Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-time Editorials

by Theodore Roosevelt

His secretary had come into the room to receive dictation from accumulated correspondence. I arose to go. “Stay with us,” the Colonel said, “until I finish this; you are a member of the family now.”

Short, crisp sentences came from him as he dictated, each with the animation of a face-to-face conversation with the writers of the letters.

It was arranged that the Colonel was to take up his duties the first of October, and a few days after this meeting announcement was made the country over that Theodore Roosevelt was to write for The Kansas City Star. Immediately applications for the right to print the articles poured in from newspapers throughout the country.

Colonel Roosevelt came West in September on a speaking tour which included Kansas City. So he came into the office of The Star on the morning of September 22, 1917, and went to a desk which had been assigned him, with the remark, “The cub reporter will now begin work.” He was fond of that designation and often in conversation referred to himself as “The Star’s cub reporter.” With pencil he wrote out on newspaper copy-paper, with much scratching and interlining, the editorial, “Blood, Iron, and Gold,” which appeared the following day. His first editorial, however, was, a short time before, written on suggestion of Mr. Kirkwood, a brief piece on the death of Dr. W. S. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, who was killed by a bomb in an airplane attack on a hospital in France—the first American officer to fall in the war.

The same day Colonel Roosevelt wrote another editorial for later publication. He was good nature itself that Saturday morning in the office, joked and chatted with members of the staff, and seemed to be enjoying the novelty of his new connection.

The following Sunday there was a luncheon of The Star family at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kirkwood, at which the “new cub reporter” made himself thoroughly at home. Editors, reporters, and men of the mechanical and circulation departments were there and had luncheon with the Colonel. He mingled with all and took delight in chatting with them of their work. During the afternoon he made an informal talk to “the family” out on the lawn, in which he commended the spirit of working together shown in the expression “The Star family.” He spoke, too, of his long acquaintance with the aims and purposes of Mr. Nelson which were the aims and purposes of The Star, and said, as he had said before, that The Star was one of two daily newspapers with which he would be proud of a connection.

The arrangement was that Colonel Roosevelt was to telegraph his editorials to The Star from Oyster Bay or wherever he was when he wrote them. They were put in type in The Star office and sent out from there for simultaneous publication in a selected list of about fifty newspapers. These included the best-known newspapers in the country and represented every section. The service was without charge beyond telegraph tolls, it being The Star’s wish to give the widest diffusion possible to Colonel Roosevelt’s ideas on the conduct of the war through the best channel in each city.

Frequently there were suggestions from The Star to the Colonel. Always he was gracious in his treatment of those suggestions, invariably writing along the lines indicated and often amplifying and bettering them. On the other hand—except in two instances—the Colonel’s editorials were printed just as they were written, and if any change in copy were considered advisable it was made only after he had been consulted by wire and had approved it.

From the start the country was much interested in the expressions from the Colonel. The newspapers which received them printed them faithfully and conspicuously. However, the service had been in operation not more than a fortnight before there came rumbles of disapproval and doubt, almost altogether from newspapers published south of Mason and Dixon’s Line.

One of the early editorials, entitled “Sam Weller and Mr. Snodgrass,” presented Uncle Sam, “eight months after Germany went to war with us, and we severed relations with Germany as the first move in our sixty days’ stern foremost drift into, not going to, war,” as the boastful Mr. Snodgrass, still taking off his coat and announcing in a loud voice what he was about to do. This drew from the mayor of Abilene, Texas, the following letter to The Star-Telegram, of Fort Worth, Texas, which was publishing the Roosevelt articles: