74 On Thursday, 20 May Shakespeare, Henry VIII, act 3, scene 2; The New York Times, 21 May 1915.
75 At 3:45 P.M. The New York Times, 23 May 1915.
76 “I will try” Ibid. It turned out that the jury had been unanimously in favor of TR all along, dividing 11 to 1 only on the minor issue of whether or not to split costs. Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., himself an appellate court judge and the son of one of TR’s lawyers, concludes that both plaintiff and defendant scored damaging points against each other, TR being shown to have selective amnesia about his acceptance of “boss” help and corporate contributions as governor and president, and Barnes being exposed as a pig at the public trough. Although the proof “fell far short of portraying Barnes as an evil man,” TR’s 1914 libel had clearly been defamatory. He was saved from conviction by virtue of his role as a “star performer” who “held his audience” for eight full days of arm-waving testimony. (Hancock, “Barnes v. Roosevelt.”) Even EKR, commenting to Cecil Spring Rice on 30 May, wryly described the verdict as “illegal” (CSR).
77 William Ivins returned Ivins died on 23 July 1915. His career is affectionately recounted in Cohen, They Builded Better Than They Knew. Barnes’s fortunes never recovered from the verdict against him. He was passed over for nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1916, and quickly lost force in New York State politics. When he died in 1930 he was remembered only as a figure in “one of the most extraordinary libel suits in the history of the country.” Boston Herald, 1 July 1930.
CHAPTER 22: WAGING PEACE
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 526.
2 The President’s official These two paragraphs owe much to the observations of Margaret Axson Elliott (“Madge,” sister of WW’s first wife) in My Aunt Louisa and Woodrow Wilson (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944). See also Asquith, Autobiography, 330; Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known, 253ff.; and for WW’s sexuality, Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 108–9, 185–88. The evidence of an affair with Mary Allen Peck in 1908 is inconclusive, but certainly suggests that in his sixth decade, WW was not short of testosterone.
3 Now, secretly Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 365; Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 33.133ff.
4 Wilson had in fact Ishbel Ross, Power with Grace: The Life Story of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1975), 36.
5 On 30 May The New York Times, 1 June 1915.
6 “the very nadir” Robinson, My Brother TR, 290.
7 “I have never” Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 406.
8 He cheerfully tolerated Sonya Levien, “The Great Friend: A Personal Story of Theodore Roosevelt as He Revealed Himself to One of His Associates in Magazine Work,” Woman’s Home Companion, Oct. 1919.
9 “Villa,” Roosevelt said Barbara Gelb, So Short a Time: A Biography of John Reed and Lousie Bryant (New York, 1973), 48.
10 Not even an invoice Financial file, 16 June 1915 (TRP). Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 406, estimates TR’s total costs at $42,000; Thayer, TR, 400, at $52,000. Only $1,443 was recoverable from Barnes. Barnes v. Roosevelt, 1.125–26.
11 Congress owed him TR, Letters, 6.1539.
12 “Why, I won it” Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known, 114–15. Thompson was an eyewitness to this exchange.
13 Each island gave off Most of the language, and all of the natural observations in the next five paragraphs are TR’s. See “Bird Reserves,” in TR, Works, 4.197–227.
14 fashionable ladies Ross, Power with Grace, 18.
15 “Nature is ruthless” TR, Works, 4.206–7.
16 a big humming hornet Ibid., 20.210–11.
17 like U-boats Ibid., 20.213–14. “British Admiralty Confidential Daily Voyage Notice 15th April 1915, issued under Government War Risks Scheme: German Submarines Appear to Be Operating Chiefly Off Prominent Headlands and Landfalls,” American Journal of International Law (New York, 1918), 12.867.
18 Early the following The Washington Post, 12 June 1915; Dudley Haddock to Charter Heslep, 14 May 1963 (EMH); The New York Times, 10 June 1915.
19 “This means war” Haddock to Heslep, 14 May 1963 (EMH).
20 He could have Ibid. The statement did not reach New Orleans until late the following day, 11 June, and Haddock put it out on the wires that night. By the following morning it was front-page news. See, e.g., The Washington Post, 12 June 1915, and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 12 June 1915.
