Theodore Roosevelt Abroad

by J. Lee Thompson

  The Frenchman was also angry at their relative position, eighth in line, behind “toutes ces petites royautés” even “le roi du Portugal” and “ces Chenois,” the Chinese ambassador. To make matters worse, “ce Perse,” a Persian prince of royal blood, had been put in with them. Pichon insisted that Roosevelt take the place of honor by riding in the right-hand rear seat. The “unfortunate Persian followed,” TR noted, “looking about as unaggressive as a rabbit in a cage with two boa constrictors.” He was able to mollify Pichon, at least temporarily, by pointing out that the most important thing would be their respective places at the lunch to follow the interment at Windsor Castle. Luckily, Pichon was placed at the Queen’s table, while Roosevelt was at the King’s and another Gallic “explosion” thereby avoided.18 Unaware of the melodrama unfolding inside, in his description of the funeral procession for the Daily Mail, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle commented on “the strong profile of the great American, set like granite as he leans back in his carriage.”19

  A few days after the funeral, Theodore and Edith had lunch with George V and Queen Mary at Marlborough House. Roosevelt thoroughly liked the King, who asked his advice about accusations brought against him that he had a secret, previous, wife and drank excessively. He responded that it was always a mistake to refute private slander with a public statement and unless the accusations were made in public he would take no notice, but if any public accusation was made it needed to be promptly and effectively met. TR appraised George as a strong man who would keep within the constitutional limitations, but was going to make himself felt, not only in England, but the world. He did not think the King had the tact, from what he had heard, of Edward VII, though that might come. George struck the Colonel as “one who had a thorough hold on himself and thorough knowledge of the people he is to rule.”20

  With his official duties at an end, Roosevelt and the family relocated from the marble halls and gold-plated extravagance of Dorchester House to the still substantial London residence of Arthur Lee, TR’s old friend of Rough Rider days, at 10 Chesterfield Street. Lee had married an American heiress and settled into life as a wealthy and wellconnected Conservative MP. The move allowed TR the freedom to see whom he liked although the house remained in a “state of siege” while he was in residence. Having nabbed the “prime lion of the season” the endless stream of people at Chesterfield Street included various big game hunters, the headmaster of Eton, where Edith visited with Spring Rice, and the Japanese ambassador. None of these visitors knew the house’s mistress, Lee’s wife Ruth, and on one occasion an old lady said to her angrily, “if I wasn’t TR’s daughter, who was I?” Another visitor was Seth Bullock, to whom the Colonel had sent an invitation in Deadwood. TR recalled, “by that time I felt I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my neighborhood dialect.”21 The tall, sinewy westerner, with his long flowing black mustache, black frock coat, string tie, and broad-brimmed black slouch hat, cut quite a figure strolling through the Zoological Gardens or in Mayfair with Roosevelt, who proudly introduced him to all and sundry, including several royals. The marshal was so happy to see TR, he told Kermit, he felt like hanging his hat on the dome of St Paul’s and shooting it off. An admiring Arthur Lee called Bullock “one of nature’s aristocrats if ever there was one.”22

  Lee was able to arrange a delightful weekend at Chequers Court, the red brick Elizabethan house in the Chiltern Hills, an hour from London, that he had only recently acquired. Roosevelt’s visit was meant to be its “house-warming” party. A decade later, Arthur and his wife Ruth gave the residence to the nation to serve as the country home of Britain’s prime ministers. Lee gathered a variety of interesting figures, many of whom Roosevelt had requested to meet. Theodore and Edith were on their own as Kermit and Ethel had “decided to bolt off to Scotland,” telling their mother that they had had “quite enough of father” and that they wished he would not talk so much about himself or sign his name so large in all the guest books.23

  At Chequers the Colonel found several of the Conservative Party’s leading lights, Arthur Balfour, Alfred Lyttelton and F. S. Oliver, particularly charming. Balfour, the languid and elegant former Prime Minister, was one of the few who was TR’s intellectual equal and, after Roosevelt remarked that he had “never demanded of knowledge anything except that it should be valueless,” their talk ranged across a wide spectrum.24Lee recorded that TR’s “conquest” of Balfour was “immediate and complete.” Upon his consciousness the Colonel “burst like a meteorite from another planet.” He was so entirely different from anything Balfour had “either experienced or imagined” that their two minds “fizzled chemically when brought into contact for the first time.” Both men were “at the top of their form” in an “almost ceaseless play of coruscating talk which illumined the weekend like summer lightening.”25

