354 My Brother Theodore Roosevelt

with deep affectionate regard but with a keen sense of the loss of an exceptionally vigorous and powerful personality. Tell Helen that I am really counting on that visit from her delightful children. Their attitude touched me very much. I am much concerned at what you tell me about gallant Bye's health. Give her my dearest love."

My sister, Mrs. Cowles, was even more delicate than usual that autumn, and I was with her at the time he wrote me the above letter. His admiration for our older sister was unbounded, and her splendid dauntless attitude toward the physical pain she suffered, and her unbroken patience through suffering, never failed to awake in him a responsive appreciation.

About that time President Wilson entered into a correspondence with Germany of which my brother disapproved. On October 13 he dictated the following statement at his home on Sagamore Hill:

"I regret greatly that President Wilson has entered into these negotiations, and I trust they will be stopped. We have announced that we will not submit to a negotiated Peace, and under such conditions, to begin negotiations is bad faith with ourselves and our Allies."

Again on October 25, in an open letter to his intimate friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, "Let us," he says, "amongst other things, dictate Peace by the hammering of guns, and not talk about Peace to the accompaniment of the clicking of typewriters."

Although the extracts which follow were written and published several weeks later than the above quotations, I prefer to give them in this connection, for Colonel Roosevelt's attitude toward "Peace without victory" and a probable League of Nations has been so often misrepresented. The Kansas City Star, the newspaper with which Colonel Roosevelt had actual connection during the last year of his life, published an editorial after his death in answer to a remark made by Senator Hitchcock, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, in which

he expressed the opinion that if Colonel Roosevelt were alive, "he would be found supporting the League of Nations as ardently as President Wilson."

The Star denied this assertion, and said:

"From the beginning of the discussion of the proposed League, The Star has been anxious to find practical features which it could support as a real defense toward lasting peace. In the last weeks of 1918, the matter was taken up with Colonel Roosevelt who proved to be of the same mind. He recognized the war weariness of the world,-a weariness in which he shared to the full-and was anxious to further any practical step in international organization. The difficulty was to find the practical basis. After his first editorial approving certain principles of a League, a member of The Star staff discussed the matter with him late in December at the Roosevelt Hospital. The suggestion was made that in a contribution he might point out certain things which a loosely organized League might accomplish. He replied that he could see so little that it might accomplish, in comparison with the rosy pictures that had been painted of its possibilities, that he hesitated to write on that line.

"In the course of correspondence, he wrote under date of December 28th, 1918: `In substance, or as our friends the diplomats say, in number, I am in hearty accord with you... . But remember that you are freer to write unsigned editorials than I am when I use my signature. If you propose a little more than can be carried out, no harm comes, but if I do so, it may hamper me for years. However, I will do my best to write you such an article as you suggest and then, probably, one on what I regard as infinitely more important, viz., our business to prepare for our own self-defense.' A few days later, almost on the eve of his death, he wrote the following article printed in The Star on January 13th. It was dictated at his home in Oyster Bay on January 3rd, the Friday before his death, and his secretary expected to take the typed copy to him for correction the

War

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