Colonel Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  Biographical Note: A contributing cause to TR’s depression may have been his reading at this time of Adolf Fischer’s Menschen und Tiere in Deutsch-Südwest Afrika. Reviewing it for The Outlook on 20 Jan. 1915, he noted that responsible conservationists had only recently saved the big-game fauna of Southwest Africa (now Namibia) from “almost complete annihilation” by trophy hunters, white and black. “This is one of the many, many reasons why the present dreadful war fills me with sadness. The men, many of whom I have known—Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Belgians—who have been opening the Dark Continent to civilization, are now destroying one another and ruining the work that has been done.” (TR, Works, 14.574.) For a brief account of the war in Africa, see Strachan, The First World War, 80–95.

  7 “Both you men” Quoted by Knox in Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 164.

  8 “Weaklings who raise” TR, Works, 20.77–78 (not included in the original New York Times article of 1 Nov. 1914, but added for republication in Jan. 1915).

  9 “Your cistern” William Allen White to TR, 28 Dec. 1914 (TRP).

  10 “I am more like” TR, Letters, 8.870–71. TR’s new contract, dated 5 Dec. 1914, required him to “use the Metropolitan Magazine exclusively for three years as your medium for articles on the great social, political, and international questions.” He would receive $25,000 annually for a minimum contribution of 50,000 words. Extra articles would be paid for at the same rate, and he could write on other subjects for other periodicals. Copy in AC.

  11 Metropolitan was a large Ellis, Mr. Dooley’s America, 240, describes Metropolitan as “a right-wing socialist periodical.” This paradox is endorsed by Antony C. Sutton in Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (Studies in Reformed Theology, 2001, chap. 11, http://www.reformed-theology.org/). Sutton notes Metropolitan’s connection, via Whitney, with the House of Morgan and the liberal financier Eugene Boissevain. He argues that many American plutocrats in the early Bolshevik era, eager to bring down foreign imperialism, aided revolutionary forces in Russia either directly, through cash contributions, or indirectly, by patronizing anti-Tsarist propaganda at home. Editor Whigham’s brand of politics allowed him to employ such relative conservatives as TR and Finley Peter Dunne as well as the outspoken Communist John Reed.

  12 “After this January” TR, Letters, 8.871.

  13 “To be neutral” Ibid., 8.903.

  14 The resultant twelve-chapter volume America and the World War is reprinted in TR, Works, 20.1–216.

  15 Critical reaction “In our hour of need,” St. Loe Strachey complained in The Spectator (6 Feb. 1915), “we should have expected a better understanding.”

  16 England is not TR, Letters, 8.867.

  17 “I ask those” Ibid., 20.105–6. TR’s oft-repeated claim that no shot was fired at a “foreign” foe during his presidency depended on the classification of Filipinos as territorial wards of the United States.

  18 He poured scorn TR, Works, 20.94; Sullivan, Our Times, 5.207. Of the stateside army, most troops were required to man coastal defenses, leaving a mobile land force of fewer than 25,000. Ibid.

  19 Mr. Bryan came TR, Works, 20.212–13.

  20 “I feel in the” Ibid., 20.194 (italics added).

  Historical Note: One of the great what-ifs of American history is the course World War I might have taken had TR been returned to the White House in 1912. He speculated often on the subject himself. “If I had been President,” he wrote Cecil Spring Rice late in 1914, “I should have acted on the thirtieth or thirty-first of July, as head of a signatory power of the Hague [conventions] … saying that I accepted [them] as imposing a serious obligation which I expected not only the United States but all other neutral nations to join us in enforcing. Of course I would not have made such a statement without backing it up.” (TR, Letters, 8.821.) In Diplomacy (New York, 1994), 29–50, Henry Kissinger argues that TR would have taken the U.S. into the war for strategic reasons, on the ground that a victory for the Central Powers, and the consequent weakening of Britain’s hold on the North Atlantic, would have threatened the world balance of power in general, and America’s hemispheric security in particular. WW, in contrast, advocated neutrality only for as long as it would take him to impose upon the belligerents his “messianic” vision of a negotiated peace based on American moral principles. While Kissinger regrets that WW’s and not TR’s foreign policy prevailed (fostering the myth of American exceptionalism for the rest of the century), he does not consider the possibility that TR, reelected with all the prestige of his proven success as an international mediator (not to mention his personal knowledge of most of the European potentates prosecuting the war), could have brought about a diplomatic solution before the end of 1914.

