Colonel Roosevelt (111 page)

Almost none, according to a message from Cal O’Laughlin in Washington. “
Tumulty tells me confidentially that the President will approve the army conscription bill, but that he will not exercise his authority for the acceptance of your division.”

On 18 May, Wilson signed the bill into law, inflicting compulsory registration for military service upon ten million men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one. The stroke of his pen made him the most powerful commander in chief in American history. In an extraordinary accompanying statement, he acknowledged that a clause in the Draft Act permitted him to give an independent command to Theodore Roosevelt. “
It would be very agreeable for me to pay Mr. Roosevelt this compliment, and the Allies the compliment, of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, an ex-President who has rendered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would no doubt have a very fine effect and make a profound impression. But this is not the time … for any action not calculated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now at hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision.”

The statement was Wilsonian in sounding like a tribute but parsing as dismissal. Roosevelt, by implication, was
an old military showman who would only strut the French stage in the manner of Debussy’s “Général Lavine—excentric.”

James Amos was with the Colonel when he received a follow-up telegram from Wilson explaining that the statement had been based on “imperative considerations of public policy and not upon personal or private choice.” Amos had never seen his boss so cast down. “He was truly in a black mood.”

For a day or two more, Roosevelt hoped that some intervention, such as an appeal from the French government, would make Wilson grant him his desperate desire. That was nothing less than death in battle: he knew he would not come back. Denied the consummation, he would have to cede it to one or more of his sons. “
I don’t care a continental whether they fight in Yankee uniforms or British uniforms or in their undershirts, so long as they’re fighting.”

Kermit was at Plattsburg, doing some last-minute training to qualify for a
commission in the British army. Ted and Archie were there too, awaiting orders as major and second lieutenant respectively in the U.S. Officers’ Reserve Corps. Their father was not so downcast that he did not press for their transfer overseas, the moment Wilson announced that John J. Pershing was to be the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe.

“
My dear General Pershing,” Roosevelt wrote, “I very heartily congratulate you, and especially the people of the United States, upon your selection.” There was no need to add that he had made Pershing’s present glory possible, having promoted him in 1905 over the heads of 835 senior officers. “I write you now to request that my two sons, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., aged 27,
^*
and Archibald B. Roosevelt, aged 23, both of Harvard, be allowed to enlist as privates under you, to go over with the first troops.”

Pershing replied that it would be “a waste” for two such promising young officers to enlist, and undertook to find them places on his staff at no loss of rank.

With Quentin almost certain to be assigned to the general’s force as well (Baker talked grandly of an “
army of the air” leading the American attack), Roosevelt’s next, painful duty was to dismiss all his volunteers. Those eligible for the draft might yet be lucky, and serve; but those ineligible needed to hear from him, rather than the President, that they were not wanted.

Before issuing a notice of general release, he discussed its wording with about twenty of his “ghost” commanders, including Seth Bullock, Jack Greenaway, a former Rough Rider, and John M. Parker, a still-passionate Progressive. Parker was the only man, apart from Roosevelt, who had actually lobbied Woodrow Wilson in behalf of the division. He was able to quote the President’s exact words: “
Colonel Roosevelt is a splendid man and patriotic citizen, as you say, but he is not a military leader. His experience in military life has been extremely short. He and many of the men with him are too old to render efficient service, and in addition to that fact, he as well as others have shown intolerance of discipline.”

John Leary attended the meeting. “
Never, except in a house of death, have I noticed a greater air of depression. All except the Colonel showed it plainly. He, it was apparent to those who knew him best, felt worse than any other.”

The notice went out on 21 May. It was a somber summary of the division’s aims, but stated that “
as good American citizens we loyally obey the decision of the Commander in Chief of the American army and navy.”

A WEEK LATER
, Georges Clemenceau published an open letter to Wilson, appealing to him to change his mind about the volunteer division. “
It is possible that your own mind, enclosed in its austere legal frontiers … has failed to be
impressed by the vital hold which personalities like Roosevelt have on popular imagination,” Clemenceau wrote, in language unlikely to have been approved by the Quai d’Orsay. “The name of Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time.”
Poilus
were asking why the Colonel had not been sent over. “Send them Roosevelt. I tell you, because I know it—it will gladden their hearts.”

