Part 30

The great hall was already filled to overflowing when we arrived, and it was difficult for us to find our seats, even although they had been carefully reserved for us. The atmosphere of the crowd in the great building was different from that of any concourse of people who had hitherto waited the coming of Theodore Roosevelt. At other times, in other crowds, when their favorite leader was expected, there had always been a quality of hilarity and gay familiarity showing itself in songs and demonstrations in which the oft-repeated “We want Teddy--we want Teddy” almost always was heard, but in this great assemblage there was a hushed silence and solicitude for their beloved friend, a personal outflowing of silent sympathy for the man whose youngest, whose “Benjamin,” had so lately paid the final price, and even a few minutes later, when to the strains of the “Star-Spangled-Banner,” Colonel Roosevelt was escorted up the aisle by my son, Senator Robinson, and Congressman Cox, from his own Nassau County, the many faces turned eagerly to watch him showed in strained eyes and set though quivering lips their efforts at self-control. As he began his speech, we realized fully that he was holding himself firmly together, but as he poured out his message of Americanism, as he pleaded for the finer and truer patriotism to be brought more closely and definitely into political action, he lost the sense of the great bereavement that had come to him, in his dedication anew to the effort to arouse in his countrymen the selfless desire for service, with which he had always fronted the problems of his own life. Toward the end of the speech, though he never referred to his sorrow, the realization of it again gripped him with its inevitable torture, and again the people who sat in breathless silence--listening to one to whom they had always listened--followed in their hearts the hard path that he was bravely treading.

The convention adjourned, and he asked the leaders to wait until the following day, at least, for his answer to the Round-Robin request which had been sent to him, but he did not give much hope that he would look favorably upon their desire that he should allow his name to be put in nomination as candidate for governor. I motored him back to Albany and took the train with him for New York. In recalling the hours of intercourse that afternoon and early evening, the great impression made upon my mind by his attitude was one of ineffable gentleness. Never was he more loving in his interest about me and mine; never was he less thoughtful of self. I realized that he needed quiet, and when I found that my seat was in a different car from his, although several people offered to change their seats with me, I felt that after our drive together, it would do him more good to be alone and read than to try to talk to me. I told him I would order our dinner and would come back for him when it was time for the meal, and I left him with his usual book in his hand. When I came back, however, I stood behind him for a moment or two before making myself known to him again, and I could see that he was not reading, that his sombre eyes were fixed on the swiftly passing woodlands and the river, and that the book had not the power of distracting him from the all-embracing grief which enveloped him. When I spoke, however, he turned with a responsive smile, and during our whole meal gave me, as ever, the benefit of his delightful knowledge of all the affairs of the world.

Only once during our talk did he speak of the Round-Robin, and especially of my son’s desire that he should be the nominee for governor. He used an expression in discussing the matter which gave me at once a sense of almost physical apprehension. Looking at me gravely, he said: “Corinne, I have only one fight left in me, and I think I should reserve my strength in case I am needed in 1920.” The contraction of my heart was swift and painful, and I said: “Theodore, you don’t feel really ill, do you?” “No,” he said; “but I am not what I was and there is only one fight left in me.” I suggested that that fight would probably be made easier by this premonitory battle, but he shook his head and I could see that there was but little chance of his undertaking the factional warfare of a state campaign, nor did he seem to feel, as did some others, that to win the election for governor of New York State would be of distinct advantage in connection with the great fight to come in 1920. The following week Theodore Roosevelt definitely refused to let his name be put before the people as a candidate for the governorship of the Empire State.

That evening on arriving late in New York, he would not let me go to the Langdon Hotel with him, but insisted on taking me to my own house. The next morning I went early to the Langdon, hoping for better news, and saw my sister-in-law, whose wonderful self-control was a lesson to all those who have had to meet the ultimate pain of life. I could see that she had but little hope, but for my brother’s sake, until the actual confirmation of Quentin’s death, she bravely hoped for hope. Later, Colonel Roosevelt made a statement from Oyster Bay in connection with the many telegrams and cables of sympathy which they received. He said: “These messages were not meant for publication but to express sympathy with Quentin’s father and mother, and sorrow for a gallant boy who had been doing his duty like hundreds of thousands of young Americans. Many of them indeed, I think, were really an expression of sympathy from the mothers and fathers who have gladly and proudly, and yet with sorrow, seen the sons they love go forth to battle for their country and the right. These telegrams, cables, and letters show the spirit of our whole people.”

The noble attitude of my brother and sister-in-law roused deep admiration, and I have always felt that their influence was never more felt than when with aching hearts they continued quietly to go about their daily duties.

