Quentin
Kermit, Archibald, Theodore—all have done their duty, but, of course, death has made the youngest of the Roosevelts dearest to American hearts. Perhaps, indeed, the death of no other man at the front has so touched the people as that of young Lieutenant Quentin. He stands almost like the symbol of young America giving itself up for freedom. “In the sorrow of his parents,” writes the Outlook, “his fellow-countrymen have felt the sorrow of all who have lost sons in this struggle. In the pride his parents have simply expressed his fellow-countrymen have been able to understand in part the pride of all those who have learned that for his purpose of making mankind free God has had need of their dearest. In honoring Quentin Roosevelt Americans honor all those young men who have rendered to their country their full measure of devotion.”
Part of the special glory of the Roosevelts comes from the fact that they were watched so closely. Quentin, especially, was known to the nation from his very childhood. The nation knew him, and it watched him. Quentin died fighting against odds—a symbol of young American manhood.
When we think of what Colonel Roosevelt and his sons stood for in this war there is something soul-stirring in the fact that the father and his youngest boy have both so suddenly passed away, and in the light of all this there is a pathetic significance in the answer which Colonel Roosevelt gave to the man who at a public meeting asked the Colonel why he himself had not gone across:
“I asked not only to go over there, but I came with one hundred thousand more men in my hands to help. And I will tell you, you man over there, that I have sent my four sons. I have sent over my four boys, for each of whose lives I care a thousand times more than I care for my own.”
Of these four sons Kermit received his cross for bravery. Archibald and Theodore rose steadily from rank to rank—wounds and honor marking their path. And Quentin gave his life. There is something more than fortitude in the words of the proud, strong, old man bearing up against the saddest of tidings:
“Quentin’s mother and I are very glad he got to the front and had the chance to render some service to his country, and to show the stuff there was in him before his fate befell him.”
Quentin Roosevelt was not yet twenty-one. He was born in Washington, November 19, 1897, while his father was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. After 1901 Quentin, starting out as the “White House baby,” kept Washington interested and amused for seven years.
Sturdy, impetuous, frank, and democratic, he was friends with everybody. He rode locomotives between Washington and Philadelphia with his chums, the engineers and firemen of the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania.
Meantime, he was captain also of a crew of warrior Indians recruited from members of his classes in a public school.
One day, during an illness of his brother Archie, Quentin decided that a sight of a pet pony might prove better than the White House doctor’s prescriptions.
Without waiting for permission he went out to the stables, introduced the Shetland into one of the private elevators, and had the little horse on the way into his sick brother’s room before he was stopped.
As recorded by the New York Times: “Quentin’s life while in Washington—he was running around here in kilts and afterward in short trousers when his father was President—was just the adventurous childhood of the boy who later slammed his motor cycle into a tree at Oyster Bay when he was trying to establish a new speed record and smiled when a home-assembled automobile took a corner under his guidance on one wheel. He was not afraid for himself and worried only about the expense of rebuilding the motor cycle.”
Quentin was sent to Harvard. He took a prominent part in athletics. He inherited his father’s pluck and determination. Like his father, too, Quentin suffered from a defect of vision. That is why when the first officers training-camp was organized and Archie was admitted and won a commission, Quentin, on account of his eyes, was rejected.
He thereupon applied for enlistment in the Canadian Flying Corps. That was in April, 1917. When the United States decided to send troops to Europe he was transferred to the United States Signal Corps as a private.
He underwent a brief period of training at Mineola. He reached France a few weeks after Archie, who, we remember, was then a Captain. Theodore, Jr., was already commanding one of the first American battalions to go under fire. Kermit also had by that time sailed for the war zone.