Colonel Roosevelt (164 page)

46
a strange flurry
A. A. and Mary Hoehling,
The Last Voyage of the Lusitania
(New York, 1956), 39–40. One of the telegram recipients was Alfred G. Vanderbilt.

47
An advisory signed
Ibid. See ibid., 96, for a facsimile reproduction of the German Embassy warning.

48
“It makes my blood”
TR,
Letters
, 8.922.

49
“I came across this”
The New York Times
, 8 May 1915. Ivins had probably seen a recent article by TR
(Ladies’ Home Journal
, Apr. 1915) complaining about having to wade through “a German edition of Aristophanes, with erudite explanations of the jokes.” TR,
Works
, 4.91.

50
Reading it, his face
Bishop,
TR
, 2.375.

51
Many of the first
Syracuse Herald
, 7 May 1915. Vanderbilt drowned, but Miss Pope survived after being nearly given up for dead. Later in life, as Theodate Pope Riddle, she designed the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace memorial in New York City.

52
Two or three
Bishop,
TR
, 2.375–76.

53
1,918 souls aboard
The New York Times
, 8 May 1915. The commonly accepted statistics of the
Lusitania
disaster are 1,959 passengers and crew, with 1,195 dead and 885 bodies unrecovered. Of the 139 Americans aboard, only 11 survived.

54
“That’s murder”
Bishop,
TR
, 2.376.

55
I can only repeat
Oshkosh Daily Northwestern
, 8 May 1915, e.g. (AP dispatch).

56
Woodrow Wilson’s first
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 364. See also
The New York Times
, 10 May 1915.

57
“America has come”
Edward M. House,
The Intimate Papers of Colonel House
, 4 vols., Charles Seymour, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 1.434.

58
After going to church
The New York Times
, 10 May 1915.

59
Sitting down
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 364.

60
Late in the afternoon
Ibid., 364–65.

61
He talked about
Albert Bushnell Hart, ed.,
Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson
(New York, 1918), 88.

62
Roosevelt was not sorry
TR to Fanny Parsons, 6 May 1915 (TRC); TR to ERD, 12 May 1915 (ERDP);
The New York Times
, 11–13 May 1915; TR,
Letters
, 8.1328.

63
Dear Archie
TR,
Letters
, 8.922. The
Gulflight
, though destroyed, was not actually sunk.

64
“starve the whole”
Horace C. Peterson,
Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality, 1914–1917
(Norman, Okla., 1939), 83.

65
Dr. Bernhard Dernburg
The New York Times
, 9 May 1915.

66
New York’s own collector
The cargo manifest also included an enormous quantity of boxes and barrels labeled “cheese,” “beef,” and “oysters,” whose contents may have been less nutritious than indicated. Dernburg was aware of more munitions aboard the
Lusitania
than he revealed, perhaps because he did not want to betray the presence in the New York port collector’s office of a spy reporting on arms exports. On 3 May 1915 the detective reported to Franz von Papen, the German intelligence officer who had visited with TR after the outbreak of the war (see above, 378–79), that the ship carried 12 crates of detonators, 6,026 crates of bullets, 492 cases of “military equipment,” and 223 auto wheels. (Papen,
Memoirs
, 42.) In the 1950s, the Royal Navy surreptitiously targeted the submerged hull of the
Lusitania
in a series of depth-charge “exercises” that shattered it almost beyond recognition. Nevertheless, in 2008 divers found the wreck bestrewn with 4 million rounds of .303 ammunition.
Daily Mail
, 20 Dec. 2008.

67
Roosevelt knew Dernburg
TR,
Letters
, 8.857–61.

68
“a personal attitude”
The New York Times
, 12 May 1915.

69
his note responding
The note, which was almost entirely the work of WW, was signed by Bryan as secretary of state.

70
Wilson stated that
The New York Times
, 14 May 1915.

71
Only the most cynical
This is the thesis that Walter Karp argues at book length in
The Politics of War
. Most historians disagree, seeing WW as genuinely peace-minded in 1915–1916, if indeed (in Karp’s word) vainglorious later on. But the President’s flag-waving bellicosity toward Mexican provocateurs in the Tampico and Vera Cruz incidents of 1914 speaks volumes, as does his confession to Colonel House in Sept. 1915 that he had long wanted the United States to join the world war.
(Intimate Papers
, 2.84.) There is no doubt that the eventual entry of the United States into World War I was the logical, if attenuated, consequence of WW’s demand in Feb. 1915 for a “strict accountability” from Germany for violations of neutrality by its warships.

72
a green and gold fountain pen
For the provenance of this instrument, see Ambrose Flack’s enchanting reminiscence, “Theodore Roosevelt and My Green-Gold Fountain Pen,”
The New Yorker
, 22 May 1948.

73
made a dignified witness
Blakey, “Calling a Boss a Boss.” See also Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., “
Barnes v. Roosevelt:
Theater in the Courtroom,”
New York State Bar Journal
, 63.8 (Dec. 1991).

74
On Thursday, 20 May
Shakespeare,
Henry VIII
, act 3, scene 2;
The New York Times
, 21 May 1915.

75
At 3:45
P.M.
The New York Times
, 23 May 1915.

76
“I will try”
Ibid. It turned out that the jury had been unanimously in favor of TR all along, dividing 11 to 1 only on the minor issue of whether or not to split costs. Stewart F. Hancock, Jr., himself an appellate court judge and the son of one of TR’s lawyers, concludes that both plaintiff and defendant scored damaging points against each other, TR being shown to have selective amnesia about his acceptance of “boss” help and corporate contributions as governor and president, and Barnes being exposed as a pig at the public trough. Although the proof “fell far short of portraying Barnes as an evil man,” TR’s 1914 libel had clearly been defamatory. He was saved from conviction by virtue of his role as a “star performer” who “held his audience” for eight full days of arm-waving testimony. (Hancock, “
Barnes v. Roosevelt.”)
Even EKR, commenting to Cecil Spring Rice on 30 May, wryly described the verdict as “illegal” (CSR).

