ROOSEVELT THEODORE Typed Letter Signed to journalist and aut

Sale 2519 - Lot 117

Price Realized: $ 6,750

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000

"JEW AND GENTILE . . . SHOULD ALL ALIKE BE HELD TO THE SAME STANDARD OF DUTY" ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Typed Letter Signed, to journalist and author Herman Bernstein, with 3 holograph emendations, pointing out an error in Roosevelt's own article published in the Metropolitan ["Need of Preparedness," April 1915?], and explaining that the just intent of the article cannot be misunderstood, the error notwithstanding. 1 3/4 pages, 4to, personal stationery, written on separate sheets; some loss to upper left corner of first leaf, remnants of adhesive at upper left of second leaf, folds. Oyster Bay, 12 April 1915

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

"The sentence to which you refer, in the Metropolitan, . . . . was telescoped out of two sentences. The first runs as follows: 'It is an outrage to seek to shape American governmental policies with a view to favoring the foreign country with which a certain percentage of our citizens are connected by birth or descent.'
"There should then be a paragraph beginning as follows: 'The Jew who has become in good faith an American is entitled in every way to exactly the same treatment as the Christian; but if he remains merely "a Jew in America," and votes as a Jew, then he has no business in America at all.'
"These two sentences . . . . are entitled on their face to the hearty approval of every good American citizen. My article cannot honestly be misconstrued. It was a demand that Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, should all alike be held to the same standard of duty, and all alike receive the same treatment, strictly on the merits of each man, as a man; and that this same principle should be applied to Americans of all national origins--English, Irish, German, Scandinavian, Slav, French,--without any regard to their descent or their birthplace. Any effort to twist it into anything else is mere quibbling . . . ."