Theodore Roosevelt and His Times Part 9

That was it--THE FIGHTING EDGE. Roosevelt had it, if ever man had. The conviction of the need for that combination of physical and spiritual qualities that this represented, if a man is to take his place and keep it in the world, became an inseparable part of his consciousness early in life. It grew in strength and depth with every year that he lived.

He learned the need of preparedness on that day in Maine when he found himself helpless before the tormenting of his young fellow travelers. In the gymnasium on Twentieth Street, within the boxing ring at Harvard, in the New York a.s.sembly, in the conflicts with the spoilsmen in Washington, on the frontier in cowboy land, in Mulberry Street and on Capitol Hill, and in the jungle before Santiago, the lesson was hammered into him by the stern reality of events. The strokes fell on malleable metal.

In the spring of 1897, Roosevelt had been appointed a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy, largely through the efforts of his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Ma.s.sachusetts. The appointment was excellent from every point of view. Though Roosevelt had received no training for the post so far as technical education was concerned, he brought to his duties a profound belief in the navy and a keen interest in its development. His first published book had been "The Naval War of 1812"; and the lessons of that war had not been lost upon him. It was indeed a fortuitous circ.u.mstance that placed him in this branch of the national service just as relations between Spain and the United States were reaching the breaking point. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor, his reaction to that startling event was instantaneous. He was convinced that the sinking of the Maine made war inevitable, but he had long been certain that war ought to come. He believed that the United States had a moral duty toward the Cuban people, oppressed, abused, starved, and murdered at the hands of Spain.

He was not the head of the Navy Department, but that made little difference. The Secretary was a fine old gentleman, formerly president of the Ma.s.sachusetts Peace Society, and by temperament indisposed to any rapid moves toward war. But he liked his a.s.sistant Secretary and did not put too stern a curb upon his impetuous activity and Roosevelt's activity was vigorous and unceasing. Secretary Long has described it, rather with justice than with enthusiasm.

"His activity was characteristic. He was zealous in the work of putting the navy in condition for the apprehended struggle. His ardor sometimes went faster than the President or the Department approved.... He worked indefatigably, frequently incorporating his views in memoranda which he would place every morning on my desk. Most of his suggestions had, however, so far as applicable, been already adopted by the various bureaus, the chiefs of which were straining every nerve and leaving nothing undone. When I suggested to him that some future historian reading his memoranda, if they were put on record, would get the impression that the bureaus were inefficient, he accepted the suggestion with the generous good nature which is so marked in him. Indeed, nothing could be pleasanter than our relations. He was heart and soul in his work. His typewriters had no rest. He, like most of us, lacks the rare knack of brevity. He was especially stimulating to the younger officers who gathered about him and made his office as busy as a hive. He was especially helpful in the purchasing of ships and in every line where he could push on the work of preparation for war."

One suspects that the Secretary may have been more complacently convinced of the forehandedness of the bureau chiefs than was his impatient a.s.sociate. For, while the navy was apparently in better shape than the army in those days, there must have been, even in the Department where Roosevelt's typewriters knew no rest, some of that cla.s.s of desk-bound officers whom he met later when he was organizing the Rough Riders. His experience with one such officer in the War Department was humorous. This bureaucrat was continually refusing Roosevelt's applications because they were irregular. In each case Roosevelt would appeal to the Secretary of War, with whom he was on the best of terms, and would get from him an order countenancing the irregularity. After a number of experiences of this kind, the hara.s.sed slave of red tape threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed, "Oh, dear! I had this office running in such good shape--and then along came the war and upset everything!"

But there were plenty of good men in the navy; and one of them was Commodore George Dewey. Roosevelt had kept his eye on him for some time as an officer who "could be relied upon to prepare in advance, and to act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own responsibility when the emergency arose." When he began to foresee the probability of war, Roosevelt succeeded in having Dewey sent to command the Asiatic squadron; and just ten days after the Maine was blown up this cablegram went from Washington to Hong Kong:

"DEWEY, Hong Kong:

"Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full of coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until further orders. Roosevelt."

The declaration of war lagged on for nearly two months, but when it finally came, just one week elapsed between the sending of an order to Dewey to proceed at once to the Philippines and to "capture vessels or destroy" and the elimination of the sea power of Spain in the Orient.

The battle of Manila Bay was a practical demonstration of the value of the "fighting edge," as exemplified in an a.s.sistant Secretary who fought procrastination, timidity, and political expedience at home and in a naval officer who fought the enemy's ships on the other side of the world.

