SECRET REVEALED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 125, 23 November 1938, Page 4

SECRET REVEALED

RUSSIA-JAPAN WAR

. WHY ROOSEVELT MOVED

Theodore Roosevelt intervened to make peace in the Russo-Japanese War . despite his own profound convection that to do so was a mistake i.ud that it would be better for the future peace of the world to allow the two nations to fight to the point of utter exhaustion, says the "New York Times." ! Feeling that public opinion would not sustain him in his views and that it was his duty as President' of the United States to take action for peace, regardless of his own personal judgment about the situation, Mr. Roosevelt dstermined to make peace and let the future take care of itself, it was related by Henry L. Stoddard, for many years his intimate friend. Mr. Stoddard, owner and editor of the "New York Evening Mail" from 1905 to 1925, and a close friend of every President since Garfield except Wilson, related this hitherto secret bit of history at the Union League Club. It will be told in detail in his book, "It Costs to be President." The episode was first revealed by Dr. Alexander Lambert in the course of one of the annual pilgrimages made by twenty or thirty loyal friends of "T. R." to his grave on January 6, the anniversary of his death. Mr. Stoddard said that Dr. Lambert subsequently authorised its publication and verified the details of the story. The President and Dr. Lambert wer» alone in a ranch house in the mountains back of New Castle, near Glenwood Springs, Colorado, early in May, 1905, where for two weeks they had been bear hunting, when a batch of dispatches reached Mr. Roosevelt and he announced he would have to return East "to take up this war business." "I THINK IT'S A MISTAKE." "Both Japan and Russia want to quit, but neither one will say it," Colonel Roosevelt said. "In a sense, they want me to say it for them. Both have asked me. I will, but I don't want to. 1 think it's a mistake." "What do you mean by 'it's a rms» take'?" Dr. Lambert inquired, according to Mr. Stoddard's account. "I mean just this," came the reply. "It would be a great deal better for the future peace of the world, and especially for our country, to let them keep at it until both sides bleed themselves white. If Japan and Russia, by heavy loss of men and treasure, can be forced into long years of peace, /it would be much better for every country having interests in the Pacific That's where our big future lies, too. I would rather see the war go on until the two countries are utterly exhausted than stop it. It's their war/how; no other nation is concerned in.lt; it's a duel; the two ought to be left alone to fight it out for themselves." Dr. Lambert told Mr. Stoddard that he had asked. Mr. Roosevelt why, if he felt that;way, he did not step aside. JHe said that the President replied that public opinion would severely criticise him. ;••'■ . I "I know We are going to regret it j bitterly some day," the President conttinued, as Dr. Lambert repeated the story to Mr. Stoddard, "but I haven't the least idea that any considerable number of our people would stan4;by me if I reMsed to act. I cannot give you the details of it, but for three months this ; thing has been going on. I have been deep in: it. I have been in communication with the Kaiser, King Edward, and the French Government, as well as Russia and Japan. v~s{ ANOTHER VIEWPOINT. ' "I have been trying to do the Very thing that if I had no official responsibility i would strongly oppose, i am at the head of our Ciovernment, however, and that compels another point of view on my part. 1 can't act pa my own individual judgment- in such a ! serious matter when i know my country woiiid not stand for it." / * Denying the authenticity of the bttrepeated story that the nomination of Harding was decided in 'a smokefilled room," Mr. Stodaard revealed another bit.of history with the contentioa that the turning-point of the Republican National Convention oi 1920 actually took place during a* three-hour taxicab ride of the two leading contenders, General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank O. Lowden. '

After a recess taken at 1.30 p.m. on Saturday of the convention week, at a time when General Wood and Mr. Low. den each commanded in the neighbourhood of 300 votes, the two men met secretly in an effort to agree upon. a ticket, Mr. Stoddard wrote. In order to avoid detection they were unwilling to meet at a hotel or a club, and so for three hours they rode-along the Chicago lake front, each endeavouring to persuade the other to subordinate himself and accept the vice-presidential nomination on a Wood-Lowden or Lowden-Wood ticket.

When they failed to reach" an agreement, Tobe Hert, the Lowden floor manager, who had brought about the recess, announced that with Governor Lowden's consent the Kentucky delegation would vote for Mr. Harding,. and thereby began the swing to the Ohio Senator that culminated in his nomination later that day. Mr. Stoddard wrote that Mr. Lowden and Colonel Frank Knox, Wood's floor manager, have both confirmed the account of the taxicab ride.

The title of his book, "It Costs t,o b» President," is a quotation from Calvin Coolidge, whom Mr. Stoddard knew well.