77
William Ivins returned
Ivins died on 23 July 1915. His career is affectionately recounted in Cohen,
They Builded Better Than They Knew
. Barnes’s fortunes never recovered from the verdict against him. He was passed over for nomination to the U.S. Senate in 1916, and quickly lost force in New York State politics. When he died in 1930 he was remembered only as a figure in “one of the most extraordinary libel suits in the history of the country.” Boston
Herald
, 1 July 1930.

1
Epigraph
Robinson,
Collected Poems
, 526.

2
The President’s official
These two paragraphs owe much to the observations of Margaret Axson Elliott (“Madge,” sister of WW’s first wife) in
My Aunt Louisa and Woodrow Wilson
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944). See also Asquith,
Autobiography
, 330; Thompson,
Presidents I’ve Known
, 253ff.; and for WW’s sexuality, Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 108–9, 185–88. The evidence of an affair with Mary Allen Peck in 1908 is inconclusive, but certainly suggests that in his sixth decade, WW was not short of testosterone.

3
Now, secretly
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 365; Link,
Papers of Woodrow Wilson
, 33.133ff.

4
Wilson had in fact
Ishbel Ross,
Power with Grace: The Life Story of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson
(New York, 1975), 36.

5
On 30 May
The New York Times
, 1 June 1915.

6
“the very nadir”
Robinson,
My Brother TR
, 290.

7
“I have never”
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 406.

8
He cheerfully tolerated
Sonya Levien, “The Great Friend: A Personal Story of Theodore Roosevelt as He Revealed Himself to One of His Associates in Magazine Work,”
Woman’s Home Companion
, Oct. 1919.

9
“Villa,” Roosevelt said
Barbara Gelb,
So Short a Time: A Biography of John Reed and Lousie Bryant
(New York, 1973), 48.

10
Not even an invoice
Financial file, 16 June 1915 (TRP). Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 406, estimates TR’s total costs at $42,000; Thayer,
TR
, 400, at $52,000. Only $1,443 was recoverable from Barnes.
Barnes v. Roosevelt
, 1.125–26.

11
Congress owed him
TR,
Letters
, 6.1539.

12
“Why, I won it”
Thompson,
Presidents I’ve Known
, 114–15. Thompson was an eyewitness to this exchange.

13
Each island gave off
Most of the language, and all of the natural observations in the next five paragraphs are TR’s. See “Bird Reserves,” in TR,
Works
, 4.197–227.

14
fashionable ladies
Ross,
Power with Grace
, 18.

15
“Nature is ruthless”
TR,
Works
, 4.206–7.

16
a big humming hornet
Ibid., 20.210–11.

17
like U-boats
Ibid., 20.213–14. “British Admiralty Confidential Daily Voyage Notice 15th April 1915, issued under Government War Risks Scheme: German Submarines Appear to Be Operating Chiefly Off Prominent Headlands and Landfalls,”
American Journal of International Law
(New York, 1918), 12.867.

18
Early the following
The Washington Post
, 12 June 1915; Dudley Haddock to Charter Heslep, 14 May 1963 (EMH);
The New York Times
, 10 June 1915.

19
“This means war”
Haddock to Heslep, 14 May 1963 (EMH).

20
He could have
Ibid. The statement did not reach New Orleans until late the following day, 11 June, and Haddock put it out on the wires that night. By the following morning it was front-page news. See, e.g.,
The Washington Post
, 12 June 1915, and
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
, 12 June 1915.

21
“Why be shocked”
Karp,
The Politics of War
, 200. For Bryan’s frantic efforts to keep the administration neutral in the first half of 1915, see ibid., chap. 9.

22
the only high official
Ibid., 171.

23
“England is fighting”
Ibid.; Joseph P. Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him
(New York, 1921), 231.

24
A hail of vituperation
See, e.g., New York
World
, 9 June 1915;
The Washington Post, Trenton
(N.J.)
Evening Times
, and
Lowell
(Mass.)
Sun
, 10 June 1915.

25
“God bless you”
Atlanta Constitution
, 10 May 1915.

26
Next morning
Ibid.

27
“Good morning”
Levien, “The Great Friend.”

28
Somehow, Roosevelt had
Ibid.; TR,
Letters
, 1.229.

29
“There was”
Ibid. The boy in the office was Philip Dunne, later a distinguished screenwriter.

30
“radicals laid”
Levien, “The Great Friend.” TR jokingly wrote at the end of a letter to one of
Metropolitan
’s left-wing contributors, “Your rational-individualist and rational-Socialist friend, Theodore Roosevelt.” TR,
Letters
, 8.962.

31
Much of the work
Levien, “The Great Friend.”

32
“I wonder how”
Ibid. One dignified old gentleman was heard breaking into song as he sank to street level.

33
Whatever Roosevelt had lost
“How I wish I were President at this moment!” TR to Roman Romanovich von Rosen, 7 Aug. 1915 (TRP).

34
“My hope is”
TR,
Letters
, 8.947.

35
Roosevelt vaguely explained
Ibid.; TR to KR, 27 May 1915 (TRC).

36
He knew nonetheless
TR,
Letters
, 8.948.

37
Then, he had called
Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 228–29.

38
Now, he lectured
The New York Times
, 22 July 1915.

39
“No nation ever”
Ibid.