To Serve Righteousness: November 1914 to April 1915

With the cataclysm in Europe showing no signs of ending in the three months widely forecast, and “utterly sick of the spiritless neutrality” of the Wilson administration, Roosevelt unfurled his fourth syndicated war series article, “An International Posse Comitatus,” which in “emphatic language” publicly recounted several themes he had already rehearsed in private conversations. 1 Up to this time, the Colonel declared in his article, he had been “reluctant in any way to criticize” the actions of Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan in foreign affairs. He had “faithfully,” and in some cases against his own “deep- rooted personal convictions,” sought to justify what had been done in Mexico and regarding the present world war. But the time had come when loyalty to the administration in foreign affairs meant “disloyalty to our own national self- interest and to our obligations toward humanity at large.”