When war actually came, Roosevelt could not stand inactivity in Washington. He was a fighter and he must go where the real fighting was.

With Leonard Wood, then a surgeon in the army, he organized the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. He could have been appointed Colonel, but he knew that Wood knew more about the soldier's job than he, and he insisted upon taking the second place. The Secretary of War thought him foolish to step aside thus and suggested that Roosevelt become Colonel and Wood Lieutenant-Colonel, adding that Wood would do the work anyway.

But that was not the Roosevelt way. He replied that he did not wish to rise on any man's shoulders, that he hoped to be given every chance that his deeds and his abilities warranted, that he did not wish what he did not earn, and that, above all, he did not wish to hold any position where any one else did the work. Lieutenant-Colonel he was made.

The regiment, which will always be affectionately known as the Rough Riders, was "raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept for two weeks on a transport, and then put through two victorious aggressive fights, in which it lost a third of the officers, and a fifth of the enlisted men, all within a little over fifty days." Roosevelt began as second in command, went through the battle of San Juan Hill as Colonel, and ended the war in command of a brigade, with the brevet of Brigadier-General. The t.i.tle of Colonel stuck to him all his life.

When he became President, his instinctive commitment to the necessity of being prepared had been stoutly reinforced by his experience in what he called "the war of America the Unready." His first message to Congress was a long and exhaustive paper, dealing with many matters of importance. But almost one-fifth of it was devoted to the army and the navy. "It is not possible," he said, "to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance." He urged that Congress forthwith provide for several additional battleships and heavy armored cruisers, together with the proportionate number of smaller craft, and he pointed out the need for many more officers and men. He declared that "even in time of peace a warship should be used until it wears out, for only so can it be kept fit to respond to any emergency. The officers and men alike should be kept as much as possible on blue water, for it is there only they can learn their duties as they should be learned." But his most vigorous insistence was upon gunnery. "In battle," he said once to the graduates of the Naval Academy, "the only shots that count are those that hit, and marksmanship is a matter of long practice and intelligent reasoning." To this end he demanded "unceasing" gunnery practice.

In every succeeding message to Congress for seven years he returned to the subject of the navy, demanding ships, officers, men, and, above all, training. His insistence on these essentials brought results, and by the time the cruise of the battle fleet around the world had been achieved, the American navy, ship for ship, was not surpa.s.sed by any in the world.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, ship's crew for ship's crew; for it was the officers and men of the American navy who made it possible for the world cruise to be made without the smallest casualty.

The question of marksmanship had been burned into Roosevelt's mind in those days when the Spanish War was brewing. He has related in his "Autobiography" how it first came to his attention through a man whose name has in more recent years become known the world over in connection with the greatest task of the American navy. Roosevelt's account is as follows:

"There was one deficiency... which there was no time to remedy, and of the very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men were ignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanship was. We had not realized that the modern battleship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attach at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after letter pointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship. I was much impressed by his letters.... As Sims proved to be mistaken in his belief that the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot, and as the Spaniards proved to be much worse even than we were, in the service generally Sims was treated as an alarmist. But although I at first partly acquiesced in this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the small proportion of hits to shots made by our vessels in battle. When I was President I took up the matter, and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize our whole training in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than to any other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was in 1902" *.

*Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 212-13.

Theodore Roosevelt was a thoroughgoing, bred-in-the-bone individualist, but not as the term is ordinarily understood. He continually emphasized not the rights of the individual, but his duties, obligations, and opportunities. He knew that human character is the greatest thing in the world and that men and women are the real forces that move and sway the world's affairs. So in all his preaching and doing on behalf of a great and efficient navy, the emphasis that he always laid was upon the men of the navy, their efficiency and their spirit. He once remarked, "I believe in the navy of the United States primarily because I believe in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the fighting edge of the average man of the navy." To the graduating cla.s.s at Annapolis, he once said:

"There is not one of you who is not derelict in his duty to the whole Nation if he fails to prepare himself with all the strength that in him lies to do his duty should the occasion arise; and one of your great duties is to see that shots. .h.i.t. The result is going to depend largely upon whether you or your adversary hits. I expect you to be brave.

