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.

ROOSEVELT’S SERVICE STARS

Thus, with telegrams and cablegrams of sympathy flooding the little Oyster Bay office by thousands, the father and mother of the boy who had given his life above the lines—received the news that their youngest born would never return.”

The only public statement Colonel Roosevelt made concerning Quentin’s death was in every way typical of the man:

“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had a chance to render some service to his country and show the stuff that was in him before his fate befell him.”

Quentin lies buried in France. There his body will remain. No formal treaty our country could make with France would be as eloquent of the good will that exists and will continue to exist between these two great republics as the fact that in French soil lie the bodies of Americans who fought and died in the common cause of humanity. Thus Quentin’s father thought; thus the world thinks. The following letter from Colonel Roosevelt to General March, while respecting the wishes of those parents who want the bodies of their boys brought home, carried a message of comfort and agreement to those parents who desired their dead soldier sons to remain in the resting places prepared for them near the field of battle by their comrades:

My Dear General March:

The inclosed clipping states that all the American dead will be taken home after the war, according to orders received by the army chaplains. I do not know whom to write to in the matter, so I merely ask that you turn this over to whomever has charge of it.

Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most respectful but most emphatic protest against the proposed course so far as our son Quentin is concerned. We have always believed that

Where the tree falls,
There let it lie.

We know that many good persons feel entirely different, but to us it is painful and harrowing long after death to move the poor body from which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where he fell in battle and where the foemen buried him.

After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I intend to visit the grave and then to have a small stone put up saying it is put up by us, but not disturbing what has already been erected to his memory by his friends and American comrades in arms.

With apologies for troubling you,

Very faithfully yours,
Theodore Roosevelt.

It seems strange that up to the very time of America’s participation in the war there should be people in this country who did not realize the self-sacrificing work for the national cause done by the Colonel, yet such was true.

At a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden Roosevelt was talking about the part the United States should take in the war, when a man shouted:

“Why aren’t you over there yourself?”

Some men cried, “Put him out!” But Roosevelt raised his hand for silence and said, “No, don’t put him out. Let him stay. I want to answer him.”

When the audience was still he went on:

“I couldn’t go myself, but I did send my four sons, every one of whose lives is a thousand times dearer to me than my own. There, you creature, that is my answer to any man who dares to ask an American father why he isn’t engaged in this war.”

The scorching anger of the Colonel and the scorn of the audience made the heckler slink away with a rebuke he will always remember.