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Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and Alice Hathaway Roosevelt, was born on 2nd December, 1884. Two days later both her mother and paternal grandmother died.

In February, 1906, Alice married Nicholas Longworth, a Congressman from Ohio. Like her husband, Alice was a member of the Republican Party. After the First World War it was claimed she played an important role in opposing the idea of the League of Nations.

Alice's home in Washington was a meeting place for politicians. She loved to gossip and kept a pillow on her sofa with the following words embroidered on it: "If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me."

Alice Roosevelt Longworth died in 1980.

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(1) Alice Roosevelt Longworth, interviewed by Michael Teague in 1981.

I used to go to the debates a lot, especially during the early days of the League of Nations. We were against the League because we hated Wilson, who was a Family Horror. He couldn't do any good in our eyes because he had beaten Father. We felt that my father had advocated the idea of the League of Nations in his Nobel prize acceptance speech. And then Taft had come up with his League to Enforce Peace and we had squabbled about that. We didn't like other people's Leagues muscling in on our own. It was entirely personal politics designed purely to annoy. As far as I was concerned anyway. All that nonsense about my killing the League with a bunch of diehard cronies is ridiculous. It is true that I took a great interest in the debates but I don't think I influenced matters one way or another. Wilson could have had his League any time. All he had to do was to take the reservations. But he had a slowness which verged on stupidity. We were not irreconcilable but we were against the League in that form.