Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 26

Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 26

Just as the sons of Bill Jones and Henry Brown were flaming with a

desire to get to the firing line, so these four sons of the Colonel

became dominated with a desire to do their part to save the world from

reverting to the barbaric ages and incidentally to prove that they were

worthy sons of the man who had led his troops in the battle of San Juan

Hill.

 

In Germany the Kaiser’s six sons, though holding high commands, were

so protected that the royal family was about the only family in all

Germany that had escaped wounds. Debauches, hunting trips and similar

revelries filled the time of these princelings. The contrast between

them and the four sons of the ex-President of the United States was

indeed marked.

 

Sword-rattling and gold braid were foreign to the nature of this new

world breed, and yet, along with millions of other young Americans,

when the time came they proved their fighting qualities in a way that

put outworn royalty to shame.

 

Quentin, the youngest, was a sophomore when America entered the war.

Theodore, Jr., Archibald and Kermit were all in business, married and

had children. Each entered at once the officers’ training camp at

Plattsburg, seeking no promotion or honors that did not come through

their own merits.

 

Theodore, Jr., after his Plattsburg training, received from President

Wilson his commission in the Officers’ Reserve Corps. He earned his

promotion to the rank of major of infantry and left Plattsburg with

confidential orders to sail to France. Here he was transferred to

the 26th Regiment of the line; was gassed at Cantigny, and later

wounded. He received a citation for bravery. After further service

with the Army of Occupation, he returned to America with the rank of

Lieutenant-Colonel.

 

Archie, after the same course of training, left Plattsburg with the

rank of lieutenant under confidential orders to proceed to General

Pershing’s headquarters in France. He was later transferred to the

26th Regiment of the line, and while leading his men in an attack was

wounded by a bullet and lay for fourteen hours unattended in No Man’s

Land. For his gallantry he was later recommended by General Pershing

for promotion to the rank of captain. He received the French War Cross

while lying on an operating table. He came back to Sagamore Hill to

recover from his wounds, and he was the only one of the Colonel’s sons

who was with him when he died.

 

Kermit was appointed a captain of the United States National Army and

left Plattsburg to accept a position in the British army, where, after

serving as a captain and receiving the British Military Cross, he was

transferred, in accordance with his wishes, to the army in France.

 

Then there was Quentin--the youngest--who derived his name from an

ancestor who left France 225 years ago. Quentin suffered from a defect

of vision, which led to his rejection in the first officers’ training

camp. He was wild to get to the front; and his next thought was to

become an airman. It was natural that the father, who had ridden

bucking broncos, should be pleased to see in his youngest a desire to

gain mastery over a bucking airplane. And it was also very natural that

the father should want to try the aerial steed for himself. Hence it

was that early one morning the car of the Colonel, driven by Charley

Lee, his colored chauffeur, shot down Sagamore Hill to the aviation

camp at Mineola, Long Island.

 

The Colonel’s arrival had been anticipated, for a group of army

officers left a nearby hangar and strode forward to greet him. For

a moment the Colonel was a youth again, keenly interested in the

mechanics of the car and as eager as Quentin to explore the virgin

reaches of space. With nonchalance, yet with a heart that no doubt

thumped with excitement, the Colonel climbed into the airplane and

helped the pilot to buckle him in. The next moment the former President

of the United States had soared away on his first air flight. After

a forty minutes’ ride over and about Long Island Sound, in which all

of the eccentricities of aerial travel were demonstrated, the Colonel

was volplaned to the ground. Every other experience in the realm of

sportsmanship had been his--and now the climactic experience had been

accomplished.

 

Having met his own boy Quentin on his own ground, and having, as a

father, learned for himself just what his son was proposing to do, he

went back to that interview with Quentin, which resulted in his giving

his consent to his enrollment in the most dangerous branch of the

service. Quentin was on the verge of applying for enlistment in the

Canadian Flying Corps when it was announced that the War Department

had accepted him in the U. S. Aviation Section. He went with the first

flying unit to France in July, 1917, reaching France a few weeks after

Archie and Theodore, Jr.

