Colonel Roosevelt (82 page)

Of all American public figures, Theodore Roosevelt best understood what it was like to be shot at point-blank range. For that matter, he was one of the very few who had any acquaintance with the archduke. And what he had seen of that “furious reactionary” in 1910 was not conducive to grief at his passing. But as Roosevelt traveled during the course of the day to Pittsburgh, through regions of Pennsylvania heavily populated by German speakers and Slavs, he could not fail to feel intense local excitement. Gothic and Cyrillic posters shouted alarm at every station newsstand.

AFTER A JOURNEY
of twelve hours, he delivered a husky-voiced address to four thousand wildly applauding Progressives that said nothing about the international situation, except for a vague reference to the administration’s “wretched foreign policy.” For the most part he contented himself with a listless indictment of the New Freedom. He offered only the briefest endorsement of Dean Lewis and Gifford Pinchot, letting his presence onstage with them speak for itself. As oratory, his performance was lackluster; as politics, it was an exercise in adroit self-distancing from the party he had created. He let drop a reference to “the honest Republican rank and file” that caught the editorial attention of
The New York Times
. “
It is such a speech as may be read with equal satisfaction by both parties,” the paper remarked. “Without saying a word about reunion, he has made a most effective argument for it. It is as adroit a speech as even this master politician ever made.” The
Times
was sure he was positioning himself for the GOP nomination in 1916. “In this speech he has struck a great blow to bring it about.”

Dean Lewis was not sure that the Colonel had enough force ever to campaign
again. Roosevelt struck him as a “
thoroughly exhausted” man who should have stayed home. Another Pennsylvania Progressive, Thomas Robins, blamed the Rio da Dúvida for destroying his fire.

“
What on earth, Colonel, has a man of your age to do with explorations, anyway?”

“Youth will be served, Tom. It was my last chance to be a boy.”

ROOSEVELT WAS BACK
in New York the following day, and visited a laryngologist who contradicted Dr. Lambert and said that his throat was healing admirably. This helped confirm his half-guilty conviction that he should do what he could, over the next two years, to keep progressive principles alive, if not the Party itself.

It was not a task he looked forward to. Leaving for South America nine months before, he had felt a Bunyanesque burden falling off his back. Now it weighed on him again. “I am not in good shape,” he wrote Hiram Johnson. “I could handle the jungle fever all right, and the Progressive Party all right, but the combination of the two is beyond me!”

His soul shrank at the prospect of having to get back on the hustings in the fall. But he felt he must try to make the country’s non-Democratic majority understand that
he
was not responsible for putting Woodrow Wilson in power. It was corrupt Old Guard bosses like William Barnes, Jr., who had split the GOP. They must be deposed before there could be any hope of a healing fusion. To that end, he would have to recuperate and rebuild his strength over the summer.

Lawrence and Lyman Abbott cited this necessity as an excuse to persuade him to resign from the editorial board of
The Outlook
. His unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 1912 had cost them many thousands of conservative subscribers. Since progressivism had been so cleverly coopted by Wilson, they felt their magazine was suffering from its identity as the Colonel’s personal mouthpiece. Letting him down as lightly as possible, they suggested that he announce his own desire to quit editing in favor of other interests, political and literary.
He would still be expected to contribute about ten articles over the next year on “current social questions,” but was free to sign up with another magazine. In the meantime,
The Outlook
would continue to pay his salary, as well as that of his new private secretary, John W. McGrath, and rent him an office in the city if he needed one.

Roosevelt accepted these generous terms of severance. Nevertheless, his letter of resignation, released to the press on the Fourth of July, sounded regretful: “
If I had been able to be, as I expected to be, a man entirely removed from all participation in active politics, nothing would give me keener pleasure than to keep on exactly as in the past.”

IN BERLIN, WILHELM II
confirmed to the Austro-Hungarian ambassador that Germany would support the Dual Monarchy in any act of revenge on Serbia for the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He advised quick action, so as to crush pan-Slavism, once and for all, before Russia had time to react.

Even if “
a serious complication in Europe” did ensue, against his expectation, the Kaiser promised to fight on Austria’s side. He said that his chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, would make the promise formal. Summoned to Potsdam, Bethmann-Hollweg undertook to do so, but not without private misgivings.

“
The future lies with Russia,” he told an aide. “She grows and grows, and lies on us like a nightmare.”

WHILE WASHINGTON WAITED
to see what Vienna would do, Americans went back to the business and pleasure of being American. Rep. James F. Byrnes of South Carolina presented President Wilson and Secretary Tumulty with a pair of white duck summer suits. In San Francisco, the city chamber of commerce heralded the imminent opening of the Panama Canal as “the dawn of a new era of unequaled prosperity.” Members of the Buttersville, Michigan, Scandinavian Methodist Church burned their paid-off mortgage and sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” in alternate verses of English and Norwegian. Missouri reported that its registration of automobiles had topped thirty-eight thousand. Ty Cobb, champion slugger of the Detroit American League, was seen dining conspiratorially with the president of the Federal League. A Philadelphia market listed its latest prices for dressed poultry: “Fowls, western fancy, 18 @ 19 cents; fowls, western unattractive, 10 @ 13 cents.” State hospitals in New York experimented with “lawn movies,” a new therapy enhanced by Victrola music. Evelyn Nesbit Thaw announced that she would star in a full-length feature entitled
The Life of Evelyn Nesbit Thaw
. The Pacific Coast Federation for Sex Hygiene sponsored a presentation on “Sex as a Factor in High School and University Life.” West Virginia went dry. Wild strawberries studded the fields around Tryonville, Pa., and Kansas wheat fields ripened northward, in a slow wave of gold.

WHEN THE
IMPERATOR
RETURNED
to New York on 15 July 1914, its register of first-class passengers included Mrs. Nicholas Longworth as well as Mr. and Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt. Alice had stocked up in Paris with all the latest hats and dresses, and was looking forward to wearing something spectacular when her parents welcomed the newlyweds at Sagamore Hill that evening.

It was the first time in four years that the Roosevelts could all be together, and it might be the last for as long again. Alice could stay only one night. Nick (waiting at quayside for the ship to dock) urgently needed her in Cincinnati, where he was campaigning to recapture his Congressional seat. Kermit and Belle were booked to sail on to Brazil in just twelve days. Ethel and Dick Derby would remain on Long Island for a while after that, with
little Richard, their son of fourteen weeks.
So would Ted and Eleanor with Grace, now almost three, and Theodore Roosevelt III, just one month old. Archie, down from Harvard, was available to drive everyone around in the family’s brand-new Buick. Quentin (fully grown now, a big boy not far off seventeen) was getting ready for his first independent adventure, a pack-horse expedition in Arizona.

Alice’s early departure spared her one of the democratic exercises Roosevelt insisted on in his capacity as a man of the people: an open reception for the residents of Oyster Bay. He thought they should be allowed to meet Belle.
That young lady was no more drawn to the hoi polloi than her elder sister-in-law. But she had learned public manners in the courts of Europe, and acquitted herself gracefully as the villagers sipped tea and looked her over.

Though Belle was, as her name and accent implied, Southern-born, her plentiful teeth qualified her as an authentic Roosevelt. The sight of her laughing with Archie, Quentin, and the Colonel was enough to overexpose the fastest camera film. Kermit found it hard to smile. Otherwise, he was beginning to resemble his father.
The slender graduate who had gone south in 1912 was a bulkier personage, with a broadening face and body and passé mustache. Ted and Archie, like most young men of their generation, were slick of hair and clean-shaven.