My Brother, Theodore RooseveltRobinson, Corinne Roosevelt
History
My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
A review of New York’s drafted men before going into training in
September, 1917.
Neither Colonel Roosevelt nor his companions to the left and right,
General Bell and Mayor Mitchel, lived to see the final review.]
All through that autumn he gave himself unstintedly to war work of
all kinds, and amongst other things came, at my request, to a
“Fatherless Children of France” booth at the great Allied Bazaar. The
excitement in front of the booth as he stood there was intense, and as
usual the admirers who struggled to shake his hand were of the most
varied character. We decided to charge fifty cents for a hand-shake,
and we laughed immoderately at the numbers of repeaters. One man,
however, having apparently approached the booth from curiosity, said
“it wasn’t worth it.” The indignation of the crowd was so great that
immediately there were volunteers to pay for three and four extra
hand-shakes to shame the delinquent!
Shortly before that, a friend of Colonel John W. Vrooman’s wrote to him
about a certain meeting at the Union League Club called to witness a
send-off to some of the soldiers. The writer says:
“The moment Colonel Roosevelt appeared on the reviewing stand he was
recognized and the vicinity of the Club was in an uproar. Later on when
visiting a party in the private dining room, he had only been in the
room about three minutes when he was recognized by the girls and boys
who were looking at the review from a building on the opposite side of
the street. Just to show you how he reaches the heart of the people,
they cheered and waved at him until his attention was attracted and he
had to go to the window and salute them. Although he was an hour and a
half in conversation in the club, he did not forget his little friends
across the way but on leaving, went to the window and waved goodbye to
them. Every youngster present will relate this incident, I am sure, for
a long time to come. In leaving the Club house, he was set upon, it
seemed to me, by the youngsters of the East Side so that he had to beg
his way through the crowd that had been waiting in the rain three hours
just to see him, and in getting into the automobile, they appeared
to an on-looker to be clambering all over him, and I would not be
surprised if he carried a few of them away in his pockets as he carried
most of their little hearts with him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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