Greenough’s masterpiece features a terrified, cowering White mother shielding her baby from danger with her body. Barbarism, in the form of a savage Indian clad in a loincloth, hovers over her, hatchet in hand, ready to strike. Towering behind the Indian is a heroic White man who is restraining the savage by the wrist, restoring safety and civilization.
The Rescue statue. For one hundred years—from 1853 to 1953—American presidents took their oaths of office standing next to The Rescue .(Library of Congress)
(The first president to be inaugurated next to The Rescue was Franklin Pierce in 1853, and the final one would be Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. By 1958, Congress deemed The Rescue an embarrassment and the statue is now hidden in the government’s memory vaults.)
Roosevelt, newly reelected, was determined to continue America’s civilizing mission. Later on his inauguration day, seated in his reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue, he saw native troops from the Philippines and Puerto Rico march by and joked that they were “rejoicing in their shackles.”46
* * *
IN MARCH OF 1905, the Japanese army ground down Russian forces in the largest land battle in the history before World War I. The month-long battle for the Manchurian city of Mukden involved nearly one million combatants and resulted in almost two hundred thousand casualties. Wave after wave of Japanese soldiers charged into Russian bullets. Americans would later deride Japan’s suicidal tactics in World War II, but in 1905 Rough Rider Teddy praised their willingness to die: “The Japanese are the most dashing fighters in the world.”47 Enthused, he intensified his jujitsu practice, wrestling three times a week with two Japanese wrestlers, and studied Inazo Nitobe’s book, Bushido, “one of his favorite books.”48 Roosevelt secretly told ambassadors from a number of countries—including Russia—that Russia should throw in the towel before Japan beat the country again.49
To express his admiration for Tokyo regarding their monumental victory at Mukden, Roosevelt invited his secret interlocutor, Baron Kaneko, to lunch. Observers remembered that when the president saw Kaneko in the White House waiting room, the president’s “face shone with joy over the unprecedented victory.”50
On April 2, 1905, Baron Kaneko took the stage at fabled Carnegie Hall to explain to a paying audience of New Yorkers that Japan was civilized because it had adopted Western morality in its international relations:
In the struggle for the survival of the fittest, when the West and the East have met, might has prevailed over right. The nations believing in the right have been crushed and trampled on for fifty years, as in the English opium war and when we had acquired Port Arthur and the peninsula of Liaodong in the war with China. In that instance Russia, with Germany and France, snatched away the spoils of victory, and might made us yield without a murmur. We knew as long as ten years ago that war was coming and prepared for it. We had to become mighty to preserve the right.51
Perhaps inspired by the great Japanese victory, Roosevelt decided to get a refill of barbarian virtues for himself. In April, the president left for a month-long vacation, including a bear hunt in Colorado’s snowy Rocky Mountains. Bears had been good for the Roosevelt image: in 1902, he had declined to shoot a roped one in Mississippi, and the retelling of that story had inspired the “Teddy bear” craze.
Roosevelt’s Colorado bear hunt turned out to be a brilliant public-relations stroke. He received more newspaper coverage than if he had stayed in Washington, and Roosevelt projected just the right image to the American Aryan electorate: a manly president with rifle in hand taming the wilderness. Front-page stories chronicled Roosevelt’s sleeping under the stars, how the Rough Rider handled a horse, and whether the president killed one or two large mammals that day.
Roosevelt came down with malaria in Colorado, but this fact was kept secret, just like his secret tennis playing, his secret asthma attacks, and his secret diplomacy. And Americans were not aware that the president’s bear hunt sent a secret message to Tokyo, an inside joke between Teddy and Japan’s founding fathers. When Roosevelt had told Kaneko he was about to go bear hunting, Kaneko recalled that the bear was a symbol for Russia and said to the president, “The Russian fleet is about to enter the Pacific, and there is certain to be a great naval battle with our fleet in the near future. If you should kill a bear, this will be an augury of victory for the Japanese fleet. I pray that you will have great success.” Replied Roosevelt, “I fully intend to.”52 And Roosevelt informed none of the American press that one of the bears he had shot was to be skinned and presented to Emperor Meiji.
The bear that Roosevelt bagged for Meiji must have brought good luck, for on May 28, 1905, the Japanese navy demolished the Russian navy in the largest sea battle in world history. It took place near the Japanese island of Tsushima in the Japan Sea and is today called the Battle of Tsushima. The Japanese—who two generations earlier had no military-industrial complex—sunk all of Russia’s warships while losing none of their own. Roosevelt, a lifelong student of naval history, gushed to Kaneko, “This is the greatest phenomenon the world has ever seen…. I grew so excited that I myself became almost like a Japanese, and I could not attend to official duties.”53
On the Sunday after the Battle of Tsushima, Reverend Robert MacArthur—for thirty-five years the pastor of New York City’s Calvary Baptist Church and one of America’s best-known clergymen—preached a sermon entitled “Japan’s Victory—Christianity’s Opportunity”:
The Great Master said, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ Apply that standard, and you will find that the nominally heathen Japan is more Christian than ‘Holy Russia.’
The victory of the Japanese is a distinct triumph for Christianity. The new civilization of Japan is largely the result of Christian teaching. A very great proportion of Japan’s leading men to-day, especially those who fight her battles on land and sea, with such skill and valor, profess the Christian faith.54
After Roosevelt calmed down from almost being Japanese, he began to suffer from some qualms. Japan’s navy had just proven itself world-class, a fact that must have worried him; after all, Teddy still wanted a significant and unthreatened American presence in Asia. Before he turned in on the evening that news of the Japanese triumph had reached the White House, he wrote a letter to Secretary Taft. When his party reached the Philippines, Roosevelt instructed, the secretary should take the senators and congressmen on a tour of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific headquarters at Subig Bay.55 In time, Congress would enthusiastically embrace Roosevelt’s vision of the bay, a former Spanish naval station captured in 1899, as America’s naval outpost in Asia, pouring many millions of taxpayer funds into building a U.S. Navy citadel there.
THE NEWS THAT THE Japanese navy had so completely dominated the Russians electrified Japan. The founding fathers rejoiced, but they did not tell the public that its military brass had notified Tokyo that in victory the military had expended itself and had little strength remaining. Out of a productive male populace of ten million, a staggering two million boys and men were in the military and one million had endured the rigors of the front. And the war was bleeding Japan financially, costing a staggering one million U.S. dollars a day. And while hit hard, Russia could still tap the enormous resources of its large army. The Japanese government allowed the people to believe that Japan was strong in victory and Russia weak in defeat, when it wasn’t true. Japan had won battles in Manchuria and had won them handily, but only the impossible task of marching to St. Petersburg could defeat Russia. Japan simply did not have the strength to demand an indemnity from Russia, and the Japanese government hesitated to tell its jubilant population the hard truth.
The founding fathers worried that if they revealed their hand, Russia would sense weakness and Japan’s bargaining position would be reduced before the negotiations began. At odds with its own public, the founding fathers now turned to Theodore Roosevelt.
On May 31, Ambassador Takahira brought Roosevelt a secret telegram from the foreign minister, Komura, requesting that his fellow Har
vard graduate invite Russia and Japan to open direct negotiations.56 Roosevelt was to keep it secret from the world that Japan had requested the president’s help and instead tell the Russians that negotiations were his idea.
Roosevelt, a lame-duck president beleaguered by his dealings with Congress, jumped at the chance. With no Senate looking over his shoulder, the president would friction the powers in North Asia. And Roosevelt had the international stage to himself because his secretary of state lingered on his deathbed and his secretary of war was about to embark upon a three-month cruise in the Pacific.
It never occurred to Roosevelt that China should participate in a peace conference that would parcel out Chinese territory. As Howard Beale writes in Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power, “Blinded by his concept of the Chinese as a backward people, he utterly failed to comprehend or take into account the rise of an independent and assertive China to a role of major importance in the twentieth century.”57
Roosevelt acted immediately on Komura’s request and told the Russian ambassador the white lie that the idea of a peace parley was his. If the czar agreed to the concept, Roosevelt said, he would then approach the Japanese. Given Teddy’s obvious tilt, it’s doubtful the Russian diplomat was taken in, especially when Roosevelt said he had a hunch that Japan would agree to his plan.
As Roosevelt fronted for them in Washington, the founding fathers met in Tokyo to work out their peace demands. These included Korea and parts of Manchuria, but the demand for an indemnity was listed as “not absolutely necessary.”58
On June 5, 1905, the czar agreed to the concept of discussing peace with Japan, but “without intermediaries.” Roosevelt would not sit at the negotiating table. That same day, Teddy welcomed to the White House a group of victorious Japanese navy admirals, who regaled the president with stories of their stunning victories at sea.
Roosevelt so enjoyed his day with the Japanese military men that he didn’t want it to end. He asked Ambassador Takahira to stay with him until 10:00 p.m., and then, after the ambassador left, a still-energized Roosevelt was unable to sleep and so took up his pen. In a series of letters, Roosevelt marveled that the Battle of Tsushima was “a rout and a slaughter,” that the Japanese fleet was left “practically uninjured,” while the Russian fleet “was demolished.”59 Roosevelt called the Slavs “hopeless creatures… helplessly unable,”60 but still hoped the Russians would balance the Japs as the Anglo-Saxon walked through the Open Door. Roosevelt was captivated by his secret diplomacy, as he wrote to his son Kermit:
I have of course concealed from everyone—literally everyone—the fact that I acted in the first place on Japan’s suggestion…. I have kept the secret very successfully, and my dealings with the Japanese in particular have been known to no one.
Remember that you are to let no one know that in this matter of the peace negotiations I have acted at the request of Japan and that each step has been taken with Japan’s foreknowledge, and not merely with her approval but with her expressed desire.61
Gazing out from Washington, Roosevelt looked west and wrote: “I believe that our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe.”62 To make sure that future Americans could walk through a wide Open Door in North Asia, Roosevelt would balance the powers just so: “It is best that [Russia] be left face to face with Japan so that each may have a moderative action on the other.”63
Roosevelt imagined the Japanese as eternal opponents of the Slav, not entertaining the possibility that Japan and Russia would kiss and make up after the war. And since Roosevelt kept his analysis secret from everyone except his Japanese allies and yes-men like Taft, there was no one to grab the reins before Roosevelt drove America’s future in Asia into a ditch.
ROOSEVELT LEFT WASHINGTON AND arrived at Sagamore Hill, his compound on the Long Island Sound, on Thursday, June 29. He would spend his summers there. Roosevelt complained that he had “been growing nearly mad in the effort to get Russia and Japan together,” but he was excited that a large trophy room had been added to his already sprawling mansion by the sea. There, Roosevelt could sit among his stuffed conquests. The trophy room’s sleek wood paneling was from America’s largest colony, the Philippines.
Though Roosevelt had tried to draw London into his secret diplomacy, the much more experienced hands at the British Foreign Office were unenthusiastic. The foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, thought it better not to encourage Roosevelt and his frictioning. Lansdowne had written his ambassador in Russia, “Is there any case of a war of this kind in which the losing side has not had to pay for its folly or ill luck?”64 The British ambassador in Washington had warned Lansdowne that Roosevelt was managing the negotiations, “not altogether I venture to think in a very adroit manner.”65 In frustration, Roosevelt wrote his ambassador in London, “President desires you to find out whether the English Government really does wish peace or not.”66
The secretary of state, John Hay, passed away on July 1, but it had no effect on Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy. Reflected Roosevelt in a letter to Taft, “For two years [Hay] had done little or nothing in the State Dept. What I didn’t do myself wasn’t done at all.”67 Roosevelt selected Elihu Root to replace Hay but did not share his Asian strategy with the new secretary of state. Root later wrote about Roosevelt’s diplomatic secrets that summer: “He held them in his hands and kept them in his hands.”68
On July 2, Roosevelt announced the news that Russian and Japanese envoys would meet at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on August 5. They would negotiate between themselves without Roosevelt. Unofficially, Teddy would coach the Honorary Aryans from the sidelines. That same month, Roosevelt would complain that “the Senate is a very poor body to have as part of the treaty-making power” because of constitutional “defects which cannot be changed.” Teddy was determined to institute “a wise foreign policy on his own.”69
A few days later, Roosevelt invited Baron Kaneko to be his houseguest at Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt and Kaneko both understood that the purpose of the visit was for Teddy to give his private thoughts to Kaneko, who would then convey them to the founding fathers and Emperor Meiji.
