At the time of the writing of that letter, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt had been very ill and was still very delicate, and my brother had not only the many worries of the department in which he was working, as he himself puts it, “like a fiend, for we have serious matters ahead,” but he also had the great anxiety of her condition on his heart. On the 28th of March: “I have been working up to the handle here, and have about all I can do on hand now. I have very strong convictions on this crisis, convictions which, I fear, do not commend themselves to my official superiors.” And again on April 2, 1898, he writes in full to my husband, who was always one of his most welcome advisers:

Navy Department, April 2, 1898.

Dear Old Man:

In one way I was very much pleased at receiving your letter, for it shows the thoughtfulness and affection you always feel for me. In another way your letter makes it very hard for me. All my friends have written me as you have, and yet I am convinced that you are all wrong. Do not misunderstand me. It may well be that I can’t get down with an Expeditionary force even if, as I think unlikely, an Expeditionary force is started before next fall. Indeed I think I shall probably have to stay here, and I should certainly stay here until we got a successor broken in. But if I get a fair chance to go, or could make a fair chance, I conscientiously feel that I ought to go. My usefulness in my present position is mainly a usefulness in time of peace, because in time of peace the naval officers cannot speak freely to the Secretary and I can and do, both to the Secretary and President, even at the cost of jeopardizing my place. But in time of war the naval officers will take their proper positions as military advisers, and my usefulness would be at an end. I should simply be one of a number of unimportant bureau chiefs. If I went I shouldn’t expect to win any military glory, or at the utmost to do more than feel I had respectably performed my duty; but I think I would be quite as useful in the Army as here, and it does not seem to me that it would be honorable for a man who has consistently advocated a warlike policy not to be willing himself to bear the brunt of carrying out that policy. I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not from merely selfish reasons, or from an impulse of levity.

I shall answer Corinne in a day or two. April 13th I was to have been in Boston, but if we have trouble, I, of course, can’t get away. I hope Corinne will stay over the following Sunday, so I may have a good chance to see her.

Faithfully yours.

The above is a most characteristic letter. Those who were nearest to him, like myself and my husband, and even Senator Lodge, were doubtful of his wisdom in leaving his important position (I mean important for the affairs of the country, not for himself) as assistant secretary of the navy to take active part in the war, should war come, but he himself knew quite well that being made of the fibre that he was, he must act up to what he had preached. Nothing is more absolutely Theodore Roosevelt, was ever more thoroughly Theodore Roosevelt, than that sentence. “I have a horror of the people who bark but don’t bite. If I am ever to accomplish anything worth doing in politics, or ever have accomplished it, it is because I act up to what I preach, and it does not seem to me that I would have the right in a big crisis not to act up to what I preach. At least I want you to believe that I am doing this conscientiously and not from merely selfish reasons or from an impulse of levity.” No sentence ever written by my brother more fitly expressed his attitude toward conviction and acting up to conviction.

VIII
COWBOY AND CLUBMAN

A RHYME OF THE ROUGH RIDERS

The ways of fate they had trod were as wide
As the sea from the shouting sea,
But when they had ranged them side by side,
Strenuous, eager, and ardent-eyed,
They were brothers in pluck, they were brothers in pride,
As the veriest brethren be.

They heard no bugle-peal to thrill
As they crouched in the tangled grass,
But the sound of bullets whirring shrill
From hidden hollow and shrouded hill;
And they fought as only the valiant will
In the glades of Guasimas.

Aye, they fought, let their blood attest!—
The blood of their comrades gone;
Fought their bravest and fought their best,
As when, like a wave, in their zealous zest
They swept and surged o’er the sanguine crest
Of the heights of San Juan.

So here’s to them all—a toast and a cheer!—
From the greatest down to the least,
The heroes who fronted the deadliest fear,
Leader and lad, each volunteer,
The men whom the whole broad land holds dear
From the western sea to the east!

—Clinton Scollard, 1898.

Those April days of 1898 in Washington were full of an underlying current of excitement. Drifting toward war we certainly were, and within a very short few weeks the drift had become a fixed headway, and Captain Dewey, on the receipt of a certain telegram from a certain acting secretary of the navy, was to enter Manila Bay, and by that entrance, and by the taking of Cavite, to change forever the policy of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt had been criticised for the amount of ammunition used in practice by the gunners of the navy during the past spring. He knew only too well that the real extravagance in either army or navy comes from lack of foresight, and the fine marksmanship of the sailors and marines was to prove a feather in the cap of the young assistant secretary.

Everything was bustle and hurry toward the end of April. Within a few days the assistant secretary was to become the lieutenant-colonel of the Rough Riders, or, as they were at first called, The First U. S. Volunteer Cavalry. Mr. McKinley offered to Mr. Roosevelt the colonelcy of the regiment, but he, with modesty and intelligence, refused the offer, knowing that he was not as well fitted by experience for the position as was his friend, Mr. McKinley’s physician, that gallant surgeon in the army, Leonard Wood, who had had as a younger man so much experience in the campaign against Geronimo. The two young men, within a year of each other in age, had been friends for some time, having many tastes in common, and the same stalwart attitude of unswerving Americanism. Their friendship had been cemented during the spring of 1898 by the fact that they felt that their views in connection with the mistakes of Spain in Cuba were very sympathetic. On the long tramps which they took together on those spring afternoons, they discussed the all-important question over and over again, and also discussed the possibility of raising a regiment of men from the fearless, hardy cowboys and backwoodsmen of the West. It was no sooner known that Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt were about to raise a regiment to go to Cuba than every sort and kind of individual flocked to their standard. The mobilization of the regiment took place in San Antonio, Texas.

My brother writes to me on May 5, 1898, from Washington: