Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [289]
Uninhibited, he might have announced that he and Wilson had chatted easily, swapped anecdotes, and in short, gotten on as well as they had in May 1914. And he could have repeated his tension-relieving remark: “Mr. President, what I have said and thought, and what others have said and thought, is all dust in a windy street if we can make your message good.” Instead, he dictated a terse statement to the effect that he had asked for authority to raise a division of volunteer soldiers, many of them already trained and available—“such a division to be sent as part of any expeditionary force to France at an early moment.” The President, he said, had neither accepted nor rejected his request, and would come to a decision “in his own good time.”
Meanwhile, Roosevelt wanted it understood that his proposed division would not conflict with Wilson’s call for a universal, obligatory draft. The volunteers he sought would either be over twenty-five or excluded from regular conscription by the War Department. “I have been in communication with Secretary Baker, but do not intend to call on him.”
Baker took the hint—or rather, yielded to an even heavier one from Franklin D. Roosevelt—that the Colonel would be receiving visitors that evening in Representative Longworth’s townhouse on M Street. When he arrived he found the place mobbed. Roosevelt had been holding court all afternoon. The British, French, and Japanese ambassadors and a long list of legislators and policymakers, including the chairmen of the House and Senate military committees and officers of the National Defense Council, were being briefed on the Roosevelt Division in such detail that it might already be en route to Brest. Its chief recruiter came out in high spirits, thrust an arm through Baker’s, and led him upstairs to a private room.
“I am aware,” Roosevelt said with winning frankness, “that I have not had enough experience to lead a division myself.” He had sensed that was one of Wilson’s doubts about his request. “But I have selected the most experienced officers from the regular army for my staff.” He was willing to serve under whatever commander the President might appoint, as well as the commander of the entire expeditionary force.
Baker felt himself being strongarmed, and would only say, as he had in their correspondence, that he was taking the proposal under advisement. The Colonel must appreciate that mobilization was a hugely complex process that could not be swayed by personal considerations.
Roosevelt returned to New York unencouraged. He tried to make the best of his interviews, saying to John Leary, “I had a good talk with Baker—I could twist him about my finger, could I have him about for a while.” As for the President, “He seemed to take it well, but—remember, I was talking to Mr. Wilson.”
ON 12 APRIL, having heard nothing from the administration, Roosevelt decided to appeal directly to Congress for legislation permitting volunteer soldiers to serve on the Western Front. He understood that a general deployment of Baker’s draft army was unlikely until the spring of 1918. But it was plain that the Allies were desperate for reinforcements. Britain had already announced that it was sending a high-level mission to Washington, headed by Arthur Balfour, in an effort to speed up the dispatch of American war aid.
In an urgent letter to George Chamberlain (D., Oregon), chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, Roosevelt wrote:
Let us use volunteer forces, in connection with a portion of the regular army, in order at the earliest possible moment, within a few months, to put our flag on the firing line. We owe this to humanity. We owe it to the small nations who have suffered such dreadful wrong from Germany. Most of all we owe it to ourselves, to our national honor and self-respect. For the sake of our own