Washington and when American troops were beginning to reach France,
The Star was barred from the Public Library at Fulton, Missouri, an
intensely Democratic town in Central Missouri, “for disloyalty to the
present Administration.” The notice read:
DEAR SIR: By order from the library board of the Public Library I am
advised to have you discontinue our subscription to The Daily Star
and The Times. Disloyalty to the present Administration is the reason
given for the action taken.
Yours sincerely
FRANCES F. WATSON
Librarian
Answering this editorially, The Star said that throughout the war
it had taken the course of calling attention to the mistakes of the
Government rather than remaining silent on its mistakes; that it
did not believe in saying the country was doing finely when it was
not; that it believed in exposing inefficiency and rooting it out.
It directed attention to results already accomplished by criticism
in bringing into the war preparations men like Schwab, Goethals,
Stettinius, March, Baruch, and others, adding: “The Star is proud
to belong to the little group of constructive critics, including
preëminently Colonel Roosevelt, who worked to get wrong conditions
changed and to contribute to the present result, which to-day is the
salvation of the cause we fight for. For it to have done anything else
would have been faithlessness to its trust.”
When at last the stirring-up of the Administration had borne fruit and
American troops were in France and on the way in considerable, though
disappointing, numbers, Colonel Roosevelt slowed down his bombardment
of the Washington authorities. His campaign had produced results. He
was right in doing all he could to speed up war preparations, and
he stood his ground in the face of widespread censure in the way he
always did. Hostile newspapers had demanded that the Postmaster-General
suppress the circulation of the Roosevelt articles; indeed, a
post-office inspector had visited Kansas City with the idea of denying
The Star admission to the mails, but the Administration made no further
move in this direction.
Even when the turning of the tide had set in, Roosevelt’s demand was
for men, more men, and then more men for France. He would have in
all six or seven million men in training, and four million American
soldiers in France in the spring of 1919. In the first article he sent
after the news of Quentin’s death, he said:
Now and always afterwards we of this country will walk with our heads
high because of the men who face death and wounds, and so many of
whom have given their lives for this nation and for the great ideals
of humanity across the sea. But we must not let our pride and our
admiration evaporate in mere pride, in mere admiration of what others
have done. We must put the whole strength of this nation back of the
fighting men at the front. We owe it to them.
Later on the good effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s criticism was widely
recognized. The Nation, one of the Colonel’s bitterest opponents,
in general a strong supporter of the Administration, said of his
editorials: “It is largely to him that we owe our ability to discuss
peace terms and to criticize at all.”
Summing up the effect of Colonel Roosevelt’s campaign to speed up our
part in the war, The Star said editorially:
There were periods of intolerance when neither Mr. Roosevelt nor The
Star was under any illusions as to the reception that would be given
frank criticism. But it was essential that such criticism be made in
order to correct evils that were really threatening the outcome of the
war....
The selective draft was the big achievement of the Administration
in 1917. But having prepared this, the Government proceeded in most
leisurely fashion, apparently not getting the slightest comprehension
of the danger to the Allied cause resulting from Russia’s collapse.
The War Department continued to be run, as it had been in the past,
by amiable old gentlemen who were wholly unfit for the task. Although
airplanes had become an essential feature of modern warfare, it was
not until weeks after war had been declared that the department sent a
commission to Europe to learn what a military airplane was. Rifles are
usually regarded as a part of the military equipment of troops. But it
was two months after the declaration of war before the War Department
decided what type of rifle to make. An army of millions of men was
certain to need uniforms, but the easy-going quartermaster-general
turned down the offer of the wool manufacturers’ association for the
entire output of the country and the result was that the soldiers
went into the winter without warm clothing or overcoats. As for
artillery, the incapacity was complete.
Meanwhile we sent a small expeditionary force to France, and in the
autumn began sending troops across in a leisurely way, at the rate of
ten thousand a week.
