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he and Wilson considered Roosevelt to be an amateur soldier from the last century. The shock was enough to reduce the hero of San Juan Heights to temporary silence. He brooded for a week, then replied with an eighteen-page letter, rejecting Baker’s rejection. “My dear sir, you forget that I have commanded troops in action in the most important battle fought by the United States army during the last half century.” He noted that field assignments were being showered on division and brigade commanders who did not have “one tenth” of his experience. Moving on to direct criticism, he ascribed the War Department’s current need for an emergency training program to its failure to initiate preparedness two and a half years before. If back then the Springfield munitions factory had been cranked into instant high gear, “we would now be a million rifles to the good.” Baker’s current advisers in formulating mobilization policy were “well-meaning men, of the red-tape and pipe-clay school … hidebound in the pedantry of that kind of wooden militarism which is only one degree worse than its extreme opposite, the folly which believes that an army can be improvised between sunrise and sunset.”

Baker mercifully did not reply, in words he already shared with a friend, that he wished to avoid “a repetition of the San Juan Hill affair, with the commander rushing his men into a situation from which only luck extricated them.” As gently as he could, he wrote, “For obvious reasons, I cannot allow myself to be drawn into a discussion of your personal experience and qualifications.” Nor would he discuss those of his consultants, except to say that they were patriotic and high-minded officers. “The war in Europe is confessedly stern, steady, and relentless. It is a contest between the morale of two great contending forces.” Should the United States jump into the struggle with a division of “hastily summoned and unprofessional” volunteers, the Allies would be depressed and disillusioned, “deeming it an evidence of our lack of seriousness about the nature of the enterprise.”

Senator Chamberlain had similar doubts about sponsoring the Colonel’s amendment to the draft bill. Pressed by Henry Cabot Lodge, he allowed it to go forward under the name of Senator Warren Harding of Ohio. This move surprised political observers who remembered Harding as chairman of the 1916 Republican convention, disdainfully (with eagle profile) maneuvering to block Roosevelt’s nomination. But the eagle was far-sighted, and looking ahead, saw no other likely nominee on the GOP’s horizon for 1920—unless it be himself. He was happy to do whatever was necessary to keep Party seniors happy.

On 24 April, Harding expanded the amendment to empower the President of the United States to appoint as many as four volunteer divisions of men not subject to conscription. The measure was optimistic in assuming that Wilson would override the policy of his own War Department. It did not name Roosevelt as a potential commander, but the ensuing agitated debate was as much about him as about the incompatibility of voluntary and drafted service. Lodge threw all his own prestige, as ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee, into the fray on behalf of the Colonel.

“He is known in Europe as is no other American. His presence there would be a help and an encouragement to the soldiers of the allied nations.… For Heaven’s sake, is there any reason why he should not be given an opportunity, if he desires, to give his life for what he regards as the most sacred of all causes?”

While the debate continued—postponing, to the relief of many congressmen, a proposal to prohibit liquor consumption in the Capitol—Roosevelt worked to ensure the fastest possible dispatch of his sons to the war. He asked Spring Rice to find out if British army regulations would permit Kermit to enlist without compromising his American citizenship. And he fattened Newton D. Baker’s already bulky “Roosevelt” file with a request to help Quentin get into the army flying school at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

“It will give