Theodore Rex (44 page)

THE PRESIDENT
, lacking precise intelligence, had to rely on intuition as the Venezuelan crisis developed. Fortunately, that intuition, in situations concerning the Monroe Doctrine, was acute. His animal Americanism—a buffalo nervously sniffing the prairie wind—sensed the circlings of a distant predator. As long as Tirpitz held off (there had been no formal blockade announcement
yet), he could technically state that the diplomatic horizon was clear. But he gave notice in his Message that the United States was looking to her defenses. “
For the first time in our history, naval maneuvers on a large scale are being held under the immediate command of the Admiral of the Navy.”

Coincidentally or not, these maneuvers were directed at the same theater as the Anglo-German blockade. On 21 November, four battleships of the North Atlantic squadron arrived off Isla de Culebra, Puerto Rico. Four cruisers and two gunboats of the Caribbean squadron lay in wait for them. From other points in the Western Hemisphere, other white warships put to sea, converging like slow bullets upon the target area.

SEA POWER
, that early obsession of Roosevelt’s youth, had returned to haunt him as Commander-in-Chief. Since entering the White House he had been, in his own words, “straining every nerve to keep on with the upbuilding of the Navy.” Perhaps his most important achievement in that regard was the appointment of two ardent strategic reformers as Secretary of the Navy and Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. William H. Moody and Admiral Taylor were working to create a larger, more war-ready fleet. They did not lack for funds. Roosevelt’s First Message to Congress had generated enough money to finance the construction of two new battleships and two armored cruisers, plus a special appropriation for the maneuvers. The President had also, at the urging of a messianic young lieutenant named William S. Sims, instigated a program to improve fleet marksmanship. With less fanfare, he had approved a six-month survey of the Venezuelan coastline, and had transferred control of Culebra to the Navy Department, “in case of sudden war.”

The most recent tables of world naval strength ranked the United States behind Britain, France, and Russia in ships built and building, but ahead of Germany at 507,434 to 458,482 tons. This position would soon improve, since the United States had more tonnage under construction than any country except Britain. Germany, however, had more vessels in commission—especially in the Atlantic, at twelve battleships to eight American. The latter were more heavily armored, with standard twelve- and thirteen-inch guns. But in aggregate fighting mass, Germany enjoyed an advantage of about 50 percent.

For two years, tacticians at the Naval War College had been trying to “combat” this, in maneuvers charted across an ocean of cartographic paper.
They sat cross-legged on contoured islands, or perched on mainland stools, and smoked and threw dice while celluloid ships—Blue for the United States, Black for Germany—crept over the grid lines, trailing dotted wakes and firing tiny broadsides of pencil. The results were not encouraging. In almost every engagement, Black’s tighter track curves, the sheer range and accuracy of its lead shot, combined to scatter Blue all over the table.

Germany, the tacticians concluded, could seize key harbors in any
Caribbean confrontation. A more optimistic view was put forward by the General Board of the Navy, the duty of which was to review such findings for the President. It found that if he established another base south of the one at Isla de Culebra, the hemisphere would be secure as far south as the Amazon.

As far as Roosevelt was concerned, the forthcoming maneuvers would show, better than any calculation by college or committee, just how much sea power the United States actually had. Real ships, and real guns, were being committed to this “game.” If Germany and Britain wanted to splash in the same water, they must play by American rules, or the game could become deadly.

HE WAS ABLE TO
stage a tableau to this effect at his first dinner in the new Executive Dining Room, on 24 November. Pale, frail Speck von Sternburg was the guest of honor. Elsewhere at the same table sat pale, frail John St. Loe Strachey, editor of the London
Spectator
and another of Roosevelt’s cosmopolitan circle. The two foreigners were visiting America for “personal reasons,” in response to invitations from the White House. They had opposing rooms upstairs. Each had been vouchsafed a flattering presidential
tête-à-tête
—von Sternburg at dead of night, Strachey on horseback in the rain. Agog at such favors, they could be counted on to return home with the kind of intelligence that, in von Sternburg’s phrase, was “better talked over than written.” The Baron was well-connected on the Wilhelmstrasse, and
Strachey, through his periodical, was one of the most powerful opinion-shapers in Britain.