21 “Why be shocked” Karp, The Politics of War, 200. For Bryan’s frantic efforts to keep the administration neutral in the first half of 1915, see ibid., chap. 9.
22 the only high official Ibid., 171.
23 “England is fighting” Ibid.; Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him (New York, 1921), 231.
24 A hail of vituperation See, e.g., New York World, 9 June 1915; The Washington Post, Trenton (N.J.) Evening Times, and Lowell (Mass.) Sun, 10 June 1915.
25 “God bless you” Atlanta Constitution, 10 May 1915.
26 Next morning Ibid.
27 “Good morning” Levien, “The Great Friend.”
28 Somehow, Roosevelt had Ibid.; TR, Letters, 1.229.
29 “There was” Ibid. The boy in the office was Philip Dunne, later a distinguished screenwriter.
30 “radicals laid” Levien, “The Great Friend.” TR jokingly wrote at the end of a letter to one of Metropolitan’s left-wing contributors, “Your rational-individualist and rational-Socialist friend, Theodore Roosevelt.” TR, Letters, 8.962.
31 Much of the work Levien, “The Great Friend.”
32 “I wonder how” Ibid. One dignified old gentleman was heard breaking into song as he sank to street level.
33 Whatever Roosevelt had lost “How I wish I were President at this moment!” TR to Roman Romanovich von Rosen, 7 Aug. 1915 (TRP).
34 “My hope is” TR, Letters, 8.947.
35 Roosevelt vaguely explained Ibid.; TR to KR, 27 May 1915 (TRC).
36 He knew nonetheless TR, Letters, 8.948.
37 Then, he had called Morris, Theodore Rex, 228–29.
38 Now, he lectured The New York Times, 22 July 1915.
39 “No nation ever” Ibid.
40 “Colonel,” somebody asked Marshall Stimson memorandum, n.d. (TRB).
41 The article described The Washington Post, 15–20 Aug. 1915; Sullivan, Our Times, 5.184–96. Another victim of U.S. wrath was Karl Bünz, Germany’s consul general in New York, arrested on charges of financial conspiracy. Bünz had once performed a useful service to TR during the Venezuela crisis of 1902–1903. TR now sought to repay that old favor by trying, unsuccessfully, to keep him out of prison. (Morris, Theodore Rex, 189; Leary, Talks with T.R., 43–44.) In December, Papen was expelled for complicity in acts of sabotage. He later (1932) served as Chancellor of Germany before stepping aside in favor of Adolf Hitler.
42 “The time for” The New York Times, 22 Aug. 1915.
43 A few days later For the background and subsequent history of the civilian preparedness program centering on Plattsburg, see John G. Clifford, Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (Lexington, Ky., 1972).
44 “I suppose” TR.Jr. to KR, 21 July 1915 (KRP).
45 Roosevelt was amused TR, Letters, 8.962–63; Eleanor B. Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday, 66. By the time TR.Jr. went to war in 1917, he had accumulated a fortune conservatively estimated at $425,000. (EBR to “mother,” 8 Jan. 1919 [TRJP].) For a compact portrait of TR.Jr., see Charles W. Snyder, “An American Original: Theodore Roosevelt, Junior,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, 17.2 (Spring 1991). See also H. Paul Jeffers, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.: The Life of a War Hero (Novato, Calif., 2002).
46 A miserly economy TR copied this extract out by hand, along with similar pronouncements at other stages of his career, for Julian Street to quote in The Most Interesting American. Ms. preserved in JS.
47 The camp was run Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, 48–49, 82–83; Sullivan, Our Times, 5.226. TR.Jr. was a founder-member of a preparedness-advocacy group, formed early in 1915, which at first called itself the American Legion (
not to be confused with the permanent organization founded after World War I), then gradually took on more substantial shape and power as the Military Training Camps Association (MTCA). Eleanor B. Roosevelt, Day Before Yesterday, 71; Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, 60–69.
Historical Note: TR was no stranger to the fantasy of a surprise invasion of the United States. Earlier in the summer of 1915, he had acted as a consultant to a film entitled The Battle Cry of Peace, produced and directed by his movie-mogul neighbor, J. Stuart Blackton of Vitagraph Pictures. (See 283.) Battle Cry, based on Hudson Maxim’s alarmist Defenseless America (New York, 1915), opened at the same time as the Plattsburg camp, and was a box-office smash, despite negative reviews mocking its deliberate sensationalism.
All that exists of the movie today is a 400-foot fragment, eerily showing choked and blinded New Yorkers trying to escape from a lower Manhattan dense with the smoke and rubble of firebombed buildings. For a full account of the production and phenomenal success of Battle Cry, and the ideological quarrel it caused between TR and Hugo Münsterberg, see chap. 2 of David A. Gerstner, Manly Arts: Masculinity and Nation in Early American Cinema (Durham, N.C., 2006). See also TR, Letters, 8.989–91.
48 It was an excellent For the sample sufferings of one trainee, see Arthur Lubow, The Reporter Who Would Be King: A Biography of Richard Harding Davis (New York, 1992), 315–16.
49 Davis, the only man present Lubow, The Reporter Who Would Be King, 309–12, 315–16.
50 “I like him” Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, 85.
51 It was tempting TR had shown an advance copy of his remarks to Wood and allowed the general to edit them. Charles McGrath clumsily gave the unedited version to the press. The New York Times, commenting on this release, allowed that TR “could use more moderation in his expression,” but nevertheless praised him for performing “a service to his country” in drawing attention to the need for national preparedness. TR, Letters, 8.965; The New York Times, 26 Aug. 1915.
52 “Let him get out” The New York Times, 26 Aug. 1915.
53 “As the Colonel” Street, The Most Interesting American, 5.
54 a reprimand to General Wood Garrison’s furious telegram, which left Wood apologetic but secretly unrepentant, is quoted in Clifford, Citizen Soldiers, 86–87. Dudley F. Malone, a WW appointee who attended Plattsburg as an observer for the administration, denounced TR’s speech as “both novel and treasonable.” The New York Times, 27 Aug. 1915.
55 the Colonel dictated “I am, of course, solely responsible for the whole speech,” TR declared, avoiding comment on his unscripted remarks at Plattsburg station. “General Wood had no more idea than Secretary Garrison what I was going to say.” The New York Times, 27 Aug. 1915.
56 “It was not” Street, The Most Interesting American, 9–10.
57 The young man was convinced Street in TR, Works, 9.203.
58 “The Master of the house” Julian Street, “Mrs. Roosevelt Edits a Statement of Her Husband’s,” ts. (JS).
59 He had to explain TR’s deposition, dated 24 Sept. 1915, is printed as an appendix in TR, Works, 4.604–6.
60 Shaken by the Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 395.
61 Washburn observed Ibid.; Adams, Letters, 6.702; Spring Rice to TR, 10 Oct. 1915 (TRP).
62 a “shifty, adroit” TR to Edith Wharton, 1 Oct. 1915 (EW).
63 “Terse, clear” Bourne, British Documents, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.149.
64 “All these letters” Street, The Most Interesting American, 15.
65 the President’s most recent The New York Times, 22 July 1915.
66 On 5 October Bailey, A Diplomatic History, 580–81.
67 Representatives of all Ibid., 581; New York World, 6 Oct. 1915.
68 On the day after Cooper, Woodrow Wilson, 302–3. WW married Mrs. Galt on 18 Dec. 1915.
69 “I am giving” TR to QR, 18 Oct. 1915 (TRC).
70 It was obvious TR quoted in Street, The Most Interesting American, 31–32; TR to KR, 15 Oct. 1915 (TRC).
Chronological Note: An important chapter in TR’s life came to an end on 14 Nov. 1915, when Booker T. Washington died. TR spoke at the memorial service in Tuskegee, Ala., on 12 Dec., and lobbied successfully for the appointment of Robert R. Moton to succeed Washington as principal of the Tuskegee Institute. In private correspondence he showed no resentment against Washington for supporting WW in 1912, calling the black educator “a genius such as does not arise in a generation.” Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 345–46; TR, Letters, 8.996–97.
