Colonel Roosevelt (95 page)

THE PRESIDENT REGRETTED
his gaffe in Philadelphia, and tried to get it deleted from the official transcript of his speech. He claimed that he been expressing “
a personal attitude.” But to some ears,
There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight
had the same smug sound as his confession over the bodies of the marines who died at Vera Cruz:
There are some things just as hard to do as to go under fire
.

On 13 May,
his note responding to the
Lusitania
disaster was cabled to James W. Gerard, the American ambassador in Berlin. Gerard had been expecting to be recalled, preparatory to a complete severance of diplomatic relations. Instead, he found himself charged with the delivery of a polite document appealing to the peaceable emotions of the Kaiser’s war cabinet.

Wilson stated that the situation was “grave.” He reported that several recent German attacks upon his countrymen at sea, traveling freely as was their privilege, had caused “concern, distress, and amazement” in the United States. Over a hundred Americans had died aboard the
Lusitania;
his administration was “loath to believe” that the U-boat commander responsible could have been obeying orders. The man must have been “under a misapprehension” of “the high principles of equity” for which Prussian war planners were famed. Making no mention of Belgium, the President praised Germany’s long-standing “humane and enlightened attitude … in matters of international right.” Surely Germans must agree that underwater attacks upon any merchantman, neutral or belligerent, were going “much beyond the ordinary methods of warfare at sea.”

He granted that the action of certain adversaries who sought “to cut Germany off from all commerce” had forced the Reich to resort to extraordinary countermeasures. But the United States was not responsible for either policy. It declined to surrender its travel and trading rights as a neutral nation. Wilson
felt obliged to repeat that he held Germany “to a strict accountability for any infringement of those rights, intentional or incidental.” He was confident that the Imperial Government would “disavow” the attacks he complained of, make appropriate reparations, and promise that no such outrages would happen again.

The note won general approval, especially in Britain, when its text was released. Wilson’s elaborate courtesies fell within the norms of diplomatic style, and did not hide his determination to get satisfaction from the Wilhelmstrasse. At best, that would be an apology and a promise not to attack any more passenger vessels. More likely, there would be an apology and a counter-move, designed to draw him into protracted negotiations.

Only the most cynical readers of the President’s text (and Americans were not good at cynicism) might wonder if he hoped to be so drawn. In little over a year, he was almost certain to win renomination for another term in the White House. But he could not dream of being reelected, unless he acted now as a man of peace: the mood of the country was overwhelmingly antiwar. It was remotely possible that Wilson might agree with Roosevelt that the nation would, sooner or later, have to fight for the survival of democracy. If so, his pose of unctuous expectation of a humane response from Germany now was just a tactic to gain him five more years of power—and his note a masterpiece of deceptive rhetoric, designed to ensure that when all the belligerents had spent their wrath, they would turn to him as their savior.

ROOSEVELT FACED HIS FIFTH
frustrating week in Syracuse, chafing under the mockery of William Ivins and jotting furious rebuttals with
a green and gold fountain pen. Barnes, summoned from Albany,
made a dignified witness, testifying coolly and precisely. It was noticed, however, that the jurors did not stare at him with the undisguised fascination they accorded the defendant. He was honest in his self-portrayal as a professional politician who understood that lawmakers needed the counsel and financial backing of corporate interests. Posturing ideologues and ill-informed common voters (Barnes denied ever calling them “riff-raff”) only impeded the legislative process.

On Thursday, 20 May, Ivins summed up his case by accusing Roosevelt of a lifetime habit of turning on former associates. He quoted Shakespeare’s famous directive
I charge thee, fling away ambition; by that sin fell the angels
. The last words members of the jury heard were those of Justice Andrews, who instructed them to forget that the defendant had ever been President of the United States, and concentrate only on whether one man’s libelous charges against another were true. If not, malice could be established by circumstantial evidence, and punitive damages imposed.

At 3:45
P.M
. the jurors withdrew. Three hours later they sent out for dinner,
and at 11:30
P.M.
, reported that they were unable to agree. Andrews escorted them across the street to the city jail and locked them up for the night. They remained at loggerheads all day Friday and through to 10:15 on Saturday morning, by which time Roosevelt was red-faced with tension. The court clerk asked if they had reached a verdict, and the foreman said yes.

