Average Americans

Preface

A LL our lives my father treated his sons and daughters as companions. When we were not with him he wrote to us constantly. Everything that we did we discussed with him whenever it was possible. All his cnildren tried to live up to his principles. In the paragraphs from his letters below, he speaks often of the citizens of this country as "our people." It is for all these, equally with us, that the messages are intended.

"New Year's greetings to you! This may or may not be, on the whole, a happy New Year — almost certainly it will be in part at least a New Year of sorrow — but at least you and your brothers will be upborne by the selfreliant pride coming from having played well and manfully a man's part when the great crisis came, the great crisis that 'sifted vi Preface

out men's souls' and winnowed the chaff from the grain." — January i, igi8.

"Large masses of people still vaguely feel that somehow I can say something which will avoid all criticism of the government and yet make the government instantly remedy everything that is wrong ; whereas in reality nothing now counts except the actual doing of the work and that I am allowed to have no part in. Generals Wood and Crowder have been denied the chance to render service; appointments are made primarily on grounds of seniority, which in war time is much like choosing Poets Laureate on the same grounds." — August 2j, 1 917.

"At last, after seven months, we are, like Mr. Snodgrass, 'going to begin.' The National Guard regiments are just beginning to start for their camps, and within the next two weeks I should say that most of them would have started; and by the first of September I believe that the first of the National

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Army will begin to assemble in their camps. . . . I do nothing. Now and then, when I can't help myself, I speak, for it is necessary to offset in some measure the talk of the fools, traitors, pro-Germans, and pacifists; but really what we need against these is action, and that only the government can take. Words count for but little when the ' drumming guns ' have been waked." — August 23, 1917.

"The regular officers are fine fellows, but for any serious work we should eliminate two thirds of the older men and a quarter of the younger men, and use the remainder as a nucleus for, say, three times their number of civilian officers. Except with a comparatively small number, too long a stay in our army — with its peculiar limitations — produces a rigidity of mind that refuses to face the actual conditions of modern warfare. But the wonder is that our army and navy have been able to survive in any shape after five years of Baker and Daniels." — September 17, 1917.

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"Along many lines of preparation the work here is now going fairly fast — not much of a eulogy when we are in the ninth month of the war. But there cannot be much speed when military efficiency is subordinated to selfish personal politics, the gratification of malice, and sheer wooden-headed folly." — October 14, 1917.

"The socialist vote [in the New York mayoralty election] was rather ominous. Still, on the whole, it was only about one fifth of the total vote. It included the extreme pacifist crowd, as well as the vicious red-flag men, and masses of poor, ignorant people who, for example, would say. 'He'll give us five-cent milk, ' which he could have given as readily as he could have given the moon." — November 7, 1917-

"Well, it's dreadful to have those we love go to the front; but it is even worse when they are not allowed to go to the front." — Letter to Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., November 11, 1917.

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"Yesterday mother and I motored down to the draft camp at Yaphank. First, I was immensely pleased with the type of the men, and the officers are just as good as the average of young West Pointers. I believe that in the end that army there will be as fine a body of fighting men as any nation in the world could desire to see under its banners. But there is still, after nearly three months that they have been called out, some shortage in warm clothes; there are modern rifles for only one man in six; there are only about four guns to an artillery brigade." — November iq, 1917.

"Of course, the root of our trouble lies in our government's attitude during the two and one half years preceding our entry into the war, and its refusal now to make the matter one in which all good citizens can join without regard to party, and paying heed only to the larger interests of the country and of mankind at large. ... I now strike hands with any one who is sound on Americanism and on x Preface

speeding up the war and putting it through to the finish; but we ought to take heed of our industrial and social matters too." — Thanksgiving Day, iQiy.

"There is little I can do here, except to try to speed up the war; the failure to begin work on the cargo ships with the utmost energyten months ago was a grave misfortune." — December 23, 1917.

"The work of preparation here goes on slowly. I do my best to speed it up; but I can only talk or write ; and it is only the doers who really count. The trouble is fundamental and twofold. The administration has no conception of war needs or what war means; and the American army has been so handled in time of peace that the bulk of the men high up were sure to break down in the event of war." — January 6, 1918.

