Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [286]
After the meeting, which Wilson closed without indicating his own feelings, Baker returned to the War Department to be confronted by a telegram from Roosevelt: IN VIEW OF THE FACT THAT GERMANY IS NOW ACTUALLY ENGAGED IN WAR WITH US I AGAIN EARNESTLY ASK PERMISSION TO BE ALLOWED TO RAISE A DIVISION FOR IMMEDIATE SERVICE AT THE FRONT.
Baker wrote back to say that no additional forces could be raised except by an act of the new Congress. When that body reassembled, the administration would present a plan “for a very much larger army than the force suggested in your telegram.” He let Roosevelt know that there was unlikely to be a commission for him. “General officers for all the volunteer forces are to be drawn from the regular army.”
The result was an impatient speech by the Colonel that night in the Union League Club of New York City. Entirely at home again among Republicans who, four years before, had shunned him, he joined Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes, and Joseph Choate in endorsing a resolution, “War now exists by act of Germany.” He noted that more than two years had passed since the administration had demanded strict accountability for all U-boat attacks on American citizens. Germany was now killing more of them than ever, “and she has proposed to Japan and Mexico an alliance for our dismemberment as a nation.”
It was irresponsible, he said, to wait another year for revenge, while the administration raised its million-man army. “We can perfectly well send an expeditionary force abroad to fight in the trenches now—” He corrected himself. “Within four or five months.”
Closeted afterward with Root, Hughes, and Robert Bacon, he begged them to do everything they could to persuade the President to let him fight in Europe. Hughes was struck by Roosevelt’s emotion as he said, “I shall not come back, my boys may not come back, my grandchildren may be left alone, but they will carry forward the family name. I must go.”
WILSON RESPONDED TO his cabinet’s consensus for war only by announcing that he would advance the forthcoming session of Congress by two weeks. He said he would then present lawmakers with “a communication concerning grave matters of national policy.” In an almost perverse display of calm, he let state papers pile up while he relaxed with his wife, socialized, and shot pool.
Roosevelt, too, took time off before what he knew would be one of the most momentous addresses in American history. He told reporters that he was heading for Punta Gorda, Florida, to hunt shark and devilfish for the rest of the month. “I shall be back by April 2, when Congress assembles.”
When he passed through Washington on his way south, the city was already flaming with flags.
CHAPTER 25
Dust in a Windy Street
He may have stumbled up there from the past,
And with an aching strangeness viewed the last
Abysmal conflagration of his dreams,—
A flame where nothing seems
To burn but flame itself, by nothing fed;
And while it all went out
Not even the faint anodyne of doubt
May then have eased a painful going down
From pictured heights of power and lost renown.
HENRY ADAMS WAS JUST ABOUT to have dinner in Washington on the rainy evening of 2 April 1917 when he heard the hoofbeats of Woodrow Wilson’s cavalcade departing the White House and heading for Capitol Hill. By the time the old historian had finished eating, newsboys in Lafayette Square were already yelling out the story of their “extry” editions: the President had asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
Theodore Roosevelt’s slow train from Florida did not get into Union Station until noon the following day. By then he had read the full text of Wilson’s address. Surrounded by a huge crowd outside the platform gates, he dictated a statement to reporters: “The President’s message is a great state paper which will rank in history among the great state papers of which Americans in future years