  Determinists might counter that a certain cosmic inevitability caused Franz Ferdinand’s automobile, on 28 June, to take the wrong turning that proved so right for Gavrilo Princip—leading over the course of the next four years to societal changes that had been generating since the end of the nineteenth century. In such a view, TR might as well have tried to mediate the eruption of Mont Pelée.

  21 “As President” TR, Letters, 8.87.

  22 In the terrible Ibid., 8.214–16.

  23 He was playing Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 57.

  24 “He will never” Hamlin Garland, My Friendly Contemporaries: A Literary Log (New York, 1932), 45. The phrase distinctly older is Garland’s.

  25 TR (laughing) Dunne, Mr. Dooley Remembers, 184–85.

  26 “striking his palm” Ibid.

  27 “We cannot remain” Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson, 228.

  28 Britain proposed This policy was announced on 1 Mar. 1915. For the Wilson administration’s complicity with it, see Walter Karp, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic (New York, 1979), 176–82.

  29 “The waters surrounding” The New York Times, 7 Feb. 1915.

  30 “This is in effect” Spring Rice to William Jennings Bryan, 1 Mar. 1915, The American Journal of International Law, 12 (1918), 866.

  31 If the commanders Foreign Relations of the United States Supplement, 1915, 98–100.

  32 “I hope that” TR, Letters, 8.879, 888–89.

  33 In a censuring tone Ibid., 8.889.

  34 almost treasonous letter Ibid., 8.876–81; Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.154.

  35 For as long as TR, Letters, 8.910, 899, 906–7, 918.

  36 “T. Vesuvius Roosevelt” Title of a poem by W. Irwin in Collier’s Weekly, 12 Jan. 1907.

  37 he checked Edith Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 406. The operation, performed on 14 Apr., was a success, and restored EKR’s health, which had been troubled for several years.

  38 Upon arrival William Lyon Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York, 1939), 618. Throughout the winter, WHT had been outspoken in his praise of WW’s war policy. It is hard to believe that TR did not say something to him, but Phelps was a close witness to the encounter, and TR’s account of the incident avoids any mention of a verbal response. (TR, Letters, 8.1118.) According to secondary newspaper reports, the two men exchanged the briefest of greetings.

  CHAPTER 21: BARNES V. ROOSEVELT

  1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 230.

  2 the most entertaining libel suit See George T. Blakey, “Calling a Boss a Boss: Did Roosevelt Libel Barnes in 1915?” New York History, 60.2 (Apr. 1979).

  3 Barnes’s counsel TR.Jr. to KR, 29 May 1915 (KRP). A later version of this anecdote is in Bishop, TR, 2.366.

  4 Roosevelt’s classmate Andrews (1858–1936) was a respected judge of the legal-realist school. Elected later to a seat on the New York Court of Appeals, he famously dissented against the majority opinion of Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (1928).

  5 “Your Honor, I move” New York (State) Supreme Court, William Barnes, plaintiff-appellant, against Theodore Roosevelt, defendant-respondent, 4 vols. (Walton, N.Y., 1917), 1.129. Except where otherwise indicated, all testimony in
the Syracuse trial is quoted from this source (hereafter cited as Barnes v. Roosevelt). Narrative and descriptive details derive from the observant reporting (with illustrations) of the New York World, 19 Apr.–23 May 1915, supplemented by accounts in The New York Times, New York Evening Post, and Syracuse Herald.

