Authors: Edmund Morris
9
On 7 December
Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 16; TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1102; Henry Clay Taylor to J. B. Coghlan, 8 Dec. 1902 (GD).
10
“We look like”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 389.
11
General Wood
Leonard Wood diary, 30 Nov. 1902 (LW).
12
Speak softly and
TR first used the proverb publicly on 2 Sept. 1901. TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 334–35.
13
ON 8 DECEMBER
Washington
Evening Star
, 8 Dec. 1902; Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 419; Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 74; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 358.
14
the most dangerous
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 341, 343; Röhl,
Kaiser Wilhelm II
, 19, 158; Gwynn,
Letters and Friendships
, vol. 1, 227–30. Another of TR’s early informants about Wilhelm was Speck von Sternburg.
15
General Wood, just
Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); Hermann Hagedorn,
Leonard Wood: A Biography
(New York, 1931), vol. 1, 398–99. Wood had been personally received by the Kaiser, and had noted that, like TR in the 1880s, Wilhelm spoke exultantly about his country’s newness and rawness and burgeoning
economic power. Wood also saw that he was “somewhat nervous in manner,” and easily put out. All these observations were doubtless relayed to TR, between singlesticks blows.
16
some beguiling
Elihu Root teased TR, referring to the Kaiser as “your cousin William.” Speck von Sternburg commented publicly that he had “not seen two men who are as alike.” Wilhelm II himself remarked to von Holleben, “Mr. Roosevelt must in some respects be very like me.” Root to TR, 15 Feb. 1904 (TRP); New York
Herald
, ca. 21 Jan. 1903; Smalley,
Anglo-American Memories
, 356–57.
17
Only three months
A caricature of TR and the Kaiser as twins (“Kindred Spirits of the Strenuous Life”) appeared in
Punch
, 16 Nov. 1904, and was suppressed by Berlin police. See also Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 441–43; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 9 Mar. 1904 (JJ). In youth, both men used to doodle ships and fleet dispositions, and in power, both tended to use the first-person possessive in referring to their respective navies. Wilhelm awarded himself the title of “Admiral of the Atlantic.” Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, 142; Röhl,
Kaiser Wilhelm II
, 81; Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 58; Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 283.
18
However, as Roosevelt
Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 55. “It is absolutely impossible,” Henry Adams wrote, “for anyone to be as big a fool as the Kaiser without being shut up” (Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 353; Röhl,
Kaiser Wilhelm II
, 18–19). Röhl quotes an example of the Kaiser’s ranting against Jews: “There are far too many of them in my country. They want stamping out” (129).
19
What made Roosevelt
Michael Balfour,
The Kaiser and His Times
(Boston, 1964), 85; Modris Eksteins,
Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
(Boston, 1989), 87–88. Jules Cambon noted how “very sensitive” TR was, “in his political judgments, to questions of prestige.” Geneviève Tabouis,
Jules Cambon: par l’un des siens
(Paris, 1938), 108, tr. the author. For the Kaiser’s homoerotic inclinations, which included a delight in seeing his courtiers dress as poodles and ballerinas, see Isabel Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Circle,’ ” in Röhl,
Kaiser Wilhelm II
.
20
“to tell the Kaiser”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 358–59. This is TR’s best, fullest, and most nearly contemporary account of the Venezuela crisis. He makes no reference to arbitration. See the chronological analysis in Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days.’ ”
21
The tactfulness
TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1102.
22
Again von Holleben
Even as TR met with von Holleben, the USS
Marietta
was en route to La Guiria, Venezuela, for “purposes of observation.” Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt.”
23
The Ambassador
William Loeb to Hermann Hagedorn, n.d., and Loeb interviewed by Henry Pringle, 14 Apr. 1930 (HP).
On this same day, TR also had a conversation with George Smalley, Washington correspondent of
The Times
. His clear purpose was to have the well-connected reporter let London policymakers know just where he stood regarding Germany’s threat to Venezuela. White House appointment book, 8 Dec. 1902, and Smalley to TR, 12 Dec. 1902 (TRP). “I think it desirable that you should know privately what … I intend to do,” he quotes TR as saying, prefatory to a twenty-minute statement of great “lucidity and force” (Smalley,
Anglo-American Memories
, 350). Smalley might have been less eager to convey presidential messages had he known that TR considered him to be “a copper-riveted idiot.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 97.
24
THE “PACIFIC” BLOCKADE
Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 117; Herbert Bowen, “Roosevelt and Venezuela,”
North American Review
, Sept. 1919; United States Department of State,
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1903
(Washington D.C., annual), 793 (hereafter
Foreign Relations)
.
25
John Hay relayed
Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 413; Pierre de Margerie to French
Foreign Office, 18 Jan. 1903 (JJ); Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 413; Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 67–69; TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1102. TR’s strategic suspicions were not unfounded. See Grenville and Young,
Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy
, 306.
26
IN BERLIN
,
Speck
Reporting back to TR on 15 Dec. 1902, von Sternburg sounded more like an American diplomat than a German. “I’ve told them every bit of [the truth]…. Fear I’ve knocked them down rather roughly, but should consider myself a cowardly weakling if I had let things stand as they were” (TRP).
27
Expressionless, self-effacing
Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 108, 197 (“As always, Speck has three faces—one for the Russians, one for the British, and one for whomever he is stationed by”); Speck von Sternburg to TR, 15 Dec. 1902 (TRP).
28
There seemed to
Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 50; Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 422, 413. See Paul S. Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity: Public Diplomacy and the Press in the Venezuela Crisis, 1902–1903,”
The Historian
32.3 (1970), for the barrage of White House publicity during Dewey’s naval maneuvers.
