"The regular officers are fine fellows, but for any serious work we should eliminate two thirds of the older men and a quarter of the younger men, and use the remainder as a nucleus for, say, three times their number of civilian officers. Except with a comparatively small number, too long a stay in our army--with its peculiar limitations--produces a rigidity of mind that refuses to face the actual conditions of modern warfare. But the wonder is that our army and navy have been able to survive in any shape after five years of Baker and Daniels."--_September 17, 1917._ "Along many lines of preparation the work here is now going fairly fast--not much of a eulogy when we are in the ninth month of the war. But there cannot be much speed when military efficiency is subordinated to selfish personal politics, the gratification of malice, and sheer wooden-headed folly."--_October 14, 1917_. "The socialist vote [in the New York mayoralty election] was rather ominous. Still, on the whole, it was only about one fifth of the total vote. It included the extreme pacifist crowd, as well as the vicious red-flag men, and masses of poor, ignorant people who, for example, would say. 'He'll give us five-cent milk,' which he could have given as readily as he could have given the moon."--_November 7, 1917_. "Well, it's dreadful to have those we love go to the front; but it is even worse when they are not allowed to go to the front."--_Letter to Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., November 11, 1917._ "Yesterday mother and I motored down to the draft camp at Yaphank. First, I was immensely pleased with the type of the men, and the officers are just as good as the average of young West Pointers. I believe that in the end that army there will be as fine a body of fighting men as any nation in the world could desire to see under its banners. But there is still, after nearly three months that they have been called out, some shortage in warm clothes; there are modern rifles for only one man in six; there are only about four guns to an artillery brigade."--_November 19, 1917._ "Of course, the root of our trouble lies in our government's attitude during the two and one half years preceding our entry into the war, and its refusal now to make the matter one in which all good citizens can join without regard to party, and paying heed only to the larger interests of the country and of mankind at large.... I now strike hands with any one who is sound on Americanism and on speeding up the war and putting it through to the finish; but we _ought_ to take heed of our industrial and social matters too."--_Thanksgiving Day, 1917._