"Over here Senator Chamberlain's committee has forced some real improvements in the work of the war department and the

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shipping board. It is of course a wicked thing that a year was wasted in delay and inefficiency. Substantially we are, as regards the war, repeating what was done in 1812-15; there was then a complete breakdown in the governmental work due to the pacifist theories which had previously obtained, to inefficiency in the public servants at Washington, and above all to the absolute failure to prepare in advance. Yet there was much individual energy, resourcefulness, and courage; much work by good shipwrights; fine fighting of an individual and non-coherent kind by ship captains and by occasional generals." — March 10, igi8.

' ' How I hate making speeches at such time as this, with you boys all at the front! And I am not sure they do much good. But someone has to try to get things hurried up." — March 14, igi8.

"Wood testified fearlessly before the Senate committee, and the country has been impressed xii Preface

and shocked by his telling (what of course all well informed people already knew) that we had none of our own airplanes or field guns and very few of our own machine guns at the front." — March ji, igi8.

"The great German drive has partially awakened our people to the knowledge that we really are in a war. They still tend to complacency about the 'enormous work that has been accomplished' — in building home camps and the like — but there really is an effort being made to hurry troops over, and tardily, to hasten the building of ships, guns, and airplanes.

"My own unimportant activities are, of course, steadily directed toward endeavoring to speed up the war, by heartily backing everything that is done zealously and efficiently, and by calling sharp attention to lukewarmness and inefficiency when they become so marked as to be dangerous." — April 7, igi8.

"Of course, we are gravely concerned over the way the British have been pushed back;

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Xlll and our people are really concerned over the fact that after over a year of formal participation in the war our army overseas is too small to be of great use." — April 14, igi8.

"The administration never moves unless it is forced by public pressure and public pressure can as a rule only be obtained by showing the public that we have failed in doing something we should do; for as long as the public is fatuously content, the administration lies back and does nothing." — April 20, igi8.

"The people who wish me to write for them are divided between the desire to have me speak out boldly, and the desire to have me say nothing that will offend anybody — and cannot realize that the two desires are incompatible." — April 28, iqi8.

"I spoke at Springfield to audiences whose enthusiastic reception of warlike doctrine showed the steady progress of our people in understanding what the war means." — May 5, 1918.

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"It is well to have had happiness, to have achieved the great ends of life, when one must walk boldly and warily close to death." — May 12, igi8.

"We are really sending over large numbers of men now, and the shipbuilding program is being rushed; but the situation as regards field guns, machine guns, and airplanes continues very bad. The administration never takes a step in advance until literally flailed into it; and the entire cuckoo population of the 'don't criticize the President' type play into the hands of the pro-Germans, pacifists, and Hearst people, so that a premium is put on our delay and inefficiency." — May 12, igi8.

"The only way I can help in speeding up the war is by jarring loose our governmental and popular conceit and complacency. I point out our shortcomings with unsparing directness and lash the boasting and the grandiloquent prophecies.

"The trouble is that our people are ignorant

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of the situation and that most of the leaders fear to tell the truth about conditions. I only wish I carried more weight. Yet I think our people are hardening in their determination to win the war, and are beginning to ask for results." — May 23, iqi8.

"The war temper of the country is steadily hardening and so is the feeling against all the pro-German agitators at home." — June 2, 1918.

"In every speech I devote a little time to the 1 cut out the boasting plea.' Of course I really do think that in spite of our governmental shortcomings we are developing our strength." — June 26, iqi8.

"On the Fourth of July I went down to Passaic, where three quarters of the people are of foreign parentage, the mayor himself being of German ancestry. I talked straightout Americanism, of course, which was most enthusiastically received; the mayor's two sons have enlisted in the navy, and one has xvi Preface

been promoted to being ensign. The war spirit of the people is steadily rising." — July 7, igi8.

"I, of course, absolutely agree with you as to the tremendous difficulties and possible far-reaching changes we shall have to face after this war. Either fool bourbonism or fool radicalism may land us unpleasantly near — say halfway toward — the position in which Russia has been landed by the alternation between Romanoffism and Bolshevism." — July 75, iqi8.

"It is very bitter to me that all of you, the young, should be facing death while I sit in ease and safety." — July 21, igi8.

