Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-Time Editorials
1921
Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star: War-Time Editorials
1921
In the autumn of 1917, Theodore Roosevelt was no longer president. He had lost his bid for a third term, watched his Bull Moose party collapse, and was excluded from the Wilson administration he despised. But he still had his pen. These editorials, written for the Kansas City Star in the final eighteen months of his life, capture Roosevelt at his most ferocious: raging against German aggression, mocking American pacifists as cowards, demanding that the nation shed its complacency and become what he called 'a virile and efficient people.' The collection opens with Roosevelt's response to the death of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, the first American killed in the war, and builds into a sustained argument for American martial purpose. These are not the reflections of an elder statesman; they are the battle cries of a man who refused to accept that his time had passed. Roosevelt would die in January 1919, just months before the armistice, still campaigning for a fourth presidential run. This collection is his final, unvarnished testament: a portrait of patriotism as combat, and of one man's refusal to go quietly.
