“_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.
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