  6 A roll of fat Visible in a photograph in the New York World, 21 May 1915.

  7 William M. Ivins The New York Times, 22 Oct. 1905; New York State Bar Association, Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting (New York, 1916), 505; Julius Henry Cohen, They Builded Better Than They Knew (New York, 1946), chap. 10.

  8 “probably the greatest” Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.142–43.

  9 “with the same care” Syracuse Herald, 20 Apr. 1915.

  10 In New York State Ibid. See 366.

  11 Roosevelt sat mutely New York Evening Post, 19 Apr., New York World, 21 Apr. 1915. Siebold wrote that TR “seemed to be laboring under a degree of depression in striking contrast to the usual volatility of spirit characteristic of him.” The reporter for The New York Times thought TR cheerful enough, but noted his lapses of memory. A careful reading of the transcript supports Siebold’s view, as does a chilling photograph in the same issue of the World.

  12 Have you read Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.193.

  13 My regiment was Ibid., 1.199.

  14 “Why all this” Ibid., 1.206–7.

  15 “Mr. Barnes spoke” Ibid., 1.226.

  16 Mr. Bowers and Ibid., 1.236–37.

  17 “The people are not” Ibid., 1.242.

  18 precise citation of names TR’s pronunciation of the word “Barnes” reminded one reporter of the plop of a pebble dropped in water. The New York Times, 21 Apr. 1915.

  19 “a very able man” Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.243.

  20 It is not my desire Ibid., 1.335–38.

  21 In other testimony Ibid., 1.272–73, 307–8; The New York Times, 23 Apr. 1915.

  22 Bowers asked Ibid., 1.322.

  23 The Colonel looked a happier New York World, 22 Apr. 1915.

  24 Court artists For an excellent rendering of the trial’s dramatis personae, including a melancholy-looking TR, see the Syracuse Herald, 20 Apr. 1915.

  25 Has your occupation Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.357; New York Evening Post, 22 Apr. 1915.

  26 “It is pretty good” Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.363.

  27 the tax-avoidance controversy John M. Corry, Rough Ride to Albany: Teddy Runs for Governor (New York, 2000), 142–65.

  28 a little book on the subject William M. Ivins, Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City (New York, 1887).

  29 Now, does that Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.394–95.

  30 “You did not” Ibid., 1.401–2.

  31 Since [1898] Ibid., 1.407. TR was not exaggerating, although the lower figure was probably the more accurate in 1915. Of his lifetime total of letters, approximately 150,000 survive today.

  32 “I particularly wished” Ibid., 1.422.

  33 “It is because” Ibid., 1.424.

  34 as if activated by a jolt The electrical metaphor comes from the court reporter of The New York Times, 22 Apr. 1915. He applied it also to the audience. See also Blakey, “Calling a Boss a Boss” for TR’s effect on the jury.

  35 Mr. Ivins, this witness Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.438.

  36 “Mr. Ivins, that is not” Ibid., 1.439–40.

  37 “Doctor Jekyll” Ibid., 1.441.

  38 Ivins noted that Ibid., 1.442.

  39 Yes, sir Ibid.

  40 even the most wheedling The New York Times, 27 Apr. 1915.

  41 “A little matter” Ibid.

  42 Barnes quit attending Ibid.

  43 “What relation” The New York Times, 5 May 1915.

  44 “I don’t know” Ibid., 7 May 1915.

  45 That night, Thursday TR, Letters, 8.921–22.

  46 a strange flurry A. A. and Mary Hoehling, The Last Voyage of the Lusitania (New York, 1956), 39–40. One of the telegram recipients was Alfred G. Vanderbilt.

  47 An advisory signed Ibid. See ibid., 96, for a facsimile reproduction of the German Embassy warning.

  48 “It makes my blood” TR, Letters, 8.922.

  49 “I came across this” The New York Times, 8 May 1915. Ivins had probably seen a recent article by TR (Ladies’ Home Journal, Apr. 1915) complaining about having to wade through “a German edition of Aristophanes, with erudite explanations of the jokes.” TR, Works, 4.91.