I rather take that for granted.... But, in addition, you have got to prepare yourselves in advance. Every naval action that has taken place in the last twenty years ... has shown, as a rule, that the defeated party has suffered not from lack of courage, but because it could not make the best use of its weapons, or had not been given the right weapons... . I want every one here to proceed upon the a.s.sumption that any foe he may meet will have the courage. Of course, you have got to show the highest degree of courage yourself or you will be beaten anyhow, and you will deserve to be; but in addition to that you must prepare yourselves by careful training so that you may make the best possible use of the delicate and formidable mechanism of a modern warship."

Theodore Roosevelt was an apostle of preparedness from the hour that he began to think at all about affairs of public moment--and that hour came to him earlier in life than it does to most men. In the preface to his history of the War of 1812, which he wrote at the age of twenty-four, this sentence appears: "At present people are beginning to realize that it is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defense upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks, and partly of new vessels rather more worthless than the old." His prime interest, from the point of view of preparedness, lay in the navy. His sense of proportion told him that the navy was the nation's first line of defense. He knew that without an efficient navy a nation situated as the United States was would be helpless before an aggressive enemy, and that, given a navy of sufficient size and effectiveness, the nation could dispense with a great army. For the army he demanded not size but merely efficiency. One of his princ.i.p.al points of attack in his criticism of the army was the system of promotion for officers. He a.s.sailed sharply the existing practice of "promotion by mere seniority."

In one of his messages to Congress he pointed out that a system of promotion by merit existed in the Military Academy at West Point. He then went on to say that from the time of the graduation of the cadets into the army "all effort to find which man is best or worst and reward or punish him accordingly, is abandoned: no brilliancy, no amount of hard work, no eagerness in the performance of duty, can advance him, and no slackness or indifference, that falls short of a court-martial offense, can r.e.t.a.r.d him. Until this system is changed we cannot hope that our officers will be of as high grade as we have a right to expect, considering the material from which we draw. Moreover, when a man renders such service as Captain Pershing rendered last spring in the Moro campaign, it ought to be possible to reward him without at once jumping him to the grade of brigadier-general."

It is not surprising to find in this message also a name that was later to become famous in the Great War. Roosevelt had an uncanny gift of prophecy.

More than once, as President, he picked out for appreciation and commendation the very men who were to do the big things for America when the critical hour came.

CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST FOUR YEARS

When the Great War broke out in August, 1914, Roosevelt instantly stiffened to attention. He immediately began to read the lessons that were set for the world by the gigantic conflict across the sea and it was not long before he was pa.s.sing them on to the American people. Like every other good citizen, he extended hearty support to the President in his conduct of America's foreign relations in the crisis. At the same time, however, he recognized the possibility that a time might come when it would be a higher moral duty to criticize the Administration than to continue unqualified support. Three weeks after war had begun, Roosevelt wrote in "The Outlook":

"In common with the immense majority of our fellow countrymen, I shall certainly stand by not only the public servants in control of the Administration at Washington, but also all other public servants, no matter of what party, during this crisis; asking only that they with wisdom and good faith endeavor to take every step that can be taken to safeguard the honor and interest of the United States, and, so far as the opportunity offers, to promote the cause of peace and justice throughout the world. My hope, of course, is that in their turn the public servants of the people will take no action so fraught with possible harm to the future of the people as to oblige farsighted and patriotic men to protest against it."

One month later, in a long article in "The Outlook", Roosevelt reiterated this view in these words:

".... We, all of us, without regard to party differences, must stand ready loyally to support the Administration, asking nothing except that the policy be one that in truth and in fact tells for the honor and interest of our Nation and in truth and in fact is helpful to the cause of a permanent and righteous world peace."

In the early months of the war, Roosevelt thus scrupulously endeavored to uphold the President's hands, to utter no criticism that might hamper him, and to carry out faithfully the President's adjuration to neutrality. He recognized clearly, however, the price that we must pay for neutrality, and he set it forth in the following pa.s.sage from the same article: "A deputation of Belgians has arrived in this country to invoke our a.s.sistance in the time of their dreadful need. What action our Government can or will take I know not. It has been announced that no action can be taken that will interfere with our entire neutrality.

It is certainly eminently desirable that we should remain entirely neutral, and nothing but urgent need would warrant breaking our neutrality and taking sides one way or the other. Our first duty is to hold ourselves ready to do whatever the changing circ.u.mstances demand in order to protect our own interests in the present and in the future; although, for my own part, I desire to add to this statement the proviso that under no circ.u.mstances must we do anything dishonorable, especially toward unoffending weaker nations. Neutrality may be of prime necessity in order to preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in so much of the world as is not affected by the war, and to conserve our influence for helping toward the reestablishment of general peace when the time comes; for if any outside Power is able at such time to be the medium for bringing peace, it is more likely to be the United States than any other. But we pay the penalty of this action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and possibly for others in the future, by forfeiting our right to do anything on behalf of peace for the Belgians in the present.

