Читать книгу The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt - Wheeler P. Bloodgood - Страница 5

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THE SHOT IS FIRED.

RELATED BY HENRY F. COCHEMS AFTER THE SHOOTING.

At 8:10 o'clock on the night of Oct. 14, 1912, an attempt was made to assassinate Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in the city of Milwaukee. Col. Roosevelt had dined at the Hotel Gilpatrick with the immediate members of his traveling party. The time having arrived to leave for the Auditorium, where he was due to speak, he left his quarters, and, emerging from the front of the hotel, crossing the walk, stepped into a waiting automobile.

Instantly that he appeared a wild acclaim of applause and welcome greeted him. He settled in his seat, but, responsive to the persistent roar of the crowd, which extended in dense masses for over a block in every direction, he rose in acknowledgement, raising his hat in salute.

At this instant there cracked out the vicious report of a pistol shot, the flash of the gun showing that the would-be assassin had fired from a distance of only four or five feet.

Instantly there was a wild panic and confusion. Elbert E. Martin, one of Col. Roosevelt's stenographers, a powerful athlete and ex-football player, leaped across the machine and bore the would-be assassin to the ground. At the same moment Capt. A. O. Girard, a former Rough Rider and bodyguard of the ex-President, and several policemen were upon him. Col. Roosevelt's knees bent just a trifle, and his right hand reached forward on the door of the car tonneau. Then he straightened himself and reached back against the upholstered seat, but in the same instant he straightened himself, he again raised his hat, a reassuring smile upon his face, apparently the coolest and least excited of any one in the frenzied mob, who crowding in upon the man who fired the shot, continued to call out:

"Kill him, kill him."

I had stepped into the car beside Col. Roosevelt, about to take my seat when the shot was fired. Throwing my arm about the Colonel's waist, I asked him if he had been hit, and after Col. Roosevelt saying in an aside, "He pinked me, Harry," called out to those who were wildly tearing at the would-be assassin:

"Don't hurt him; bring him to me here!"

The sharp military tone of command was heard in the midst of the general uproar, and Martin, Girard and the policemen dragged Schrank toward where Mr. Roosevelt stood. Arriving at the side of the car, the revolver, grasped by three or four hands of men struggling for possession, was plainly visible, and I succeeded in grasping the barrel of the revolver, and finally in getting it from the possession of a detective. Mr. Martin says that Schrank still had his hands on the revolver at that time. The Colonel then said:

"Officers, take charge of him, and see that there is no violence done to him."

The crowd had quickly cleared from in front of the automobile, and we drove through, Col. Roosevelt waving a hand, the crowd now half-hysterical with frenzied excitement.

After rounding the corner I drew the revolver from my overcoat pocket and saw that it was a 38-caliber long which had been fired. As the Colonel looked at the revolver he said:

"A 38-Colt has an ugly drive."

Mr. McGrath, one of the Colonel's secretaries riding at his right side, said:

"Why, Colonel, you have a hole in your overcoat. He has shot you."

The Colonel said:

"I know it," and opened his overcoat, which disclosed his white linen, shirt, coat and vest saturated with blood. We all instantly implored and pleaded with the Colonel to drive with the automobile to a hospital, but he turned to me with a characteristic smile and said:

"I know I am good now; I don't know how long I may be. This may be my last talk in this cause to our people, and while I am good I am going to drive to the hall and deliver my speech."

Shirts Worn by Ex-President Roosevelt

Showing Extent of Bleeding from Wound

While He Spoke to 9,000 People.

By the time we had arrived at the hall the shock had brought a pallor to his face. On alighting he walked firmly to the large waiting room in the back of the Auditorium stage, and there Doctors Sayle, Terrell and Stratton opened his shirt, exposing his right breast.

Just below the nipple of his right breast appeared a gaping hole. They insisted that under no consideration should he speak, but the Colonel asked:

"Has any one a clean handkerchief?"

Some one extending one, he placed it over the wound, buttoned up his clothes and said:

"Now, gentlemen, let's go in," and advanced to the front of the platform.

I, having been asked to present him to the audience, after admonishing the crowd that there was no occasion for undue excitement, said that an attempt to assassinate Col. Roosevelt had taken place; that the bullet was still in his body, and that he would attempt to make his speech as promised.

As the Colonel stepped forward, some one in the audience said audibly:

"Fake," whereupon the Colonel smilingly said:

"No, it's no fake," and opening his vest, the blood-red stain upon his linen was clearly visible.

A half-stifled expression of horror swept through the audience.

About the first remark uttered in the speech, as the Colonel grinned broadly at the audience, was:

"It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose. I'm all right, no occasion for any sympathy whatever, but I want to take this occasion within five minutes after having been shot to say some things to our people which I hope no one will question the profound sincerity of."

Throughout his speech, which continued for an hour and twenty minutes, the doctors and his immediate staff of friends, sitting closely behind him, expected that he might at any moment collapse. I was so persuaded of this that I stepped over the front of the high platform to the reporters' section immediately beneath where he was speaking, so that I might catch him if he fell forward.

These precautions, however, were unnecessary, for, while his speech lacked in the characteristic fluency of other speeches, while the shock and pain caused his argument to be somewhat labored, yet it was with a soldierly firmness and iron determination, which more than all things in Roosevelt's career discloses to the country the real Roosevelt, who at the close of his official service as President in 1909 left that high office the most beloved public figure in our history since Lincoln fell, and the most respected citizen of the world. As was said in an editorial in the Chicago Evening Post:

"There is no false sentiment here; there is no self-seeking. The guards are down. The soul of the man stands forth as it is. In the Valley of the Shadow his own simple declaration of his sincerity, his own revelation of the unselfish quality of his devotion to the greatest movement of his generation, will be the standard by which history will pass upon Theodore Roosevelt its final judgment. This much they cannot take from him, no matter whether he is now to live or to die."

To the men of America, who either love or hate Roosevelt personally, these words from his speech must carry an imperishable lesson:

"The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech. But I will try my best.

"And now, friends, I want to take advantage of this incident to say as solemn a word of warning as I know how to my fellow Americans.

"First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too many important things to think of to pay any heed or feel any concern over my own death.

"Now I would not speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things. It is not in the least for my own life.

"I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have had—a happier life in every way.

"I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested in doing other things.

"I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in whether I am shot or not.

"It was just as when I was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety, but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any heed to his personal safety when he is occupied, as he ought to be occupied, with the absorbing desire to do his duty.

"I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul; I believe in the Progressive movement—a movement for the betterment of mankind, a movement for making life a little easier for all our people, a movement to try to take the burdens off the man and especially the woman in this country who is most oppressed.

"I am absorbed in the success of that movement. I feel uncommonly proud in belonging to that movement.

"Friends, I ask you now this evening to accept what I am saying as absolute truth when I tell you I am not thinking of my own success, I am not thinking of my own life or of anything connected with me personally."

The disabling of Col. Roosevelt at this tragic moment was a great strategic loss in his campaign. The mind of the country was in a pronounced state of indecision. He had started at Detroit, Mich., one week before and had planned to make a great series of sledge hammer speeches upon every vital issue in the campaign, which plan took him to the very close of the fight. He had planned to put his strongest opponent in a defensive position, the effect of which, now that all is over, no man can measure. Stricken down, an immeasurable loss was sustained. In the years that lie before, when misjudgment and misstatements, which are the petty things born of prejudice, and which die with the breath that gives them life, shall have passed away, this incident and the soldierly conduct of the brave man who was its victim will have a real chastening and wholesome historical significance.

Page from Ex-President Roosevelt's Manuscript of Speech Showing Bullet Holes.