My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

In answer to the above letter, my brother wrote:

“Because of your attitude, I earnestly approve your work. The safety of this country depends upon our immediate, serious, and vigorous efforts to square our words with our deeds, and to secure our own national rehabilitation. The slumbering patriotism of our people must be waked and translated into concrete and efficient action. The awakening must be to a sense of national and international duty and responsibility.” After going into greater length as to his personal principles and opinions, Mr. Roosevelt continues: “Our citizens must act as Americans, not as Americans with a prefix and qualifications.... Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin. The timid man who cannot fight, and the selfish, short-sighted or foolish man who will not take the steps that will enable him to fight, stand on almost the same plane. Preparedness deters the foe and maintains right by the show of ready might without the use of violence. Peace, like Freedom, is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards, or of those too feeble or too short-sighted to deserve it, and we ask to be given the means to insure that honorable peace which alone is worth having.”

In answering from other sources the same suggestion—namely, that he should take anew the leadership and be himself the nominee against President Wilson—he boldly replied that he doubted if it would be wise to name him, for if he should be named, his followers would have to be in a “heroic mood.”

On May 31 he announced: “I speak for universal service based on universal training. Universal training and universal service represent the only service and training a democracy should accept.... Performance of international duty to others means that in international affairs, in the commonwealth of nations, we shall not only refrain from wronging the weak, but, according to our capacity and as opportunity offers, we should stand up for the weak when the weak are wronged by the strong.”

Every speech by Colonel Roosevelt had again become the subject of national discussion, and as the Democratic policy began to shape itself, each position taken by the Republican party, as well as by the Progressive party, followed the lines laid down in some speech made by Colonel Roosevelt. By this time he had fully come to realize that, if it were possible to defeat the policies which, from his standpoint, were lulling the country into ignoble avoidance of its national and international duty, such defeat could only be brought about by the amalgamation of the Progressive and Republican parties, a result extremely difficult to accomplish.

On April 14 he said: “The Tribune says of the approaching convention, ‘We are choosing which way the country shall go in the era that is now opening, just as our fathers chose the nation’s path in the days of 1860.’ This sentence should be in the mind of every man who at Chicago next June takes part in formulating the platform and naming the candidate. The men at Chicago should act in the spirit of the men who stood behind Abraham Lincoln.... There is one great issue on which the fight is to be made if the highest service is to be rendered the American people. That issue is that the American people must find its own soul. National honor is a spiritual thing that cannot be haggled over in terms of dollars. [He refers to the issue of the tariff which had been prominently brought forward.] We must stand not only for America First but for America first, last, and all the time and without any second.... We can be true to mankind at large only if we are true to ourselves. If we are false to ourselves, we shall be false to everything else. We have a lofty ideal to serve and a great mission to accomplish for the cause of Freedom and genuine democracy, and of justice and fair dealing throughout the world. If we are weak and slothful and absorbed in mere money getting or vapid excitement, we can neither serve these causes nor any others. We must stand for national issues, for national discipline and for preparedness—military, social and industrial—in order to keep the soul of this nation. We stand for Peace, but only for the Peace that comes as a right to the just man armed, and not for the Peace which the coward purchases by abject submission to wrong. The Peace of cowardice leads in the end to war after a record of shame.”

Even the Democratic newspaper, the New York Times, spoke about that time of Colonel Roosevelt’s capacity to rouse a true patriotism. It said: “The passion of his Americanism, his unerring instinct for the jugular vein, make him, in a good cause, an unrivalled compeller of men. He has had his fill of glories, his name is blown about the world;—by preparing America against war, to unite America in patriotism, there are no nobler laurels.” And almost coincident with this unexpected appreciation of a newspaper frequently the enemy of Colonel Roosevelt came a letter from his former attorney-general, William H. Moody, written to their mutual friend Mr. Washburn, the author of the book which I have already mentioned. In the heat of the controversy which was once more beginning to rage around the figure of Theodore Roosevelt, it was interesting to read the calm and quiet words penned by the able man who had served as attorney-general in my brother’s cabinet, but, alas, laid low by the painful illness which later proved the cause of his premature death. “For five years,” writes Mr. Moody, “I was in almost daily association with him in the details of work for a common purpose and in his relation to all sorts and conditions of men. There are some parts of his work as President which I think no one knew better than I did, and there are results of it which ought to receive thorough study and be brought clearly to light. I have here specially in mind, the effect of his acts and preachments upon economic thought, and the development of the constitutional theory of our government. If one contrasts the state of opinion as to the proper relation between capital and labor, and the proper attitude of government toward both as that opinion existed just before the war with Spain, and as it exists today, one cannot fail to see that there has been an extraordinary change. In this change, I believe he was the one great leader in this country.... What was needed was a man with a great genius for leadership, great courage, great intelligence, and the highest purpose. That man came in Theodore Roosevelt. Perhaps, many would scout the idea that he had been a guide in constitutional interpretation. I remember the state of legal thought and the attitude of the Supreme Court in the nineties toward what we called the new internationalism. I believe no one appreciates more clearly than I the great change that has come to both since then. By the legislation which he, Theodore Roosevelt, promoted against great odds, there have been drawn from the Supreme Court decisions which have declared that nationalism which is necessary to our future national life.”

This deliberate decision on the part of a man essentially legal in mind throws interesting light upon my brother’s actions and attitudes, assailed as he was at the time for lack of the very devotion to the Constitution for which Mr. Moody praises him. About the same time, from Kansas City, on May 30, 1916, my brother writes to me: “I hope you will like the speech I am about to make here. I have scrupulously employed the ‘we’ in describing our governmental short-comings!”

Unless I am mistaken, it was about that time that my brother made a speech in Arkansas which—while the quotation which I am about to give has little to do with the issue of the moment—is so characteristic of his own fearlessness that I cannot pass it over.

The strongest theory which I have evolved from the study of the ups and downs of political life consists in the belief that of all factors in permanent success (and permanent success means a place in history), there is none so important as that of moral as well as physical courage. More men have lost their heart’s desire because at the most crucial moment they lacked the courage to barter that very desire for an honest conviction than from any other cause. Theodore Roosevelt believed that he could help not only his country but the countries of the world were he nominated and elected in 1916, just as he firmly believed that should Mr. Wilson be renominated and re-elected to that position, America and the countries of the world would be worse off rather than better off, and yet, no matter before what audience he spoke, were it East, West, North, or South, he spoke with the ardor of conviction, never for one moment withholding one belief, no matter how unpalatable it might be to the section of the country to which he was giving his message, did he feel that that belief should be clearly demonstrated to that portion of the people.