71 Roosevelt had been pleased TR, Letters, 8.1455, 829; TR to KR, 8 Apr. 1915 (TRC).
72 As a token TR to QR, 18 Oct. 1915 (TRC).
73 The extermination of TR, Works, 4.226–27.
CHAPTER 23: THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY
1 Epigraph Robinson, “The Revealer (Roosevelt),” The Town Down the River, 127.
2 “With T.R.” Baker, notebook VIII.63, 11 Jan. 1916 (RSB).
3 “In the present crisis” Ibid. Contributing to the “crisis” atmosphere was the recent sinking, by an Austrian-flagged submarine, of the Italian liner Ancona, with 25 American citizens aboard. The submarine was actually German, but this inflammatory fact was kept secret for years.
4 “I can understand” Baker, notebook VIII.63–64, 11 Jan. 1916 (RSB).
5 Roosevelt was regretfully Street, The Most Interesting American, 32–33; TR to KR, 27 May 1915 (TRC).
6 “I’m a domestic” Street, The Most Interesting American, 33.
7 “Most certainly” Ibid., 53.
8 the possibility of uniting On 11 Jan. 1915, the Progressive National Committee, strong-armed by George W. Perkins, had publicly indicated a willingness to unite with the GOP under “a common leadership,” if Republicans would adopt a sufficiently Rooseveltian (i.e., patriotic, pro-preparedness, and socially fair) platform for the coming campaign. See TR, Letters, 8.1000, and Mowry, TR, 331.
9 persons lacking manly qualities For the effeminacy imputed to pacifists by TR and his fellow interventionists in World War I, see Gerstner, Manly Arts, 53ff.
10 “The way to treat” Sullivan, Our Times, 5.202.
11 the winter so far Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 391–93; The New York Times, 28, 21 Jan. 1916.
12 an appreciable minority The phrase is TR’s, in Letters, 8.1013.
13 Owen Wister’s bestselling Wister, The Pentecost of Calamity, chap. 14. For TR’s influence on the draft of this elegant little book, see Wister, Roosevelt, 349ff.
14 millions of poilus Edith Wharton, Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort (New York, 1915), 238. Mrs. Wharton begged TR in the fall of 1915 to visit the Western Front and publicize the plight of the French. He declined, saying he would do so only when allowed to fight there. “But I won’t have the chance to try. The shifty, adroit and selfish logothete in the White House cannot be kicked into war.” (1 Oct. 1915 [EW].) She replied that she felt the same way about WW. “I think it was the saddest moment of my life when I realized that my country wanted him to be what he is.” (19 Oct. 1915 [ERDP].) Later TR wrote the introduction to Wharton’s The Book of the Homeless (New York, 1916), an anthology raising funds for war refugees.
15 “Does anybody understand” The New York Times, 28 Jan. 1916.
16 “a proper and reasonable” Ibid. At another dinner at the Biltmore later that evening, WW, speaking extemporaneously, made an obtuse reference to certain “humbugs” who had “been at large a long time,” and could be silenced only by allowing them to expose themselves to public ridicule. His audience of movie producers listened mystified as the President rambled on about watching himself on film, in tones that implied he had drunk one toast too many.
17 Wilson proceeded Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, 376–79; Sullivan, Our Times, 5.228–30, 277–78; The New York Times, 30 Jan., 4 Feb. 1916. Actually WW had asked Congress to double the size of the standing army to 140,000, and to increase the size of the fleet to 27 battleships, plus ancillary vessels—the largest defense appropriations yet requested in A
merican history.
18 “Each of these” Sullivan, Our Times, 5.230.
19 epithets like “skunk” TR, Letters, 7.809.
20 “a Byzantine logothete” TR, Works, 20.243.
21 “If any individual” Ibid., 20.245–46.
22 “jungle fever” TR.Jr. to KR, 8 Mar. 1916 (KRP).
23 mountains of Allied money Mowry, TR, 333, notes that the earnings of the Dupont Company of Delaware increased from $5.6 million in 1914 to $57.8 million in 1915. For a detailed account of TR’s swing to the right, 1915–1916, see ibid., chap. 13.
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