Theodore Rex (96 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
ALTHOUGH ROOSEVELT
, on the whole, breathed more freely when Alice was in another hemisphere, he missed her company. Of all his children, she was the only one with an original intelligence. He identified with her quirky reading tastes, her strong passions, her ravenous curiosity. Vicariously, half enviously, he lived through “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (as the press kept reporting them), and sent her one of his quaint “picture letters,” a mix of deliberately naïve drawings and allusive prose. It included
a sketch of his daughter and the Empress Dowager of China exchanging ceremonial puffs of opium.
At the top of the page, over another drawing of Alice being pursued by bicycle cops, he depicted himself as a toothily grinning, vaguely Oriental sun flapping two beneficent wings:
At the time of the sketch, his wings were still beating in vain with regard to an armistice between Russia and Japan, and also to the fraught issue of an indemnity, which Katsura’s government seemed determined to demand. But July had otherwise seen a heartening
accelerando
of diplomatic developments, as if the peace conference, so long discussed and dreamed of, was suddenly so urgent that it had to take place at once. In short order, the two powers appointed their full delegations, separately confided (to Roosevelt
only) the extent of their possible concessions, and announced that they would meet in early August on American soil—the United States being, at least symbolically, halfway between Europe and Asia. The initial introductions would be performed at Oyster Bay by President Roosevelt.
Washington was, of course, no longer a suitable location for the conference proper. Tempers were likely to be hot enough without the aggravating factor of Potomac humidity. Roosevelt volunteered to find “some cool, comfortable and retired place,” where there would be “as much freedom from interruption as possible.” Many East Coast seaside towns made bids to host the conference.
Only one met his stipulations, while also offering the security and communications facilities necessary for a major diplomatic event: Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
The pretty little town boasted a navy yard—strictly speaking, in Kittery, across the bay in Maine—and ample hotel accommodations for both delegates and press. Authorities at the yard made available a big, dignified, vaguely Petrovian building with its own railway siding, and plenty of exposure to sea breezes. Its oblong design, centering on a pedimented entrance facade, was symmetrical enough to satisfy the most stickling insistence on equal space. It was the architectural equivalent of a joint communiqué.
Kogoro Takahira, who had been named as Japan’s junior plenipotentiary to the conference, approved Portsmouth without hesitation. So did his opposite number and new colleague on Embassy Row in Washington, Baron Roman Romanovich von Rosen. (Count Cassini, having lied to Roosevelt once too often, had been tactfully recalled by the Tsar.)
Their respective governments followed up with such alacrity that Alice, steaming west on her first crossing of the Pacific, had bypassed the Japanese delegates steaming east; and long before her father’s self-portrait reached her, the Russian team had arrived in New York from Cherbourg.
AT SIX AND A
half feet tall, Russia’s senior plenipotentiary was a delight to cartoonists, who imagined him crushing, or bear-hugging, his tiny Japanese adversaries to death. Yet Sergei Iulievich Witte was more adept at commercial negotiations than at the often dangerous business of ending a war. He was a former finance minister and railroad man, convinced that gold, not gunpowder, was the final arbiter of all questions. As such, he had become so identified with the “peace party” in his homeland that Nicholas II at first absolutely declined to appoint him. Only when two other nominees quailed before the challenge had the Tsar yielded to the urgings of Witte’s supporters.
Henry Adams had met Witte in St. Petersburg a few years before and recognized him as an archetypal Slav, except for an inherited streak of Dutch phlegmatism. “He is quite ignorant. Of the world outside Russia, and especially of America, he knows little. He fears Germany, detests England, and
clings to France. He is a force; a rather brute energy, a Peter-the-Great sort of earnestness.” More recent reports described Witte as the ablest man in Russia, a “most bitter enemy” of reform, and a likely leader of the government, were the Tsar not so afraid of him.
Roosevelt had hoped that Marquis Hirobumi Ito would head the Japanese delegation, since he was a revered former statesman, and had the same pragmatic views about peace as Witte. But to the further joy of cartoonists, Katsura appointed the puniest-looking officer in his government, Baron Jutaro Komura. The Foreign Minister was delicately boned and wizened, although he was only forty-eight, with eyes black as calligrapher’s ink, and nervous, jerky gestures, as if swatting at imaginary gnats. He had the pallid look of a man who lived largely on seaweed. Lloyd Griscom had learned not to underestimate him.
Komura was, like Takahira, a Harvard graduate, and he had the advantage over Witte in that his mind was “remarkably Western in its comprehension of world affairs.”
