Colonel Roosevelt (161 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
19: A H
URRICANE OF
S
TEEL
1
Epigraph
Robinson,
Collected Poems
, 74.
2
“The situation”
TR to QR, 2 Aug. 1914 (ERDP).
3
A packhorse
QR to KR, 2 Feb. 1916 (KRP).
4
As a little girl
Longworth,
Crowded Hours
, 235.
5
Balfour’s dream
See 71.
6
he also had his Saxon side
The Kaiser, flattering TR during his presidency, had come up with a triple adjective: “Let us rejoice that, thank Heaven, the Anglo-Saxon-Germanic Race is still able to produce such a specimen.” (Wilhelm II to TR, 14 Jan. 1904 [TRP].) For TR’s German days, see Putnam,
TR
, 102–13, or Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 43–47.
7
“From that time”
TR,
An Autobiography
, 274.
8
“I wish I had”
TR to Finley Peter Dunne, quoted in Ellis,
Mr. Dooley’s America
, 154.
9
“the battle forced”
Quote in Ecksteins,
Rites of Spring
, 93.
10
“If they refuse”
Barbara Tuchman,
The Guns of August
(New York, 1962, 1979), 141.
11
“The lamps are going out”
Grey,
Twenty-five Years
, 2.20. There was a personal poignancy to Grey’s metaphor. He was afflicted with dimming vision, and had been told by oculists that he would become functionally blind in a few years. Ibid., 61–62.
12
“You’ve got to”
Felix Frankfurter, eyewitness.
13
Booth would only say
Charles Booth (1840–1916) was a stellar example of the high Victorian ideal of a businessman devoting himself to the making of money and enlightened philanthropy. He was author of a 17-volume social study,
Life and Labor of the People in London
(1891–1903). The steamer
Aidan
, which had altered its itinerary to bring the ailing TR home from Brazil in May 1914, belonged to Booth’s fleet. His brother, Alfred Booth, was chairman of the Cunard Line, which on this same day delayed the departure from New York of its flagship
Lusitania
.
14
“would result in”
TR,
Letters
, 8.826.
15
“The European world”
The New York Times
, 4 Aug. 1914. WW reckoned without the strong inherited patriotism of German-Americans. When the Reich declared war on Russia, the
New York Herald
ran a banner headline,
ALLE
DEUTSCHEN HERZEN
SCHLAGEN
HEUTE HOHER (“All German hearts beat faster today”). Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.8.
16
When other powers
Japan declared war against Germany on 23 Aug. and Turkey against the Allies on 11 Nov. 1914. Italy hesitated until 24 May 1915 before turning against its former Triple Entente partner, Austria-Hungary.
17
Theodore Roosevelt’s gift
The Washington Post
reported on this date, 5 Aug. 1914, that strategists in the nation’s capital regarded the Canal as “the biggest war menace that hangs over America and the western hemisphere.”
18
“God has stricken me”
Heckscher,
Woodrow Wilson
, 334.
19
“Let us be”
The New York Times
, 6 Aug. 1914.
20
“I simply do not”
TR to George S. Viereck, 8 Aug. 1914 (TRC).
21
Having lost
See Morris,
The Rise of TR
, 229–31. TR sent WW a supportive telegram even before Ellen Wilson died. “Very deep sympathy. Earnestly hope reports of Mrs. Wilson’s condition are exaggerated.” TR to WW, 5 Aug. 1914 (TRP).
22
“It is not”
TR,
Letters
, 7.790.
23
“The melancholy thing”
TR,
Letters
, 7.794. Münsterberg (1863–1916) was one of the most eloquent of TR’s German-American friends attempting to recruit him as a spokesman for their cause. A pioneer industrial psychologist, antifeminist, and protégé of William James, he died suddenly in 1916 after publishing
The Photoplay
, the first major work of film theory.
24
The message he
Papen,
Memoirs
, 14; TR,
Letters
, 8.1165.
25
Roosevelt bowed back
TR, describing this visit later, dated it as occurring “within a week of the outbreak of the war,” and identified his caller only as “a young member of the German Embassy staff in Washington,” and “I think a Count.” (TR,
Letters
, 8.1165; Leary,
Talks with T.R.
, 41.) But the evidence that it was Papen is, on top of these qualifications, compelling. In his memoirs, Papen mentions being entrusted with Wilhelm II’s goodwill message before being posted to the United States in the new year of 1914. He also states that he came to New York at this time, straight from an espionage visit to Mexico, in order to set up a base for further spying and propaganda work at the Manhattan headquarters of “a German firm in Hanover Street.” (Papen,
Memoirs
, 21, 31.) Papen left Galveston, Tex., at midnight on 4 Aug. 1914, and probably saw TR in New York on 7 Aug. TR was back in Oyster Bay the following day.
26
“In common with”
TR, “The Foreign Policy of the United States,”
The Outlook
, 22 Aug. 1914.
27
daily in black headlines
“The dispatches were as if black flocks of birds, frightened from their familiar rookeries, came darting across the ocean, their excited cries a tiding of stirring events.” (Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.2.) See ibid., 1–46, and
American Review of Reviews
, Oct. 1914, for the impact of the war on American newspapers.
28
swamping even, on 15 August
The Washington Post
, e.g., put the canal opening on page 10. The
Syracuse Herald
gave it a slender column on page 2, beneath a banner headline:
STUPENDOUS BATTLE BETWEEN
G
ERMANS AND THE ALLIED FORCES IS NEAR AT HAND
.
29
Diaghilev’s dancers
At the Theatro Municipale in Rio on 22 Oct. 1913.
30
“It must indeed be”
Baker, notebook III.74 (14 Aug. 1914 [RSB]).
31
On 19 August
The New York Times
, 28 Oct. 1913; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.43–44. WW’s phrase “impartial in thought” is often misquoted as “neutral in thought.”
32
Boredom gave way
Richard Harding Davis, “The Germans in Brussels,”
Scribner’s Magazine
, Nov. 1914. Davis’s first version of this account, which is less rich in detail, appeared in the New York
Tribune
on 24 Aug. 1914. The final version was published in his book
With the Allies
(New York, 1914), 21–28.
33
onslaught on the
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.26.
34
the Italian word
fasci
From the Latin
fasces
, evoking a bundle of rods, unbreakable because bound, irresistible when rammed. Fascism did not attain the status of a national political party until after World War I. But in Aug. 1914, Mussolini was rapidly converting his personal ideology from pacific socialism to aggressive, interventionist activism, in favor of an all-powerful nation-state. Three months later, he founded a revolutionary newspaper,
Il Popolo d’Italia
, which bore banner quotes from Louis Blanqui and Napoleon: “He who has steel, has bread,” and “Revolution is an idea that has found bayonets.” On 24 Nov. he formed a pro-war
fasci di azione rivoluzionaria
(power group for revolutionary action) that quickly grew and claimed 5,000 members by the year’s end.
35
Roosevelt had been confidentially
See 146.
36
“If the Franco-British”
TR,
Letters
, 7.810–11. In his long-term scenario, TR included a prophecy that came true after World War II: “If Germany is smashed, it is perfectly possible that later she will have to be supported as a bulwark against the Slav by the nations of Western Europe.” Ibid., 812.
37
The same prospect
Gilbert,
A History of the Twentieth Century
, 345–46; Alan Kramer,
Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War
(New York, 2007), 7–11.
38
“The Prussian”
Gerard,
Face to Face with Kaiserism
, 131.
39
It was all
Davis,
With the Allies
, 90–95. See also Brand Whitlock,
Belgium: A Personal Narrative
(New York, 1919), chap. 26.
40
The imperial embassy
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.58.
41
“I am an ex-President”
TR,
Letters
, 7.812.
42
“If you have”
TR to Frederick H. Allen, 31 Aug. 1914 (TRC).
43
Belle had fallen
EKR diary, 16 July 1914 and
passim
(TRC).
44
“Ted and Eleanor”
TR,
Letters
, 7.816.
45
In a crescendo of carnage
The ecstasy affected even Calvinist intellectuals. “This war is great and wonderful beyond all expectations,” Max Weber wrote a friend.
The New York Review of Books
, 18 Feb. 1988.
46
“The fire-ants”
TR,
Works
, 6.113–14.
47
Elsewhere in Brazil
TR,
Works
, 6.142; Strachan,
The First World War
, 55.
48
Masses, slaves, arise
Eugène Pottier (1816–1887). Author’s translation of French original. The text varies in later Russian, British, and American versions.
49
The government of
Gerard,
My Four Years in Germany
, 91; Tuchman,
The Proud Tower
, 419. On the eve of Germany’s declaration of war against Russia, Sir Edward Grey had passionately burst out, “It is the greatest step toward Socialism that could possibly have been made. We shall have Labour Governments in every country after this.” Grey,
Twenty-five Years
, 2.239–40.
50
When Wilson thought
“I find the President singularly lacking in appreciation of the importance of this European crisis,” Colonel House wrote on 28 Sept. 1914. “I find it difficult to get his attention centered upon the one big question.” Sullivan,
Our Times
, 5.35.
51
“I gather”
Cecil Spring Rice to TR, 18 Sept. 1914 (CSR).
52
Before Roosevelt
TR,
Letters
, 8.862.
Biographical Note:
Earlier in the year, TR had resisted a suggestion that he should encourage Progressives to support Wilson, rather than allow them to drift back into a Republican Party dominated by the likes of Boies Penrose. He agreed, however, that “permanently, there is only room for two national parties in this country, and one of these must be the opposition.” (TR to Alex Moore, 10 July 1914 [TRC].) Interviewing TR on 14 Aug. 1914, Ray Stannard Baker heard him “express doubt as to whether the American people really know what they [were] doing” in voting for his philosophy of government. “I do not believe,” Baker concluded, “that T. R. has ever really believed in people. He has led people, he has advertised popular measures, but he has never really believed that the people must rule. His idea of leadership has been domination rather than education & service. He has done great good as a publicist, as a political revivalist, but by George, I can’t help feeling that his time has passed.” Notebook III.73 (RSB).
53
“He is most”
O’Laughlin to his wife, 6 Sept. 1914 (OL).
54
“there should be”
Ibid. See 47.
55
hurricane of steel
See 301.
56
The war had wrought
The New York Times
, 26 Sept. 1914; EKR diary, 27 Sept. 1914, misdated 14 Sept. (TRC). As things transpired, a security scare diverted the ship to Glasgow.
57
Edith said goodbye
EKR to ERD, 5 Oct. 1914 (ERDP); TR to KR, 17 Jan. 1915 (TRC).
58
I have something special
Trevelyan to TR, 1 Sept. 1914 (TRP).
59
Your mode of thought
For recent analyses of TR’s foreign policy toward Britain and Europe, see William N. Tilchin,
Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft
(New York, 1997), and Serge Ricard,
Théodore Roosevelt: principes et pratique d’une politique étrangère
(Aix-en-Provence, 1991). Howard K. Beale’s massive
Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power
(Baltimore, 1956) remains the most comprehensive overall survey, and Frederick W. Marks’s elegant
Velvet on Iron
(op. cit.) the most concise. An excellent specialized study is Henry J. Hendrix,
Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century
(Annapolis, Md., 2009). See also Raymond A. Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
(Seattle, 1966), and A. Gregory Moore, “Dilemma of Stereotypes: Theodore Roosevelt and China, 1901–1909,” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1978).
60
Other representatives
TR,
Letters
, 8.819–20; Hengelmüller to TR, 24 Sept. 1914, reprinted at TR’s request in
The New York Times
, 8 Nov. 1914.