Then suddenly, late in March, with the German army driving straight on
Paris and the Allied defenses giving way, under the appeal of Lloyd
George we suddenly woke to the fact that we had been playing with the
war. From that time on we acted as if we had a man’s job, and we got
into the line just in time to save the situation.
All through the fall and winter of last year what Mr. Roosevelt and
the other outspoken critics were trying to do was to arouse the
country and the Administration to the magnitude of the task and to the
danger from delay. They succeeded only partly. But they did succeed
to the extent of forcing the removal of incompetent departmental
chiefs, and the substitution of efficient men who were able to handle
the emergency when the Administration finally discovered that the
emergency existed.
Looking back over the events of the last eighteen months, we believe
no fair-minded American can fail to perceive the patriotic service
done by Mr. Roosevelt and other critics, who were seeking to awaken
the Government from a lethargy that just missed proving fatal to the
Allied cause.
VI
Colonel Roosevelt’s last visit to his desk in the editorial rooms of
The Star was early in October, 1918. It struck those who had been
associated with him that he was not quite as fit as usual. I asked
him if it were true the physicians had placed him on a diet. He
said it was, but, to be frank, he had not given much heed to their
recommendations. In a discussion at his desk with men of the editorial
force a recent article about Roosevelt by George Creel came up. “I
must admit,” said Colonel Roosevelt, laughing, “he took a rather
jaundiced view of me.”
Mr. Kirkwood was away in the army, but Mrs. Kirkwood was in Kansas
City and the Colonel stayed at their home during his visit. At this
time a subject was brought up which had been talked over along in the
summer--a visit from him to the battle front to write at first hand
of the American forces. Newspapers which were receiving the service
and others which had heard of the suggestion were eager for Roosevelt
articles from France, but from the first the Colonel had demurred and
now said a final “No.” His reason was that he could not go as a private
citizen, as he had been denied permission to go as a soldier; it would
not only be unbecoming for a former president of the United States
to go in any newspaper capacity, but how to treat him would be an
embarrassing question to France.
The tide had turned toward the Allies, and the country was certain the
defeat of the enemy was a question of a short time. Colonel Roosevelt’s
articles turned to a discussion of the kind of peace there should be
and examinations of the President’s “Fourteen Points” and his notes
to Austria. On November 11--the day the armistice was signed--it was
considered necessary for Colonel Roosevelt to go to a hospital in New
York. From his hospital room he telegraphed that day an editorial
joining in the general rejoicing over peace and appraising tersely our
part in the war.
A few days later there came an editorial prompted by a letter from a
woman friend in California. Visiting this friend was another woman
whose son had died of influenza in the navy. That mother had said she
had given her boy proudly to her country, “but if only he could have
died with a gun in his hand--a little glory for him and a thought for
me that my sacrifice had not been useless.” The California friend had
written: “There must be other mothers who feel they have laid their
sacrifices on cold altars. You have written much that will comfort the
mothers whose sons have paid with their bodies in battle. Isn’t there
something you can say to comfort these other mothers?”
The letter touched Colonel Roosevelt deeply. “I felt a real pang when
I received this letter,” he wrote, “because the thought suggested had
been in my mind and yet I had failed to express it.” The editorial,
“Sacrifices on Cold Altars,” which he wrote in response, gave
consolation from the heart. It made it clear that all who had given
their lives in the country’s service, whether in action or from
disease, stood on “an exact level of service and sacrifice and honor
and glory.” It concluded:
The mother or wife whose son or husband has died, whether in battle
or by fever or in the accident inevitable in hurriedly preparing a
modern army for war, must never feel that the sacrifice has been laid
on “a cold altar.” There is no gradation of honor among these gallant
men and no essential gradation of service. They all died that we might
live; our debt is to all of them, and we can pay it even personally
only by striving so to live as to bring a little nearer the day when
justice and mercy shall rule in our own homes and among the nations
of the world.
