus an almost total transferal of press attention to what was happening “over there,” filled the old house with an emptiness that only extreme youth could assuage. Ethel brought her little boy and baby girl often, but not often enough for a wistful grandfather. And there was Flora Whitney, with a gulf of her own inside her. She visited the Roosevelts again and again, as if she were already their daughter-in-law.

  Quentin had done what he could to create interdependence between her and them, leaving a farewell note to Flora in his father’s hands: “I love you, dearest, and always shall, far, far, more than you will ever know or believe.… Ah, sweetheart, war is a cruel master to us all.”

  “FLORA CAME OVER for dinner with Mother and me,” Roosevelt wrote Quentin on 28 July. “So darling and so pretty.… I cannot overstate how fond I have grown of her, and how much I respect and admire her—so pretty and young and yet so good and really wise.”

  His praise might have signified more, were he not in the habit of applying the same adjectives to all the women in his family. It was too early for him to adjust to Flora as a species different from those others, so avant-garde in her affectations (“I am perfectly mad about amber”), mercurial, hungry for new experiences that she could not quite specify, except to be certain that Quentin would provide them. She found a sympathetic f
riend in Ethel, to whom she poured out emotions the Roosevelts would have recoiled from: “If the fates can be as cruel as to take him from me, I need all the courage I can get from him and his influence now, while he is concretely mine, so that my life has to be lived for him and not with him.… It was hard during that last day but toward evening I got to a point where I couldn’t cry. I felt as if the tears of the centuries had amassed themselves somewhere between my throat and my stomach and intended to remain there.”

  In the midst of her anguish, Flora could tell that Edith was also pining for Quentin—the most vulnerable of the Roosevelt children, with his bad back and unmilitary nature. If that aloof woman had more particular reasons for loving him, Flora was too shy to ask. The Colonel was more approachable, yet again, there was a uniformity about the way he talked about his sons, except in occasional references to Kermit. They were equally brave and fine and determined to do their duty. Dick Derby was also brave and fine, in arranging to be sent back to France as a military doctor—and Nick Longworth would be brave and fine too, except that members of Congress were barred from enlisting. In his all-embracing pride, Roosevelt was actually harder than Edith for Flora to reach. She begged Ethel to tell her what she could do to help the family. “I am so sorry for your Mother that when I am with her … I almost forget my own troubles.”