At another pleasant luncheon there was present Alice, now the wife of Congressman Longworth, of Ohio, Roosevelt's daughter by his first wife. In the course of our discussion about the reciprocity treaty with Cuba and the making of more favorable tariff arrangements, I said: "We went to war with Spain for the liberation of Cuba, and now if we treat her step-motherly and starve her to death, what would the world say?" There was hearty laughter all round the table, and Miss Alice turned to me and said, in her naïve way and with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes: "Do I look starved?" The President had fairly exploded with laughter, and when I remarked that I had "put my foot into it," he added, amid another outburst, "Yes, both of them!"
The President did not smoke, but always served cigars and cigarettes to his guests. When I did not take one, he said, "Straus, you smoke."
"Yes," I answered, "but I certainly want to pay as much respect to you as I always did to the Sultan of Turkey. He did not drink, and I never took any when it was served."
"You go right ahead and smoke. If Root were here he would smoke and always does," replied Roosevelt.
After lunch that day, when the other guests had gone, he and I went into an adjoining room and had a general discussion—labor matters, the National Civic Federation, the Republican Party, etc., etc. He said he had received a number of requests to put into the Republican platform a plank protesting against the discrimination made by Russia against Americans of the Jewish faith. "You know," he said, "I am prepared to do anything that I can for all of our citizens regardless of race or creed, but unless we mean to do something further than simply protest it would look like an effort to catch votes, for such statements in the platform could not be regarded for any other purpose." He added he had in mind a different and more effective way of handling the subject when the time came. He said he remembered that I had never asked him to take action in this or any other question that was not justified on broad American principles, but that if anything arose which specially reflected upon the Jews he looked to me to bring it to his attention, and I was to regard that just as much my duty as the protection of American Christian interests in Turkey.
We spoke about the Russo-Japanese War, and I told him that some one had said that the Japs were yellow-skinned, but the Russians were yellow all the way through. This called forth a hearty laugh. Humor of any kind, provided it was clean, he always appreciated, and his own sense of it continually served, as it did for Lincoln, to lighten the seriousness of his duties.
Like Lincoln, too, Roosevelt combined with that balancing sense of humor an innate and always active sense of justice. Time and again in my relationship with him I have observed and admired it. I recall in this regard the case of an employee named Miller in the Government Printing Office, who was discharged because he did not belong to the union, and Roosevelt reinstated him. Mr. Gompers and several members of the Executive Committee of the American Federation of Labor thereupon called upon the President to protest against this reinstatement. They said his discharge was based on two points: that he was a non-union man, and also that he was an incapable worker. Roosevelt's answer was: "The question of his personal fitness is one to be settled in the routine of administrative detail, and cannot be allowed to conflict with or to complicate the larger question of governmental discrimination for or against him or any other man because he is or is not a member of a union. This is the only question now before me for decision; and as to this my decision is final."
As I was in constant touch with the President by correspondence and conferences, I wrote him telling of my gratification to find in his decision anent the Miller case such consonance in principle with his position regarding the anthracite coal strike, to which I received the following reply that brings out the point I have just made about his sense of justice:
White House, Washington
October 1, 1903My dear Mr. Straus:
I thank you heartily for your letter. When you can get on here I should like to tell you for your own information some of my experiences in connection with this Miller case. I feel exactly as you do—that my action was a complement to my action, for instance, in the anthracite coal strike, and that I could no more hesitate in the teeth of opposition from the labor unions in one case, than I could when the opposition came from the big monied men in the other case.
Sincerely yours
Theodore Roosevelt