From his entrance to the hospital until his departure on Christmas
day, the editorials were less frequent. The Peace Conference, the
Congressional elections, and the League of Nations were uppermost
in public thought, and on these subjects the Colonel wrote several
editorials. Both Colonel Roosevelt and The Star were anxious to
find some means to lessen the chance of war through international
organization. Both feared, from President Wilson’s addresses, that he
had in view some grandiose plan that would be impractical. In December
a member of The Star’s staff visited the Colonel in Roosevelt Hospital,
New York. At that time he had written one or two editorials discussing
the subject in a tentative way. He was asked if he did not think he
could say something more positive.
“I doubt it,” he said. “I feel there is so little that really can
be done by any form of treaty to prevent war that it would be
disappointing for me to point it out. Any treaty adopted under the
influence of war emotions would be like the good resolutions adopted
at a mass meeting. We have an anti-vice crusade. Everybody is aroused.
The movement culminates in a big meeting and we adopt resolutions
abolishing vice. But vice isn’t abolished that way.”
Correspondence on the subject followed, and December 28, 1918, he wrote
this letter to the member of the staff who had been talking with him:
In substance, or, as our friends the diplomats say, in principle, I
am in hearty accord with you. But do you really think we ought to
guarantee to stand with France and Italy in all future continental
wars? It’s a pretty big guarantee and I don’t know whether it would be
made good. Indeed, I don’t know whether it ought to be made good. I am
most heartily with France and England now, but I certainly would not
have been with France fifty years ago or with England sixty years ago,
and our clear duty to antagonize Germany has slowly become apparent
during the last thirty or forty years. Remember that you are freer to
write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you
propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I
do so it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write
you such an article as you suggest: and then probably one on what I
regard as infinitely more important, namely, our business to prepare
for our own self-defense.
As for Wilson having with him the bulk of the people who are taken in
by this name [The League of Nations], I attach less importance to this
than you do. He is a conscienceless rhetorician and he will always
get the well-meaning, foolish creatures who are misled by names. At
present anything he says about the World League is in the domain of
empty and windy eloquence. The important point will be reached when he
has to make definite the thing for which he stands.
The article written in response to the promise in this letter was
Colonel Roosevelt’s last contribution to The Star. It was dictated at
his home at Oyster Bay, January 3, which was Friday. His secretary
expected to take it to him for correction the following Monday. Instead
an early call on the telephone that morning told of his passing away in
his sleep.
RALPH STOUT
ROOSEVELT IN THE KANSAS CITY STAR
[Illustration]
DR. FITZSIMONS’S DEATH[1]
SEPTEMBER 17, 1917
The first name on the casualty list of the American army in France is
that of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, killed in a German
air raid on our hospitals. Dr. Fitzsimons had already served for some
time in a French hospital. As soon as this Nation went to war he
volunteered for service abroad.
There is sometimes a symbolic significance in the first death in a war.
It is so in this case. To the mother he leaves, the personal grief
must in some degree be relieved by the pride in the fine and gallant
life which has been crowned by the great sacrifice. We, his fellow
countrymen, share this pride and sympathize with this sorrow. But
his death should cause us more than pride or sorrow; for in striking
fashion it illustrates the two lessons this war should especially teach
us--German brutality and American unpreparedness.
The first lesson is the horror of Germany’s calculated brutality. As
part of her deliberate policy of frightfulness she has carried on a
systematic campaign of murder against hospitals and hospital ships.
The first American in our army to die was killed in one of these
typical raids. We should feel stern indignation against Germany for the
brutality of which this was merely one among innumerable instances.
But we should feel even sterner indignation towards--and fathomless
contempt for--the base or unthinking folly of those Americans who aid
and abet the authors of such foul wickedness; and these include all men
and women who in any way apologize for or uphold Germany, who assail
any of our allies, who oppose our taking active part in the war, or who
desire an inconclusive peace.
The second lesson is our unpreparedness. We are in the eighth month
since Germany went to war against us; and we are still only at the
receiving end of the game. We have not in France a single man on the
fighting line. The first American killed was a doctor. No German
soldier is yet in jeopardy from anything we have done.
