Indeed, the offensive remarks
seem to have been extemporaneous, because, as it was too dark for
him to read his prepared speech, he spoke impromptu. In any
event, Secretary Garrison had due notice that Roosevelt was to
speak, and if he had had any doubts he should have sent word to
General Wood to cancel the engagement. The Administration made as
much as it could out of this impropriety, but the public saw the
humor of it, because it knew that Secretary Garrison agreed with
Roosevelt and Wood in their crusade for preparedness.
Later, when Mr. Garrison resigned, President Wilson put Mr.
Newton D. Baker, a Pacifist, in his place, and after war came,
the military preparation and direction of the United States were
entrusted to him. But it does not belong to this biographical
sketch to narrate the story of the American conduct of the war
under the Wilson Administration.
To Roosevelt, the vital fact was that war was at hand, the great
object for which he had striven during two years and eight
months, the participation in the war which would redeem the honor
of the United States, call forth the courage of its citizens,
make Americans alone dominant in America and so purge this
Republic of the taints of pro-Germanism, of commercial greed, and
of ignoble worship of material safety, that it could take its
part again at the head of the democracies of the world.
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