Roosevelt went on, staring hard at Witte. “I drink to the welfare and prosperity of the sovereigns and to the peoples of the two great nations whose representatives have met one another on this ship. It is my most earnest hope and prayer, in the interest not only of these two great powers, but of all civilized mankind, that a just and lasting peace may speedily be concluded between them.”
After the requisite hush and sipping, conversation continued with gradually increasing bonhomie. (“How is Madame Takahira?” “I hope the Baroness is well.”) A young reporter from the Sun syndicate, to whom Roosevelt had awarded one of the most prized exclusives in journalism, realized that all belligerents were human.
For the first time it was borne in upon me that wars were not only not necessary, but even ridiculous; that they were wholly man-made.… [I] questioned Socrates’ conclusion that to know the good is to practice it. Humanity is simply not built like that. Except for a few savage or half-savage tribes, we all know that war profits no one, that its only result in the world, in the words of Croesus, is that “In war the fathers bury their sons, whereas in peace the sons bury their fathers,”—the normal course. But we are no more normal than we are certain to practice the good if we know it. Those bits of wisdom from the Greek world are two and a half millennia old, but they only emphasize our persistent unwisdom.
When lunch was over, Roosevelt and his chief guests posed for a formal photograph. Some of the chagrin he had seemed to feel the previous day, for misjudging the Russians, made him place Witte and Rosen on his right. Or was it, more subtly, his intuition that when the dread indemnity question was raised, Witte would be the only negotiator wise enough to give in? Throughout the reception, he had been more amiable to Witte than to Komura.
The latter, dwarfed and sickly looking on the President’s left, remained impassive. But a camera caught an expression of real hurt on Takahira’s face.
AT TWENTY MINUTES to three, Roosevelt bade farewell to everyone, put his silk hat back on, and left the Mayflower, to another twenty-one-gun salute. His preliminary diplomatic work was done. The Japanese exited next, and were ferried to the Dolphin. Their counterparts remained aboard the much larger host ship, which hoisted Russian colors and prepared to sail for Portsmouth. A change in the displacement of the delegations would seem to have occurred. But the much smaller Dolphin weighed anchor first, as if determined to establish precedence. The Mayflower let her go, then followed at leisure. Witte and his aides reappeared on deck in light summer clothes.
“WHEN LUNCH WAS OVER, ROOSEVELT AND HIS CHIEF GUESTS POSED FOR A FORMAL PHOTOGRAPH.”
Left to right: Sergei Witte, Baron Rosen, the President, Baron Komura, and Ambassador Takahira, 5 August 1905 (photo credit 24.3)
That evening, a guest at Sagamore Hill thought the President looked weary but content. “I think we are off to a good start,” Roosevelt said, admitting that he had been afraid of making a slip during the day. “I know perfectly well that the whole world is watching me, and the condemnation that will come down on me, if the conference fails, will be world-wide too. But that’s all right.”
THE FIRST INDICATION that something had gone seriously wrong at Portsmouth came on Friday, 18 August, when Kentaro Kaneko hurried out to Oyster Bay from New York. The self-important Baron, who served as a messenger from Komura, was beginning to irritate reporters with his almost daily pilgrimages up Sagamore Hill. They suspected that Kaneko was none too bright. He could hardly order a cup of tea without mentioning his Harvard education, and reverently quoted the President’s aphorisms (“The railroad train is doubtless stronger than a bull, but that doesn’t say the train wants a bull on the track”) as if he understood them.
His news today, however, was urgent. The peace negotiations were on the verge of deadlock. Witte, whose overbearing garrulousness (and clever cultivation of American press opinion) grated more and more on Komura, was insisting that Russia would give up no territory and pay no indemnity. Japan had moderated her peace terms at Roosevelt’s suggestion, dropping Vladivostok and changing the word indemnity to reimbursement, but Witte was plainly hardening, rather than commensurately softening, Russian attitudes. He refused in particular to concede Sakhalin, which he described as “a watchman at our gates.” All he was willing to consider was some sort of arrangement recognizing Japanese economic interest in the island.