The military work we are now doing is work of preparation. It should
have been done just three years ago. Nine tenths of wisdom is being
wise in time.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Although Colonel Roosevelt did not begin his regular contributions
to The Star until October 1, the death of Dr. W. T. Fitzsimons, of
Kansas City, moved him to send this article.
BLOOD, IRON, AND GOLD
SEPTEMBER 23, 1917
Bismarck announced that his policy for Germany was one of blood and
iron. The men who now guide, and for some decades have guided,
German international policy have added gold as the third weapon in
Germany’s armory.
[Illustration: A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF ONE OF ROOSEVELT’S
EDITORIALS]
To a policy based on callous disregard of death and suffering, and
the brutal use of force, they have added the habitual and extensive
employment of corruption as a means for weakening their foes and
bending other nations to their service.
The Administration at Washington recently made public the proof that
Ambassador Bernstorff, on behalf of the German Government, was, up to
the very last moment of his stay, engaged in efforts to bribe with
German money American organizations or individuals who could be used to
further Germany’s purpose by protesting against war, demanding peace
at any price, opposing the measures necessary for war, denouncing
the Allied nations, praising unpreparedness, or by some other of the
methods habitual with pro-German Senators, Congressmen, editors, heads
of peace societies and the like.
No well-informed man was surprised at the revelation. Every reasonably
well-informed man, who has known about matters at Washington, has
known that for nearly three years German money and governmental power
has been used for the corruption of American newspapers and pacifist
organizations and for the pay of German, and the bribery of native,
scoundrels to wreck our industries with dynamite and in all ways
debauch our political life. The Government, from the highest official
down, knew all these facts over two years ago. The New York World
published the names of some of the editors and other individuals who
had received money, and the amounts received. The Austrian Ambassador,
Dumba, and two of the German attachés, Boy-Ed and Von Papen, were
dismissed for inspiring and countenancing the intrigues. It was
absolutely impossible that what they did was not ordered and supervised
by Bernstorff, under the direction of the Berlin Government. It was
deeply to our discredit that we did not then show the courage and
manliness to break at once with Germany, instead of hiding our heads in
the sand so as to avoid seeing the guilt of the German Government, and
punishing the minor instruments of wrongdoing who, under no conceivable
circumstances, would or could have acted save as their superiors bade
them act. Germany has hitherto been able to do but little against us
with blood and iron; gold has been her weapon, and her agents have been
the foes of our own household.
Every man in this country who is now playing the pro-German game
should be made to feel that he must overcome a presumption of guilty
motive. There are misguided pro-Germans who are uninfluenced by corrupt
motives, just as there were in the Civil War copperheads who were
merely misguided and not conscious wrongdoers. But these men are in
mighty unpleasant company!
The pacifist, the man who wishes a peace without victory, the supporter
of Senator La Follette or Senator Stone, the man who in any way now
aids Germany, may be honest; but he stands cheek by jowl with hired
traitors, and he is serving the cause of the malignant and unscrupulous
enemies of his country.
THE GHOST DANCE OF THE SHADOW HUNS
OCTOBER 1, 1917
Ten days ago a ghost dance was held in St. Paul under the auspices
of the Non-Partisan League, with Senator La Follette as the star
performer. We have the authority of the German Kaiser for the use of
the word Hun in a descriptive sense, as representing the ideal to which
he wished his soldiers in their actions to approximate. It is therefore
fair to use the word descriptively as a substitute for the German
in this war. It is also fair to use it descriptively of the German
sympathizer in this country, of the man who aids and abets Germany by
condoning the German offenses against us, by seeking to raise class
division in this country, with, of course, the attendant benefit to
Germany; by screaming against the war, or in favor of an inconclusive
peace; or by belittling or sneering at or declaring inopportune the
effort to arouse the spirit of Americanism. The Americans who thus
serve Germany deserve the title of Shadow Huns.
