Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 25

Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 25

On they went, however, enduring the dangers and hardships they

encountered like the true explorers they were. They had to wade through

water for days at a time. Their shoes were never dry. Insect bites

became festering wounds in their bodies. Poisonous ants, biting flies,

ticks, wasps and bees never ceased to torment them.

 

Under these circumstances the temper of the men was sorely tried. At

last came a tragedy. Julio, one of their attendants, a powerful fellow

but a rogue, shot Paishon, a good-natured negro sergeant. The murderer

escaped into the wilderness and was never found.

 

At last, exhausted and almost broken by their terrible hardships, they

reached their destination. They had put on the map a river of some

1,500 kilometers’ length from its highest source to its confluence with

the Amazon.

 

Some of his statements on the subject of his explorations and

discoveries were twisted and ridiculed by the press. The fact remains

that he rendered a great service to geographers by locating the mouth

of this river exactly. Other explorers had discovered its source but

they possessed neither the courage nor endurance to follow it to its

mouth. It was a real River of Doubt, because nobody knew where it led

until Colonel Roosevelt cleared away the mystery.

 

Colonel Rondo, chief of the Brazilian mission which had accompanied the

Colonel’s party, told later how the Colonel’s leg had become infected.

While the party was shooting the rapids in the River of Doubt, he said,

the boat came near being capsized, and in trying to save it Colonel

Roosevelt received a wound in the leg. Poison spread from this to the

blood and impeded the Colonel’s walking.

 

When he returned to New York, highly honored by the Brazilian

government and praised for his achievements by explorers who knew the

greatness of his undertaking, he was a sick man. Fever burned within

him. His constitution was undermined. He admitted now that he had

waited too long to undertake the hardest and most perilous task of his

life.

 

These facts lead inevitably to the conclusion that the trip to South

America marked the beginning of the end for the Colonel. Friends and

physicians point to the fact that from that time began the series of

maladies that attacked him recurrently until his death. Viewing the

terrible hardships Roosevelt experienced on this journey of exploration

it is not going wide of the mark to say that he laid on the altar of

science a score of what would have been his most fruitful years.

 

 

 

 

XVII

 

Roosevelt’s Part in the World War

 

 

When America entered the world war Theodore Roosevelt stood among the

first of those who volunteered their services. He had dealt with the

grasping Prussian spirit in the Venezuelan incident in 1902, and made

the sword-clanking junkers back down. He was fervently anxious to help

do it again.

 

The Colonel announced that he had asked the War Department for

permission to raise a body of troops. “In such event, I and my four

sons will go,” he said, and added: “I don’t want to be put in the

position of saying to my fellow countrymen, ‘Go to war.’ I want to be

in the position of saying: ‘Come to the war; I am going with you.’”

 

Then, after a period of suspense in which the Colonel was a veritable

Paul Revere in urging the nation to prepare, war actually came. On this

momentous day the former President of the United States received the

news in about the same spirit that Bill Jones and Henry Brown and the

rest of his Oyster Bay neighbors greeted it. Colonel Roosevelt forgot

that he had been twice President of the United States. He remembered

only that America wanted men.

 

The Colonel felt himself to be fully equipped. Aside from the fact that

he was a retired Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, in the

Santiago campaign he had served in the first fight as commander, had

earned promotion to the rank of colonel in his regiment and had ended

the campaign in command of the brigade.

 

The Colonel followed up his previous application to the Secretary of

War, with the telegram from which these words are quoted:

 

“To the Secretary of War, Washington, D. C.

 

“In view of the fact that Germany is now actually engaged in war

with us, I again earnestly ask permission to raise a division for

immediate service at the front. My purpose would be, after some six

weeks’ preliminary training here, to take it direct to France for

intensive training, so that it could be sent to the front in the

shortest possible time to whatever point was desired. I should, of

course, ask no favors of any kind, except that the division be put

in the fighting line at the earliest possible moment.

 

“THEODORE ROOSEVELT.”

 

Meanwhile, while Colonel Roosevelt waited with the ardor of a boy

the answer to this appeal, applications for military service abroad

under him were pouring in from all sections of the country. News of

his desire to fight in France had spread like wildfire, and every man

who had served with the Colonel at Santiago, as well as every man

who wished that he had served with him, wired, wrote and telephoned

his application to serve now. Authors, artists, engineers, cowboys,

clerks, lawyers, ministers, wanted to go to France with “Teddy.”

“Battling” Nelson and “Kid” McCoy were among the applicants. North

Carolina offered to send a company. This evidence of the loyalty of the

red-blooded men who had fought his civic and military battles with him

touched the Colonel deeply and very naturally increased the anxiety

with which he awaited the answer from the War Department.

 

Interesting and enthusiastic was this comment of Colonel Henry

Watterson, the famous editor of “The Louisville Courier-Journal”:

 

“The proposal of Theodore Roosevelt to enlist in the world’s army of

freedom and to go to one of the fronts in Europe leading a body of

American soldiers may not be whistled lightly down the wind as a man

who has a positive genius for the spectacular. It should be considered

very seriously. Men are reached equally through their imagination and

their patriotism, and except for the sympathetic and emotional in man

there would be no armies. The appearance of an ex-President of the

United States carrying the Star-Spangled Banner over a body of American

soldiers to the battlefront would glorify us as will nothing else. It

will electrify the world.”

 

After further correspondence by letter and wire, through which the

Colonel pleaded with all the fervor of his patriotism and all the

strength of his convictions that he be allowed to muster for service

the older men of the country, who would not otherwise be called, the

Secretary of War forwarded him, with assurances of appreciation of

the Colonel’s patriotic spirit, the recommendation of the War College

Division of the General Staff to the effect that no American troops

be employed in active service in any European theatre until after an

adequate period of training and that only regular officers be put in

command of them.

 

Colonel Roosevelt’s unsuccessful effort to go to France with his

proposed volunteer division was undoubtedly the keenest disappointment

of his life. President Wilson, in his statement declining the offer of

the Roosevelt division, did not fail to pay tribute to the patriotism

and courage of the great volunteer.

 

The President said in part:

 

“I shall not avail myself, at any rate at the present stage of the war,

of the authority conferred by the act to organize volunteer divisions.

I understand that this section was added with a view to providing an

independent military command for Mr. Roosevelt and giving the military

authorities an opportunity to use his fine vigor and enthusiasm in

recruiting.”

 

Remarking further that it would be “very agreeable” to him to confer

this honor on the ex-President, the President added that “to do so

would seriously interfere with the carrying out of the chief and most

important purpose contemplated by this legislation, the prompt creation

and early use of an effective army, and would contribute practically

nothing to the effective strength of the armies now engaged against

Germany.”

 

 

ROOSEVELT’S FIGHTING SONS

 

“_Colonel, one of these days those boys of yours will be putting the

name Roosevelt on the map!_”

 

_Peter Dunne’s remark to Roosevelt,

quoted in the “Metropolitan”_

 

But although the door of active personal service was thus shut to him,

there remained open four wide avenues through which the war could come

to him and through which he could pour in the greatest measure the

inspiration of his ideals--his four sons: Theodore, Jr., Kermit, Archie and Quentin.