Between the two foreigners Roosevelt placed the Admiral of the United States Navy, as someone who could not fail to impress them. George Dewey, about to leave for the Caribbean exercises, was America’s greatest military hero. He had destroyed the entire Spanish fleet at Manila in ’98. (Given permission, he would have bombarded Germany’s ships, too.) Blessed by Admiral Farragut and anointed by McKinley, he gave off an almost divine aura. There were people who carried little icons of him at their bosoms. Some Filipinos thought he communed directly with God.

The Admiral was now almost sixty-five. His immaculate mustache was snowy, and his well-pressed uniform did not hang as straight as it had three years before, the day he rolled down Fifth Avenue behind Governor Roosevelt’s prancing horse. Too many good lunches at the Metropolitan Club had pinkened the mahogany tan; he tended to nod off in the late afternoon.
Awake, however, Dewey still had formidable authority, accentuated by the glitter of four gold stars.
As Roosevelt reminded him, in the order sending him back to sea, his “standing” was enough to ensure world attention to the Caribbean maneuvers.

But Dewey had more than prestige to suit the President’s current purpose.
He was notoriously the most bellicose Germanophobe in the United States. And if Speck von Sternburg could not see
that
, over the white flowers and wineglasses, he needed a stronger monocle.

THE NEXT DAY
, Britain and Germany officially informed the State Department of their intents to proceed against Venezuela. There would be an ultimatum followed by a blockade, within the bounds of the Monroe Doctrine. Secretary Hay replied that the United States “greatly deplored” any European intervention in the affairs of a South American republic. He conceded, however, that such action was sometimes justifiable.

Meanwhile, the United States armada off Culebra was joined by a flotilla of support vessels, including colliers and torpedo boats. Farther south, two battleships and four cruisers of the European and South Atlantic squadrons met near Trinidad, at a point only 125 miles from the Venezuelan coast.

Finally, on 1 December, Admiral Dewey went down to the Navy Yard in Washington, where Roosevelt’s yacht
Mayflower
awaited him as his flagship. He ordered its crew to prepare for the open sea.

ON THE MORNING
of Dewey’s departure, Roosevelt drained his umpteenth cup of coffee, then spent twenty minutes walking in the garden with Edith. They had come to treasure this early ritual, now that his work took up most of the day and much of the night. The stroll helped him digest three breakfast courses—or rather six, as he usually ordered both choices of each, plus a bowl of fruit or cereal. Edith fondly let him eat as much as he liked. She believed that his intellectual turbine, whirring always at abnormal speed, needed a proportionate supply of fuel. At ten to nine, before going indoors, she would pick a rosebud for his buttonhole. Then, with her kiss warming his cheek, he would march along Jefferson’s colonnade toward his office in the new Executive Wing.

It was a treat not to have to operate out of home anymore. This neutral space, full of winter sun, pleasingly separated his work from his private life. As Roosevelt gave all of himself to each, so he disliked to have the one encroach upon the other. Any person with legitimate business to transact could see him where he was going. But in future, only those worthy of intimacy might venture back the way he had come.

The scents of a little flower shop greeted him as he traversed “the President’s Passage” and entered a hallway dividing the Cabinet Room,
on his right, from the Executive Office on his left. The latter was a spacious, southward-facing chamber, thirty feet square, hung with dark olive burlap and simply but solidly furnished. Behind his massive mahogany desk—unencumbered by a telephone, an instrument Roosevelt deemed suitable only for clerks—three tall windows framed, in triptych, the Washington Monument, a lawn still red with construction mud, and Virginia rising beyond the silver river.

Another set of windows looked east toward the residence. If he caught sight of Archie or Quentin misbehaving in the garden, he had only to heave up a sash and roar at them. Thick doors (and a
NO SMOKING
sign) insulated him from supplicants and sycophants collecting in Secretary Cortelyou’s big office beyond, and from gentlemen of the press, who now had their own den down the corridor. An oil portrait of Lincoln hung over the mantel, where he could see it at all times. Logs glowed in the fireplace; a tiny clock ticked. Polished leather under his cuffs reflected an
art nouveau
lamp and silver bowl of American Beauty roses.

The room’s main decoration was a huge globe. Spun and stopped at a certain angle, this orb showed the Americas floating alone and green from pole to pole, surrounded by nothing but blue. Tiny skeins of foam (visible only to himself, as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Navy) wove protectively across both oceans, as far south as the bulge of Venezuela and as far west as the Philippines. Asia and Australia were pushed back by the curve of the Pacific. Africa and Arabia drowned in the Indian Ocean. Europe’s jagged edge clung to one horizon, like the moraine of a retreating glacier.