282   My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

"Yes, you were, of course," said Mr. Cooper; "but your sister, Mrs. Robinson, refused to let you stay for dinner, saying that you would have to reach Oneonta at 8 o'clock." "May I ask," said my brother in a high falsetto, "what business my sister, Mrs. Robinson, had to refuse a dinner invitation for me?" And,with a bound, he leaped from the automobile, shaking, laughingly, his fist at me, and said, "Dinner with the Coopers ! Well, of course, I am going to stay to dinner," and returned rapidly to the house, followed meekly by his party. The hospitable and resourceful Coopers, who naturally, after my refusal, had not expected seven extra people to dinner, turned in, assisted by Theodore himself, and proceeded to scramble eggs and broil bacon, much to the amusement and delight of the cook, who had never had an ex-President in her kitchen before, and of all the merry dinner-parties that I have ever attended, that one, forced upon the delightful Fenimore Coopers, was about the merriest.

Senator Davenport had been in poor health at the time, and my brother called him entirely "Little Eva," after the angel child of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," both because of his rather transparent appearance and his high-minded principles (upon which the Colonel dilated in his speeches). He called himself "Uncle Tom," and Senator Newcomb "Simon Legree," and those cognomens and no others were used throughout the entire trip, which proved a veritable holiday.

But neither that trip nor any other trip could have changed the fate of the Progressive candidates in 1914, and New York State showed at election time, as did various other states in the country, that America was not prepared for a third party, even though that party stood, more than did any other party, for the practical common sense and high idealism of Theodore Roosevelt.

Just before Election day I accompanied him to Princeton, where Doctor John Grier Hibben, president of the university, received him with distinction, and asked him to speak to the

Whisperings of War   283

body of students there not only on political faiths but on "Preparedness." Unless I am very much mistaken, the first speech on that subject in the United States during the Great War was that very address made in the auditorium of Princeton in November, 1914, by my brother. His young and eager listeners among the student body applauded him to the echo. The cause of preparedness and true Americanism had no stancher upholder at that time, nor in the difficult years to come, than president Hibben of Princeton University. Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Leonard Wood, John Grier Hibben, Augustus P. Gardner, and other far-seeing patriots, stood from the beginning for the Allies against the Huns, and for "Preparedness" of a thorough kind. Had their advice been followed, Germany would very soon have sensed how formidable an influence in the war America could be. I am convinced there would have been no sinking of the Lusitania, and hundreds of thousands of gallant young men would not have lost their lives on Flanders Fields.

On November 12, 1914, after Election day, my brother writes me: "Darling Corinne:-That is a very dear letter of yours ! I shall make no further statement. Did you see my quotation from Timothy II, Chapter 4, verses 3 and 4 ? It covers the whole situation. Ever yours, Theodore Roosevelt."

The verses referred to are as follows:

(3) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

(4) And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

He was very apt to sum up a situation in some pregnant verse from the Bible.

The winter of 1915 was trying to him in certain ways, especially on account of the Barnes libel suit. He had made the statement that Mr. Barnes had, politically, a bipartisan attitude, and indeed more than attitude, and Mr. Barnes decided