 

One day, just after his brothers, Theodore and Archie, had gone to

France, Colonel Roosevelt was entertaining about a thousand visitors at

a patriotic rally at Sagamore Hill. An army airplane soared up the bay.

The airman performed various maneuvers that thrilled the throng but the

father did not know till days afterward that the daring aviator was

Quentin.

 

It was one of the ironies of life that not long after this episode

there came an overseas cable to Colonel Roosevelt which brought the war

home to him in a way that can only be realized by the man who has lost

a son.

 

Mr. Philip E. Thompson, a newspaper man stationed at Oyster Bay, has

thus described how the Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt bore the news of

their loss:

 

“At 7:30 on the following morning the newspaper man at Oyster Bay rang

the bell at Sagamore Hill. The Colonel came to the door. There was no

need to speak.

 

The two walked to the old-fashioned veranda of the Roosevelt house.

And there, with the early morning breezes sweeping from the Sound,

the Colonel heard the positive confirmation of the tragedy of the

trenches--that the previous night’s cablegrams had been too cruelly

verified.

 

For a long space the Colonel walked in silence, his brow furrowed.

Then, turning to his companion, he said:

 

“But--Mrs. Roosevelt! How am I going to break it to her?”

 

It was of his wife and not of himself that the Colonel thought and

pondered.

 

Abruptly he turned back to the house--to face the hardest task of his

life. For the first time death had entered the intimate Roosevelt

family circle.

 

A few hours later the newspaper man saw the Colonel again. With him was

Mrs. Roosevelt, with eyes bright and voice steady. Yet it was plain

that she had been told.

 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD

 

ROOSEVELT’S SERVICE STARS]

 

Thus, with telegrams and cablegrams of sympathy flooding the little

Oyster Bay office by thousands, the father and mother of the boy

who had given his life above the lines--received the news that their

youngest born would never return.”

 

The only public statement Colonel Roosevelt made concerning Quentin’s

death was in every way typical of the man:

 

“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad that he got to the front and had

a chance to render some service to his country and show the stuff that

was in him before his fate befell him.”

 

Quentin lies buried in France. There his body will remain. No formal

treaty our country could make with France would be as eloquent of the

good will that exists and will continue to exist between these two

great republics as the fact that in French soil lie the bodies of

Americans who fought and died in the common cause of humanity. Thus

Quentin’s father thought; thus the world thinks. The following letter

from Colonel Roosevelt to General March, while respecting the wishes of

those parents who want the bodies of their boys brought home, carried

a message of comfort and agreement to those parents who desired their

dead soldier sons to remain in the resting places prepared for them

near the field of battle by their comrades:

 

My Dear General March:

 

The inclosed clipping states that all the American dead will be

taken home after the war, according to orders received by the army

chaplains. I do not know whom to write to in the matter, so I

merely ask that you turn this over to whomever has charge of it.

 

Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most respectful but most

emphatic protest against the proposed course so far as our son

Quentin is concerned. We have always believed that

 

Where the tree falls,

There let it lie.

 

We know that many good persons feel entirely different, but to us

it is painful and harrowing long after death to move the poor body

from which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that Quentin shall

continue to lie on the spot where he fell in battle and where the

foemen buried him.

 

After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I intend to visit the

grave and then to have a small stone put up saying it is put up by

us, but not disturbing what has already been erected to his memory

by his friends and American comrades in arms.

 

With apologies for troubling you,

 

Very faithfully yours,

 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

 

It seems strange that up to the very time of America’s participation in

the war there should be people in this country who did not realize the

self-sacrificing work for the national cause done by the Colonel, yet

such was true.

 

At a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden Roosevelt was talking about

the part the United States should take in the war, when a man shouted:

 

“Why aren’t you over there yourself?”

 

Some men cried, “Put him out!” But Roosevelt raised his hand for

silence and said, “No, don’t put him out. Let him stay. I want to

answer him.”

 

When the audience was still he went on:

 

“I couldn’t go myself, but I did send my four sons, every one of

whose lives is a thousand times dearer to me than my own. There, you

creature, that is my answer to any man who dares to ask an American

father why he isn’t engaged in this war.” The scorching anger of the Colonel and the scorn of the audience made the heckler slink away with a rebuke he will always remember.