Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography,

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And how could so great a soul exercise itself to the full, except
by grappling with adversity? The prosperous days seemed to fit
him like a skin, but only in these days of apparent thwarting and
disappointment could he show himself equal to any blows of Fate.
At first he struggled magnificently against crushing odds, asking
no allowances and no favors. He founded and led the Progressive
Party and, in 1912, received the most amazing popular tribute in
our history. And he would have pushed on his work for that party
had not the coming of the World War changed his perspective.
Thenceforth, he devoted himself to saving civilization from the
reptilian and atrocious Hun; that was a task, in comparison with
which the fortune of a political party sank out of sight.

His work demanded of him to rouse his country men from the apathy
and indifference which a timid Administration breathed upon it,
and from the lethargic slumber into which the pro-Germans drugged
it. During four years, his was the one voice in the United States
which could not be silenced. He was listened to everywhere. Men
might agree with him or not, but they listened to him, and they
trusted him. Never for a moment did they suspect that he was
slyly working for the enemy, or for special interests here or
abroad.

He, the supreme American, spoke for America and for the
civilization which he believed America fulfilled. His attacks on
the delays and the incompetence, on the faint-heartedness and
contradictions of the Administration had no selfish object. His
heart was wrenched by the humiliation into which the honor of the
United States had been dragged. The greatest patriotic service
which he could render was to lift it out of that slough, and he
did. The best evidence that he was right lies in the fact that
President Wilson, tardily, reluctantly, adopted, one by one,
Roosevelt's demands. He rejected Preparedness, when it could have
been attained with comparative leisure; he accepted it, when it
had to be driven through at top speed. And so of the other
vitally necessary things. He ceased to warn Americans that they
must be neutral "even in thought"; he ceased to comfort them by
the assurance that a nation may be "too proud to fight"; he
ceased to extol the "justice and humanity of the Germans." That
he suffered these changes was owing to the fact that American
public opinion, largely influenced by Roosevelt's word and
example, would not tolerate them any more. And President Wilson,
when he can, follows public opinion.

Roosevelt took personal pleasure in the bridging of the chasm
which had opened between him and his former party intimates. On
neither side was there recantation, but they could unite again on
the question of the War and America's duty towards it, which
swallowed up partisan grievances. Many of the old time
Republicans who had broken politically from Roosevelt in 1912,
remained devoted personal friends, and they tried to reunite him
and the discordant fragments. One of these friends was Colonel
Robert Bacon, whom every one loved and trusted, a born
conciliator. He it was who brought Roosevelt and Senator Root
together, after more than five years' estrangement. He gave a
luncheon, at which they and General Leonard Wood met, and they
all soon fell into the old-time familiarity. Roosevelt urged
vehemently his desire to go to France, and said that he would go
as a private if he could not lead a regiment; that he was willing
to die in France for the Cause. At which Mr. Root, with his
characteristic wit, said: "Theodore, if you will promise to die
there, Wilson will give you any commission you want, tomorrow."

Roosevelt never fully recovered from the infection which the
fever he caught in Brazil left in his system. It manifested
itself in different ways and the one thing certain was that it
could not be cured. He paid little attention to it except when it
actually sent him to bed. In the winter of 1918, it caused so
serious an inflammation of the mastoid that he was taken to the
hospital and had to undergo an operation. For several days his
life hung by a thread. But, on his recovery, he went about as
usual, and the public was scarcely aware of his lowered
condition. He wrote and spoke, and seemed to be acting with his
customary vigor. That summer, however, on July 14th, his youngest
son, Quentin, First Lieutenant in the 95th American Aero
Squadron, was killed in an air battle near Chambray, France. The
lost child is the dearest. Roosevelt said nothing, but he never
got over Quentin's loss. No doubt he often asked, in silence, why
he, whose sands were nearly run, had not been taken and the
youth, who had a lifetime to look forward to, had not been
spared. The day after the news came, the New York State
Republican Convention met at Saratoga. Roosevelt was to address
it, and he walked up the aisle without hesitating, and spoke from
the platform as if he had no thoughts in his heart, except the
political and patriotic exhortation which he poured out. He
passed a part of the summer with his daughter, Mrs. Derby, on the
coast of Maine; and in the early autumn, at Carnegie Hall, he
made his last public speech, in behalf of Governor Whitman's
candidacy. A little after this, he appeared for the last time in
public at a meeting in honor of a negro hospital unit. In a few
days another outbreak of the old infection caused his removal to
the Roosevelt Hospital. The date was November 11th,--the day when
the Armistice was signed. He remained at the hospital until
Christmas Eve, often suffering acutely from inflammatory
rheumatism, the name the physicians gave to the new form the
infection took. He saw his friends for short intervals, he
followed the news, and even dictated letters on public subjects,
but his family understood that his marvelous physical strength
was being sadly exhausted. He longed to be taken home to Sagamore
Hill, and when his doctor allowed him to go home, he was greatly
cheered.

To spend Christmas there, with his family, even though he had to
spend it very quietly, delighted him. For ten days he seemed to
be gaining, he read much, and dictated a good deal. On January
5th, he reviewed a book on pheasants and wrote also a little
message to be read at the meeting of the American Defense
Society, which he was unable to attend. That evening he spent
with the family, going to bed at eleven o'clock. "Put out the
light, please," he said to his attendant, James Amos, and no one
heard his voice again. A little after four o'clock the next
morning, Amos, noticing that he breathed strangely, called the
nurse, and when they reached his bedside, Roosevelt was dead. A
blood clot in his heart had killed him. Death had unbound
Prometheus.

By noon on that day, the 6th of January, 1919, the whole world
knew of his death, and as the news sank in, the sense of an
unspeakable void was felt everywhere. He was buried on January
8th, on a knoll in the small country graveyard, which he and Mrs.
Roosevelt had long before selected, overlooking Oyster Bay and
the waters of the Sound. His. family and relatives and dear
friends, and a few persons who represented State and Nation, the
Rough Riders, and learned societies, attended the services in the
little church. Just as the coffin was being borne in, the sun
came out and streamed through the stained-glass windows. "The
services were most impressive in their simplicity, in their sense
of intimacy, in the sentiment that filled the hour and the place
of personal loss and of pride of possession of a priceless
memory." The bearers took the coffin through the grove, with its
bare trees and light sifting of snow, to the grave; and as it was
committed, there were many sobs and tears of old and young. Rough
Riders, who had fought by his side, cabinet ministers who had
served with him, companions of his work and of his playtime, were
all mourners now, and some of those men of affairs, who had done
their utmost to wreck him eight years before, now knew that they
had loved him, and they grieved as they realized what America and
the world had lost. "Death had to take him sleeping," said
Vice-President Marshall; "for if Roosevelt had been awake, there
would have been a fight."

---------------

The evil men do lives after them; so does the good. With the
passing of years, a man's name and fame either drift into
oblivion, or they are seen in their lasting proportions. You must
sail fifty miles over the Ionian Sea and look back before you can
fully measure the magnitude and majesty of Mount Aetna.

Not otherwise, I believe, will it be with Theodore Roosevelt,
when the people of the future look back upon him. The blemishes
due to misunderstanding will have faded away; the transient
clouds will have vanished; the world will see him as he was.

I do not mean that it will reduce him to an abstraction of
perfection, as ill-judged worshipers of George Washington
attempted to do with him. Theodore Roosevelt was so vastly human,
that no worshiper can make him abstract and retain recognizable
features. We have reached the time when we will not suffer
anybody to turn our great ones into gods or demigods, and to
remove them far from us to dwell, like absentee deities, on a
remote Olympus, or in an unimaginable Paradise; we must have them
near, intimates whom our souls can converse with, and our hearts
love. Such an intimate was Roosevelt living, and such an intimate
will he be dead. Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt--those are the
three whom Americans will cherish and revere; each of them a
leader and representative and example in a structural crisis in
our national life.

Those of us who knew him, knew him as the most astonishing human
expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold
talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his
thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did,
his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in its
scabbard, would have rendered him superhuman, had he not
possessed other qualities which made him the best of playmates
for mortals. He had humor, which raises every one to the same
level. He had loyalty, which bound his friends to him for life.
He had sympathy, and capacity for strong, deep love. How tender
he was with little children! How courteous with women! No matter
whether you brought to him important things or trifles, he
understood.

I can think of no vicissitude in life in which Roosevelt's
participation would not have been welcome. If it were danger,
there could be no more valiant comrade than he; if it were sport,
he was a sports man; if it were mirth, he was a fountain of
mirth, crystal pure and sparkling. He would have sailed with
Jason on the ship Argo in quest of the Golden Fleece, and he
would have written a vivid description of the adventure. I can
imagine the delight he would have taken, as the comrade of
Ulysses, on his voyage through the Midland Sea, looking with
unjaded curiosity on strange towns and into strange faces, and
steering fearlessly out to the Hesperides, and beyond the baths
of all the western stars. What a Crusader he would have been! How
he would have smitten the Paynim with his sword, and then
unvisored and held chivalrous interview with Saladin!

Had he companioned Columbus, he would not have been one of those
who murmured and besought the great Admiral to turn back, but
would have counseled, "On! On! It is of little matter whether any
one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it
is the cause of mankind." I can see him with the voyageurs of New
France, exploring the Canadian Wilderness, and the rivers and
forests of the North west. I can see him with Lasalle, beaming
with exultation as they looked on the waters of the Mississippi;
and I can think of no battle for man's welfare in which he would
not have felt at home. But he would have taken equal, perhaps
greater, delight in meeting the authors, sages, and statesmen,
whose words were his daily joy, and whose deeds were his study
and incentive. I can hear him question Thucydides for further
details as to the collapse of the Athenians at Syracuse; or
cross-examine Herodotus for information of some of his incredible
but fascinating stories. What hours he would have spent in
confabulation with Gibbon! What secrets he would have learned,
without asking questions, from Napoleon and Cavour!

His interest embraced them all, some of them he could have
taught, many of them would have welcomed him as their peer. As he
mixed with high and low in his lifetime, so would it have been in
the past; and so will it be in the future, if he has gone into a
world where personal identity continues, and the spiritual
standards and ideals of this world persist. But yesterday, he
seemed one who embodied Life to the utmost. With the assured step
of one whom nothing can frighten or surprise, he walked our
earth, as on granite. Suddenly, the granite grew more
unsubstantial than a bubble, and he dropped beyond sight into the
Eternal Silence. Happy we who had such a friend! Happy the
American Republic which bore such a son!

THE END

Mr. John Woodbury, Secretary of the Harvard Class of 1880, in
sending to his classmates a notice of Theodore Roosevelt's death
on January 6, 1919, added this quotation from the second part of
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress:"

"After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant for-truth was
taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this
for a token that the summons was true, 'That his pitcher was
broken at the fountain.' When he understood it, he called for his
friends and told them of it. Then he said, 'I am going to my
Father's, and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet
now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to
arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me
in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get
it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me
that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.'"

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