“How do you find?”

“For the defendant.”

Roosevelt had never been one to display deep emotion in public, and he kept himself in check now, merely grinning as spectators roared applause. But he fought tears afterward as he took the jury aside and thanked each member personally. “
I will try all my life,” he said, his voice shaking, “to act in private and public affairs so that no one of you will have cause to regret the verdict you have given this morning.”

William Ivins returned to New York an exhausted man, with few weeks left to live. Legal analysts concluded that his performance had been impeccable and his cross-examinations brilliant, but that he had been defeated by a defendant beyond the reach of ordinary justice. Behind him in Syracuse he left, securely tacked to the courthouse wall, the hide of William Barnes, Jr.

THE PRESIDENT’S OFFICIAL DEMEANOR
, as he waited for Germany’s reply to his note, was no different than it had been since the death of Ellen Wilson nine months before: calm, controlled, apparently affable but reserved beyond reach. He smiled brilliantly, if rather too often. When the grin disappeared, he was not always able to prevent his long jaw from clamping his lips shut, as if to discourage the person smiled upon from asking a favor. Or worse still, from presuming to advise him. Wilson had such a horror of being instructed he would walk away from anyone who waxed too confidential. The thinness of his skin was as real as it was metaphorical: he could not even touch boiled eggs, which had to be cracked open for him.

He felt, not without reason, that he was stronger and smarter than anyone else in the administration. His acuity showed in the speed with which he grasped and cut short any argument, often rejecting a conclusion before it had been fully stated. Lobbyists and petitioners retired feeling that they had not been heard. To that extent Wilson was, or seemed, cold. A Calvinist restraint hindered his attempts to charm the public. He longed to be called “Woody” by the sort of people who called Roosevelt “Teddy,” and reacted with joy when they did. But that rarely happened, to the puzzlement of his three daughters and small circle of adoring friends. They remembered him before his bereavement as a delightfully warm man, a lover of dinner-table repartee, limericks, and the patter songs of Gilbert and Sullivan, which he would sing in a pleasant tenor voice. The younger Wilson had always had a healthy libido and made no effort to conceal it. While remaining faithful to his wife (as far
as anyone knew: there had been rumors), he confessed that he never went to New York alone without feeling certain temptations.

Now, secretly, as Washington burst into full spring flower, he felt them again, without having to stray farther than four blocks from home. It transpired that the President had not been altogether alone the weekend after the
Lusitania
went down. The weather had been beautiful, and so, in his opinion, was Mrs. Edith Bolling Galt, the big dark Southern widow who went driving with him. He blamed her for his rhetorical gaffe the following Monday: “I do not know just what I said in Philadelphia … my heart was in such a whirl.”

Wilson had in fact already proposed marriage. Mrs. Galt had said no, but in a way that implied she would not mind if he raised the subject again.

ON 30 MAY
, Count Johann von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington, handed over a qualified apology for the destruction of the
Lusitania
. His minister, Count von Jagow, argued that the liner “undoubtedly had guns on board” when she sailed, “mounted under decks and masked.” Germany therefore had the right to sink her “in just self-defense.” The real responsibility for the disaster must lie with the Cunard company, for not informing American passengers that they were being used “as protection for the ammunition carried.” Jagow would have more to say on the subject, but in the meantime, the government of the United States might like to reflect on these complaints, and consider whether it should not visit its wrath on Great Britain instead.

The note said nothing about reparations, and its testy, provisional tone suggested dissension within the Wilhelmstrasse. Wilson began to draft a reply that conveyed his willingness to hear more, but (over Bryan’s protests), reiterated in stronger language the outrage he had expressed already.

FOR ROOSEVELT, TOO
, the new season brought release from what he admitted had been “
the very nadir” of his life. He set such store by his victories in
Roosevelt v. Newett
and
Barnes v. Roosevelt
that when he updated his biography in
Who’s Who
, the two trials totaled almost a fourth of the available space, dwarfing such achievements as the Panama Canal, the Treaty of Portsmouth, and the Conservation Conference of 1908.
“I have never seen Theodore in finer form,” Edith Roosevelt wrote her sister Emily. “He bubbles over with good spirits, and I do my best to pant and puff after him.”