Colonel Roosevelt (108 page)

ROOSEVELT, WHOSE FIRST
reaction to the Zimmermann telegram had been to crumple his newspaper in rage, exulted to Kermit that “
the lily-livered skunk in the White House” had at last begun to act like a man. He restrained himself from public commentary, not wanting to appear disloyal to the President at a time of crisis, or to jeopardize his dream of raising a volunteer division (or two, or three, or four) with Secretary Baker’s approval.

Even now, Wilson seemed to hope that “armed neutrality” would be enough to keep the United States at peace.
On 9 March, professedly bedridden with a cold, he summoned the new Congress. However, he postponed the date of its assembly to 16 April, six weeks off. That rendered Senator La Follette powerless in the interim to stop an executive order requiring all American freighters to arm themselves. For the next ten days the President remained out of sight, while his wife fronted for him.

In Russia, meanwhile, half-starved workers revolted against an imperial ban on organized demonstrations.
The first news of food riots in Petrograd and Moscow reached Washington via Stockholm on 12 March. Vast crowds were reported to be on the rampage, roaring “Down with autocracy!”
The Russian army, weakened by the loss of three and a half million men, was either unable or unwilling to restore order. Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik exile living in New York, rejoiced that after twelve years of seismic buildup, the revolution of the proletariat was at last happening. Five days later
The Washington Post
confirmed that the Tsar had abdicated. A socialistic “provisional government” headed by Prince Lvov and dominated by the social democrat Aleksandr Kerensky was announced. “Unless improbable events occur,”
The New York Times
reported, “Russia has today become a republic.”

The news caused more satisfaction in the United States than in Britain and France. Both were in terror that Russia would now withdraw from the war and enable the Central Powers to turn all their firepower on the Western Front. This, plus the deaths of fifteen Americans in yet another “submarining” (the word had become a verb) put pressure on Wilson to summon Congress sooner.

On 20 March the President met with his cabinet and asked each member for advice. All were in favor of a prompt declaration of war against Germany, although Josephus Daniels, the secretary of the navy, cried as he committed himself. Newton D. Baker, all vestiges of past pacifism shed, argued for rapid rearmament with an earnestness that impressed Robert Lansing.

After the meeting, which Wilson closed without indicating his own feelings, Baker returned to the War Department to be confronted by a telegram from Roosevelt:
IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT GERMANY IS NOW ACTUALLY ENGAGED IN WAR WITH US I AGAIN EARNESTLY ASK PERMISSION TO BE ALLOWED TO RAISE A DIVISION FOR IMMEDIATE SERVICE AT THE FRONT
.

Baker wrote back to say that no additional forces could be raised except by an act of the new Congress. When that body reassembled, the administration would present a plan “for a very much larger army than the force suggested in your telegram.” He let Roosevelt know that there was unlikely to be a commission for him. “General officers for all the volunteer forces are to be drawn from the regular army.”

The result was an impatient speech by the Colonel that night in the Union League Club of New York City. Entirely at home again among Republicans who, four years before, had shunned him, he joined Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes, and Joseph Choate in endorsing a resolution, “War now exists by act of Germany.” He noted that more than two years had passed since the administration had demanded strict accountability for all U-boat attacks on American citizens. Germany was now killing more of them than ever, “
and she has proposed to Japan and Mexico an alliance for our dismemberment as a nation.”

It was irresponsible, he said, to wait another year for revenge, while the administration raised its million-man army. “
We can perfectly well send an expeditionary force abroad to fight in the trenches now—” He corrected himself. “Within four or five months.”

Closeted afterward with Root, Hughes, and Robert Bacon, he begged them to do everything they could to persuade the President to let him fight in Europe. Hughes was struck by Roosevelt’s emotion as he said, “
I shall not come back, my boys may not come back, my grandchildren may be left alone, but they will carry forward the family name. I must go.”

WILSON RESPONDED TO
his cabinet’s consensus for war only by announcing that he would advance the forthcoming session of Congress by two weeks. He said he would then present lawmakers with “
a communication concerning grave matters of national policy.” In an almost perverse display of calm, he let state papers pile up while he relaxed with his wife, socialized, and shot pool.

