The Wilmington morning star., 1946-12-06
As Pegler Sees 1t
By WEsTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, by King Features Syndicate. Inc.

OAe y
versation without a drink" Elliott Roosevelt
wrote in his own story o. his alcoholic jour
neys with his father to the Jovian stag-1ightS
with Stain and Churchill, and ''the only way
we talked was through the medium of a
toast"
Elliott set out to depict Winston Churchill
as a heavy drinker and a rather unpleasant
fellow socially, but better managed to reveal
his own appetite and impugn the manners
and raising that he received from parents
who never h~esitated to tell better Americans
how to bring up children. Now, having re-
turned to Russia with his latest wife, he was
invited to a party. at the American embassy
where, it appears, he again saw the world
through the bottom of an upturned glass, and
babbled callow profundities which were print
ed here and cabled back to Moscow. There
he generally repudiated them and Elliott
Roosevelt, Of all persons, complained that he
should not have been quoted because the
party was private, and criticized the ethics
of correspondents who certainly did no worse
than he did, and for his enormous personal
profit, in his Rollo book.
We are not told why the American embassy
gave this party for him and it was reason
able to assume that the embassy would have
barred the door, lest privacy be violated and
guests exposed to publicity and embarrass-
ment. This man is not an official person,
ana uS IldS UuL oil lIOSLo, anu AA'o1(,
on warning that they have social a n d fl
nancial traffic with him at their own con-
siderable risk.
In trying to degrade Winston Churchill, Ell
lott got so confused among the wines and
vodkas that he presented the blunderbuss
wrong-end-to. Nothing that he writes about
the p. NJ" as he calls the Prime Minister,
is quite as b~elittling as his own revelation
of the %indignity that he put on himself eor
the sake of a wild party and a program OF
free drinks at Teheran. For Elliott reveals
that, knowing he wasn't invited to the brawl,
he put himself in a position by a side door
where he would be seen by one OF Stains
bodyguards. who whispered to Stain, who,
under the circumstances, HAD to arrange an
other plate and draw up another chair cor
him.
Even Elliott, a man Of capacity, admits
that he had to take a deep breath, trying
to think through the champagne bubbles" that
night. History was making in the company
of giant toss-pots and the Roosevelts' problem
child contrived to be there.
Americans who now apprenend darkly that
Elliott has found some profitable way to set
himself up as the agent of his late fathers
foreign policies and as a pro-Russian propa-
gandist, will find explanatory and reassuring
information in his mothers autobiography,
''This Is My Story" published by Harpers in
1851. mere, MIS-. ROOSeVelI reveals d 1dIllllS
history of serious drunkenness that flows
smoothly into Elliott's own freely expressed
enthusiasm for the tlagon, the jigger and the
crock.
Mrs. Roosevelt tells us that when she was
a very little girl, her own father, also named
Elliott, a magnificent loafer of the idle rich
type, broke a leg riding in a society circus
and 'began to drink She casts about wiSt-
fully for an excuse. 1t may have been the
pain or the combined strain Of the injury, a
heavy social program and a brief spell OF
going to business At any rate, in 1890,
our little group of well-fed economic royalists.
father, mother, and little Nell, destined to be-
come the great mother adviser of American
women on the development Of character in
the young, went to Italy as the first step
in the fight for his health and selt-control." .
1t couldn't have been, of course, that this
Elliott Roosevelt simply lacked character and
responsibility in a comprehensive word, the
manhood to be a man.
Twice on page 10 he "entered a sanitarium.
the first in Germany, the other in France. On
page IL, little Nell and her baby brother,
Hall, SAILED. for home, leaving my father in a
sanitarium in France where his brother Theo-
dore Qater President, had to 60 and get him
later on"
Mrs. Roosevelt mentions those summers
while my Gather was away trying to rehabili
tate hlmself' and tells us that when her moth
er died, my father was sent for but came
too late from his exile in Virginia. Now no
hope of wiping out the sorrowful years that
he had brought upon my mother and she
had left her mother as guardian for her chill
dren. My grandmother did not feel that she
could trust my father to take care of us. >.
He died in 1894 still at a distance from his
family, an irresponsible souse in the judgment
OF his mother-in-law and an unfit persons.
We meet Uncle Vallie Hall, a brother Of
Mrs. Roosevelts mother, on page %, find him
TO be a tennis champion and a popular young
man in society on page %, and, on page 80
hear that her Grandmother Hall now has her
hands full Of the young blade who has begun
ITO sow his wild oats" A little later, he is
slipping rapidly into the habits of the habitua]
drunkard," but promising to quit latter each
spree"
And, woe upon woe, on page SO, the sad
news breaks that Uncle Eddie, too, a brother
G Uncle Vallie, is proving himself 'just as
weak as his brother"
"This was my first contact with anyone
who had completely lost the power Of ~self-con-
troll" little Nell tells us.
"Vallie," however, "still had great charm
and I think my grandmother, because she al
ways had a desire to protect those she loved.
PROBABLY loved him more than any of her
other children and never. would give up hopes
for him."
Our current mischievous elliott enjov-
ed similar priority in the affections of his
grandmother. the late Sara of Hyde Park. And
his mother tells us that he suffered for a
Cro~4