Not only that, he had served as a diplomat in St. Petersburg, Washington, Peking, and Seoul—the power centers in the current war. If he had any weakness as a negotiator, it was the common Japanese one of being “apprehensive lest somebody might get the better of him.”
The four plenipotentiaries were each assisted by six accredited aides, of economic, diplomatic, or military persuasion. Together with their clerical staffs, security officers, and countless hangers-on, they invested New York City with an unusual amount of diplomatic pomp as the fifth of August, the day they were to meet at Oyster Bay, drew near.
That solemn engagement did not prevent first Komura and Takahira, then Witte and Rosen from paying advance visits to the President at Sagamore Hill. The Japanese party came an hour earlier than arranged, in their high silk hats and frock coats. They waited for a while on the porch until they heard a shouted greeting from the trees far below and saw their host approaching in knickerbockers and a collarless brown shirt. He was waving an ancient hat.
After Roosevelt had changed, he escorted them into the “North Room,” a new adjunct to the house, designed by C. Grant LaFarge for the reception of important visitors. It had been completed just six weeks before:
a space both deep and high, sunken four steps down from the first-floor walkway, and stretching forty polished feet to its farther windows (a spread eagle cawing silently between them). Although the woodwork and vaulted ceiling were of
heavy Philippine hardwoods and the walls lined with simulated leather, there was plenty of natural light, thanks to two other west-facing windows. These were set into a square, bookshelved reading alcove. Two black bison heads glowered on either side of the east fireplace, and extrusions of horn and fur elsewhere reminded Komura that the President was a man who liked blood. Ionic columns subtly evoked his statesmanship; flags and military mementos his heroism in Cuba; a blurry painting by P. Marcius Simons, entitled
Where Light and Shadow Meet
, his sense of universal harmony; and three
small carved initials, paired with his own, signaled the presence of a woman in the house.
“
Framed” thus in Komura’s view, Roosevelt said frankly that he was concerned that Japan might ask for too much at Portsmouth. Russia should be given some opportunity to negotiate. The Baron replied by reading him a list of demands, many of which were nonnegotiable. Russia must recognize Japan’s “paramount” interests in Korea, withdraw all troops from Manchuria, and sacrifice her trade and transport privileges there. Russia should also pay an indemnity for war costs. The Liaotung Peninsula must become Japanese, as must Sakhalin Island—Japan’s latest territorial prize—and the railroad to Port Arthur. Russia must never again maintain a large naval fleet in “the Extreme East,” and must sacrifice to Japan her few remaining warships, stuck in neutral ports. She should allow Japanese fishing boats into her home waters.
Arrogant though these terms may have sounded in a large quiet room, with Sergei Witte thirty miles away, they were not as harsh as they could have been. Komura indicated the possibility of some flexibility on some points. His idea of generosity, however, was not to insist that Russia level every last brick of her fortifications around Vladivostok. Roosevelt suggested that the latter port did not need to be disarmed, if Japan was going to take over the Port Arthur railway.
As for the indemnity, he said he had heard “from France” that Witte would not hear of it. Komura and Takahira should perhaps propose reparation in principle at first, rather than rapping out
hard numbers of yen.
The Baron did not object to any of Roosevelt’s comments, saying only that Japan had a right to be indemnified. The possibility of a compromise at Portsmouth floated faintly in the air, like one of Alice’s peace puffs. But it lasted about as long.
After Komura and Takahira had taken their leave, Roosevelt heard again from his French source (Philippe Bunau-Varilla, of all people, communicating through Francis B. Loomis) that Witte had vowed to “break off” the peace conference within ten days if Japan did not make acceptable concessions. On the other hand, Russia “would consider paying at least part of Japan’s expenses in the war.”
Roosevelt was worried enough by Witte’s semantics to write
his friend Kentaro Kaneko—not a member of the Japanese delegation, but actively fronting for it in New York—and urge “that great care be used about the word indemnity and that it possibly be avoided.” Doubtless remembering how he had persuaded George Perkins and Robert Bacon to accept an “eminent sociologist” on the Coal Strike Commission, he added, “If he does not object to reimbursing Japan … it does not make the slightest difference to you whether it is called an indemnity or not.”
The Russian plenipotentiaries, less courteous than the Japanese, did not deign to visit Sagamore Hill until 4 August—or, by their calendar, 27 July. To
them, it was the name day of the Empress Marie Feodorovna. All Roosevelt knew was that in fewer than twenty-four hours, he had to introduce both delegations at a welcoming ceremony aboard the
Mayflower
. And he still did not know officially what Witte’s terms were going to be.