Theodore Roosevelt Abroad (25 page)

The Admiral had expected Japan to attack the American fleet while it was on its journey and asked if Roosevelt had feared the same. TR replied that he had not expected such an attack but thought it possible. His view was that if the Japanese attacked it would have been a sign that they meant to strike at the first favorable moment. He had been doing his best to be polite with Japan but had become aware of a “slight undertone of veiled truculence” in regard to affairs on the Pacific slope, and that the Japanese thought him afraid of them. Roosevelt had found out through various sources that Japan’s war party believed themselves superior and that they could win. It seemed to him that the British thought the same, so that the time was ripe for a “showdown.” He had great confidence in the U.S. Navy, and felt that, in any event, if the fleet was not able to get to the Pacific in first class shape they had better find out. He told von Tirpitz that, once the fleet started, it meant the United States had gained three months and it was doing what it would have to do in case of war. In TR’s view, if the Japanese did attack, it would be proof positive that he had followed exactly the right course, and if they became peaceful, the same was true. As it fell out, “every particle of trouble” with the Japanese Government and press “stopped like magic as soon as they found out our fleet had actually sailed and was obviously in good trim.” It was a good thing, he told von Tirpitz, that the Japanese should know that there were “fleets of the white races which were totally different” from that of the poor Russian Admiral Rojestvensky annihilated in the Russo-Japanese War.
³³

Before leaving the United States, Roosevelt had agreed to make a German academic address, which he delivered at the University of Berlin on May 12, after he received an honorary doctorate. The scene was noteworthy for the picturesque combination of military uniforms, academic gowns and what Lawrence Abbott considered the “somewhat bizarre dress” of the undergraduate student corps. The ceremony began with fine renditions of
Hail Columbia
and the
Star Spangled Banner
by the student chorus, “harmonized as only the Germans can harmonize choral music.”
³⁴
Though suffering from an attack of bronchitis, Roosevelt nevertheless persevered through his subject, “The World Movement,” which traced the history of civilization from ancient times to the present. In his view the modern movement towards a world civilization had begun its march four hundred years before with the discovery of printing and the “bold sea ventures” which culminated with the discovery of America. This was followed in Europe by a “tremendous religious ferment” which set off a “moral uprising” matched by a revolution in science. Since then, century by century, the changes had “increased in rapidity and complexity.”
³⁵

Instead of being directed by one or two dominant peoples as in the past, the new movement was shared by many nations and had been from every standpoint of “infinitely greater moment than anything hitherto seen.” This was ref lected in an extraordinary growth in wealth, in population, in power of organization and in mastery of mechanical activity and natural resources “accompanied and signalized” by an immense outburst of energy and restless initiative. The result of this in the first place has been the conquest of space, to spread into all the practically vacant continents, and the development of “un-heard-of military superiority as compared with their former rivals.” In Roosevelt’s view, these two factors created for the first time “really something that approaches a world civilization, a world movement.” The net outcome of what had occurred over the past four centuries was that civilization of the European type now exercised a “more or less profound effect over practically the entire world.” This reflected something “wholly different from what has ever hitherto been seen.” The world was bound together as never before. The bonds, he admitted, were “sometimes those of hatred rather than love,” but were bonds nevertheless.
³⁶

In this new world movement the influence of European governmental principles was strikingly illustrated by the fact that admiration for them had even “broken down the iron barriers of Moslem conservatism,” so that their introduction had become burning questions in Turkey and in Persia. At the same time, the unrest in Egypt, India and the Philippines, took the form of demanding a government closer in form to the United States or Britain. From new discoveries in science to new methods of combating or applying socialism, there was no movement of note which could take place in any part of the globe “without powerfully affecting masses of people” on every continent. “For weal or for woe,” the peoples of mankind were “knit together far closer than ever before.”
³⁷

Unfortunately, Roosevelt saw in this world movement “signs of much that bodes ill.” The machinery was “so highly geared,” the tension and strain so great that he feared ruin could follow “any great accident, from any breakdown” or the mere wearing out of the machine itself. He saw many “forces and tendencies” at work in the present that had brought down previous civilizations such as Rome. These included “knowledge, luxury, and refinement, wide material conquests, territorial administration on a vast scale, an increase in the mastery of mechanical appliances and in applied sciences.”
³⁸

Personally, however, Roosevelt did not believe the new world civilization would fall. He asserted that on the whole “we have grown better and not worse” and the future “holds more for us than even the great past has held.” But it was up to mankind, “high of heart and strong of hand,” to make the dreams of the future come true “by our own mighty deeds.” TR concluded by expressing his hope that the world movement “which is now felt throbbing in every corner of the globe” would bind the nations of the world together and at the same time leave “unimpaired that love of country in the individual citizen” which in the present stage of the world’s progress was “essential to the world’s well-being.” In his view, the good citizen, must be a good citizen of his own country before he could “with advantage be a citizen of the world at large.”
³⁹

The Emperor, Empress and several other members of the royal family attended the address, and spoke of it approvingly. Nevertheless, unlike elsewhere in Europe, and ominously for the future, TR noted that, though they behaved entirely correctly, the “Germans did not like me, and did not like my country.” The “stiff, domineering and formal” upper classes, with the organized army, bureaucracy and industry of their “great, highly civilized and admirably administered country behind them” regarded America with a dislike “all the greater because they could not make it merely contempt.” Since they saw America as entirely unorganized, in their view “we had no business to be formidable rivals at all” and they were exasperated to feel that “our great territory, great natural resources, and strength of individual initiative” enabled the United States to be “formidable industrial rivals” and, “more incredible still, that thanks to our Navy and ocean-protected position, we were in a military sense wholly independent and slightly defiant.”
⁴⁰

