Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 12

Great Heart The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt 12

On one occasion he asked for $500,000 for the purpose of buying

ammunition. Congress gave it to him. A few months later he asked for

$800,000 more. Congress asked what had become of the first $500,000.

 

“We spent it for powder and guns used in target practice,” said

Roosevelt.

 

“What will you do with this $800,000?” a Congressman queried.

 

“Spend it in the same way,” Roosevelt promptly replied.

 

He got the money.

 

In addition to improving the marksmanship of the navy Roosevelt also

took many other important steps in preparation for war. Feeling that

the United States must soon land troops in Cuba, he bought and equipped

transports. He found jealousy existing between regular officers and

engineer officers, and worked hard to remove this. He formed the United

States warships stationed on the Atlantic into one squadron and drilled

them so that they could act in concert if war came. He selected depots

for fuel, provisions and munitions.

 

When Admiral Dewey found coal and ammunition at Hong Kong at the

outbreak of the war, and was thus enabled to reach Manila a week ahead

of his time, it was due to the foresight and energy of Roosevelt that

this was accomplished.

 

There were profiteers in those days, too. Roosevelt, in buying ships to

carry naval supplies, found himself forced to do business with them.

Ships were scarce, and sometimes those available were offered by their

owners at exorbitant prices. Here is the way Leupp heard Roosevelt

handle a lawyer who was representing one of these extortionate firms:

 

“Don’t you feel ashamed to come to me today with another offer after

what you did yesterday? Don’t you think that to sell one rotten ship

to the government is enough for a single week? Are you in such a hurry

that you couldn’t wait even over Sunday to force your damaged goods

upon the United States? Is it an excess of patriotism that brings

you here day after day in this way or only your realization of our

necessities?”

 

“Why our clients”----began the lawyer.

 

“Yes, I know all about your clients,” burst in the Assistant Secretary.

“I congratulate them on having an attorney who will do work for

them which he wouldn’t have the face to do for himself. I should

think, after having enjoyed the honors you have at the hands of the

government, you’d feel a keen pride in your present occupation! No, I

don’t want any more of your old tubs. The one I bought yesterday is

good for nothing except to sink somewhere in the path of the enemy’s

fleet. It will be God’s mercy if she doesn’t go down with brave men on

her--men who go to war and risk their lives, instead of staying home to

sell rotten hulks to the government!”

 

Finally war came. The battleship Maine on February 15, 1898, was blown

up in Havana Harbor and 260 American sailors were killed.

 

Afterward a court of inquiry met to determine what had caused the

explosion. The jury disagreed. Be that as it may, the spark had been

applied to the powder magazine. America was in a convulsion--its voice

was for war.

 

On April 20 President McKinley declared war on Spain.

 

 

ROOSEVELT CHAMPIONS DEWEY

 

Roosevelt had suggested that when war came it would be wise for the

United States to seize the Philippine Islands, then under Spanish

possession. He it was who, when the War Department proposed to supplant

Dewey, successfully urged that he be retained at the Asiatic station.

“Keep the Olympia! Provide yourself with coal,” he cabled to Dewey at

this time.

 

No sooner had President McKinley declared war than Roosevelt sent a

still more vital message to Dewey, ordering him to sail into the port

of Manila and to capture or destroy the Spanish fleet.

 

Those who, at the Cabinet meeting, scoffed at Roosevelt’s plan for a

war now remembered that he had advocated this very act in his programme

and that the officer who had so splendidly captured Manila was the very

man Roosevelt had managed against strong opposition to keep on the job.

 

Roosevelt’s reputation as a picker of men was further illustrated at

this time by the interest he took in Lieutenant Sims, then American

naval attaché at Paris.

 

Sims had written to his superiors letter after letter pointing out

how backward our fleet was in marksmanship. He had definite plans for

teaching Yankee sailors how to shoot. Those in authority considered

Sims an alarmist, but Roosevelt grew concerned as he noted the small

proportion of hits to shots made by our ships. He then sounded the

slogan that “the shots that hit are the shots that count.”

 

Roosevelt could do little then in support of Sims, but when he

became President he remembered Sims and appointed him to lead in

revolutionizing the fleet’s training in marksmanship. It was due to

Sims--now the admiral who has served this country so well in the

present war--that the fighting efficiency of the navy, as far as

gunnery went, became three times more effective.