Later that evening, Roosevelt received related news from George Meyer in St. Petersburg. It indicated that Witte was acting on royal authority. Nicholas II, who had made plain at Tsarsköe Selò how precious Sakhalin was to Russia, was increasingly under the sway of war advocates. To them, an indemnity under any name would be an admission that the Motherland was conquered. No Japanese jackboot had yet trodden her soil—unless one counted the non-continental mass of Sakhalin.
Roosevelt detected a resurgence of the Russian lack of logic that had so infuriated him with Count Cassini. His Majesty would not give up Sakhalin, yet Sakhalin was already occupied by the Japanese. Russia was not conquered—she had merely been beaten in every land battle of the war, and lost almost all of her navy. Her soil was undefiled, but if she did not soon treat with Japan, she could say good-bye to eastern Siberia.
A fantasy began to grow in him. He would like to march the Tsar and his ministers to the end of Cove Neck, and “run them violently down a steep place into the sea.” But reality beckoned. The peace conference would soon founder if Russia could not be persuaded to sacrifice some of her “honor.” He told Kaneko that he would appeal, if necessary, to the Tsar, and enlist the aid of the Kaiser and President Loubet of France as well.
The courier returned home satisfied. That night, Roosevelt, having heard from Speck von Sternburg that Britain and France were conspiring to step in as peacemakers, sent a telegram to the Russian delegation in Portsmouth, in care of Herbert H. Peirce. It was galvanizing enough for the Assistant Secretary to wake Baron Rosen up at 2:00 A.M. and tell him he was expected at Sagamore Hill in the early afternoon.
All diplomatic niceties, evidently, were being waived in this hour of crisis. The President of the United States was no longer a neutral mediator between belligerents. He was prepared to intervene, and to do so peremptorily. Rosen had no choice but to obey his summons.
Roosevelt was playing tennis in white flannels when Rosen found him at four o’clock. Disconcertingly, he kept returning to the game at pauses in their conversation, as if to mime the serves and returns of diplomatic dialogue. He said that three of Russia’s principal concerns at Portsmouth—imprisoned war vessels, naval limitation, and Japanese control of Sakhalin—were resolvable, in his opinion. Japan would back down on the first two, and the Tsar must accept the last as a fait accompli. Occupied ground was enemy ground.
“We Americans,” Roosevelt said, by way of example, “are ensconced at Panama and will not leave.”
It was not the most fortunate comparison, but Rosen was more interested in what the President proceeded to say about Sakhalin. Roosevelt seemed to know that Witte had reluctantly begun to talk about dividing the island—the northern half to be Russian and strategic, the southern Japanese and commercial.
He asked Rosen if his delegation would transmit a proposal to the Tsar as “an idea expressed in private conversation” with the President. This was that Russia should buy her half from Japan, as holders of the real estate in question. Without even mentioning the word indemnity, a negotiable quantity of money would begin to flow in Tokyo’s direction. The talks would be reanimated, tempers would cool, and the unmentionable could perhaps be submitted to allies for arbitration.
Rosen, politely masking his resentment at being manipulated, agreed to carry the proposal back north for his chief to relay to St. Petersburg. Witte reluctantly obliged on 21 August, advising Count Lamsdorff, “If it is our desire that in the future America and Europe side with us, we must take Roosevelt’s opinion into consideration.” On Monday, the President felt uneasy enough about Russian duplicity to cable Meyer and ask him, once again, t
o read a personal message to Nicholas II:
I earnestly ask your Majesty to believe in what I am about to say and to advise. I speak as the earnest well-wisher of Russia and give you the advice I should give if I were a Russian patriot and statesman.… I find to my surprise and pleasure that the Japanese are willing to restore the northern half of Sakhalin to Russia, Russia of course in such case to pay a substantial sum for this surrender of territory by the Japanese and for the return of Russian prisoners. It seems to me that if peace can be obtained substantially on these terms, it will be both just and honorable.… If peace is not made now and war is continued, it may well be that, though the financial strain upon Japan would be severe, yet in the end Russia would be shorn of those east Siberian provinces which have been won by her by the heroism of her sons during the last three centuries. The proposed peace leaves the ancient Russian boundaries absolutely intact. The only change will be that Japan will get that part of Sakhalin which was hers up to thirty years ago. As Sakhalin is an island it is, humanly speaking, impossible that the Russians should reconquer it in view of the disaster to their navy; and to keep the northern half of it is a guarantee for the security of Vladivostok and eastern Siberia to Russia. It seems to me that every consideration of national self-interest, of military expediency and of broad humanity makes it eminently wise and right for Russia to conclude peace substantially along these lines, and it is my hope and prayer that your Majesty may take this view.
