My Brother, Theodore RooseveltRobinson, Corinne Roosevelt
History
My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
Senator Davenport had been in poor health at the time, and my brother
called him entirely “Little Eva,” after the angel child of Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” both because of his rather
transparent appearance and his high-minded principles (upon which the
Colonel dilated in his speeches). He called himself “Uncle Tom,” and
Senator Newcomb “Simon Legree,” and those cognomens and no others were
used throughout the entire trip, which proved a veritable holiday.
But neither that trip nor any other trip could have changed the fate
of the Progressive candidates in 1914, and New York State showed at
election time, as did various other states in the country, that America
was not prepared for a third party, even though that party stood, more
than did any other party, for the practical common sense and high
idealism of Theodore Roosevelt.
Just before Election day I accompanied him to Princeton, where Doctor
John Grier Hibben, president of the university, received him with
distinction, and asked him to speak to the body of students there not
only on political faiths but on “Preparedness.” Unless I am very much
mistaken, the first speech on that subject in the United States during
the Great War was that very address made in the auditorium of Princeton
in November, 1914, by my brother. His young and eager listeners among
the student body applauded him to the echo. The cause of preparedness
and true Americanism had no stancher upholder at that time, nor in the
difficult years to come, than President Hibben of Princeton University.
Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Leonard Wood, John Grier Hibben,
Augustus P. Gardner, and other far-seeing patriots, stood from the
beginning for the Allies against the Huns, and for “Preparedness” of a
thorough kind. Had their advice been followed, Germany would very soon
have sensed how formidable an influence in the war America could be. I
am convinced there would have been no sinking of the _Lusitania_, and
hundreds of thousands of gallant young men would not have lost their
lives on Flanders Fields.
On November 12, 1914, after Election day, my brother writes me:
“Darling Corinne:--That is a very dear letter of yours! I shall make no
further statement. Did you see my quotation from Timothy II, Chapter
4, verses 3 and 4? It covers the whole situation. Ever yours, Theodore
Roosevelt.”
The verses referred to are as follows:
(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers,
having itching ears;
(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be
turned unto fables.
He was very apt to sum up a situation in some pregnant verse from the
Bible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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