  Another who was present, TR’s old friend Cecil Spring Rice, commented, perhaps not without bias, that Roosevelt had “turned us all upside down” while enjoying himself hugely. Springy had to say that, “by the side of our statesman,” TR looked a “little bit taller, bigger and stronger.”26 Lee himself thanked TR for the way he “played up” at Chequers. He told his friend, “Personality is a thing which can only explain itself and I am so glad I no longer have any need to attempt (vainly) to explain yours.”27 Roosevelt in turn later told his friend David Gray that Chequers Court was a “delightful place” and that he was almost as fond of Lee as of Spring Rice, and equally fond of both their wives.28

  The only man the Colonel met at Chequers that he, and Edith, did not like was the one destined the next year to follow Sir Eldon Gorst as Consul-General in Egypt, Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the hero of Omdurman. TR found him a “strong man, but exceedingly bumptious, and everlastingly posing as a strong man.” In contrast, he considered the other military icon on hand, Lord Roberts of Kandahar, whose memoir Forty-one Years in India he had read, to be a “particularly gentle, modest and considerate little fellow” whom he treated with a “deference and almost boyish hero-worship” which touched Roberts. At Chequers, Kitchener confronted TR over the Panama Canal, proclaiming loudly that it had been a huge mistake not to make it a sea-level canal. When the Colonel responded reasonably that the engineers on the ground recommended against this on good evidence, Kitchener blustered on that he “never paid heed to protests like that” and would have ordered a sea-level canal be dug nevertheless. In the end Roosevelt told Kitchener that he considered his chief engineer in Panama, Colonel George Goethals, the very best man in the world for the job and took his advice. He added that “Goethals had never seen the Sudan, just as he Kitchener, had never seen Panama,” and that he would trust Goethals’ opinion rather than Kitchener’s as to Goethals’ job, just as he would “trust the opinion of Kitchener rather than Goethals if Goethals should criticize Kitchener’s job in the Sudan.”29

  A week after Edward’s funeral, Edith and Alice accompanied TR to Cambridge, where he was awarded an honorary L. L. D. He had lunch with Arthur Balfour’s sister Eleanor Sidgwick, the principal of Cambridge’s Newnham College. He also paid informal visits to several other of the colleges, including Trinity, King’s and Emmanuel, the college of John Harvard, who had gone on to found Roosevelt’s own university at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Colonel was enchanted with the original Cambridge, which he thought one of the most beautiful places he visited.

  At the Student Union, where to prolonged cheers he was made an honorary member, TR participated in a good-natured round of verbal give and take with the undergraduates, whose mental quickness reminded him of those at Harvard. He was subjected to student pranks when a stuffed teddy bear, its paws outstretched, was placed in his path on arrival at the Union, and another lowered on him during his remarks. This followed an old university tradition, which had seen a stuffed monkey dropped on Darwin and a Mahdi replica on Kitchener.

  In his extemporaneous remarks TR advised the students that to succeed in life did not need “any remarkable skill, all you need is to possess ordina
ry qualities, but to develop them to more than an ordinary degree.” In public life it was not genius, it was not “extraordinary subtlety, or acuteness of intellect,” that was important. The things that were important were “rather commonplace, the rather humdrum virtues that in their sum are designated as character.” If a nation had men of common sense, not geniuses, but “men of good abilities, with character, if you possess such men, the Government will go on very well.” He confided that he didn’t think any president or ex-president “ever enjoyed himself any more than I did” and added that he had enjoyed his life and work because he believed that “success—the real success—does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position.” He concluded that there was “no man there to-day who has not the chance so to shape his life after he leaves this university that he shall have the right to feel, when his life ends, that he has made a real success of it.” And his making a real success “does not in the least depend upon the prominence of the position he holds.”30