  50 Reading it, his face Bishop, TR, 2.375.

  51 Many of the first Syracuse Herald, 7 May 1915. Vanderbilt drowned, but Miss Pope survived after being nearly given up for dead. Later in life, as Theodate Pope Riddle, she designed the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace memorial in New York City.

  52 Two or three Bishop, TR, 2.375–76.

  53 1,918 souls aboard The New York Times, 8 May 1915. The commonly accepted statistics of the Lusitania disaster are 1,959 passengers and crew, with 1,195 dead and 885 bodies unrecovered. Of the 139 Americans aboard, only 11 survived.

  54 “That’s murder” Bishop, TR, 2.376.

  55 I can only repeat Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, 8 May 1915, e.g. (AP dispatch).

  56 Woodrow Wilson’s first Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 364. See also The New York Times, 10 May 1915.

  57 “America has come” Edward M. House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 4 vols., Charles Seymour, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 1.434.

  58 After going to church The New York Times, 10 May 1915.

  59 Sitting down Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 364.

  60 Late in the afternoon Ibid., 364–65.

  61 He talked about Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1918), 88.

  62 Roosevelt was not sorry TR to Fanny Parsons, 6 May 1915 (TRC); TR to ERD, 12 May 1915 (ERDP); The New York Times, 11–13 May 1915; TR, Letters, 8.1328.

  63 Dear Archie TR, Letters, 8.922. The Gulflight, though destroyed, was not actually sunk.

  64 “starve the whole” Horace C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (Norman, Okla., 1939), 83.

  65 Dr. Bernhard Dernburg The New York Times, 9 May 1915.

  66 New York’s own collector The cargo manifest also included an enormous quantity of boxes and barrels labeled “cheese,” “beef,” and “oysters,” whose contents may have been less nutritious than indicated. Dernburg was aware of more munitions aboard the Lusitania than he revealed, perhaps because he did not want to betray the presence in the New York port collector’s office of a spy reporting on arms exports. On 3 May 1915 the detective reported to Franz von Papen, the German intelligence officer who had visited with TR after the outbreak of the war (see above, 378–79), that the ship carried 12 crates of detonators, 6,026 crates of bullets, 492 cases of “military equipment,” and 223 auto wheels. (Papen, Memoirs, 42.) In the 1950s, the Royal Navy surreptitiously targeted the submerged hull of the Lusitania in a series of depth-charge “exercises” that shattered it almost beyond recognition. Nevertheless, in 2008 divers found the wreck bestrewn with 4 million rounds of .303 ammunition. Daily Mail, 20 Dec. 2008.

  67 Roosevelt knew Dernburg TR, Letters, 8.857–61.

  68 “a personal attitude” The New York Times, 12 May 1915.

  69 his note responding The note, which was almost entirely the work of WW, was signed by Bryan as secretary of state.

  70 Wilson stated that The New York Times, 14 May 1915.

  71 Only the most cynical This is the thesis that Walter Karp argues at book length in The Politics of War. Most historians disagree, seeing WW as genuinely peace-minded in 1915–1916, if indeed (in Karp’s word) vainglorious later on. But the President’s flag-waving bellicosity toward Mexican provocateurs in the Tampico and Vera Cruz incidents of 1914 speaks volumes, as does his confession to Colonel House in Sept. 1915 that he had long wanted the United States to join the world war. (Intimate Papers, 2.84.) There is no doubt that the eventual entry of the United States into World War I was the logical, if atten
uated, consequence of WW’s demand in Feb. 1915 for a “strict accountability” from Germany for violations of neutrality by its warships.

  72 a green and gold fountain pen For the provenance of this instrument, see Ambrose Flack’s enchanting reminiscence, “Theodore Roosevelt and My Green-Gold Fountain Pen,” The New Yorker, 22 May 1948.

  73 made a dignified witness Blakey, “Calling a Boss a Boss.” See also Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., “Barnes v. Roosevelt: Theater in the Courtroom,” New York State Bar Journal, 63.8 (Dec. 1991).