The baron arrived at the village of Oyster Bay by train on the afternoon of July 7. A waiting Roosevelt carriage took him to Sagamore Hill, where Teddy warmly welcomed Kaneko. The baron and Roosevelt ate dinner together, then chatted in the president’s study and retired after 10:00 p.m. Years later, Kaneko remembered how Roosevelt put him to sleep:
The President… lit two candles, one of which he gave me, while he carried the other himself, and showed me to my bedroom upstairs. Thinking that the bed cover was too thin and that I would be cold in the night—he explained that a cold north-east wind usually came from the bay after midnight—he went downstairs and returned with a blanket on his shoulder.70
The next morning Roosevelt and Kaneko breakfasted together and then went out onto the porch alone. The baron later wrote that what he heard Roosevelt say that July morning overlooking the Long Island Sound “made such an ineffaceable impression upon my mind as can never be forgotten as long as I live.”71 Kaneko paraphrased Roosevelt’s words from memory:
Japan is the only nation in Asia that understands the principles and methods of Western civilization. She has proved that she can assimilate Western civilization, yet not break up her own heritage. All the Asiatic nations are now faced with the urgent necessity of adjusting themselves to the present age. Japan should be their natural leader in that process, and their protector during the transition stage, much as the United States assumed the leadership of the American continent many years ago, and by means of the Monroe Doctrine, preserved the Latin American nations from European interference, while they were maturing their independence. If President Monroe had never enunciated the doctrine, which bears his name, the growth of the independent South America republics would have been interfered with by influences foreign to this continent. The future polic
y of Japan towards Asiatic countries should be similar to that of the United States towards their neighbours on the American continent. A ‘Japanese Monroe Doctrine’ in Asia will remove the temptation to European encroachment, and Japan will be recognized as the leader of the Asiatic nations, and her power will form the shield behind which they can reorganize their national systems.72
Roosevelt couldn’t back up his vision with any signed pledge notes because what he was doing was against the Constitution he had sworn to uphold. So instead Roosevelt blustered to Kaneko that if Tokyo proclaimed a Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia after the Portsmouth peace negotiations were concluded, “I will support her with all my power, either during my Presidency or after its expiration.”73
This was the first time Kaneko had heard anyone enunciate the concept of a “Japanese Monroe Doctrine.” Three days later Roosevelt’s historic idea was rendered into Japanese diplomatic code and pulsed through the long cable deep below the Pacific.74
Japan’s founding fathers cannot be faulted if they believed that Roosevelt was powerful enough to control American policy even as he kept Congress in the dark. Throughout the summer, Teddy continued to signal that he could sway the U.S. government and people his way. On Saturday, July 15, 1905, Ambassador Takahira visited Roosevelt at Oyster Bay to complain of the anti-Japanese prejudice that had erupted in San Francisco. After this meeting, Roosevelt wrote this astounding sentence for transmittal to the founding fathers: “While I am president, there will be no discrimination.”75 Thus, Roosevelt, relaxing in his Long Island mansion, sparing no time from his vacation to consult anyone at the State Department, furthered the impression that a president could control U.S. states like he could corral rebels in the Philippines. Later, when Roosevelt delivered neither on his promises nor his boasts, Tokyo could only wonder why.
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