  Five days later, before a much more serious-minded assembly of almost a thousand notables at the historic Guildhall, TR was given the freedom of the City of London and made his much-anticipated speech on British rule in Africa, thus keeping a pledge to the men and women on the ground who felt themselves misunderstood, neglected and without proper support at home.31 The company included many of the British statesmen he had met, such as Grey, Balfour, Cromer and Burns, but also Americans such as Whitelaw Reid and the painter John Singer Sargent. “Your men in Africa,” Roosevelt declared, were “doing a great work for your Empire” and also “a great work for civilization.” His sympathy for and belief in them were his reasons for speaking. In his opinion, “the great fact of world history during the last century” had been “the spread of civilization over the world’s waste spaces” and that work was still being carried out by these soldiers, settlers and civic officials who were “entitled to the heartiest respect and the fullest support from their brothers who remain at home.”32

  About British East Africa, Uganda and the Sudan Roosevelt had “nothing to say to you save what is pleasant, as well as true.” In the first he had found a land which could be made “a true white Man’s country.” And for the settlers he had a “peculiar sympathy,” because they so strikingly reminded him of his own beloved westerners at home. In his view it was “of high importance” to encourage them in every way. Referring to the ongoing controversy over immigration from India, he exhorted his audience to ensure that no “alien race should be permitted to come into competition with the settlers.” He praised the governor, Sir Percy Girouard, as a “man admirably fitted to deal wisely and firmly with all the many problems before him.” All that was necessary was to “follow his lead, and to give him cordial support and backing.” The principle on which Roosevelt thought it was wise to act in dealing with “far-away possessions,” was “choose your man, change him if you become discontented with him, but while you keep him back him up.”33

  Unlike British East Africa, Uganda, because of the large native population and different geography and climate, would never be a “white man’s country.” There the “prime need” was to “administer the land in the interests of the native races, and to help forward their development.” In his view missionary activity in Uganda had resulted in “an extraordinary development of Christianity” and the inhabitants therefore stood “far above most races in the Dark Continent in their capacity for progress towards civilization.” All that was necessary was to “go forward on the paths you have already marked out.”34

  The Sudan was “peculiarly interesting” because it afforded the best possible example of “disregarding the well-meaning but unwise sentimentalists who object to the spread of civilization at the expense of savagery.” The English “restored order, kept the peace, and gave to each individual a liberty” previously enjoyed only by the “blood-stained tyrant who at the moment was ruler.” In his view, the governor-general, Sir Reginald Wingate, and his lieutenants, had in their reconstruction efforts in administration, education and police work, “performed to perfection a task equally important and difficult” and had “a claim upon all civilized mankind which should be heartily admitted.” Not to go on with the work in the Sudan would be a crime and it was the “duty of England to stay there.”35

  Turning last to Egypt, Roosevelt declared that as a “sincere wellwisher of the British Empire,” he felt “impelled to speak” mainly because of his “deep concern in the welfare of mankind and in the future of civilization.” In Egypt, he saw Britain as “not only the guardians of your own interests” but also of civilization. The present condition of affairs, in TR’s opinion, was a “grave menace to both your Empire and the entire civilized world.” Britain had given Egypt the best Government in two thousand years, particularly for the fellahin “tiller of the soil,” yet recent events, such as the assassination of Boutros Ghali, had shown that “in certain vital points you have erred.” It was up to the British to correct this error, which had sprung from “the effort to do too much and not too little in the interests of the Egyptians themselves.” Showing weakness, timidity and sentimentality might cause “even more far-reaching harm than violence and injustice.”36

  Treating all religions with fairness and impartiality, Roosevelt continued, had only resulted in a “noisy section of the native population” taking advantage to bring about an “anti-foreign movement” in which “murder on a large or small scale is expected to play a leading part.” Boutros was assassinated “simply and solely” because he was the “best and most competent Egyptian official, a steadfast upholder of English rule, and an earnest worker for the welfare of his countrymen.” The attitude of the Egyptian Nationalist party in response to this outrage had shown that they were “neither desirous nor capable of guaranteeing even that primary justice the failure to supply which makes self-government not merely an empty, but a noxious farce.”37

