Part 11

“The biggest of the four stood a little out from the other three, and at him I fired, the bullet telling with a smack on the tough hide and going through the lungs. We had been afraid they would at once turn into the papyrus, but instead of this they started across our front directly for the open country.

“This was a piece of huge good luck. Kermit put his first barrel into the second bull and I my second barrel into one of the others, after which it became impossible to say which bullet struck which animal, as the firing became general. They ran a quarter of a mile into the open, and then the big bull I had first shot, and which had no other bullet in him, dropped dead, while the other three, all of which were wounded halted beside him.

“One bull dropped to the shot as if poleaxed, falling straight on his back with his legs kicking, but in a moment he was up again and after the others. Later I found that the bullet, a full metal patch, had struck him in the head, but did not penetrate the brain, and merely stunned him for a moment.

“All the time we kept running diagonally to their line of flight. They were all three badly wounded, and when they reached the tall, rank grass, high as a man’s head, which fringed the papyrus swamp, the two foremost lay down, while the hindmost turned, and, with nose outstretched, began to come toward us. He was badly crippled, however, and with a soft-nosed bullet from my heavy Holland I knocked him down, this time for good. The other two rose and though each was again hit they reached the swamp, one of them to our right, the other to the left, where the papyrus came out in a point.”

Roosevelt the hunter had faced many dangerous situations in his adventures in the wilds, but his first encounter with an elephant brought him closer to death than he had ever been. It was his comrade, F. C. Selous, an able and experienced African hunter, who saved the American on this occasion.

A shot from Roosevelt’s party had badly wounded a great lion. It had finally taken refuge in a dense thicket. Selous advised the party that it would be dangerous to come to close quarters with it. Roosevelt excited by the chase, plunged into the thicket in pursuit of the beast.

The party had seen no elephants and were unaware that any were in their vicinity. Selous, who, with Kermit, had followed Roosevelt, saw the Colonel lift his gun hurriedly to his shoulder. He glanced in the same direction and caught sight of a herd of elephants led by an enormous tusker. This animal was less than two hundred feet away.

Selous shouted: “For the life of you, don’t shoot! A bullet will bring a charge of the herd and we may be trampled to death. Follow me!”

Roosevelt reluctantly lowered his rifle. Selous led the Colonel and Kermit to a safe spot and bade them climb a tree. From this position Selous showed his companions how to aim. Roosevelt raised his Winchester and sent a half-dozen bullets into the leader of the herd.

With a scream of pain, the elephant charged, but when close to the tree he fell with a tremendous crash. He had received his death wound. The rest of the herd fled, pursued by Kermit’s bullets.

Many a big game hunter has been killed by the swirling trunk or the trampling feet of a wounded elephant. If the Colonel had fired from the position from which Selous rescued him he would undoubtedly have been crushed to death when the brute charged.

Roosevelt’s exploits in Africa aroused the intense admiration of the natives, and as a compliment to his shooting ability they named him “Bwana Tumbo,” the Great Hunter.

Carl Akeley, head of the elephant hunting expedition in Africa for the American Museum of Natural History, met the Roosevelt expedition in Africa and spent several days hunting with the Colonel.

Mr. Akeley found that while the Colonel took a huge interest in the hunt for big game, he was yet so much of a naturalist that he showed a keen interest in even the most insignificant of wild creatures. A small rodent had been discovered on the North American Continent. The discovery was of small moment. Few men remembered it, yet the Colonel was found to know all about it. Akeley says:

“I found Colonel Roosevelt one of the most refreshing and delightful companions I ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was as ideal and keen a sportsman as ever lived. The least of his pleasure was in the killing of animals. He found infinite joy in studying wild animal life in its native haunts. His greatest pleasures lay in seeing and learning, thereby proving himself an ideal naturalist.”

XVI

“The River of Doubt”

At Gondokoro, Uganda, Roosevelt ended his African hunts. He came through his many perilous situations unharmed. Kermit was also in the best of health. The latter was praised by Scout Cunninghame as one of the best shots and most daring hunters he had ever seen.

The Colonel on his journey back to civilization, visited first the Congo Free State, where the Belgian officers in charge of that colony gave him a warm welcome.

The journey was then continued by way of the Nile to Khartum, where the first newspaper men Roosevelt had seen for months raced up the Nile to greet him. Here Mrs. Roosevelt and her daughter met Kermit and him, and there was an affectionate family reunion. The party then traveled through Egypt.

In a speech at Cairo the Colonel referred jokingly to Wall Street’s attitude toward him by saying that when he left America to hunt in Africa “Wall Street expected every lion to do its duty.”

