Dear Sir: By order from the library board of the Public Library I am advised to have you discontinue our subscription to The Daily Star and The Times. Disloyalty to the present Administration is the reason given for the action taken.Yours sincerelyFRANCES F. WATSONLibrarian
Dear Sir: By order from the library board of the Public Library I am advised to have you discontinue our subscription to The Daily Star and The Times. Disloyalty to the present Administration is the reason given for the action taken.
Yours sincerelyFRANCES F. WATSONLibrarian
Answering this editorially, The Star said that throughout the war it had taken the course of calling attention to the mistakes of the Government rather than remaining silent on its mistakes; that it did not believe in saying the country was doing finely when it was not; that it believed in exposing inefficiency and rooting it out. It directed attention to results already accomplished by criticism in bringing into the war preparations men like Schwab, Goethals, Stettinius, March, Baruch, and others, adding: “The Star is proud to belong to the little group ofconstructive critics, including preëminently Colonel Roosevelt, who worked to get wrong conditions changed and to contribute to the present result, which to-day is the salvation of the cause we fight for. For it to have done anything else would have been faithlessness to its trust.”
When at last the stirring-up of the Administration had borne fruit and American troops were in France and on the way in considerable, though disappointing, numbers, Colonel Roosevelt slowed down his bombardment of the Washington authorities. His campaign had produced results. He was right in doing all he could to speed up war preparations, and he stood his ground in the face of widespread censure in the way he always did. Hostile newspapers had demanded that the Postmaster-General suppress the circulation of the Roosevelt articles; indeed, a post-office inspector had visited Kansas City with the idea of denying The Star admission to the mails, but the Administration made no further move in this direction.
Even when the turning of the tide had set in, Roosevelt’s demand was for men, more men, and then more men for France. He would have in all six or seven million men in training, and four million American soldiers in France in the spring of 1919. In the first article he sent after the news of Quentin’s death, he said:
Now and always afterwards we of this country will walk with our heads high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of whom have given their lives forthis nation and for the great ideals of humanity across the sea. But we must not let our pride and our admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others have done. We must put the whole strength of this nation back of the fighting men at the front. We owe it to them.
Now and always afterwards we of this country will walk with our heads high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of whom have given their lives forthis nation and for the great ideals of humanity across the sea. But we must not let our pride and our admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others have done. We must put the whole strength of this nation back of the fighting men at the front. We owe it to them.
Later on the good effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s criticism was widely recognized. The Nation, one of the Colonel’s bitterest opponents, in general a strong supporter of the Administration, said of his editorials: “It is largely to him that we owe our ability to discuss peace terms and to criticize at all.”
Summing up the effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s campaign to speed up our part in the war, The Star said editorially:
There were periods of intolerance when neitherMr.Roosevelt nor The Star was under any illusions as to the reception that would be given frank criticism. But it was essential that such criticism be made in order to correct evils that were really threatening the outcome of the war....The selective draft was the big achievement of the Administration in 1917. But having prepared this, the Government proceeded in most leisurely fashion, apparently not getting the slightest comprehension of the danger to the Allied cause resulting from Russia’s collapse.The War Department continued to be run, as it had been in the past, by amiable old gentlemen who were wholly unfit for the task. Although airplanes had become an essential feature of modern warfare, it was not until weeks after war had been declared that the department sent a commission to Europe to learn what a military airplane was. Rifles are usually regarded as a part of the military equipment of troops. But it was two months after the declaration of war before the War Department decided what type of rifle to make. An army of millions of men was certain to need uniforms, but the easy-going quartermaster-general turned down the offer of the wool manufacturers’ association for the entire outputof the country and the result was that the soldiers went into the winter without warm clothing or overcoats. As for artillery, the incapacity was complete.Meanwhile we sent a small expeditionary force to France, and in the autumn began sending troops across in a leisurely way, at the rate of ten thousand a week.Then suddenly, late in March, with the German army driving straight on Paris and the Allied defenses giving way, under the appeal of Lloyd George we suddenly woke to the fact that we had been playing with the war. From that time on we acted as if we had a man’s job, and we got into the line just in time to save the situation.All through the fall and winter of last year whatMr.Roosevelt and the other outspoken critics were trying to do was to arouse the country and the Administration to the magnitude of the task and to the danger from delay. They succeeded only partly. But they did succeed to the extent of forcing the removal of incompetent departmental chiefs, and the substitution of efficient men who were able to handle the emergency when the Administration finally discovered that the emergency existed.Looking back over the events of the last eighteen months, we believe no fair-minded American can fail to perceive the patriotic service done byMr.Roosevelt and other critics, who were seeking to awaken the Government from a lethargy that just missed proving fatal to the Allied cause.
There were periods of intolerance when neitherMr.Roosevelt nor The Star was under any illusions as to the reception that would be given frank criticism. But it was essential that such criticism be made in order to correct evils that were really threatening the outcome of the war....
The selective draft was the big achievement of the Administration in 1917. But having prepared this, the Government proceeded in most leisurely fashion, apparently not getting the slightest comprehension of the danger to the Allied cause resulting from Russia’s collapse.