29
Von Bülow
Alfred Vagts,
Deutschland und die vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik
(New York, 1935), 1569, tr. the author;
Die Grosse Politik
, vol. 17, 255–60; Lionel M. Gelber,
The Rise of Anglo-American Friendship
(New York, 1938), 113.
30
The ink on
Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 118.
31
Roosevelt continued
TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1102; Platt, “Allied Coercion of Venezuela.”
32
Sunday, 14 December
The Washington Post
, 15 Dec. 1902. For reasons set forth at length in Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days,’ ” Sunday, 14 Dec., must have been the date of the secret TR-von Holleben meeting. Hay’s arbitration message was sent the previous day, Saturday, and von Holleben left Washington for New York on Sunday evening.
33
If Roosevelt expected
Vagts,
Deutschland
, 1569; profile in
Munsey’s
, Sept. 1901; Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 108; Sergei Witte,
The Memoirs of Count Witte
, ed. Sidney Harcave (Armonk, N.Y., 1990), 61, 76–77; Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 422.
34
Today, von Holleben
Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 133; TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1103.
35
Controlling himself
William Loeb interviewed by Henry Pringle, 14 Apr. 1930 (HP).
36
The President said
Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 414.
37
WILLIAM LOEB SAW
Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, argues that TR himself may have been initially responsible, in order not to humiliate the pathologically sensitive Kaiser. “Roosevelt’s penchant for face-saving is the key to much of the mystery surrounding his foreign policy.… In the field of diplomacy he was nearly
always
tactful and courteous” (58–59).
38
Von Holleben
Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 80, 55, 69.
39
Late that evening
“At the Hotels,”
The New York Times
, 15 Dec. 1902.
40
Sometime during
TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1104, and vol. 5, 1102; George Dewey diary, 13 Jan. 1903 (GD). Bünz, TR said years later, was “the one man who sized me up right.” When the aging Consul General was arrested on espionage charges in the First World War, TR vowed to help him, “for the really valuable service he did this country as well as his own in the Venezuela matter” (TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks [TRC]). See TR’s exquisitely detailed expositions of the Monroe Doctrine to Bünz in
Letters
, vol. 3, 98.
41
As von Holleben
Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 414; Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 121–22.
42
But Metternich
“If President Castro should prematurely perceive that there exists
on our part a leaning toward arbitration,” Metternich opined, “he would interpret this as weakness and would certainly make no concessions.” Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 121.
43
It was now
TR to A. W. Callisen, 3 May 1916 (TRP); Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 122; Washington
Evening Star
, 16 Dec. 1902; Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD). There was a flurry of nervous selling on Wall Street. New York
Herald
, 17 Dec. 1902.
44
“Such cables,”
Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD).
45
After less than
Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 41; New York
Herald
, 17 Dec. 1902. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt,” notes that the fighting edge of Dewey’s armada moved five hundred miles closer to Venezuela at this “critical” juncture.
46
Throughout the crisis
Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity.”
47
By now the
The Washington Post
, 17 Dec. 1902; “At the Hotels,”
The New York Times
, 16 Dec. 1902; Marks,
Velvet on Iron
, 42, is puzzled by German Embassy letters dated 15, 17, and 18 Dec. and signed by von Holleben. There is no question that the Ambassador was out of town from 14 Dec. on: he must simply have taken official stationery with him to New York. See below.
48
From there
The New York Times
, 17 Dec. 1902;
The Times
(London), 18 Dec. 1902; Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 69.
49
“now the cannons”
Edward B. Parsons, “The German–American Crisis of 1902–1903,”
The Historian
33 (May 1971).
50
The reaction in
Alfred P. Dennis,
Adventures in American Diplomacy, 1896–1906
(New York, 1928), 290; George P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, eds.,
British Documents on the Origin of the War, 1898–1931
(London, 1928–1931), vol. 2, 153. On 18 Dec., Hay, believing the crisis still to be acute, wasted much hot breath in a strongly worded “ultimatum” to Albert von Quadt, the German chargé d’affaires. Both men were, in a later phrase, out of the loop. The skimpy evidence surviving suggests that TR’s ultimatum was received by Berlin not as a shock, but as a confirmation of repeated warnings from Bünz (June 1902) and von Sternburg (July, Oct., Nov. 1902) that the new President was not to be trifled with (Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 418). Throughout the year, both von Holleben and Quadt had urged Berlin to prepare for possible war with the United States. Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 69, 71.
51
SO THE DEADLINE
Von Bülow expressly repeated that Germany had no territorial ambitions in Venezuela. Hill,
Roosevelt and the Caribbean
, 131.
52
“I am a sick man,”
New York
Herald
news clipping, ca. 10 Jan. 1903, John Hay Scrapbook (JH). Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
(Boston, 1918), 437; Herwig,
Politics of Frustration
, 83. Von Holleben did not return to Washington until 26 Dec. and stayed two weeks to wind up his affairs, still refusing to speak to the press. On 5 Jan. 1903, the Kaiser canceled his credentials. He left town again without saying good-bye to TR or John Hay (New
York Tribune
, 10 Jan. 1903; Pierre de Margerie to Théophile Delcassé, in
Documents diplomatiques français [1871–1914]
, series 2, vol. 3, 24 [Paris, 1929–1959]). When he sailed home from Hoboken, N.J., on 10 Jan. 1903, “not a single member of the diplomatic corps or German official [with the exception of Karl Bünz] dared to see him off.” TR,
Letters
, vol. 8, 1104, and Blake, “Ambassadors at the Court.”