On August 3d a letter came to me from Dark Harbor, Maine, where Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt had gone to visit their daughter Mrs. Derby. “Darling Corinne:--Indeed it would be the greatest pleasure--I mean that exactly,--to have you bring little Douglas to Sagamore in the holidays. [He refers to my grandson, the son of Theodore Douglas Robinson.] All the people here are most considerate and the children a comfort. Little Edie is as pretty as a picture and a little darling; she has been very much of a chimney swallow this morning, clinging to whoever will take her up and cuddle her.” In the latter part of the letter he refers to my own great loss nine years before of my youngest son in his twentieth year, and says: “Your burden was even harder to bear than ours, for Stewart’s life was even shorter than Quentin’s and he had less chance to give shape to what there was in him, but, after all, when the young die at the crest of their life, in their golden morning, the degrees of difference are merely degrees in bitterness; and yet, there is nothing more cowardly than to be beaten down by sorrows which nothing we can do will change. Love to Douglas, Helen and Teddy, and to Fanny if she is with you.” The sentence of this brave letter in which my brother speaks of its being “cowardly to be beaten down by sorrows which nothing we do can change” is typical of the attitude which he had preserved through his whole life. Theodore Roosevelt was a great sharer and a great lover, but above all else he was essentially the courageous man who faced squarely whatever came, and by so facing conquered.

A few days later, again a dear letter came from Dark Harbor, and once more he dwells upon the baby girl who comforted him with her sweet, unconscious merriment. He says: “She is such a pretty little baby and with such cunning little ways. I fear I am not an unprejudiced witness. The little, curly-headed rascal is at this moment, crawling actively around my feet in her usual, absurd garb of blue overalls, drawn over her dainty dresses, because otherwise, she would ruin every garment she has on and skin her little bare knees. I heartily congratulate Teddy on going to camp. Give Corinne and Helen my dearest love and to all the others too.” The congratulations sent to my eldest son were indeed deserved, for the serious break to his leg having at last fully recovered, and a new camp near Louisville, Ky., having been started for men above the draft age, my son with real sacrifice resigned from his position in the Senate (having just been nominated for a second term), and started for Camp Taylor, where later he received his commission. My brother was very proud of the fact that, with hardly an exception, each son, nephew, or cousin of the Roosevelt and Robinson family was actively enrolled in the country’s service.

On August 18, having returned to Sagamore Hill, a little line comes to me of appreciation of a poem that I had written called “Italy.” “I am particularly glad you wrote it,” he says, and referring to my son-in-law, he continues: “Joe and Corinne lunched here yesterday; they were dear,--I admire them both so much.” He never failed, as I have said before, in giving me the joy of knowing when he admired those most dear to me. The following day, August 19, Mr. Colgate Hoyt, a generous neighbor, wrote to Colonel Roosevelt making the suggestion that a monument should be erected in honor of Quentin in some permanent place in the village of Oyster Bay, as Mr. Hoyt thought it would have an educational influence and value, as Quentin was the first resident of Oyster Bay (and the first officer) to make the supreme sacrifice in giving his life for his country. Mr. Hoyt wished to start this movement, but Colonel Roosevelt sent the following reply, a copy of which Mr. Hoyt gave me:

“My dear Mr. Hoyt:--That is a very nice letter of yours, but I do not think it would be advisable to try to put up a monument for Quentin. Of course, individually, our loss is irreparable but to the country he is simply one among many gallant boys who gave their lives for the great Cause. With very hearty thanks, Faithfully yours.”

The above letter and his statement that he and Quentin’s mother would prefer that their boy should lie where he fell were but what would have naturally been expected of Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt.

In September, 1918, Theodore Roosevelt made an address on Lafayette Day, part of which ran as follows:

“Lafayette Day commemorates the service rendered to America in the Revolution by France. I wish to insist with all possible emphasis that in the present war, France, England, and Italy and the other Allies have rendered us similar services.... They have been fighting for us when they were fighting for themselves. [My brother was only repeating in 1918 what he had stanchly declared from the autumn of 1914.] Our army on the other side is now repaying in part our debt. It is now time and it is long behind time for America to bear her full share of the common burden.... It is sometimes announced that part of the Peace Agreement must be a League of Nations which will avert all war for the future and put a stop to the need of this nation preparing its own strength for its own defense. In deciding upon proposals of this nature, it behooves our people to remember that competitive rhetoric is a poor substitute for the habit of resolutely looking facts in the face. Patriotism stands in national matters as love of family does in private life. Nationalism corresponds to the love a man bears for his wife and children. Internationalism corresponds to the feeling he has for his neighbors generally. The sound nationalism is the only type of really helpful internationalism, precisely as in private relations, it is the man who is most devoted to his own wife and children who is apt in the long run to be the most satisfactory neighbor. The professional pacifist and the professional internationalist are equally undesirable citizens. The American pacifist has in the actual fact shown himself to be the ally of the German militarist. We Americans should abhor all wrong-doing to other nations. We ought always to act fairly and generously by other nations, but, we must remember that our first duty is to be loyal and patriotic citizens of our _own_ nation. Any such League of Nations would have to depend for its success upon the adhesion of nine other nations which are actually or potentially the most powerful military nations; and these nine nations include Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Russia. The first three have recently and repeatedly violated and are now actively and continuously violating not only every treaty but every rule of civilized warfare and of international good faith. During the last year, Russia under the dominance of the Bolshevist has betrayed her Allies, has become the tool of the German autocracy and has shown such utter disregard of her national honor and plighted word and her international duties that she is now in external affairs the passive tool and ally of her brutal conqueror, Germany.

“What earthly use is it to pretend that the safety of the world would be secured by a League in which these four nations would be among the nine leading partners? Long years must pass before we can again trust in promises these four nations make. Therefore, unless our folly is such that it will not depart from us until we are brayed in a mortar, let us remember that any such treaty will be worthless unless our own prepared strength renders it unsafe to break it.... Let us support any reasonable plan whether in the form of a League of Nations or in any other shape which bids fair to lessen the probable number of future wars and to limit their scope, but let us laugh at all or any assertions that any such plan will guaranty Peace and Safety to the foolish, weak, or timid characters who have not the will and the power to prepare for their own defense. Support any such plan which is honest and reasonable, but support it as a condition to and never as a substitute for the policy of preparing our own strength for our own defense.

“I believe that this preparation should be, by the introduction in this country of the principle of universal training and universal service, as practised in Switzerland, and modified, of course, along the lines enacted in Australia, and in accordance with our needs. There will be no taint of Prussian militarism in such a system. It will merely mean to fit ourselves for self-defense and a great democracy in which order, law, and liberty are to prevail.”

I have quoted this speech because I am under the impression that it was his first actual declaration of any attitude toward a proposed League of Nations. In the early autumn of 1914 Theodore Roosevelt himself had written an article for the New York _Times_ syndicate in which he suggested the possibility of a League of Nations, and the fact that he did make that suggestion was frequently used after his death--and, I think, in an unjustifiable manner--by the adherents of the Wilsonian League of Nations, with the desire to make the American public feel that my brother would have been in favor of Mr. Wilson’s league. In every pronouncement in connection with a tentative or possible league, my brother invariably laid stress upon an absolutely Americanized type of association. I asked him once about his article written in 1914, and he told me that while still hoping that some good might come from a league or association of nations, his serious study of world situations during the Great War had made him less optimistic as to the possibility of reaching effective results through such a possible league or association.

In another speech at about the same time, he said, in characteristic fashion: “I frequently meet one of those nice gentry in whom softness of heart has spread to the head, who say: ‘How can we guaranty that everybody will love one another at the end of the war?’ The first step in guarantying it is to knock Germany out!”

On September 12 my husband, Douglas Robinson, the unfailing friend and devoted brother of Theodore Roosevelt, died very suddenly, and my brother and sister-in-law hurried to the old home on the Mohawk Hills which my husband had loved so well. Putting themselves and their own grief for Mr. Robinson and their own late personal sorrow entirely aside, they did all that could be done by those we love to help me in every way. My brother had always cared for Henderson House, its traditions and its customs, and even in the midst of the sorrow which now hung over the old place, he constantly spoke to me of his appreciation of its atmosphere. At the time of my husband’s death my eldest son came quickly back for two days from the camp where he was training, to his own home adjoining mine, and his children were with us constantly during those days, as were the children of my nephew and niece, Hall and Margaret Roosevelt, who occupied a little cottage on my place. I remember with what tender thoughtfulness my brother withdrew himself on the Sunday afternoon after the funeral and wrote a long letter to my second son, Monroe, a captain in the 77th Division, then in the Argonne Forest in France. Just as he had found comfort in his own little grandchildren during those hard days at Dark Harbor, Maine, so, while facing the great loss of his lifelong and devoted friend and brother-in-law, he turned to an affectionate intercourse with the little ones of the youngest generation of the family, and on September 19, when he had left me and gone to Oyster Bay, he writes: “I think of you with tenderest love and sympathy all the time. I cannot get over my delight in Helen and Teddy’s darling children; and I loved Margaret’s brace of little strappers also. Archie and Gracie have hired a little apartment in town.” His son Captain Archibald Roosevelt had returned from France sorely wounded in both arm and leg, wounds and disabilities which he bore with undaunted patience and courage.