The War Department continued to be run, as it had been in the past, by amiable old gentlemen who were wholly unfit for the task. Although airplanes had become an essential feature of modern warfare, it was not until weeks after war had been declared that the department sent a commission to Europe to learn what a military airplane was. Rifles are usually regarded as a part of the military equipment of troops. But it was two months after the declaration of war before the War Department decided what type of rifle to make. An army of millions of men was certain to need uniforms, but the easy-going quartermaster-general turned down the offer of the wool manufacturers’ association for the entire outputof the country and the result was that the soldiers went into the winter without warm clothing or overcoats. As for artillery, the incapacity was complete.
Meanwhile we sent a small expeditionary force to France, and in the autumn began sending troops across in a leisurely way, at the rate of ten thousand a week.
Then suddenly, late in March, with the German army driving straight on Paris and the Allied defenses giving way, under the appeal of Lloyd George we suddenly woke to the fact that we had been playing with the war. From that time on we acted as if we had a man’s job, and we got into the line just in time to save the situation.
All through the fall and winter of last year whatMr.Roosevelt and the other outspoken critics were trying to do was to arouse the country and the Administration to the magnitude of the task and to the danger from delay. They succeeded only partly. But they did succeed to the extent of forcing the removal of incompetent departmental chiefs, and the substitution of efficient men who were able to handle the emergency when the Administration finally discovered that the emergency existed.
Looking back over the events of the last eighteen months, we believe no fair-minded American can fail to perceive the patriotic service done byMr.Roosevelt and other critics, who were seeking to awaken the Government from a lethargy that just missed proving fatal to the Allied cause.
Colonel Roosevelt’s last visit to his desk in the editorial rooms of The Star was early in October, 1918. It struck those who had been associated with him that he was not quite as fit as usual. I asked him if it were true the physicians had placed him on a diet. He said it was, but, to be frank, he had not given much heed to their recommendations. In a discussion at his desk with men of the editorial forcea recent article about Roosevelt by George Creel came up. “I must admit,” said Colonel Roosevelt, laughing, “he took a rather jaundiced view of me.”
Mr.Kirkwood was away in the army, but Mrs. Kirkwood was in Kansas City and the Colonel stayed at their home during his visit. At this time a subject was brought up which had been talked over along in the summer—a visit from him to the battle front to write at first hand of the American forces. Newspapers which were receiving the service and others which had heard of the suggestion were eager for Roosevelt articles from France, but from the first the Colonel had demurred and now said a final “No.” His reason was that he could not go as a private citizen, as he had been denied permission to go as a soldier; it would not only be unbecoming for a former president of the United States to go in any newspaper capacity, but how to treat him would be an embarrassing question to France.
The tide had turned toward the Allies, and the country was certain the defeat of the enemy was a question of a short time. Colonel Roosevelt’s articles turned to a discussion of the kind of peace there should be and examinations of the President’s “Fourteen Points” and his notes to Austria. On November 11—the day the armistice was signed—it was considered necessary for Colonel Roosevelt to go to a hospital in New York. From his hospital room he telegraphed that day an editorial joining in the general rejoicing over peace and appraising tersely our part in the war.
A few days later there came an editorial prompted by a letter from a woman friend in California. Visiting this friend was another woman whose son had died of influenza in the navy. That mother had said she had given her boy proudly to her country, “but if only he could have died with a gun in his hand—a little glory for him and a thought for me that my sacrifice had not been useless.” The California friend had written: “There must be other mothers who feel they have laid their sacrifices on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there something you can say to comfort these other mothers?”
The letter touched Colonel Roosevelt deeply. “I felt a real pang when I received this letter,” he wrote, “because the thought suggested had been in my mind and yet I had failed to express it.” The editorial, “Sacrifices on Cold Altars,” which he wrote in response, gave consolation from the heart. It made it clear that all who had given their lives in the country’s service, whether in action or from disease, stood on “an exact level of service and sacrifice and honor and glory.” It concluded:
The mother or wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid on “a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when justice andmercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations of the world.
The mother or wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid on “a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when justice andmercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations of the world.
From his entrance to the hospital until his departure on Christmas day, the editorials were less frequent. The Peace Conference, the Congressional elections, and the League of Nations were uppermost in public thought, and on these subjects the Colonel wrote several editorials. Both Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were anxious to find some means to lessen the chance of war through international organization. Both feared, from President Wilson’s addresses, that he had in view some grandiose plan that would be impractical. In December a member of The Star’s staff visited the Colonel in Roosevelt Hospital, New York. At that time he had written one or two editorials discussing the subject in a tentative way. He was asked if he did not think he could say something more positive.
“I doubt it,” he said. “I feel there is so little that really can be done by any form of treaty to prevent war that it would be disappointing for me to point it out. Any treaty adopted under the influence of war emotions would be like the good resolutions adopted at a mass meeting. We have an anti-vice crusade. Everybody is aroused. The movement culminates in a big meeting and we adopt resolutions abolishing vice. But vice isn’t abolished that way.”
Correspondence on the subject followed, and December 28, 1918, he wrote this letter to the member of the staff who had been talking with him:
In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago, and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent during the last thirty or forty years. 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, namely, our business to prepare for our own self-defense.As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he has to make definite the thing for which he stands.
In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago, and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent during the last thirty or forty years. 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, namely, our business to prepare for our own self-defense.
As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he has to make definite the thing for which he stands.
The article written in response to the promise in this letter was Colonel Roosevelt’s last contribution to The Star. It was dictated at his home at Oyster Bay, January 3, which was Friday. His secretary expected to take it to him for correction the following Monday. Instead an early call on the telephone that morning told of his passing away in his sleep.
Ralph Stout