World War I
Just after the United States entered the war against the Central Powers, the U.S. Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise up to four divisions similar to the Rough Riders. Roosevelt immediately selected eighteen officers (including: Seth Bullock, Frederick Russell Burnham, and James Rudolph Garfield) to raise a volunteer infantry division, and began corresponding with Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War. After several months, many more men joined Roosevelt's World War I volunteers, but Baker refused to offer any assistance or guidance to the new unit. Frustrated, Roosevelt telegrammed President Woodrow Wilson requesting his assistance; however, as Commander-in-chief, Wilson refused to make use of the volunteers and Roosevelt disbanded the unit.
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Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
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