The ambassadors were grateful for this information, which they communicated to their Governments; and through the agency of M. Lauzanne and with the consent of the ambassadors, the letters were given in full to the French and British press.
On the very day that Congress declared war against Germany, April 6, 1917, we were giving a dinner at our home to Professor Henri Bergson. Among our guests were James M. Beck, author of "The Evidence in the Case" and "The War and Humanity"; ex-Senator Burton of Ohio; former Governor and Mrs. John M. Slaton, of Georgia; Adolph S. Ochs, of the "New York Times," and Mrs. Ochs. Bergson was regarded as the unofficial representative of France in our country at the time. Of course, our thoughts and conversation were dominated by the great event of the day. Professor Bergson and Mr. Beck drank and responded to toasts with eloquent fervor. It was felt by all that the entrance into the war of the United States would prove a decided factor in winning it for democracy and constitutional liberty.
Just before Christmas, 1918—to be specific, on December 22d—I called on Roosevelt at the Roosevelt Hospital, where he was convalescing from his seven weeks' illness, believed to have been inflammatory rheumatism. He was dressed in his robe de chambre and was seated in an armchair with a pile of books before him. He looked neither enfeebled nor emaciated, though he showed signs of illness. When I asked him how he had been since my last visit, for I had called on him frequently during his illness, he told me that he had had an attack of embolism—I think that was the ailment—which showed in his wrists, and that his fever had gone up to 104. But that was all gone and he was again feeling fine. He was planning to return to Sagamore Hill to spend Christmas, which he subsequently did.
He inquired particularly about my son Roger, of whom he was very fond, and who was then in Siberia, where he had served for some months as captain and assistant intelligence officer on the staff of General William S. Graves, in command of the American Expeditionary Forces. I told him we had had a cable from Roger from Blagoveschensk that he was well. In his last letter he had expressed a desire to come home, since the war was over. Roosevelt agreed that that was right. He would not want his own sons to endanger their lives in the civil war raging in Russia, and he would not have Roger do so. "Let the Russians settle their own internal affairs; that is not our business," he added.
By way of amusing and interesting Roosevelt, I told him of a curious incident narrated in one of Roger's letters. He had been sent as the official representative of the army into the Amur Province, of which the governor was Alexandre Alexiefsky, who had been a member of the Constitutional Assembly of the Kerensky Government. When Roger called, the governor repeated his name familiarly and then asked: "Are you related to His Excellency by that name in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt?" When Roger told him he was my son, the governor immediately expressed a readiness to help him in every possible way, because as the latter said he owed his life to me. As Roger expressed it, "He was courteous before, but after that he was ready to give me his undershirt."
ROGER W. STRAUS
First Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, on the Staff of General W. S. Graves, American Expeditionary Force in Siberia. Now Major in the Reserve Corps, U. S. A."
Alexiefsky had told Roger the story of his case. In the autumn of 1908, several Russians whom the Czar had exiled to Siberia as political prisoners made their escape and came to the United States. The Russian Government discovered this and engaged one of the leading New York law firms to secure the extradition of the refugees, which was demanded on the specious charge of murder. Secretary Root, in the midst of his many important duties, favored the extradition, and the papers were referred by the State Department to Attorney-General Bonaparte. Application for deportation was also made to me under the immigration laws.
Meanwhile several prominent men and women interested in the case—Miss Lillian Wald, of the Henry Street Settlement House, New York, and James Bronson Reynolds, chairman of the American Society for Russian Freedom, foremost among these—supplied the intelligence and the proof that these men were not criminals in any sense, but political refugees. When Roosevelt spoke to me about them, I told him that I had declined to deport them because it was clear to me that they were political refugees. At that moment Bonaparte joined us. Roosevelt requested him to return the papers in the case, and shortly directed that the men were not to be deported.