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to take joint action against any offender.” (TR, Letters, 7.795–96.) He spelled out this vision in more detail on 18 Oct. in The New York Times, by which time it had become “a great World League for the Peace of Righteousness.” Six weeks later in The Atlantic Monthly, the Cambridge classicist Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson published the first of two influential articles advocating the organization of a “League of Nations.” TR rejected his concept as excessively theoretical and lacking in the vital dimension of “international force.” (TR, Letters, 852–55.) Nevertheless, Lowes Dickinson later helped frame the official League of Nations Covenant of 1919. For a detailed history of TR’s proposal, 1910–1917, see Stephen A. Wertheim, “The League That Wasn’t: Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, William Howard Taft and a Legalist League of Nations” (AB diss., Harvard, 2007).

74 Rumors began The New York Times, 14 Sept. 1914.

75 “It would reflect” John N. Wheeler, I’ve Got News for You (New York, 1961), 43–44. TR nursed ancient grudges against the World, going back to its opposition to his candidacy in the presidential election of 1904. For his subsequent persecution of the paper and its publisher, see James McGrath Morris, Joseph Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (New York, 2010), chaps. 29, 30. By 1914, Pulitzer was dead.

76 “One moment” The New York Times, 27 Sept. 1914.

77 “Under such circumstances” Ibid.

78 Although he did not Wheeler, I’ve Got News, 44–45; John N. Wheeler to TR, 14 Oct. 1914 (TRP).

79 He obliged with The New York Times, 4, 11, 18 Oct., and 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 Nov. 1914. Reprinted with variations in TR, Works, 20.36–216.

80 “the one certain way” TR, Works, 20.107.

81 When he encountered Parsons, Perchance to Dream, 253.

82 Word that Germany TR, Works, 20.4.227. For an eloquent private statement of TR’s war views in the early fall of 1914, see his letter to Hugo Münsterberg, 3 Oct. 1914, TR, Letters, 8.822–25.

83 “You cannot imagine” ERD to EKR, 6 Oct. 1914 (ERDP).

84 Roosevelt had received Rudyard Kipling to TR, 15 Sept. and 20 Oct. 1914 (TRP).

85 “My experience in” TR to Kipling, 3 Oct. 1914 (TRC). Kipling had complained that the tone of TR’s war articles was too mild.

86 He granted that Ibid. Five days before a campaigning TR wrote this letter, he was waylaid in Cleveland by members of a Belgian government commission charged with alerting key American figures to the suffering inflicted on their country. They found the Colonel sympathetic but unwilling to criticize WW’s silence on the issue. “If you were President, what would you do?” “Exactly what Mr. Wilson is doing.” The commissioners said they were going on to meet with former President Taft. “You’ll like him awfully,” TR replied, “he’ll agree with everything you say.” Lalla Vandervelde, relief lobbyist, in Monarchs and Millionaires (New York, 1925), 71–73.

87 an impassioned speech Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 255. See also Robinson, My Brother TR, 282–83: “Unless I am very much mistaken, [that was] the first speech on that subject in the United States during the Great War.” Both women were eyewitnesses to the occasion. For an example of TR’s formidable aggression on this issue, see his letter to the pacifist Andrew Dickson White in TR, Letters, 8.827–28.

88 In a post-election poll The New York Times, 20 Dec. 1914.

89 “utter and hopeless” TR, Letters, 8.831.

90 We, here in America See 180. In a letter to Lyman Abbott, forecasting the death of the Progressive Party, TR made plain that he felt progressivism as a “movement” would go on. “I honestly feel that none of us have any cause to be ashamed of what we did in 1912.” 7 Nov. 1914 (TRP).

Historical Note: The narrative of this book will not deal with the Progressive Party’s prolonged death throes through the spring of 1916. TR dutifully fulfilled his duties as Party chief until then, but his heart was elsewhere. For a detailed account, see Gable, The Bull Moose Years, chaps. 9 and 10, and the relevant correspondence in TR, Letters, 8.843–1085.

91 “I wish I could stroke” TR, Letters,