Correspondence on the subject followed, and December 28, 1918, he wrote this letter to the member of the staff who had been talking with him:
In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago, and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent during the last thirty or forty years. Remember that you are freer to write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I do so it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write you such an article as you suggest: and then probably one on what I regard as infinitely more important, namely, our business to prepare for our own self-defense.
As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he has to make definite the thing for which he stands.
The article written in response to the promise in this letter was Colonel Roosevelt’s last contribution to The Star. It was dictated at his home at Oyster Bay, January 3, which was Friday. His secretary expected to take it to him for correction the following Monday. Instead an early call on the telephone that morning told of his passing away in his sleep.
Ralph Stout
ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR
DR. FITZSIMONS’S DEATH[1]
September 17, 1917
The first name on the casualty list of the American army in France is that of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, killed in a German air raid on our hospitals. Dr. Fitzsimons had already served for some time in a French hospital. As soon as this Nation went to war he volunteered for service abroad.