American Rifle - Alexander Rose [264]
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15. Semsch, “Root and General Staff,” pp. 23–24; R. Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 99.
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16. The bitterness between Roosevelt and Miles was boundless. Thus Harvard’s award of an honorary degree to Miles may have been “preposterous,” and his complaints that American troops had abused Filipinos strikingly hypocritical considering (as Roosevelt told him to his face) that “when he was in command against the Sioux at the time of the Pine Ridge outbreak . . . the troops under his command had at Wounded Knee committed a massacre,” but ultimately Miles could only genuinely be a “very bad man . . . if the opportunity came and his abilities were sufficient.” Perhaps no criticism is more damning in life or politics than dismissal as being too inept to be dangerous. Miles, for his part, cruelly hinted in a speech in June 1901 that Roosevelt had not, in fact, been at San Juan Hill. Roosevelt to Owen Wister, July 20, 1901, pp. 234–36; to Root, February 18, 1902, pp. 246–47; and to John Hay, July 22, 1902, pp. 253–54, in Auchincloss, ed., Roosevelt Letters and Speeches; for Miles’s insinuation, see Jessup, Elihu Root, p. 1:245. Roosevelt’s view, put most succinctly, was that Miles was a “scoundrel.” See Roosevelt to Hay, August 9, 1903, p. 277. On the succeeding developments surrounding the bill, see Semsch, “Root and General Staff,” pp. 25–27.
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17. Exercised by Roosevelt’s remark, Harper’s Weekly admitted that the old general had “been consistently bombastic and condescending and generally a nuisance” but declared that his long service record made him an undeserving recipient of the president’s “snub of the snubbiest sort.” Editorial, “President Roosevelt and General Miles,” Harper’s Weekly, August 22, 1903, p. 1359. Even after his own supporters complained at the slight, Roosevelt suggested to Root that he submit an official memorandum noting that Miles had “played the part of traitor to the army and therefore to the nation. His intriguing disloyalty should be made manifest so that there can be no mistake about it in the future.” Ultimately, according to Root’s biographer, the war secretary’s “order transferring [Miles] from the active to the retired list was purely formal and contained no word of praise for past services.” Jessup, Elihu Root, pp. 1:249–50.
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18. Roosevelt to Root, October 19, 1899, in E. E. Morison, ed. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 2:1085.
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19. Roosevelt to Wood, June 4, 1904, in Morison, Letters of Roosevelt, p. 4:820. For his background, see Crozier’s entry in American National Biography.
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20. “Capt. Crozier Is Ineligible,” New York Times, September 25, 1901, p. 3.
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21. Quoted in Jessup, Elihu Root, p. 1:185.
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22. “Capt. Crozier to Be Promoted,” New York Times, October 3, 1901, p. 5.
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23. “Capt. William Crozier Now Chief of Ordnance,” New York Times, November 23, 1901, p. 5.
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24. “The Chief of Ordnance,” New York Times, May 4, 1902, p. 6.
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25. “Agree on Gen. Crozier,” New York Times, June 20, 1902; “Crozier for Another Term,” New York Times, November 19, 1905, p. 3.
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26. W.H. Hallahan, Misfire: The History of How America’s Small Arms Have Failed Our Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), p. 269.
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27. Roosevelt to Lodge, March 27, 1901, in Morison, Letters of Roosevelt, pp. 2:31–32.
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28. Hallahan, Misfire, p. 266.
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29. Ibid., p.267; W. S. Brophy, The Springfield 1903 Rifles: The Illustrated, Documented Story . . . (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1985), p. 2.
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30. Report by Major John Greer, October 2, 1900, in J. E. Hicks, Notes on United States Ordnance: Small Arms, 1776 to 1940 (Mount Vernon, N.Y.: James