Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [435]
33 onslaught on the Sullivan, Our Times, 5.26.
34 the Italian word fasci From the Latin fasces, evoking a bundle of rods, unbreakable because bound, irresistible when rammed. Fascism did not attain the status of a national political party until after World War I. But in Aug. 1914, Mussolini was rapidly converting his personal ideology from pacific socialism to aggressive, interventionist activism, in favor of an all-powerful nation-state. Three months later, he founded a revolutionary newspaper, Il Popolo d’Italia, which bore banner quotes from Louis Blanqui and Napoleon: “He who has steel, has bread,” and “Revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.” On 24 Nov. he formed a pro-war fasci di azione rivoluzionaria (power group for revolutionary action) that quickly grew and claimed 5,000 members by the year’s end.
35 Roosevelt had been confidentially See 146.
36 “If the Franco-British” TR, Letters, 7.810–11. In his long-term scenario, TR included a prophecy that came true after World War II: “If Germany is smashed, it is perfectly possible that later she will have to be supported as a bulwark against the Slav by the nations of Western Europe.” Ibid., 812.
37 The same prospect Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 345–46; Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (New York, 2007), 7–11.
38 “The Prussian” Gerard, Face to Face with Kaiserism, 131.
39 It was all Davis, With the Allies, 90–95. See also Brand Whitlock, Belgium: A Personal Narrative (New York, 1919), chap. 26.
40 The imperial embassy Sullivan, Our Times, 5.58.
41 “I am an ex-President” TR, Letters, 7.812.
42 “If you have” TR to Frederick H. Allen, 31 Aug. 1914 (TRC).
43 Belle had fallen EKR diary, 16 July 1914 and passim (TRC).
44 “Ted and Eleanor” TR, Letters, 7.816.
45 In a crescendo of carnage The ecstasy affected even Calvinist intellectuals. “This war is great and wonderful beyond all expectations,” Max Weber wrote a friend. The New York Review of Books, 18 Feb. 1988.
46 “The fire-ants” TR, Works, 6.113–14.
47 Elsewhere in Brazil TR, Works, 6.142; Strachan, The First World War, 55.
48 Masses, slaves, arise Eugène Pottier (1816–1887). Author’s translation of French original. The text varies in later Russian, British, and American versions.
49 The government of Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, 91; Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 419. On the eve of Germany’s declaration of war against Russia, Sir Edward Grey had passionately burst out, “It is the greatest step toward Socialism that could possibly have been made. We shall have Labour Governments in every country after this.” Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.239–40.
50 When Wilson thought “I find the President singularly lacking in appreciation of the importance of this European crisis,” Colonel House wrote on 28 Sept. 1914. “I find it difficult to get his attention centered upon the one big question.” Sullivan, Our Times, 5.35.
51 “I gather” Cecil Spring Rice to TR, 18 Sept. 1914 (CSR).
52 Before Roosevelt TR, Letters, 8.862.
Biographical Note: Earlier in the year, TR had resisted a suggestion that he should encourage Progressives to support Wilson, rather than allow them to drift back into a Republican Party dominated by the likes of Boies Penrose. He agreed, however, that “permanently, there is only room for two national parties in this country, and one of these must be the opposition.” (TR to Alex Moore, 10 July 1914 [TRC].) Interviewing TR on 14 Aug. 1914, Ray Stannard Baker heard him “express doubt as to whether the American people really know what they [were] doing” in voting for his philosophy of government. “I do not believe,” Baker concluded, “that T. R. has ever really believed in people. He has led people, he has advertised popular measures, but he has never really believed that the people must rule. His idea of leadership has been domination rather than education & service.