“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.”