"I keep pegging away in the effort to hurry forward our work. We now have enough troops in France to make us a ponderable element in the situation." — August 4, iqi8.

"On Labor Day I spoke at Newburgh shipyard and spoke plainly of the labor slackers

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and the unions that encourage them; and on Lafayette Day, at the City Hall, I spoke of the kind of peace we ought to have, and nailed to the mast the flag of Nationalism as against Internationalism." — September g, iqi8.

"The Germans have been given a staggering blow, and while I hope for peace by Xmas, I believe we should speed everything to the limit on the assumption that next year will be the crucial year." — October 20, iqi8.

"During the last week Wilson has been adroitly endeavoring to get the Allies into the stage of note writing and peace discussion with an only partially beaten and entirely unconquered Germany. I have been backing up the men like Lodge who have given utterance to the undoubtedly strong, but not necessarily steady, American demand for unconditional surrender. It is dreadful to have my sons face danger; but unless we put this war through, their sons may have to face worse danger — and their daughters also.' ' — October 27, ipiS.

Oyster Bay, August, 19 19.

Contents

PAGE

Preface ......

V

Chapter I

'"Tis education forms the common mind, — Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."

Alexander Pope.

CROM the time when we were very little boys we were always interested in military preparedness. My father believed very strongly in the necessity of each boy being able and willing not only to look out for himself but to look out for those near and dear to him. This gospel was preached to us all from the time we were very, very small. A story, told in the family of an incident which ha'ppened long before I can remember, illustrated this. Father told me one day always to be willing to fight anyone who insulted me. Shortly after this wails of grief arose from the nursery. Mother ran upstairs and found my little brother Kermit howling in a corner. When she demanded an explanation I told her that he had insulted me by taking away some of my blocks, so I had hit him on the head with a mechanical rabbit.

Our little boy rights were discussed in detail with father. Although he insisted on the willingness to fight, he was the first to object to and punish anything that resembled bullying. We always told him everything, as we knew he would give us a real and sympathetic interest.

Funny incidents of these early combats stick in my mind. One day one of my brothers came home from school very proud. He said he had had a fight with a boy. When asked how the fight resulted he said he had won by kicking the boy in the windpipe. Further investigation developed the fact that the windpipe was the pit of the stomach. My brother felt that it must be the windpipe, because when you kicked someone there he lost his breath. I can remember father to this day explaining that no matter how effective this method of attack was it was not considered sportsmanlike to kick.

Father and mother believed in robust righteousness. In the stories and poems that they read us they always bore this in mind. Pilgrim's Progress and The Battle Hymn of the Republic we knew when we were very young. When father was dressing for dinner he used to teach us poetry. I can remember memorizing all the most stirring parts of Longfellow's Saga of King Olaf, Sheridan's Ride, and the Sinking of the Cumberland. The gallant incidents in history were told us in such a way that we never forgot them. In Washington, when father was civil service commissioner, I often walked to the office with him. On the way down he would talk history to me — not the dry history of dates and charters, but the history where you yourself in your imagination could assume the r61e of the principal actors, as every well-constructed boy wishes to do when interested. During every battle we would stop and father would draw out the full plan in the dust in the gutter with the tip of his umbrella.

When very little we saw a great many men serving in both the army and navy. My father did not wish us to enter either of these services, because he felt that there was so much to be done from a civilian standpoint in this country. However, we were taught to regard the services, as the quaint phraseology of the Court Martial Manual puts it, as the "honorable profession of arms." We were constantly listening to discussions on military matters, and there was always at least one service rifle in the house.

We spent our summers at Oyster Bay. There, in addition to our family, were three other families of little Roosevelts. We were all taught out-of-door life. We spent our days riding and shooting, wandering through the woods, and playing out-of-door games. Underlying all this was father's desire to have all of us children grow up manly and cleanminded, with not only the desire but the ability to play our part at the country's need.

Father himself was our companion whenever he could get away from his work. Many times he camped out with us on Lloyd's Neck, the only "grown-up" of the party. We always regarded him as a great asset at times like these. He could think up more delightful things to do than we could in a "month of Sundays." In the evening, when the bacon that sizzled in the frying-pan had been eaten, we gathered round the fire. The wind soughed through the marsh grass, the waves rippled against the shore, and father told us stories. Of the children who composed these picnics, two died in service in this war, two were wounded, and all but one volunteered, regardless of age, at the outbreak of hostilities.