From Alexandria the Colonel took a steamer for Italy and, on landing in Naples, found a mountain of letters and cablegrams from America awaiting him. After a tour of Austria Roosevelt went to France. Ambassador Jusserand was the first to greet him. In an address in Paris Roosevelt spoke these prophetic words:

“Made to understand and love each other, our two countries have been friends from the beginning, and no doubt will always remain friends in the future. Every civilized man who comes to France learns something, because France is the cradle of modern civilization.”

The Colonel then visited Belgium, Holland--the home of his ancestors--Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and England.

Roosevelt arrived in London while Britain was mourning the death of King Edward. He took part in the great ceremonial funeral procession, made a sensational speech in regard to England’s rule in Egypt, became the guest of Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, and left England for home with this remark:

“My day in New Forest with Sir Edward Grey was the crowning experience of the whole three months.”

His landing in Manhattan was marked by one of the greatest ovations an American citizen had ever received in New York City.

THE FATEFUL JOURNEY THROUGH BRAZIL

One day in 1908, when Roosevelt’s Presidential term was drawing to a close, Father Zahm, a priest, called on him. The priest had just returned from a trip across the Andes and down the Amazon. He proposed that when Roosevelt left the Presidency he should take a trip with him into the interior of South America.

Roosevelt’s African trip was then uppermost in his mind, so the subject was dropped. Five years later, however, Roosevelt accepted invitations from Argentina and Brazil to address certain societies. It occurred to him then that after making this tour he could come north through the middle of the continent into the valley of the Amazon. His plans for the trip were soon under way. Frank Chapman, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, gladly appointed the naturalists George K. Cherrie and Leo E. Miller to accompany the party. Both were veterans of the tropical American forests. Father Zahm also agreed to go. Kermit Roosevelt joined the party.

On December 9 of the same year, as the party left Asuncion to ascend the Paraguay, Colonel Rondo and other Brazilians joined the expedition as representatives of the Brazilian government.

In the latter part of the next February the party started their long descent of the Duvida--“The River of Doubt.” Colonel Roosevelt describes this voyage interestingly in his book “Through the Brazilian Wilderness.” Many dangers confronted them. The descent of the rapids was perilous to men and boats. They were in danger of being slain through encounters with Indians. They faced the necessity of long, wearing portages or contact with impassable swamps. Fever and dysentery were ills that haunted that region. Starvation, caused by the loss of supplies, was not beyond the bounds of possibility.

On they went, however, enduring the dangers and hardships they encountered like the true explorers they were. They had to wade through water for days at a time. Their shoes were never dry. Insect bites became festering wounds in their bodies. Poisonous ants, biting flies, ticks, wasps and bees never ceased to torment them.

Under these circumstances the temper of the men was sorely tried. At last came a tragedy. Julio, one of their attendants, a powerful fellow but a rogue, shot Paishon, a good-natured negro sergeant. The murderer escaped into the wilderness and was never found.

At last, exhausted and almost broken by their terrible hardships, they reached their destination. They had put on the map a river of some 1,500 kilometers’ length from its highest source to its confluence with the Amazon.

Some of his statements on the subject of his explorations and discoveries were twisted and ridiculed by the press. The fact remains that he rendered a great service to geographers by locating the mouth of this river exactly. Other explorers had discovered its source but they possessed neither the courage nor endurance to follow it to its mouth. It was a real River of Doubt, because nobody knew where it led until Colonel Roosevelt cleared away the mystery.

Colonel Rondo, chief of the Brazilian mission which had accompanied the Colonel’s party, told later how the Colonel’s leg had become infected. While the party was shooting the rapids in the River of Doubt, he said, the boat came near being capsized, and in trying to save it Colonel Roosevelt received a wound in the leg. Poison spread from this to the blood and impeded the Colonel’s walking.

When he returned to New York, highly honored by the Brazilian government and praised for his achievements by explorers who knew the greatness of his undertaking, he was a sick man. Fever burned within him. His constitution was undermined. He admitted now that he had waited too long to undertake the hardest and most perilous task of his life.

These facts lead inevitably to the conclusion that the trip to South America marked the beginning of the end for the Colonel. Friends and physicians point to the fact that from that time began the series of maladies that attacked him recurrently until his death. Viewing the terrible hardships Roosevelt experienced on this journey of exploration it is not going wide of the mark to say that he laid on the altar of science a score of what would have been his most fruitful years.

XVII

Roosevelt’s Part in the World War

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.”

ROOSEVELT’S FIGHTING SONS

“_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.