It was to me a matter of sincere regret to have the Non-Partisan League
play the part it did at St. Paul in connection with the meeting
which Senator La Follette addressed. They held what was in effect a
disloyalty day festival. When the Non-Partisan League movement was
first started, I was inclined to hail it, because I am exceedingly
anxious to do everything in my power to grapple with and remedy every
injustice or wrong or mere failure to give ample opportunity to the
farmer. With most of the avowed objects and with some of the methods of
the Non-Partisan League I was in entire sympathy, although there were
certain things it did which I felt should be condemned, and certain
ways of achieving its objects which I believed to be mischievous. But
when the League, on the disloyalty day in question, ranged itself on
the side of the allies of Germany and the enemies of this country,
it became necessary for every loyal American severely to condemn it.
Morally, although doubtless not legally, it thereby came perilously
near ranging itself beside the I.W.W., the German-American Alliance,
and the German Socialist party machine in America.
When I spoke in Minneapolis three men spoke from the same platform
with me. One was that fine and loyal American, Governor Burnquist,
of Swedish ancestry. One was a blacksmith, born in Sweden, a former
member of the Socialist party, who left the party within the last six
months when he became convinced that it was the tool or ally of German
autocracy. The third was another working-man, of German birth.
At the meeting in Wisconsin I was on the platform with the Mayor of
Racine, an American citizen of German birth. My companions throughout
the trip were Judge Harry Olson, of Swedish parentage, and Mr.
Otto Butz, of German parentage, both of whom represent that kind
of Americanism to which we all must subscribe if we are to be good
Americans.
The Americanism of all these men is the Americanism I profess, and it
is the exact antithesis of the attitude of the Shadow Huns, who, under
the lead of native-born Americans like Messrs. La Follette and Townley,
by their utterances, stir dissensions among our own people and weaken
us in the prosecution of the war.
The two working-men of whom I speak, the man born in Sweden and the man
born in Germany, spoke with rugged emphasis of their devotion to this
country, and of their sense of the duty of every man fit to be called
an American in this crisis. They emphasized the fact that Germany’s
social system was based upon the duty of the average man to cringe
before the insolence of his superiors and his right himself to behave
with insolence to his inferiors. It is for this system of cringing
abasement before the powerful, and of brutal insolence to the weak
for which the Shadow Huns in this country stand when they directly or
indirectly talk against our Government for going to war or talk against
any step which it takes for the efficient waging of the war; and, above
all, when they directly or indirectly apologize for or champion Germany.
It is the duty of every American citizen fearlessly, but truthfully,
to criticize not only his Government but his people, for wrongdoing,
or for failure to do what is right. It is his duty to obey the
injunction of President Wilson by insisting upon pitiless publicity of
inefficiency, of subordination of public to private considerations,
or of any other form of governmental failure to perform duty. Such
criticism is absolutely indispensable if we are to do our duty in this
war, and if we are to adopt a permanent policy of preparedness which
will make this Nation safe. But the men who oppose the war; who fail
to support the Government in every measure which really tends to the
efficient prosecution of the war; and above all who in any shape or way
champion the cause and the actions of Germany, show themselves to be
the Huns within our own gates and the allies of the men whom our sons
and brothers are crossing the ocean to fight.
I do not admire these Shadow Huns. But least of all do I admire those
among them, whether Senators, Congressmen, or public officials of any
other kind who, although on Uncle Sam’s pay-roll, nevertheless seek to
stab Uncle Sam in the back.
SAM WELLER AND MR. SNODGRASS
OCTOBER 2, 1917
Readers of “Pickwick,” if such there still be, will recall the time
when Mr. Pickwick was arrested and some of his followers resisted
arrest. Sam Weller made no boasts; but he spoiled the looks of various
opponents. Mr. Snodgrass began ostentatiously to take off his coat,
announcing in a loud voice that he was going to begin. But he gave no
further trouble.