The Wilmington morning star., 1944-07-19
BY WEsTBROOK PEGLER


By WESTBROOK PEGLER
NEW YORK-"He was the most gallant
soldier and officer and gentleman that l have
ever known, and make no exceptions Mai.
Gen. R. O. Barto commander of the Fourth
division, said of Brig Gen. Theodore Rooseve-
welt when young Ted died of exhaustion in
Normandy That could express the opinion
of others who had the privilege of knowing
young Ted and dare say that others besides
me feel truly humble in the presence of this
great Americans character and honored by
the personal friendship of a man who always
was naive in his patriotism and a simple
fundamentallSt in personal honor.
Young Ted held fast to his ideals all through
a time of popular cynicism when his contnu-
ing interest in soldering, as the personal duty
OF citizen to his country, was rewarded with
the blase, alcoholic sneers of a licentious in
tellgentsa and he was called, variously a
perpetual boy scout and an American junker
AT one stage of his long trail he as depicted
as an aristocratic feudalist because some
member of his family had said, or written
unguardedly, that when, in France in the
first World war, he was sent to hospital
gassed and wounded, he restless to get
back to his troops"
This was held to be an unconscious reveI-
alton of the arstocrat's feeling that the SOL
d1ers of his battalion were, so to speak, his
serfs, an Interpretation which would be re-
sented by men who served with him in either
war. incidentally on that occasion when he
was restless to get back to his troops he
went back against orders in order to lead
them in new attack.
Young Ted was slight and little fellow
physically and SO polite to louder but lesser
persons that one who did not know him mi ght
have met in crowd one of the finest Amer
lean soldiers, of the great patriots of
American history and passed him quickly by
unlmpressed to join some Wittier group across
the room. Not that he was at all reticent,
for Ted was garrulous in his mood But he
remained a Kipling type, fond of soldier stor-
les and heroic poetry when patriotism was
being ridiculed as the folly of the masses
and the treaty Of Brest-Litovsk was clamor-
| ousiy praised as smart business by Leon Trot-
sky, even though it turned the German armies
unreservedly against the Americans in the
west and left the communists free to organize
the terror that begot Mussolini and Hitler and,
eventually, the present war Ted bored many
of the intellectuals of his time and set be-
cause he had earned the right to talk of bat
ties, as others spoke of ephemeral plays and
books in which they had part. Their sneers
against the perpetual boy scout was largely
defensive.
In politics, young Ted had been eliminated
early, for when AL Smith laughed him off in
their campaign for the governorship in 1924
with the remark that 1.-The young Teller amt
there" he measured his opponents political
size with accurate eye. For a number of
reasons he just wasn't there a politician,
which was unfortunate, for his ideals were
decency in private and public life and pure
patriotism.
AS head of the clan of republican or "out
of aeason Poosevelts" he was overshadoWed
during the reign Of those whom he called the
mavericks and it is one of my own regrets
that, under the political hipnotism of contrast
repeal and the strains of Happy Days Are
Here Again once added my voice to the
scoffing in dscredt of a man whose quality,
the country, to its damage, did not know.
He fought in the circle of his acquaintance,
the propaganda that loose-living was but self
expression and that poverty was an adequate
excuse for bad morals. He defended his be-
lief that parents, poor or rlch owed their
children good example and should maintain
the family unit and the home at any sacrifice
I never knew a man more loyal to- his word.
On the train for the 1886 republican con-
vention. young Ted and another republican
one of the richest men in America, sat at
a table opposite Haywood Broun and me. 1t
was open season and we were needing all
republicans Presently, the millionaire offered
to bet us each $500 to $50 that the republican
nominee, whoever he might be, would beat
Frank Roosevelt. We grabbed him in SIAM
pede.
Two days before election he wired us, want
ing to renege let him off the hook but
Broun wouldn't. A few days after the election
Young Ted sent me check for $50. He had
an impression that he had taken half of the
republican end of my bet. 1 sent it back
explaining that he was not involved and that
his check insisting that inasmuch as he had
thought he was down for $50 he ought to pay.
Again sent it back and have lost the cor
respondence, but believe he settled the Grob-
lem within himself by giving $50 to the Boy
Scouts.