Roosevelt used the words substantial and substantially with little consideration for an Emperor whose idea of conciliation was “not an inch of land, not a rouble of indemnities.” The cable went off, coded to cheat Russian surveillance, with carbon copies referred to the ambassadors of Germany and France. He sent a much colder message to Baron Kaneko: “I think I ought to tell you that I hear on all sides a good deal of complaint expressed among the friends of Japan as to the possibility of Japan’s continuing the war for a large indemnity.” Then, putting his trust in the hands of Meyer, he soothed himself by reflecting that Ramses II had not scrupled to treat with the Hittites in 1272 B.C., after years of militant blustering.
“I cannot trust myself to talk about the Peace Conference,” Henry Adams wrote Elizabeth Cameron from Paris. “I am too scared. Literally I am trembling with terror.… The general débâcle must now begin.”
THE SIGHT OF Sergei Witte standing huge and rumpled to the right of the President of the United States did not beguile Nicholas II, when, on 23 August, Meyer showed him a batch of photographs from the Mayflower. Nor was the Tsar disposed to be reasonable, as he had been during their last interview. He remarked rather peevishly that his cousin Wilhelm had just sent him a letter urging peace, and added that it was “quite a coincidence” that such missives always seemed to precede audiences with the American Ambassador.
“Russia is not in the position of France in 1870,” Nicholas said, refusing again to pay any indemnity. Meyer had to argue for two hours before he consented to pay at least “a liberal and generous amount” for the care and maintenance of Russian prisoners of war. This encouraged the Ambassador to press him on Sakhalin. Nicholas at last said that Japan could keep “that portion” of the island she had once had clear title to.
On the same day, Roosevelt, who by now had become a one-man electrical storm of cables to St. Petersburg, Peking, Paris, London, and Tokyo, again wrote Kaneko. Dropping all diplomatic politesse, he went to the edge of brusqueness in implying that Japan was being both greedy and inconsiderate at the conference table. Another year of war would merely “eat up more money than she could at the end get back from Russia.” Then followed a moral lecture, in language a Nipponese aristocrat was not used to hearing:
Ethically it seems to me that Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis. The civilized world looks to her to make peace; the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership in matters ethical no less than matters military. The appeal is made to her in the name of all that is lofty and noble; and to this appeal I hope she will not be deaf.
The letter was wired to Tokyo, while Meyer, at Roosevelt’s insistence, kept pressuring the Tsar for further concessions. Both initiatives failed, or seemed to fail. In the absence of changed instructions, the peace conference went into recess.
ON FRIDAY, 25 August, Roosevelt shocked most of his countrymen by dropping to the floor of Long Island Sound in one of the Navy’s six new submarines, appropriately named the Plunger. He remained beneath the surface (lashed with heavy rain) long enough to watch fish swim past his window. Then, taking the controls, he essayed a few movements himself, including one which brought the ship to the surface rear end up.
Once again, he seemed to be miming, albeit unconsciously, the progress of negotiations at Portsmouth, where the issue of the indemnity had become a dead weight. The afternoon following his dive marked the low point of the conference, with Witte and Komura staring at each other in silence, smoking cigarette after cigarette, for eight minutes. Rumors spread over the weekend that the Russians were asking for their hotel bills. On Monday, Roosevelt concluded that he could do nothing more. According to Meyer, Japan’s fanatic insistence on compensation—at a scarcely conceivable 1.2 billion yen—had so enraged the Russian people that “even the peasants” supported their sovereign’s refusal to pay.
On Tuesday, 29 August, Witte suddenly placed a sheet of paper on the table. He said it contained Russia’s final concessions. They were less, not more, generous than the concessions Japan could have accepted a week before, from the hands of the Tsar. Russia would pay no indemnity. Japan might have south Sakhalin, but only if she gave up the north, “sans aucune compensation.”
Komura sat impassive. Silence grew in the room. Witte took up another piece of paper and began to tear bits off it—a habit, intolerable to Japanese sensibilities, that he had indulged throughout the conference. Eventually, Komura said in a tight voice that the Japanese government wanted to restore peace, and bring the current negotiations to an end. He consented to the division of Sakhalin and withdrew the claim for an indemnity.
Witte accepted this acceptance, and said that the island would be cut at the fiftieth degree of latitude north. The Russo-Japanese War was over.
HENRY J. FORMAN, the young reporter whom Roosevelt had permitted on board the Mayflower, had accompanied the President on a quick trip to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, earlier in the summer of 1905. The occasion had been a routine appearance before coal miners, in a parklike square cut across by ropes, like a giant spider’s web. For some extraordinary reason, as John Mitchell addressed the crowd, bound around by the ropes, it had begun to sway from side to side, in an almost hydraulic movement that gathered force frighteningly. Mitchell, sweating, begged the crowd to keep still, lest the ropes break and people be trampled to death. But the swaying continued. Alarm was visible on the faces of those in front of the speaker stand, as if they could not help themselves.
Then Roosevelt was announced. Holding up his arms to a roar of acclaim, he began to speak. Forman could not remember what he said, only that the crowd all at once “froze to attention.”
The peace the President had made possible at Portsmouth was the result of just such an inexplicable ability to impose his singular charge upon plural power. By sheer force of moral purpose, by clarity of perception, by mastery of detail and benign manipulation of men, he had become, as Henry Adams admiringly wrote him, “the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon.”
After the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed on 5 September, he allowed himself a characteristic moment of self-congratulation. “It’s a mighty good thing for Russia,” he allowed, “and a mighty good thing for Japan.” And, with a thump of his chest, “a mighty good thing for me, too!”
CHAPTER 25
Mere Force of Events
Ye see, th’ fact iv th’ matter is th’ Sinit don’t know what th’ people iv th’ Far West want, an’ th’ Prisidint does.
CROWNED HEADS AND columnists around the world hastened to praise The
odore Roosevelt in September 1905. “Accept my congratulations and warmest thanks,” Nicholas II cabled, adding, “My country will gratefully recognize the great part you have played in the Portsmouth peace conference.” An overjoyed Wilhelm II declared, “The whole of mankind must unite and will do so in thanking you for the great boon you have given it.” Emperor Mutsuhito wrote in the careful language of the Japanese court, “To your disinterested and unremitting efforts in the interests of peace and humanity, I attach the high value which is their due.”
Roosevelt was pleased enough with these pro forma expressions to copy them into a posterity letter to Henry Cabot Lodge. He did not notice, or bother to notice, the subtler signals they sent forth: the Tsar’s unconscious separation of himself from his subjects, the Kaiser’s readiness to speak for every person on the planet, the Mikado’s enigmatic formality. But neither did he let the praise go to his head. As he wrote to Alice (still touring the Far East with Nick):
It is enough to give anyone a sense of sardonic amusement to see the way in which the people generally, not only in my own country but elsewhere gauge the work purely by the fact that it succeeded. If I had not brought about peace I should have been laughed at and condemned. Now I am over-praised. I am credited with being extremely longheaded, etc. As a matter of fact I took the position I finally did not of my own volition but because events so shaped themselves that I would have felt as if I was flinching from a plain duty if I had acted otherwise.… Neither Government would consent to meet where the other wished and the Japanese would not consent to meet at The Hague, which was the place I desired. The result was that they had to meet in this country, and this necessarily threw me into a position of prominence which I had not sought, and indeed which I had sought to avoid—though I feel now that unless they had met here they never would have made peace.
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