On October 13, in response to a letter of mine in which I told him that a Monsieur Goblet had wished the honor of dedicating to him a poem, and at the same time had also asked the privilege of translating my verses “To France” into the French language, he writes to me:

“I have written to M. Goblet as you suggested; I feel that you have every right to be really pleased with what he says about your poem--a noble little poem.

“How admirably Monroe has done. It is astonishing how many men I meet who speak of Douglas [my husband] not only with deep affectionate regard but with a keen sense of the loss of an exceptionally vigorous and powerful personality. Tell Helen that I am really counting on that visit from her delightful children. Their attitude touched me very much. I am much concerned at what you tell me about gallant Bye’s health. Give her my dearest love.”

My sister, Mrs. Cowles, was even more delicate than usual that autumn, and I was with her at the time he wrote me the above letter. His admiration for our older sister was unbounded, and her splendid dauntless attitude toward the physical pain she suffered, and her unbroken patience through suffering, never failed to awake in him a responsive appreciation.

About that time President Wilson entered into a correspondence with Germany of which my brother disapproved. On October 13 he dictated the following statement at his home on Sagamore Hill:

“I regret greatly that President Wilson has entered into these negotiations, and I trust they will be stopped. We have announced that we will not submit to a negotiated Peace, and under such conditions, to begin negotiations is bad faith with ourselves and our Allies.”

Again on October 25, in an open letter to his intimate friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, “Let us,” he says, “amongst other things, dictate Peace by the hammering of guns, and not talk about Peace to the accompaniment of the clicking of typewriters.”

Although the extracts which follow were written and published several weeks later than the above quotations, I prefer to give them in this connection, for Colonel Roosevelt’s attitude toward “Peace without victory” and a probable League of Nations has been so often misrepresented. The Kansas City _Star_, the newspaper with which Colonel Roosevelt had actual connection during the last year of his life, published an editorial after his death in answer to a remark made by Senator Hitchcock, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in which he expressed the opinion that if Colonel Roosevelt were alive, “he would be found supporting the League of Nations as ardently as President Wilson.”

_The Star_ denied this assertion, and said:

“From the beginning of the discussion of the proposed League, _The Star_ has been anxious to find practical features which it could support as a real defense toward lasting peace. In the last weeks of 1918, the matter was taken up with Colonel Roosevelt who proved to be of the same mind. He recognized the war weariness of the world,--a weariness in which he shared to the full--and was anxious to further any practical step in international organization. The difficulty was to find the practical basis. After his first editorial approving certain principles of a League, a member of _The Star_ staff discussed the matter with him late in December at the Roosevelt Hospital. The suggestion was made that in a contribution he might point out certain things which a loosely organized League might accomplish. He replied that he could see so little that it might accomplish, in comparison with the rosy pictures that had been painted of its possibilities, that he hesitated to write on that line.

“In the course of correspondence, he wrote under date of December 28th, 1918: ‘In substance, or as our friends the diplomats say, in number, I am in hearty accord with you.... But remember that you are freer to write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I do so, it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write you such an article as you suggest and then, probably, one on what I regard as infinitely more important, viz., our business to prepare for our own self-defense.’ A few days later, almost on the eve of his death, he wrote the following article printed in _The Star_ on January 13th. It was dictated at his home in Oyster Bay on January 3rd, the Friday before his death, and his secretary expected to take the typed copy to him for correction the following Monday, the very Monday of his death. The following then, his final article, represents his matured judgment based on protracted discussion and correspondence. It is of peculiar importance as the last message of a man who, above every other American of his generation, combined high patriotism, practical sense and a positive genius for international relations.”

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT

“It is, of course, a serious misfortune that our people are not getting a clear idea of what is happening on the other side. For the moment, the point as to which we are foggy is the League of Nations. We all of us earnestly desire such a league, only we wish to be sure that it will help and not hinder the cause of world peace and justice. There is not a young man in this country who has fought, or an old man who has seen those dear to him fight, who does not wish to minimize the chance of future war. But there is not a man of sense who does not know that in any such movement if too much is attempted the result is either failure or worse than failure.

* * * * *