This is CBSI in the world.

I'm John Batchel with Neil Langtoe.

His new book is The Approaching Storm.

Roosevelt Wilson Adams, the three progressives of the beginning of the 20th century, know each other very well, and maneuver in public.

Everything's in public.

They write letters.

They're published.

The headlines are filled with what Wilson says, what TR says, what Jane Adams is done in Europe. When she visited Vienna and commented on the horse ribs sticking out because they were starving. That made it into the newspapers. When she sailed back to home, there was concern about her safety because of the

German submarines. These were daily conversation pieces in the big city, especially in New York,

which was 10% of the population. And America is now the richest planet, the richest country on

the planet. So all of these are not backwaters. These are major decisions. And we come to

the winter of 1915, 1916. And we start with Teddy Roosevelt because he has been, well, you can

fill in the blanks of what he thinks about Wilson, keep writing strong notes to Berlin. And he's

already disdained Jane Adams as naive or worse. So in January and

February of 1916, the wintertime, is he planning to run for the presidency? Does he open

relations again with the party he rejected. Do they welcome him, Neil?

There were signs that he was moving in that direction. He felt for a long time that no one was

listening to him because the great cause he had been involved with since the war began was

what they called preparedness, being prepared militarily because our country was so limited

in its military power. We had 100,000 men or something

like that, although our Navy was decent size. So he had been preaching that message. It was starting

to catch on in late 1950. Typically, after the Lusitania, people started to realize that there was some

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