Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  70 Meyer had managed Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 145–46.

  71 The Tsarina’s problem Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 49–50; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 455, 465–68.

  72 “Did you ever” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1158.

  73 “my own belief” Ibid., 1179.

  74 “As we left ever” TR, Works, vol. 3, 91.

  CHAPTER 24: THE BEST HERDER OF EMPERORS SINCE NAPOLEON

  1 Thim was th’ “Mr. Dooley” in The Washington Post, 12 Apr. 1903.

  2 “Come hither” Wallace Irwin, “The Ballad of Grizzly Gulch,” in At the Sign of the Dollar (New York, 1905), 32.

  3 But as he Ibid., 34.

  4 (Santo Domingo would) See Gow, “How Did the Roosevelt Corollary?”

  5 the better he could Note that he does not mention a word of his involvement even to Elihu Root on 13 May. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1171–72. 387 So backward Irwin, “Ballad of Grizzly Gulch,” 35.

  6 THE BATTLE OF Tsu Kenneth Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet: American Sea Power Comes of Age (Dulles, Va., 1998), 192.

  7 “a civilized” See p. 228.

  8 Although he confessed TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1178.

  9 His cousin Wilhelm Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 47.

  10 Ambassador Cassini Jusserand, What Me Befell, 300; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1232.

  11 But France, right Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” 122–24. TR had changed his mind about staying aloof from the Moroccan squabble because he saw in it the possibility of “a world conflagration.”

  12 So the diplomatic

  Chronological Note: On 2 June 1905, TR initiated what Oscar Kraines calls “the first comprehensive inquiry” into federal administration (Oscar Kraines, “The President Versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905–1909,” Western Political Quarterly 23.1 [1970]). On his own initiative, and without Congressional direction or confirmation, TR appointed a committee for the purpose of investigating business methods in all federal offices, with an eye toward improving efficiency and cutting costs. Headed by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Charles H. Keep, and composed of James Garfield, Gifford Pinchot, Lawrence Murray, and Frank Hitchcock, the commission first investigated two government-agency scandals (an area technically outside their mandated province) before getting down to the stated task. Keep and his colleagues uncovered copious examples of waste and ineffective methods, and came up with some truly innovative ideas and solutions (many originated by TR himself). The Keep Commission was the first to recommend the idea of a retirement program for federal employees; to propose a classification system for federal salaries and positions; to suggest uniform regulations for work hours and leaves of absence; and to recommend the centralization of supply purchasing and distribution, as well as the reduction of unnecessary government publications and mailings. Despite the Commission’s hard work, Congress refused to pass any related legislation. Kraines notes that while Congress viewed the increasing cost of government with alarm, it viewed with equal (if not greater) alarm the President’s attempts to investigate and reorganize as threats to both legislative control and patronage. The Keep Commission became just another battleground between TR, who wished to expand his executive powers, and a Congress reluctant to surrender any authority. It took until 1920 for Congress to create a retirement system for federal employees.

  13 ROOSEVELT PUT ALL As early as Aug. 1904, TR had considered Meyer to be Cabinet material, as well as a potential top ambassador. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 890.

  14 Although the United States Ambassador When Meyer first met the Tsar, on 12 Apr. 1905, he was able to break the ice by saying that he had “met His Imperial Majesty’s brother … at Kiel, when I was racing there with the Emperor of Germany” (Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 142). For a modern assessment, see Wayne A. Wiegand, “George Meyer and Kaiser Wilhelm II,” Mid-America 74.1 (Jan. 1974).

  15 The way Meyer Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, passim. Failure to “make the Porc.,” as Cousin Teddy had, became a lifelong neurosis for Franklin Roosevelt. Geoffrey C. Ward, A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), 46.

  16 “I want a man” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1079.

  17 “I am not inclined” Ibid., 1079–80.

  18 After only two Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 157.

  19 This was not Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 46; Dennett, Roosevelt, 215–16.

  20 At all costs TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203.

  21 The move was Ibid., 1203–4.

  22 Count Lamsdorff George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 6 June 1905 (GVM). The Tsarina’s birthday is wrongly dated in Dennett, Roosevelt, 193.

  23 Meyer found himself Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is taken from Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 158–62.

  24 “It is the judgment” Telegram copy, 5 June 1905, in TRP. See also TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

  25 As Meyer read George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 7 June 1904 (GVM).

  26 “If Russia will” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

  27 “… and the President” Ibid.

  28 “Mr Roosevelt’s success” London Morning Post, 12 June 1905.

  29 He had, in fact Washington Times, 9 June 1905; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 289–90.

  30 “It really is” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209.

  31 Since Edith’s culinary industry Ibid. Pine Knot, 125 miles southwest of Washington, remained TR’s country hideaway throughout his second term. It is now maintained as a museum by the Theodore Roosevelt Association. See William H. Harbaugh, “The Theodore Roosevelts’ Retreat in Southern Albemarle: Pine Knot 1905–1908,” Magazine of Albemarle County History 51 (1993).

  32 “The President is” Joseph James Matthews, George W. Smalley: Forty Years a Foreign Correspondent (Chapel Hill, 1973), 158.

  33 What was “going on” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222–29; vol. 6, 234–36.

  34 “The President feels” TR to Kogoro Takahira, 15 June 1905, qu. in Letters, vol. 4, 1228.

  35 There was a world Ibid., 1230; Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

  36 “the triumph of Asia” TR, qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

  37 Roosevelt had confided Mrs. Lodge was included as an honorary member of TR’s secret du roi. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1202.

  38 As he mediated Ibid., 1303; vol. 6, 234.

  39 Wilhelm II had Jusserand, What Me Befell, 319–20. Von Sternburg asked if the President was also taking Wilhelm II’s Weltanschauung into account in his Far Eastern negotiations. (The Kaiser had urged peace upon the Tsar, fearing that Nicholas might be assassinated after Tsu Shima.) TR truthfully replied that Meyer had used Wilhelm’s name as well as his own when conversing with the Tsar. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203; Henry Cabot Lodge (qu. TR in 1905) to Philippe Bunau-Varilla, 12 July 1924 (FBL).

  40 The French Ambassador Both the French and British governments shared TR’s fear of war if the Kaiser was not thrown a sacrificial lamb. Delcassé was succeeded on 6 June 1904 by the less imperialistic Maurice Rouvier. For the text of TR’s memo (which he shared with Jusserand), see TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1256–57. Larsen, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Moroccan Crisis,” chap. 3, provides the most detailed account of TR’s parallel negotiations in 1905. For TR’s own record, see TR, Letters, vol. 6, 231–51.

  41 Roosevelt made a point Jusserand, What Me Befell, 302–3.

  42 “eight guinea-pig power” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 242.

  43 A summons to Sir H. Mortimer Durand diary, 18 June 1904 (HMD).

  44 “He told me” Sir H. Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 16 June 1904 (HMD).

  45 (“You are the only”) TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203.

  46 Lodge, in turn Sir H. Mortimer Durand to Lord Lansdowne, 16 June 1904 (HMD). TR could not resist giving a hint to what he was doing when he told the graduating class at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., on 21 June: “No man in public position can, under penalty of forfeiting the right to the respec
t of those whose regard he most values, fail as the opportunity comes to do all that in him lies for peace.” Transcript in TRB.

  47 Durand noted Ibid. For TR’s two June “posterity letters” to Henry Cabot Lodge, describing his activities, see TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1202–6 and 1221–33.

  48 JUSSERAND HAD NO Jusserand, What Me Befell, 302–3; John Hay to TR, 16 June 1904 (TD).

  49 “I suppose nothing” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1216.

  50 In the mid-Atlantic John Hay diary, 13 June 1904 (JH). The vision of Lincoln prompted Hay to write his own epitaph. See Thayer, John Hay, vol. 2, 408–9.

  51 Roosevelt was in TR joked to Hay that “the more I saw of the Tsar and the Kaiser, the better I liked the United States Senate.” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1286.

  52 As they talked John Hay to Clara Hay, 20 June 1904 (TD).

  Chronological Note: On 28 June, TR attended the twenty-fifth reunion of the Harvard Class of 1880. For an excellent account, see Marian L. Peabody, “Theodore Roosevelt Visits Cambridge: Reminiscences of His Hostess’s Daughter,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 3 May 1958.

  53 NEWS OF THE TR reacted to Hay’s death with genuine grief. But he made clear that he mourned him as “a beloved friend,” and not as a member of the Administration. “For two years he has done little or nothing in the State Dept. What I didn’t do myself wasn’t done at all” (TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1260—or, for harsher criticism, 1271). He attended the Secretary’s funeral in Cleveland on 5 July, accompanied by past and present Cabinet officers. In a strange scene afterward, when the presidential party was picnicking on a railside lawn at Wheelock’s Switch [Ohio] en route east, TR suddenly rose to his knees “and asked God’s mercy” on Hay’s soul. The Cabinet knelt with him for a few minutes of silence under the trees. The New York Times, 7 July 1905.

  54 Simultaneously, William Washington Evening Star, 1 and 2 July 1905; Longworth, Crowded Hours, 69–70.

  55 “Elihu,” the President Emily Stewart notes, 1905 (PCJ).

  56 Root sat silent Dunne, “Remembrances”; Elihu Root, interviewed by Emily Stewart, 13 Sept. 1932 (PCJ). According to Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 449, Root sacrificed an estimated $200,000 in annual income to become Secretary of State at $8,000.

  57 He exchanged glances Emily Stewart notes, 1905 (PCJ). This conversation took place on the presidential train after Hay’s funeral in Cleveland.

  58 ROOSEVELT WAS QUITE Elihu Root, interviewed by Emily Stewart, 13 Sept. 1932 (PCJ).

  59 Apart from an Japan declined TR’s suggestion of an armistice. Dennett, Roosevelt, 205.

  60 A sense gathered Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 83. TR did not realize that Britain needed Japan’s goodwill in a secret attempt to strengthen the Anglo-Japanese Alliance vis-à-vis India and Korea. The allies were soon to sign a revised agreement protecting British interests in the former and Japanese aspirations in the latter. See Ian H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Empires, 1894–1907 (London, 1966).

  61 mutiny aboard Dennett, Roosevelt, 205.

  62 Wilhelm II seemed Ibid., 208.

  63 Roosevelt was reinforced Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 476.

  64 “Now, oh best” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1283–84.

  65 “My feeling is” Ibid., 1284.

  66 Knowing he could Ibid.

  67 Roosevelt’s admiration Ibid., 1233.

  68 Eight years before Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 572–73.

  69 “In a dozen years” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1233–34.

  70 The oracular tone Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 129; Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 85. According to John Barrett, whom TR asked to report on the situation in California, anti-Japanese hysteria was largely due to propaganda put about by Michael H. De Young, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, for reasons as much to do with newspaper circulation as any desire to “embarrass” the President. At any rate, the “yellow peril” propaganda was dangerously effective. John Barrett to [unknown], ca. 6 July 1905, and TR to Barrett, 15 July 1905 (JB); Thomas A. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crises (Stanford, 1934), 10–11.

  71 He was afraid When Cassini blustered that Russia “was fighting the battles of the white race” in the Far East, TR, thinking of the Kishinev pogrom, asked him “why in that case she had treated other members of the white race even worse than she had treated Japan.” The Ambassador’s reply was not recorded. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222.

  72 He asked Lloyd Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 86. TR also vehemently protested discrimination against Chinese immigrants, with the exception of “coolies,” or peasants. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1235–36.

  73 HAPPILY, THE PRESIDENT Taft’s party left Washington on 30 June 1905, and sailed from San Francisco on 8 July. For varying accounts of the trip, see Ralph E. Minger, “Taft’s Mission to Japan: A Study in Secret Diplomacy,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961), and Stacy Rozek Cordery, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Private Diplomat: Alice Roosevelt and the 1905 Far Eastern Junket,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 352–67.

  74 Roosevelt had asked Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 384.

  75 the flare and smell This was Alice’s own phrase. Longworth, Crowded Hours, 70.

  76 She was, if anything Ibid., 72–77, 68.

  77 When they arrived Ibid., 79–84.

  78 On 27 July William H. Taft to Elihu Root, 29 July 1905 (“Agreed Memorandum of Conversation Between Prime Minister of Japan and Myself”), cable transmission reproduced in John Gilbert Reid, ed., “Taft’s Telegram to Root,” Pacific Historical Review, March 1940 (hereafter “Taft-Katsura Memorandum”). Taft addressed himself to Root, but was communicating with TR. His cable cost the United States taxpayer just over one thousand dollars, or about $19,400 today.

  79 Although the memorandum Esthus, Roosevelt and Japan, 102.

  Historiographical Note: Esthus notes the illogicality whereby conspiratorial historians have insisted, over the years, in calling this document the “Taft-Katsura Agreement.” Its own title, qu. above, shows “only that the two parties agreed that the memorandum was an accurate record of what was said.”

  Esthus notes further that the memorandum, for all its subsequent reputation as a “secret pact” and progenitor of the myriad “executive agreements” characteristic of 20th-century diplomacy, lay forgotten for nearly twenty years, after serving its original informal purpose. TR specifically denied on 5 Oct. that there had been any quid pro quo. The memorandum was meant “merely to clear up Japan’s attitude [regarding the Philippines], which had been purposefully misrepresented by pro-Russian sympathizers.” Its separately numbered statements about Korea and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance stood “entirely apart” from that primary concern (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 46).

  In further support of TR’s denial, Katsura himself denied Japanese rumors of a “bargain” concerning Korea. The Prime Minister stated that United States policy toward Korea in 1905 struck him as “entirely spontaneous” (Esthus, Roosevelt and Japan, 105). Index entries under “Korea” in TR, Letters, vol. 4, et seq., show that TR’s own contemptuous attitude toward the Hermit Kingdom was formed long before the Taft-Katsura conversation.

  For the rediscovery of the cable, see Tyler Dennett, “President Roosevelt’s Secret Pact with Japan,” Current History, Oct. 1924. For a sample modern interpretation by the conspiracy school, see Walter LaFeber, “Betrayal in Tokyo,” Constitution, fall 1994.

  80 As the Prime Minister Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

  81 Allowing Koreans Ibid. For Japan’s previous efforts, diplomatic and military, to colonize Korea, see Dennett, Roosevelt, 96–111. See also M. Hane, “Theodore Roosevelt and Korea: The U.S. Response to the Japanese Policy to Make Korea Its Protectorate,” Journal of American History 82.4 (1996).

  82 Regarding the Philippines Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

  83 Taft said that Ibid. For reactions to Root’s appointment, see Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 47–51.

  84 “If I have” Taft-Katsura Memorandum.

  85
YOUR CONVERSATION TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1293; Dennett, Roosevelt, 110–11.

  86 ALICE, UNAWARE Alice Roosevelt diary, 27 July and passim 1905 (ARL).

  87 At a dinner entertainment Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 259.

  88 Since her father Teague, Mrs. L., 4–5; Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 122.

  89 Her last impression Longworth, Crowded Hours, 85.

  90 a sketch of his daughter Facsimile from family collection, privately held. TR’s superscript reads “Not a posterity letter.”

  91 At the time Dennett, Roosevelt, 198–200.

  92 Washington was, of TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1226.

  93 Only one met Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 66. The choice of Portsmouth was announced officially on 12 July 1904.

  94 The pretty, little Ibid., 67–70. The building (no. 86) still stands.

  95 Their respective Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 115–16.

  96 AT SIX AND A half Ibid., 74–76; Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 284; E. J. Dillon, “Sergius Witte,” Review of Reviews, Sept. 1905.

  97 Henry Adams had Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 284; John Hay diary, 16 Feb. 1905 (JH); Charles Hardinge to Lord Lansdowne, 4 Jan. 1905, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 1A, 3, 1. The best contemporary portrait of Witte is in Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, chap. 30.

  98 Roosevelt had hoped Dennett, Roosevelt, 42–43; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1276. Ito had actually proposed a Russo-Japanese alliance in 1902, when Witte was the Tsar’s finance minister.

  99 Komura was, like Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 72; Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 398. The latter memorably describes Komura as having “an intelligent face, but of parchment written all over with hieroglyphics.”

  100 Not only that Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 225–26.

  101 The four plenipotentiaries For a complete list of delegates to the Portsmouth Conference, see Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 72–73, 76–77.