Authors: Edmund Morris
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.
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.