My Brother, Theodore RooseveltRobinson, Corinne Roosevelt
History
My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt
Robinson, Corinne Roosevelt
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919
My sister, Mrs. Cowles, was even more delicate than usual that
autumn, and I was with her at the time he wrote me the above letter.
His admiration for our older sister was unbounded, and her splendid
dauntless attitude toward the physical pain she suffered, and her
unbroken patience through suffering, never failed to awake in him a
responsive appreciation.
About that time President Wilson entered into a correspondence with
Germany of which my brother disapproved. On October 13 he dictated the
following statement at his home on Sagamore Hill:
“I regret greatly that President Wilson has entered into these
negotiations, and I trust they will be stopped. We have announced that
we will not submit to a negotiated Peace, and under such conditions, to
begin negotiations is bad faith with ourselves and our Allies.”
Again on October 25, in an open letter to his intimate friend Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, “Let us,” he says, “amongst other things, dictate
Peace by the hammering of guns, and not talk about Peace to the
accompaniment of the clicking of typewriters.”
Although the extracts which follow were written and published several
weeks later than the above quotations, I prefer to give them in
this connection, for Colonel Roosevelt’s attitude toward “Peace
without victory” and a probable League of Nations has been so often
misrepresented. The Kansas City _Star_, the newspaper with which
Colonel Roosevelt had actual connection during the last year of his
life, published an editorial after his death in answer to a remark made
by Senator Hitchcock, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in
which he expressed the opinion that if Colonel Roosevelt were alive,
“he would be found supporting the League of Nations as ardently as
President Wilson.”
_The Star_ denied this assertion, and said:
“From the beginning of the discussion of the proposed League, _The
Star_ has been anxious to find practical features which it could
support as a real defense toward lasting peace. In the last weeks of
1918, the matter was taken up with Colonel Roosevelt who proved to be
of the same mind. He recognized the war weariness of the world,--a
weariness in which he shared to the full--and was anxious to further
any practical step in international organization. The difficulty was
to find the practical basis. After his first editorial approving
certain principles of a League, a member of _The Star_ staff discussed
the matter with him late in December at the Roosevelt Hospital. The
suggestion was made that in a contribution he might point out certain
things which a loosely organized League might accomplish. He replied
that he could see so little that it might accomplish, in comparison
with the rosy pictures that had been painted of its possibilities, that
he hesitated to write on that line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account