We can maintain our neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid unoffending weak powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshed and misery through no fault of their own. Of course it would be folly to jump into the gulf ourselves to no good purpose; and very probably nothing that we could have done would have helped Belgium. We have not the smallest responsibility for what has befallen her, and I am sure that the sympathy of this country for the men, women, and children of Belgium is very real. Nevertheless, this sympathy is compatible with full acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our uttering a single word of official protest unless we are prepared to make that protest effective; and only the clearest and most urgent national duty would ever justify us in deviating from our rule of neutrality and noninterference. But it is a grim comment on the professional pacifist theories as. .h.i.therto developed that our duty to preserve peace for ourselves may necessarily mean the abandonment of all effective efforts to secure peace for other unoffending nations which through no fault of their own are dragged into the War."

The rest of the article concerned itself with the lessons taught by the war, the folly of pacifism, the need for preparedness if righteousness is not to be sacrificed for peace, the worthlessness of treaties unsanctioned by force, and the desirability of an a.s.sociation of nations for the prevention of war. On this last point Roosevelt wrote as follows:

"But in view of what has occurred in this war, surely the time ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a great world agreement among all the civilized military powers TO BACK RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FORCE. Such an agreement would establish an efficient World League for the Peace of Righteousness. Such an agreement could limit the amount to be spent on armaments and, after defining carefully the inalienable rights of each nation which were not to be transgressed by any other, could also provide that any cause of difference among them, or between one of them and one of a certain number of designated outside non-military nations, should be submitted to an international court, including citizens of all these nations, chosen not as representatives of the nations, BUT AS JUDGES and perhaps in any given case the particular judges could be chosen by lot from the total number. To supplement and make this effectual it should be solemnly covenanted that if any nation refused to abide by the decision of such a court the others would draw the sword on behalf of peace and justice, and would unitedly coerce the recalcitrant nation. This plan would not automatically bring peace, and it may be too soon to hope for its adoption; but if some such scheme could be adopted, in good faith and with a genuine purpose behind it to make it effective, then we would have come nearer to the day of world peace. World peace will not come save in some such manner as that whereby we obtain peace within the borders of each nation; that is, by the creation of reasonably impartial judges and by putting an efficient police power--that is, by putting force in efficient fashion--behind the decrees of the judges. At present each nation must in the last resort trust to its own strength if it is to preserve all that makes life worth having. At present this is imperative. This state of things can be abolished only when we put force, when we put the collective armed power of civilization, behind some body which shall with reasonable justice and equity represent the collective determination of civilization to do what is right."

From this beginning Roosevelt went on vigorously preaching preparedness against war; and the Great War had been raging for a scant seven months when he was irresistibly impelled to utter open criticism of President Wilson. In April, 1915, in The Metropolitan Magazine, to which he had transferred his writings, he declared that "the United States, thanks to Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, has signally failed in its duty toward Belgium." He maintained that the United States, under the obligations a.s.sumed by the signature of The Hague Conventions, should have protested to Germany against the invasion of Belgium.

For two years thereafter, while Germany slapped America first on one cheek and then on the other, and treacherously stabbed her with slinking spies and dishonored diplomats, Roosevelt preached, with growing indignation and vehemence, the cause of preparedness and national honor.

He found it impossible to support the President further. In February, 1916, he wrote:

"Eighteen months have gone by since the Great War broke out. It needed no prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of forecasting the future, to see that, when such mighty forces were unloosed, and when it had been shown that all treaties and other methods. .h.i.therto relied upon for national protection and for mitigating the horror and circ.u.mscribing the area of war were literally 'sc.r.a.ps of paper,' it had become a vital necessity that we should instantly and on a great and adequate scale prepare for our own defense. Our men, women, and children--not in isolated cases, but in scores and hundreds of cases--have been murdered by Germany and Mexico; and we have tamely submitted to wrongs from Germany and Mexico of a kind to which no nation can submit without impairing its own self-respect and incurring the contempt of the rest of mankind. Yet, during these eighteen months not one thing has been done.... Never in the country's history has there been a more stupendous instance of folly than this crowning folly of waiting eighteen months after the elemental crash of nations took place before even making a start in an effort--and an utterly inefficient and insufficient effort-for some kind of preparation to ward off disaster in the future.