When we were all still little tadpoles, father went to the war with Spain. We were too little, of course, to appreciate anything except the glamour. When he decided to go, almost all his friends and advisers told him he was making a mistake. Indeed, I think my mother was the only one who felt he was doing right. In talking it over afterward, when I had grown much older, father explained to me that in preaching self-defense and willingness to fight for a proper cause, he could not be effective if he refused to go when the opportunity came, and urged that "it was different" in his case. He often said, "Ted, I would much rather explain why I went to the war than why I did not."

At school and at college father encouraged us to take part in the games and sports. None of us were really good athletes — father himself was not — but we all put into it all we had. He was just as much interested in hearing what we had done on the second football team or class crew as if we had been varsity stars.

He always preached to us one maxim in particular : take all legitimate chances in your favor when going into a contest. He used to enforce this by telling us of a man with whom he had once been hunting. The man was naturally a better walker than father. Father selected his shoes with great care.

The man did not. After the first few days father was always able to outwalk and outhunt him just on this account. Father always went over his equipment with the greatest care before going on a trip, and this sort of thoroughness was imbued in all his sons.

Long before the European war had broken over the world, father would discuss with us military training and the necessity for every man being able to take his part.

I can remember him saying to me, "Ted, every man should defend his country. It should not be a matter of choice, it should be a matter of law. Taxes are levied by law. They are not optional. It is not permitted for a man to say that it is against his religious beliefs to pay taxes, or that he feels that it is an abrogation of his own personal freedom. The blood tax is more important than the dollar tax. It should not therefore be a voluntary contribution, but should be levied on all alike."

Father was much interested in General Wood's camps for the training of the younger boys and was heartily in sympathy with them. Both Archie and Quentin attended them. Quentin had a badly strained back at the time, but that did not keep him from going.

At the sinking of the Lusitania a very keen realization of the gravity of the situation was evident all over the country. A number of younger men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five met together to talk things over. In this group were Grenville Clarke, Philip A. Carroll, Elihu Root, Jr., Cornelius W. Wickersham, J. Lloyd Derby, Kenneth P. Budd, and Delancy K. Jay. They felt that it was only a question of time until we would be called to the colors, and realized most keenly the fact that it is one thing to be willing and quite another to be able to take your part. They felt, as this war has shown, the lamentable injustice and grievous loss that is entailed by putting against men who are trained in the business of fighting untrained men who, no matter how good their spirit and how great their courage, do not know the game.

The outcome of the conference of these men was the decision to ask General Wood if it would be possible for him to hold a training camp, for men up to forty -five years, similar to those held for boys. With the usual patriotism that characterizes him, General Wood said at once that he would hold the camp even if they were able to get only twenty-five men to attend. In the beginning, converts came slowly, but after a campaign of personal solicitation, in which members of the original group went individually to various cities in the vicinity of New York, the movement got under way with such success that the first so-called "Business Men's Plattsburg Camp" numbered about one thousand, and was immediately followed by another nearly as large.

At this time the average man did not know what military training and service meant. The camp was composed of men of all types and all ages. Many of them, too old for active service, had come as an earnest of their belief and through the desire to teach by their actions as well as by their preachings. Robert io Average Americans

Bacon and John Purroy Mitchel attended this camp, both of them men whose memory will always be treasured by those who were fortunate enough to know them.

We took it all very seriously. At one end of the company street you would see two prominent middle-aged business men trying to do the manual of arms properly, rain dripping off them, their faces set like the day of judgment, crowned with grizzled hair. At the other would be Arthur Woods, the Police Commissioner of New York, "boning" the infantry drill regulations. George Wharton Pepper was promoted to sergeant, and was as proud of it as of any of his achievements in civil life. Bishop Perry of Rhode Island was named as color sergeant.