Roosevelt, too, took time off before what he knew would be one of the
most momentous addresses in American history. He told reporters that he was heading for Punta Gorda, Florida, to hunt shark and devilfish for the rest of the month. “
I shall be back by April 2, when Congress assembles.”

When he passed through Washington on his way south, the city was already
flaming with flags.

HENRY ADAMS WAS JUST ABOUT
to have dinner in Washington on the rainy evening of 2 April 1917 when he heard the hoofbeats of Woodrow Wilson’s cavalcade departing the White House and heading for Capitol Hill. By the time the old historian had finished eating, newsboys in Lafayette Square were already yelling out the story of their “extry” editions: the President had asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

Theodore Roosevelt’s slow train from Florida did not get into Union Station until noon the following day. By then he had read the full text of Wilson’s address. Surrounded by a huge crowd outside the platform gates, he dictated a statement to reporters: “The President’s message is a great state paper which will rank in history among the great state papers of which Americans in future years will be proud.”

His tribute was awkwardly worded but heartfelt. All the rage he had nurtured against Wilson gave way to something like admiration. Yesterday’s timid, selfish, cold-blooded sophist, the narrow and bitter partisan and debaucher of brains, had at last come to see things
his
way. Here, streaming across the front page of
The Washington Post
in double-width columns (juxtaposed with a dispatch that
another U.S.-flagged steamer had been torpedoed,
with eleven dead), was the oratory, impassioned yet rational, of a statesman whose mind was made up:

Wilson noted that among the steps he was requesting Congress to authorize were the extension of liberal financial credit to the Allies, a powering-up of American industrial resources, and an addition of at least half a million men to the army by means of a universal draft, with equally large increments to follow. “We have seen the last of neutrality,” he said. The United States had “no quarrel with the German people”—only with the autocratic oligarchy that had sent them to war without consulting them. Autocracy could not be allowed to pervert any postwar partnership of free nations. “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

Reportedly, this last line had not kindled the immediate ovation the President expected. But Senator John Sharp Williams, a Missouri Democrat who had served in Congress since the days of Grover Cleveland, had recognized it as the keynote of Wilson’s future foreign policy: an active, and if necessary forcible, imposition of American values upon “the world.”
Williams had stood and applauded until his perception spread through both legislative bodies (the judiciary too, as represented by all nine members of the Supreme Court) and an enormous roar had built and built.

If Roosevelt had not delayed his departure from Punta Gorda, in order to harpoon the
second largest devilfish ever measured, he could have gotten to Washington in time to witness this triumph—so much greater than any he had experienced as president. But he found himself, on the morning after, an out-of-towner with no business to do in a city electric with urgency. The newsmen who greeted him vanished after taking his statement. They had other leads to pursue. Congress was about to debate a war resolution, over Senator La Follette’s filibuster. Antiwar lobbyists were besieging the Capitol.
Senator Lodge, of all people, was reported to have knocked one pacifist down.

Alice Longworth was on hand to take her father to lunch. He had a few
hours to kill between trains, so they went to congratulate Lodge on his pugilism. The “Brahmin Bruiser” was away from his office. Roosevelt decided to pay a call on Woodrow Wilson.

The White House was closed to visitors without appointment, as it had been since the spring of 1913. But when the guard at the northwest gate saw who was sitting with Alice in her big car, he automatically waved it through. The driveway that had been theirs for seven and a half years uncurled; the familiar portico loomed up; the glass doors to the vestibule swung open. Ike Hoover emerged from the usher’s office. The time was a few minutes before three.

Roosevelt asked if he could see Wilson. Hoover regretted that the President was not at home: he had just gone to the West Wing for a cabinet meeting. Could the Colonel return later in the day? Roosevelt explained that he had no time, and left his card. He asked that Wilson be informed that he had come to congratulate him on “that remarkable state paper.”

Alice drove him back to the station. Starved as ever for his company, she volunteered to ride with him as far as Baltimore. Before he climbed into the train after her, Roosevelt admitted to a stray reporter, “
I don’t know just what I’m going to do when I reach New York.” He said the next few days in Congress were crucial to his plans. “I can’t say anything more about organizing a division to go to the firing line until I find out something more about the policy of this government. I am sorry not to have seen the President.”