think as you do, all the more so because I am out of sympathy with the great majority of my countrymen, and especially with those who claim the foremost place in light and leading. I am not in the least a hero, my dear fellow. I am a perfectly commonplace man and I know it; I am just a decent American citizen who tries to stand for what is decent in his own country and in other countries and who owes very much to you and to certain men like you who are not fellow-countrymen of his.

"That's a dreadful tragedy of which you speak in connection with that noble battalion of regular infantry and the fate they encountered at the Dardanelles.

"Booth was at my house just at the time of the outbreak of the war last year. To think of the horror that has befallen his partner!

"Your son lunched here the Sunday before he sailed. As you know, he is one of the young men whom I especially admire."

In 1918 Roosevelt had four sons and a son-in-law in the war, and Trevelyan's youngest son, George Macaulay Trevelyan, had been in it since 1915. This common interest and anxiety naturally drew them more closely than ever together and the letters reveal an added tone of tender affection. When in the spring of 1918 the news came of the wounding of two of the Roosevelt boys, Trevelyan sent to Roosevelt a letter of sympathy, to which the latter replied on April 9:

"Yes; you know exactly how I feel about Archie's wounds. In this great and terrible war we are indeed proud that events here so shaped themselves that our four sons are at the front, and Ethel's husband also; we would not for anything have them anywhere else; but I fear we would welcome their return home, each with an arm or leg off, so that they could feel that they had played their parts manfully, and yet we could have them back! Archie's arm was badly fractured, and a shell splinter went into his knee; he continued in command for some time, until the loss of

·

blood overcame him; it was fourteen hours before he reached a hospital; a French general gave him the croix de guerre while he was on the operating table. The rest in the hospital will do him good. Ted was knocked down by a shell, but was merely bruised. He and Quentin are now in the battle to beat back this huge German drive.

"I have heard again and again of George's high and gallant valor; indeed you must feel equal pride and anxiety over him."

Writing to me on June 6, 1919, and referring to the above letter, Sir George gives this graphic picture of a most interesting incident of the war:

"This letter was in my mind on last Friday, the 30th of May. We were traveling to this place from Stratford on Avon, and we spent an hour or two in Birmingham, and went to the Cathedral, where the Lord Mayor and Corporation had come to do honor to Commemoration day. Some hundred and fifty young Americans, without side-arms, marched past us in single file up the center of the nave, the last twenty or thirty of them carrying immense armfuls and handfuls of most beautiful flowers. They took their seats in long rows beneath the mural tablet bearing the fine inscription to the famous Loyalist exile, 'Peter Oliver, formerly His Majesty's Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England.' There they sat, unconscious of the historical contrast; and, as I watched their calm grave young faces, lighted by the glorious and inimitable windows of Burne-Jones, I thought how Theodore Roosevelt would have loved to see them, and they him.'

Soon after retiring from the Presidency in March, 1909, Colonel Roosevelt went to Africa on a hunting-trip. He had arranged before his departure for several formal addresses which he was to make in Germany, England, France, and Norway on his return. When he reached Khartoum in March, 1910, on his way home, he yielded to urgent appeals and made two addresses on Egyptian affairs, one at Khartoum and the other at Cairo, which aroused much controversy and led later to a speech on the same subject, also by urgent request, at the Guildhall in London. From Khartoum he went to Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Paris, Brussels, The Hague, Copenhagen, Christiania, Stockholm, Berlin, and thence to London. At the close of his tour he paid a cheerful and joyous visit to his long-time correspondent and friend, Sir George Otto Trevelyan, at the latter's Warwickshire home at Welcombe, Stratford-onAvon. During that visit his narrative of his experiences in Egypt and Europe so strongly impressed and fascinated Sir George that he urged him most earnestly to put it in writing. This Roosevelt did in the following year, in the form of a letter to Trevelyan, under date of October 1, 1911, of which Roosevelt himself preserved a copy. This letter, about 25,000 words in length, is an intimate account of his experiences in Egypt and in the chief capitals of Europe, with frank and searching comments upon the characteristics and personalities of the kings, emperors, and other eminent personages with whom he came in contact. It is a "human document" of quite exceptional character. What Trevelyan thought of it was expressed in a letter that he wrote to Roosevelt, under date of October 21, 1911:

"I have now read aloud, in the course of several evenings, your account of your European and Egyptian travels to my wife. I shall give it to George and Charles to read, without letting it go from beneath my roof; and I have arranged with Charles that (to employ the usual euphemism), 'if anything happens to me' he is to write to you, and ask whether you would wish to have it back. It is a piece absolutely unique in literature. Kings and emperors are a class apart; and no one, so capable of describing his observations, ever had such an opportunity of observing them, since the Prince de Ligne lived with Frederick, Catherine of Russia, and Maria Theresa, and their humble, royal contemporaries. But the Prince de Ligne, though a very great subject, was after all a subject. Your position was independent, and you were as strange to them as they to you, and you approached them with ideas and beliefs engendered in a very different atmosphere. I never read anything more novel and interesting.

"I own to be rather alarmed by what you saw and heard in Germany. The whole account of the relation of the Emperor to his people is most exceedingly important, and quite bears out my own outside conclusions. He acceded to the throne at the age of 28-the age of Frederick the Great; and, before three months were over, Frederick had all Europe in a blaze, and William has kept the peace already for above a quarter of a century. There is a very serious tendency in the German mind; and I await with real anxiety the forthcoming election for the Reichstag. A very great weakening of the Junker predominance might have a good effect; but the powers that are may stick at nothing to avert that result.

"We were extraordinarily interested by your policy about the sailing of the United States Fleet. It was a glimpse of la plus haute politique,' which told much of your methods as a ruler."

In view of Roosevelt's remark in the opening paragraph of his letter, that it should not be made public "until long

after all of us who are now alive are dead," the question of publication was referred to Sir George, who replied on May 29, 1919: "I do not hesitate to say that it should be published and the sooner the better. The world would be much the richer for it. The times are such that the human interest and solid value of this wonderful paper would be very great indeed now."

THE LETTER

SAGAMORE HILL, OYSTER BAY. NEW YORK,

Oct. 1, 1911.

To the Right Hon. Sir George Trevelyan, Bart.
Dear Sir George:

Sixteen months have passed since that very enjoyable Sunday I passed at your house. In the evening I finally told you that I would try to write an account of the intimate side of my trip from Khartoum to London, and send it to you for the eyes only of you yourself and your family. I am not quite sure I ought to write it even to you! However, I shall, just for the satisfaction of telling you things most of which it would be obviously entirely out of the question to make public, at any rate until long after all of us who are now alive are dead. By that time in all probability this letter will have been destroyed; and in any event interest in what it relates will have ceased. Meanwhile, if you enjoy reading what I have set down, I shall be repaid; and moreover, I am really glad for my own sake to jot down some of the things that occurred, before they grow so dim in my mind that I can no longer enjoy the memories, and look back at some with laughter and at others with sober interest.

I journeyed down the Nile, passing through stratum after stratum of savagery and semi-civilization. At first I was among men who, in culture, were more like our own palæolithic forefathers than the latter were to us; and then up through level after level as we went steadily northward with the current of the great stream, each stage represent