"If President Wilson had shown the disinterested patriotism, courage, and foresight demanded by this stupendous crisis, I would have supported him with hearty enthusiasm. But his action, or rather inaction, has been such that it has become a matter of high patriotic duty to oppose him.... No man can support Mr. Wilson without at the same time supporting a policy of criminal inefficiency as regards the United States Navy, of short-sighted inadequacy as regards the army, of abandonment of the duty owed by the United States to weak and well-behaved nations, and of failure to insist on our just rights when we are ourselves maltreated by powerful and unscrupulous nations."

Theodore Roosevelt could not, without violating the integrity of his own soul, go on supporting either positively by word or negatively by silence the man who had said, on the day after the Lusitania was sunk, "There is such a thing as a nation being too proud to fight," and who later called for a "peace without victory." He could have nothing but scorn for an Administration whose Secretary of War could say, two months after the United States had actually entered the war, that there was "difficulty. .. disorder and confusion... in getting things started,"

and could then add, "but it is a happy confusion. I delight in the fact that when we entered this war we were not like our adversary, ready for it, anxious for it, prepared for it, and inviting it."

Until America entered the war Roosevelt used his voice and his pen with all his native energy and fire to convince the American people of three things that righteousness demanded that the United States forsake its supine neutrality and act; that the United States should prepare itself thoroughly for any emergency that might arise; and that the hyphenated Americanism of those who, while enjoying the benefits of American citizenship, "intrigue and conspire against the United States, and do their utmost to promote the success of Germany and to weaken the defense of this nation" should be rigorously curbed. The sermons that he preached on this triple theme were sorely needed. No leadership in this phase of national life was forthcoming from the quarter where the American people had every right to look for leadership. The White House had its face set in the opposite direction.

In August, 1915, an incident occurred which set the contrast between the Rooseveltian and Wilsonian lines of thought in bold relief. Largely through the initiative of General Leonard Wood there had been organized at Plattsburg, New York, an officers' training camp where American business men were given an all too brief course of training in the art and duty of leading soldiers in camp and in the field. General Wood was in command of the Plattsburg camp. He invited Roosevelt to address the men in training. Roosevelt accepted gladly, and in the course of his speech made these significant statements:

"For thirteen months America has played an ign.o.ble part among the nations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we have covenanted to protect, wronged. We have seen our men, women, and children murdered on the high seas without protest. We have used elocution as a subst.i.tute for action.

"During this time our government has not taken the smallest step in the way of preparedness to defend our own rights. Yet these thirteen months have made evident the lamentable fact that force is more dominant now in the affairs of the world than ever before, that the most powerful of modern military nations is utterly brutal and ruthless in its disregard of international morality, and that righteousness divorced from force is utterly futile. Reliance upon high sounding words, unbacked by deeds, is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of sham.

"It is not a lofty thing, on the contrary, it is an evil thing, to practise a timid and selfish neutrality between right and wrong. It is wrong for an individual. It is still more wrong for a nation.

"Therefore, friends, let us shape our conduct as a nation in accordance with the highest rules of international morality. Let us treat others justly and keep the engagements we have made, such as these in The Hague conventions, to secure just treatment for others. But let us remember that we shall be wholly unable to render service to others and wholly unable to fulfill the prime law of national being, the law of self-preservation, unless we are thoroughly prepared to hold our own.

Let us show that a free democracy can defend itself successfully against any organized and aggressive military despotism."

The men in the camp heard him gladly and with enthusiasm. But the next day the Secretary of War sent a telegram of censure to General Wood in which he said:

"I have just seen the reports in the newspapers of the speech made by ex-President Roosevelt at the Plattsburg camp. It is difficult to conceive of anything which could have a more detrimental effect upon the real value of this experiment than such an incident.... No opportunity should have been furnished to any one to present to the men any matter excepting that which was essential to the necessary training they were to receive. Anything else could only have the effect of distracting attention from the real nature of the experiment, diverting consideration to issues which excite controversy, antagonism, and ill feeling and thereby impairing if not destroying, what otherwise would have been so effective."

On this telegram Roosevelt's comment was pungent: "If the Administration had displayed one-tenth the spirit and energy in holding Germany and Mexico to account for the murder of men, women, and children that it is now displaying in the endeavor to prevent our people from being taught the need of preparation to prevent the repet.i.tion of such murders in the future, it would be rendering a service to the people of the country."