ficers for the higher commands."

Roosevelt waited five weeks and then earnestly renewed his request.
He declared his purpose to take his division, after some six weeks of
preliminary training, direct to France for intensive training so that
it could be sent to the front in the shortest possible time. Secretary
Baker replied that no additional armies could be raised without the
consent of Congress, that a plan for a much larger army was ready for
the action of Congress when ever required, and that the general officers
for all volunteer forces were to be drawn from the regular army. To
this Roosevelt replied with the respectful suggestion that, as a retired
Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, he was eligible to any
position of command over American troops. He recounted also his
record of actual military experience and referred the Secretary to his
immediate superiors in the field in Cuba as to his fitness for command
of troops.

When war had been finally declared, Secretary Baker and Roosevelt
conferred together at length about the matter. Thereafter Mr. Baker
wrote definitely, declaring that he would be obliged to withhold his
approval from an expedition of the sort proposed. The grounds which he
gave for the decision were that the soldiers sent across must not be
"deprived... of the most experienced leadership available, in deference
to any mere sentimental consideration," and that it should appear from
every aspect of the expeditionary force, if one should be sent over (a
point not yet determined upon) that "military considerations alone had
determined its composition."

To this definite refusal on the part of the Secretary of War Roosevelt
replied at length. In his letter was a characteristic passage commenting
upon Secretary Baker's reference to "sentimental considerations":

"I have not asked you to consider any "sentimental value" in this
matter. I am speaking of moral effect, not of sentimental value.
Sentimentality is as different from morality as Rousseau's life from
Abraham Lincoln's. I have just received a letter from James Bryce urging
"the dispatch of an American force to the theater of war," and saying,
"The moral effect of the appearance in the war line of an American
force would be immense." From representatives of the French and
British Governments and of the French, British, and Canadian military
authorities, I have received statements to the same effect, in even more
emphatic form, and e