 

[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD

 

ROOSEVELT ADDRESSING AN INTERESTED AUDIENCE]

 

The following account and appreciation of Admiral Dewey’s work derives

a special interest from the fact that it was written by Colonel

Roosevelt shortly after the battle of Manila:

 

“Admiral Dewey was sent to command the fleet on the Asiatic station

primarily because he had such a record in the past that the best

officers in the navy believed him to be peculiarly a man of the

fighting temperament and fit to meet emergencies, and because he had

shown his willingness to assume heavy responsibilities.

 

“For our own sakes, and in particular for the sake of any naval officer

who in the future may be called upon to do such a piece of work as

Dewey did, let us keep in mind the further fact that he could not

have accomplished his feat if he had not had first-class vessels and

excellently trained men; if his warships had not been so good and his

captains and crews such thorough masters of their art.

 

“A man of less daring courage than Dewey would never have done what

he did; but the courage itself was not enough. The Spaniards, too,

had courage. What they lacked was energy, training, forethought. They

fought their vessels until they burned or sank; but their gunnery

was so poor that they did not kill a man in the American fleet. Even

Dewey’s splendid capacity would not have enabled him to win the battle

of Manila Bay had it not been for the traditional energy and seamanship

of our naval service, so well illustrated in his captains, and the

excellent gun practice of the crews, the result of years of steady

training.”

 

Roosevelt never lost his interest in the navy. Admiral Chadwick wrote a

book on the early period of the American navy. As soon as the book was

published Senator Lodge hurried to the White House, hoping to surprise

Mr. Roosevelt with the news of the publication.

 

“I see,” he remarked, “that Admiral Chadwick has written a book on the

American navy.”

 

“Yes,” broke in Roosevelt, “I have read it. It’s bully. I didn’t think

Chadwick was equal to it.”

 

Roosevelt felt that his work for the navy was done at the outbreak of

the war.

 

“I have nothing more to do,” he said. “I must go to war myself.”

 

He was urged to keep his position. The women of the Cabinet reminded

him that he had six children.

 

“I have done what I could to bring about the war,” he said; “now I have

no right to ask others to fight it out while I stay home.”

 

He resigned to go to the front.

 

 

 

 

VIII

 

Roosevelt’s Rough Riders

 

 

When America went to war with Germany she was in her typical state of

unpreparedness. In spite of her handicaps, the world admits that she

did her tremendous job efficiently.

 

The same state of confusion and unpreparedness existed when America

went to war with Spain. The thing that saved the day in both cases was

the latent fighting strength of the nation. At the beginning of the

Spanish war, just as at the beginning of the war with Germany, the

young men thronged the enlistment centers. Regiments and ships were

besieged with applicants. Men who had deserted in peace times returned,

begging for a chance to fight.

 

 

ROOSEVELT AND WOOD

 

Typical examples of this true American spirit were Theodore Roosevelt

and his comrade, Army Surgeon Leonard Wood. Roosevelt saw in Wood a man

after his own heart. Wood traced his ancestry back to the “Mayflower”;

he was directly descended from Susanna White, whose son, Peregrine

White, was the first white child born in New England. Wood was born

at Winchester, New Hampshire, on October 9, 1860. His father was Dr.

Charles Jewett Wood, who followed the profession of a country doctor.

The boy Leonard went to the district school and later attended an

old-fashioned academy at Middleboro.

 

Upon the death of his father in 1880, Wood entered the Harvard Medical

School. When he graduated he became an intern at the Boston City

Hospital. At twenty-four he began the practice of medicine in Staniford

Street, Boston. He was located in a poor neighborhood and had all he

could do to make ends meet.

 

In 1885 he took an examination for admission as a surgeon in the army.

He passed second in a competitive class of fifty-nine. His first

service was at Fort Warren, Massachusetts. From this post he was

ordered to Arizona. Here he met Captain H. L. Lawton of the Fourth

Cavalry, who later became Major-General Lawton. The two fought Apaches

together. Wood developed into such a good fighting man that before he

had been commissioned three months, and while he still held the rank of

surgeon, he was given the command of the infantry of the expedition.

 

While engaged in this work he announced his opinion that a well-trained

white man could endure more than an Indian. It became his ambition to prove this so far as he himself was concerned.