Wilson did not reply. Roosevelt complained to fellow members of the Harvard Club that he had been cashiered by a jealous rival determined to deny him the right
pro patria mori
. “
I told Wilson that I would die on the field of battle, that I would never return if only he would let me go!”

“If you could really convince the President of that,” Elihu Root said, “I’m quite sure he would send you at once.”

QUENTIN ROOSEVELT’S POSTING
to Long Island filled Flora Whitney with joy. She and Quentin were besotted with each other, to the extent that they had
secretly become engaged. The Whitney estate at Old Westbury was near enough to Mineola for them to spoon whenever Quentin got an evening pass from Hazelhurst Field, and Sagamore Hill was available for weekend trysts.
Edith Roosevelt had taken to Flora (as she had not to Grace). Knowing how little time the two nineteen-year-olds were likely to have together, she encouraged their closeness.

“
Ah, Fouf,” Quentin wrote from camp, using Flora’s family nickname, “I don’t yet see how you can love me,—still I feel as tho’ it were all a dream from which some time I will wake … with nothing left to me but the memory of beauty and the wonder of it all.”

He was a year and a half younger than the youngest men who flocked to register on “Draft Day,” 5 June, and just as unready as she to face the horrifying fact that after six or seven more weeks of rapture, he might never see her again. It was difficult for Quentin to imagine himself flying solo before the end of the month. But that was the speed at which he was being flung into the air, in a lumbering, hard-to-control Curtiss Jenny that cruelly taxed his back. France was hopelessly calling for five thousand American pilots and fifty thousand aviation “mechanicians.” The U.S. Army (seventeenth in the world, packing only one and a half days’ worth of ammunition) had fewer than a hundred trained pilots. A story in
The New York Times
reported seventy-five British planes had been shot down in a single dogfight. Apparently, service aloft was more dangerous than life in the trenches.

The war had so long been regarded by Americans as something they were “kept out of” that its sudden, here-and-now reality was shocking, even to the Colonel’s children. On 17 June, just as Ethel was giving birth to a little girl, Ted and Archie came to Sagamore Hill to announce, in great secrecy, under
the new Espionage Act, that they would be leaving for France in three days’ time. Quentin and Flora felt impelled to reveal
their
own secret at the family’s final gathering before the two regulars sailed. They were so barely grown up that Edith might have reacted in horror, except that all over the country, the accelerating pace of “mobilization” had made short order of maternal scruples. She gave them her blessing.

“H
E WAS ASSIGNED TO THE
N
INETY-FIFTH
A
ERO
S
QUADRON
.”
Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt
.
(photo credit i25.2)

Flora was as sure as Quentin that their engagement was a commitment for life. Outside of that, and the flamboyant “freshness” with which she dressed, bobbed her hair, and rode horses, she was an insecure girl, tongue-tied when
the Roosevelts quoted poetry to one another, and in awe of the public figures who constantly visited the Colonel. She adored her father, but Harry Whitney had the globetrotting restlessness of the wealthy, and she saw little of him. Her famous mother was interested only in art and artists. Roosevelt, in contrast, embraced Flora as he did anyone who passed Edith’s muster, radiating such affection that she understood Sagamore Hill would remain “home” to her, however long Quentin stayed away.

Ted and Archie sailed on the twentieth, with orders attaching them to General Pershing’s advance headquarters in Paris. Roosevelt was overjoyed to be able to boast that they were among the first in line for the Front. He pushed to have Kermit similarly placed in Mesopotamia, writing to Lloyd George, “I pledge my honor that he will serve you honorably and efficiently.” Early in July, an acceptance call came through from Balfour’s roving ambassador in New York, Lord Northcliffe. Kermit was tracked down in Boston, where he was sitting for a portrait by John Singer Sargent, and by mid-month he was gone too.

Quentin simultaneously graduated as a first lieutenant in the Flying Corps. He was assigned to the Ninety-fifth Aero Squadron, with orders to proceed overseas at once. Fanny Parsons watched him emerging khaki-clad from Christ Church after communion with his mother, and got a sick feeling they might never share the sacrament again. His departure was set for Monday, 23 July.
He told Edith that he wanted to spend his last night with Flora, on the Whitney yacht. Helpless against the rush of events, she could hold him at Sagamore Hill only through Saturday.

Before going to bed that evening, she went to his bedroom and tucked him in.