That is a charge, of course, to which all of our statesmen, from
Washington down, have been exposed. Its final refutation comes
from examining the entire public career and the character of the
person accused. To any one who knew what Roosevelt's life had
been, and who knew how poignantly he felt the national dangers
and humiliation of the past three years, the idea that he was
playing politics, and merely pretending to be terribly in earnest
as a patriot, is grotesque. And I believe that no greater
disappointment ever came to him than when he was prohibited from
going out to battle in 1917. Mr. Wilson and the obsolescent
members of the General Staff had obviously a plausible reason
when they said that the European War was not an affair for
amateurs; that no troops, however brave and willing, could, like
the Rough Riders in the Spanish War, be fitted for action in a
month. Only by long drill and by the coordination of all branches
of the service, organized on a vaster scale than the world had
ever seen before, and commanded by experts, could an army enter
the field with any hope of holding its own against the veteran
armies of Europe.
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