Epilogue: November 1918 to January 1919

Abstract

The day the Armistice was signed with Germany and the guns silenced, the Colonel was admitted to Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. He had been suffering from a collection of chronic illnesses for some time, but he insisted on soldiering on until after the election. A flare up of his gout forced him into bed, and further complications including inflammatory rheumatism sent him to the hospital, where he stayed until Christmas. The public was told he was suffering an attack of sciatica. The end of the war and the vindication of Roosevelt’s criticisms implicit in the election defeat of Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats had not softened his loathing for the man. He told one of the doctors that he would like to be “left alone in this room with our great and good president for about fifteen minutes, and then I would be cheerfully hung.”²

Theodore Roosevelt is dead, and I have lost a friend … something vital has gone. Something fine. Something that seemed as though it could not die. Fearless, reckless, boyish Theodore Roosevelt has joined the army at last.¹

—Mary Roberts Rinehart