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.
(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.
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