“Where the Tree Falls”: The National Cemetery System and the Post-WWI Construction of an International Nationalism

Allison Lynn Wanger

On July 14, 1918, Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt (1897–1918), the youngest son of (1858–1919), was killed in aerial combat near Château Thierry, France. Recovered by German soldiers, he was laid to rest in an indi- vidual grave, marked by a cross that was crafted by the enemy out of his plane’s propellers. Over a thousand German troops gathered to pay their respects.1 Correspondence between the former president and military officials concern- ing Quentin’s death circulated in newspapers nationwide. “The death of our son is a bitter affliction”, Roosevelt wrote, “but this affliction would have been more bitter if our boy had not had an ardent desire to face death for such a noble cause”.2 Sending his condolences, General John J. Pershing (1860–1948) sympathized, “You may well be proud of your gift to the nation in his supreme sacrifice”.3 This well-worn nationalistic rhetoric embodied the interwar na- tional cemetery system’s (NCS) memorial mission. Through the establishment of overseas American cemeteries the institution employed classical, allegori- cal, and religious iconography and memorial architecture to imagine the tragic loss of distinctive lives as abstract ideological necessities in the national cru- sade to, in the words of President , “make the world safe for democracy”.4 The nature, politics, and geography of modern global warfare, the interna- tional relations it extended and the death it engendered, influenced the charac- ter and evolution of the government’s investment in a “good” national death.5

1 Due to the fact the Germans recognized Roosevelt as the son of a former president he re- ceived unique treatment. The average soldier did not garner such attention from the enemy. 2 “Roosevelt Thanks Paris”, The New York Times, November 21, 1918, 14. 3 “Quentin Roosevelt Praised by Pershing”, The New York Times, August 19, 1918, 9. 4 Woodrow Wilson, “At War with Germany: Address to Congress”, April 2, 1917 in Arthur Roy Leonard, ed., War Addresses of Woodrow Wilson (Boston, Athenaeum Press, 1918), 42. 5 This chapter is structured around the nineteenth century notion of a “good death”. As the government established the NCS following the Civil War, late nineteenth century American funerary traditions provided a cultural and social impetus for the institution’s evolution. By personally caring for the dying and the deceased within their homes and communities,

© VERLAG FERDINAND SCHÖNINGH, 2019 | DOI:10.30965/9783506788245_006 106 Allison Lynn Wanger

The death of Quentin Roosevelt provided an impetus for this metamorpho- sis. “Mrs. Roosevelt and I”, the former President wrote to the Quartermaster General,

have always believed that “Where the tree falls, there let it lie”. … to us it is painful and harrowing long after death to move the poor body from which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where he fell.6

At the time, the policy of the War Department was to “return to the the bodies of our soldiers who died on foreign soil and is in response to the practically unanimous demand on the part of the relatives of the deceased soldiers”. The Roosevelts’ public request compelled the War Department to un- officially adjust its policy. “In view … of your desire to have the body of your son Quentin remain where he fell”, General Peyton C. March wrote Roosevelt, “I am sending an order to General Pershing to carry out your wishes … and am giving him general authority to take the same course of action with regard to the body of any other soldier whose relatives or proper legal representatives desire such a course to be taken”.7 This decision suggested that the govern- ment was willing to grant next of kin (NOK) at least a degree of autonomy in determining the interment location of their deceased relative and, by conse- quence, the conflict’s official national memory. The public exchange presented a democratic model of familial and national mourning that further positioned the government as a mediator of funerary and memorial traditions. As their correspondence influenced recovery and repatriation policies, it ultimately impacted the NCS’ geographic, aesthetic, and regulatory development and, ultimately, the vision of the nation embodied therein.8

Victorian Americans assured themselves that their loved one had lived a worthy life and that their soul was at peace. Such “good death” practices served social functions, allowing the ­living to re-imagine and revive familial and communal relations and assuage fears concern- ing mortality and affirmed that life was worth living. I argue that the NCS was and continues to be a custodian of the Victorian tradition. Through the recovery, interment, and memo- rialization of the nation’s war dead, the NCS translated and transformed the domestic and familial nature of a “good death” into a national and international concern. 6 “Roosevelt Objects to Removal of Son”, The New York Times, November 18, 1918, 11. 7 Ibid. 8 Press Release from National Publicity Divisions, ND; Folder 687, Cemeteries 1923 through 1939; Box 157, Decimal Subject File Concerning the Construction and Maintenance of Cem- eteries and Monuments; Records of the American battle Monument Commission, Record