My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

On June 23, just before the meeting of the Progressive Convention, he writes to me: “I should like to show you my letter to the National Committee which will appear on Monday afternoon. I will then, I trust, finish my active connections with Politics.” And again, in another letter on July 21, he says: “For six years I have been, I believe, emphatically right, emphatically the servant of the best interests of the American people; but just as emphatically,—the American people have steadily grown to think less and less of me, and more definitely determined not to use me in any public position, and it is their affair after all. Your Teddy [my son at the time was running for the nomination for New York State Senator] may experience the same fate and may find that through no fault of his,—in my case the fault may have been mine,—his talents may be passed by.”

It is interesting to note that although so frequently a justified prophet in national affairs, my brother’s prophecies concerning himself rarely came true. The above prophecy was no exception to this rule, for during the years to come, the Republican party was to turn once more to Theodore Roosevelt as its greatest leader, and to pledge its support to him both inferentially and actually in their great effort to make him the nominee for governor of New York State. In the campaign of 1918 the leaders of the Republican party turned to him as almost one man, feeling as they did that his election again to that position would positively secure him the election to the presidency in 1920.

Perhaps the hardest thing for him to bear connected with the political situation in 1916 was the keen disappointment of those Progressives for whom he had such devoted affection when he refused to run on the Progressive ticket as the candidate for President. He felt that in the hearts of many there was, in spite of their personal devotion to him, a sense of disillusion, and he tried with earnest effort to make them see the point of view which he was convinced was the right point of view, which made him support the candidate of the Republican party.

A Mrs. Nicholson, of Oregon, for whom he had a sincere regard, having written to him on the subject, he answers on July 18, 1916:

“My dear Mrs. Nicholson: ... You say you do not understand ‘Why we men make such a fetich of parties.’ I cannot understand how you include me with the men who do so. Four years ago I declined to make a fetich of the Republican party, when to do so meant dishonor to the nation, and this year I declined to make a fetich of the Progressive party when to do so meant dishonor to honor. I agree with you that issues and men are the things that count. A party is good only as a means to an end. Nevertheless, we have to face the fact that has been made strikingly evident during the past four years that with ninety per cent of our country-men the party name of itself has a certain fetichistic power, and we would be very foolish if we did not take this into account in endeavoring to work for good results. Moreover, it is unfortunately true that the dead hand of a party sometimes paralyzes its living members. The ancestral principles of the Democratic party are so bad it seems to be entirely impossible for it to be useful to the country except in spasms.

“I believe Mr. Hughes to be honest and to have the good of his country at heart.”

He was not able to visit us in our country home on the Mohawk Hills, as we had hoped he might possibly do, during that summer, but on October 5 he writes to me: “I fear I shall be West on the 25th, otherwise I should jump at the chance to lunch with you and Fanny at the Colony Club. Can I accept for the first subsequent day when I find that you and she are available? I am now being worked to the limit by the Hughes people who are the very people who four months ago were explaining that I had ‘no strength.’... I most earnestly desire to win; I, above all things, do not wish to sulk, and therefore, from now on my time is to be at the disposal of the National Committee. Of course, Teddy’s nomination meant far more to me personally than anything else in this campaign. I look forward eagerly to seeing you. Do look at my Metropolitan Magazine article which is just out. I think you will like the literary style!” The “literary style” was combined with a certain amount of plain talk in this particular instance!

On October 12 Colonel Roosevelt, taking the exploits of the German submarine U-boat 53 off the shores of America as a text, launched an urgent protest. Colonel Roosevelt declared that the conduct of the war had led to a “complete breakdown of the code of international rights.” The man who as long ago as in his inauguration speech in March, 1905, inveighed against the “peace of the coward,” was stirred to red-blooded indignation at the Democratic slogan of that campaign of 1916, which laid all the stress on “He kept us out of war,” a sentence which Colonel Roosevelt described as “utterly misleading.”

He said:

“Now that the war has been carried to our very shores, there is not an American who does not realize the awful tragedy of our indifference and our inaction. Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. By taking the right step at the right time, America’s influence and leadership might have been made a stabilizing force.