  Britain’s first duty, TR asserted, was to keep order, and above all to punish murder and bring justice to all who committed or condoned it. When a people treated “assassination as a corner-stone of selfgovernment,” it forfeited “all rights to be treated as worthy of selfgovernment.” The British had saved the Egyptians from ruin in 1882 by coming in, and at the present moment if they were not ruled from outside they would “again sink into a welter of chaos.” Some nation must govern Egypt and he believed that “you will decide that it is your duty to be that nation.” Roosevelt went on, “Now, either you have the right to be in Egypt or you have not; either it is or is not your duty to establish and keep order. If you feel that you have not the right to be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and keep order there, why then, by all means get out.” However, if as he hoped, “you feel that your duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own great traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the fact and the name agree and show that you are ready to meet . . . the responsibility which is yours.”38

  During the speech, Sir Edward Grey had whispered to Arthur Lee, “this will cause the devil of a row—although I hope a good one.”39 As he had promised he would, the foreign secretary defended the address against attacks in the House of Commons, but another member of the British Cabinet, John Morley, was less supportive. Morley told his peace ally Carnegie that the speech was a “grievous mistake, in spite of Grey being an accomplice.” It only gave “powder and shot to our war men, and heaven knows they have plenty of ammunitions already.”40 In the Liberal press, the London Daily News questioned the propriety of TR lecturing the British on their own problems and asked what he would have thought if during the Philippine or Japanese crises a former British prime minister had opined in a similar fashion in the United States. It also doubted whether the former president fully appreciated the “complexity of the problems which he resolved yesterday in characteristically vigorous style.” The Colonel claimed to speak from “first hand knowledge” of affairs in British East Africa, but after his relatively brief v
isit the Daily News questioned his assertion that “no alien race” should be allowed to come into competition with whites or his advice to “follow blindly the man on the spot.” These views came from the “quality of his own mind” and he would have held them even if he had never shot big game in the protectorate. About Egypt, the paper decried TR’s “crude” way of handling a complex problem which would not be helped by labeling Muslims as “fanatical” or “uncivilized” because of a single murder or labeling the nationalists “anti-foreign.” Such a “Big Stick” approach would not work and the British should not abandon their Liberal principles, even on the advice of Theodore Roosevelt.41

  British imperialists on the other hand were ecstatic. Balfour and Cromer “made no secret of their delight” with the speech and among the many letters of congratulations, one was addressed to “His Excellency ‘Govern-or-go’ Roosevelt.”42In the Spectator, TR’s friend St. Loe Strachey noted that because he had the courage to speak out “timid, fussy and pedantic people had charged Mr. Roosevelt with all sorts of crimes.” Some had even accused him of “unfriendliness to this country.” Happily the British people as a whole were not so foolish. He had told them “something useful and practical and has not lost himself in abstraction and platitude.” The paper thanked TR “once again for giving us so useful a reminder of our duty.” The Times, widely considered the voice of the British establishment, gave verbatim coverage, while remarking that “Mr. Roosevelt has reminded us in the most friendly way of what we are at least in danger of forgetting, and no impatience of outside criticism ought to be allowed to divert us from considering the substantial truth of his words.”43

  Reports of the Guildhall address published in Egypt further stirred nationalist resentment and Sir Eldon Gorst felt that Roosevelt’s “mischievous remarks” helped to confirm the opinion of the critics of his policy. Gorst recorded in his diary that TR was “again disporting himself as the bull in the China shop—this time at my expense.” His manner of expression was “most unfortunate” and most of his i n format ion had c ome f rom A meric a n m is siona r y aut horit ie s, “a wor t hy but prejudiced and narrow-minded body,” subject to the influence of the native Christians.44 Lord Elgin, the former Colonial Secretary involved in a government review of Egyptian affairs, called the speech “a pity” because it would only raise resentment and because it oversimplified the issues. He did not agree that pro-Egyptian “sentiment” had done mischief in Egypt. In his view that was as rare as the “white rhinoceros (of which I fear Mr. Roosevelt killed too many).” The mischief instead had come from “intellectual indolence, which misapplies political maxims in countries like Egypt by treating them as if they were fundamental truths.”45Whatever the truth of the matter, Roosevelt’s speech was another nail in the coffin of Gorst’s experiment in liberalization and he would soon be replaced by the strong man Kitchener who would with some success return to a sterner and more Cromer-like administration.