Men who went to this Plattsburg camp had to pay their own money in order to try to fit themselves to serve their country. No more undemocratic arrangement could have been made for it placed beyond the power of the men of small means, who form the body of the country, to get in advance the knowledge

Boyhood Recollections n

necessary to act as an officer. Yet this was the only course open to us. In the ensuing year these camps spread over the country, and through them passed many thousands of men. Far over and above their value from the standpoint of military training was their educational value in national duty. A large percentage of the commissioned officers on our country's roll of honor attended the Plattsburg camps. These camps in themselves furnished the nucleus for the selection of the commissioned personnel of the national army, and furnished, furthermore, the system by which the great mass of our junior officers were chosen and educated. Yet the movement was launched, not with the backing and help of the national administration, but rather in spite of the national administration. No official representing the administration visited these early camps. Solely by private endeavor, therefore, arose the system of selection of officers which enabled the army in this war, more than any army this country has had in the past, to choose the men for commissions with a keen regard for their ability, with a truer democracy and less of political influence. On account of this movement the town of Plattsburg is known from one coast to the other.

During this first camp my father came up to address the men. Up to this time, although he had spoken on universal military training, it had been considered as such an unthinkable program that no one had paid any attention. Two or three times people have asked me when my father first became convinced of the necessity for universal training and service in this nation. They have always been greatly surprised when I have referred them back to a message to Congress written during his first term as President, in which he suggested that the Swiss system of training would be an advisable one to adopt in the United States. Many years before this he had directed N. Carey Sawyer to investigate and report on Switzerland's military policy. So little were people concerned with it at that time that no comment of any sort was caused by either act.

The evening of my father's arrival at Plattsburg an orderly came and directed me to report at headquarters, where my father was sitting in conference.

"Ted, I have decided to make a speech to-morrow in favor of universal service," father said to me. "My good friends here, who believe in it as much as I do, feel that the time is not ripe, that the country would not understand it, and that it will merely provoke a storm of adverse criticism. I have told them that although the country may criticize, and although unquestionably a storm of attacks will be directed against me, it must be done, because the country must begin thinking on the subject."

He spoke next day before the assembled students. The ring of serious khaki-clad men seated on the parade ground, father speaking very earnestly in the center, speaking until after dark, when he had to finish by a lantern, is a clear picture to me.

To many of them this exposition was the first they had ever heard on the subject.

Most of them up to this time had not been interested in it, and had felt vaguely that compulsory military training and service was synonymous with the German system and was not democratic. When France and Switzerland were brought to their attention as democracies, as efficient democracies, and as countries which had a thoroughly developed system of universal military training, their eyes were opened and they saw the matter in a new light. From this camp, directed in a large part by my father's and General Wood's inspiration and ideas, grew a nation-wide group of young men who felt the seriousness of the situation, young men who realized we must take our part and who wished, as one of my private soldiers put it to me, "At least to have a show for their white alley" when the war broke.

During the ensuing winter and summer in many parts of the country enthusiasts were working, and many more camps were founded and carried to a successful completion. Recognition of a mild sort was obtained from the National Government. Not recognition which permitted men to go as men should go in a democracy, to learn to serve their country, as pupils of the country, at the country's expense, but at least as men doing something which was not unrecognized and frowned on by their government.

Toward the winter of 191 7 father talked ever increasingly to all of us concerning his chance of being permitted to take a division or unit of some sort to Europe. When war was declared he took this matter up directly with the President. What happened is now history. He took his disappointment as he took many other disappointments in his life. Often after he had worked with all that was in him for something, when all that could be done was done, he would say, "We have done all we can; the result is now on the knees of the gods."

Meanwhile he was constantly interested in and constantly talked with all of us about what we were doing. At last, two months after we severed diplomatic relations, training camps for officers were called into being with enormous waste and inefficiency, and we ambled slowly toward the training of an army and its commanding personnel.

All of us except my brother Quentin left for Plattsburg. Quentin, on the day before diplomatic relations were severed, had telephoned from college to father to say he would go into the air service, where his real ability as a mechanician stood him in good stead. Of the other three, Kermit had had the least training from a purely military standpoint^ having been in South America during most of the time when we had been working on the "Plattsburg movement." His ability and experience, however, in other ways were greater, as in his hunting trips in Africa and South America he had handled bodies of men in dangerous situations. Archie had attended practically all the camps, and was naturally a fine leader of men and a boy of great daring.