Moreover, Roosevelt personally “typified the nation they disliked.” The German upper classes did not like the social type he represented. The lower classes were socialists to whom he was “really an enemy rather than a friend” and his ideals were just as alien. The middle classes looked upon him as typifying a middle class country which was their business rival, “whose manners of life and ways of thought they regarded with profound dislike, and whose business rivalry was irritating and obnoxious.”
⁴¹
It was with little regret, therefore, that the family left Berlin for London.

Traveling through Germany in a royal rail carriage, every attention was shown them, and at the stations a few score or hundred polite and mildly curious people might be on hand. But when they crossed into Holland at the first stop a “wildly enthusiastic” crowd of ten thousand awaited the party. While the Colonel had been in Germany, Taft had wired a request that he act as America’s special ambassador to the funeral of Edward VII. In Washington Archie Butt commented that with the Kaiser and TR present, it would be “a wonder if the poor corpse gets a passing thought.”
⁴²
It was with his new post foremost in mind that TR arrived in London on May 16, 1910.

The state funeral of Edward VII brought together the grandees of Europe for a final time before World War I swept away most of these human remnants of the old regime. Until the funeral was done, and with it his official capacity as special ambassador, TR stayed at Dorchester House, the cavernous Park Lane mansion that the U.S. ambassador Whitelaw Reid had taken on lease from Earl Morley.
¹
With him were Edith, Kermit, Ethel, and a new arrival, his oldest daughter “Princess Alice,” or Mrs. Nicholas Longworth as she was since her White House marriage four years before. Alice brought with her black mourning attire from a recent family funeral, while Edith and Ethel, who had been warned in Germany by Mrs. Reid that the London shops had been emptied, bought proper clothing in Berlin. Alice also brought the latest political gossip from Washington and stayed up very late sharing it with her father, who told her of his disappointment in their mutual friend Taft’s administration and that he thought it would be impossible for him to speak for it in the fall elections.

A royal carriage of state was put at the Colonel’s disposal, complete with a guard of six grave grenadiers in bearskins, who lined up and saluted while a bugler sounded off whenever he left or entered Dorchester House. The British Crown also assigned two special aides, Lord Cochrane and Captain Cunninghame R. N., as guides through the intricacies of the many formal calls TR made on the luminaries gathered in London, including King Frederick VIII of Denmark, King Haakon of Norway, King George I of Greece, and the German emperor, with whom he had another brief interview. Roosevelt commented that not only “all the Kings I had met, but the two or three I had not previously met, were more than courteous and the Kaiser made a point of showing his intimacy with me and of discriminating in my favor over all his fellow sovereigns.”
²

The day they arrived, Roosevelt and his family visited the catafalque of Edward VII at Buckingham Palace and afterwards, he and Ambassador Reid were received by George V and Queen Mary at Marlborough House. The new King was forty-five years old and a younger son who had been trained as a naval officer. But the death in 1892 of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, had thrust him forward. He was something of an unknown quantity and not particularly highly regarded.
³
An avid hunter, though with no big game experience, the King was eager to hear from TR about the safari and conditions in general in his African possessions, all of which Roosevelt gladly supplied. Their hour-long discussion on May 16 soon turned from big game when the King congratulated TR on his speeches at Cairo and Khartoum, adding that he wished something along those lines, “but stronger,” could be openly stated at home. Roosevelt responded that he was considering just such a message for the Guildhall address he had already agreed to; however, not wanting to give offence, he intended first to consult with figures from both political parties, particularly Lord Cromer, still considered the British authority on Egypt, and Sir Edward Grey, the Liberal foreign secretary responsible for Egyptian affairs.
⁴

At a meeting arranged by Reid, TR found Cromer strongly supportive of a speech about Egypt, while warning him that he should be “rabidly attacked for making it.” The former Egyptian Proconsul told Roosevelt that in his view the Liberal government, abetted by his successor Gorst, were reaping the whirlwind from foolishly sharing too much power too soon. This conciliatory policy had only made the Egyptians hungry for more: hence the burgeoning agitation for selfgovernment. Cromer went on that he felt it “almost imperative that England should be told the truth by someone to whom England would listen.” The public had already heard what imperialists such as himself had to say, while the “people of the other way of thinking simply refused to listen to the facts.”
⁵
Many of these, in Cromer’s estimation, were in the Liberal Government.

During a breakfast with Grey, Roosevelt found him “obviously uneasy” at the course his Liberal party was taking about Egypt. He was surprised that the foreign secretary also was “very anxious” for him to speak out, although both men knew that the Prime Minister, Henry Asquith, would disapprove. According to TR, Grey was in the “unpleasant position of finding his party associates tending as a whole to refuse to allow him to do what was necessary: and he wanted his hand forced.” The Colonel offered a vow of secrecy concerning their meeting which Grey declined, telling him that if a question arose in the House of Commons he would not only admit talking the matter over, but that he approved and that TR was “rendering a real service to Great Britain by saying it, and that I was strengthening his hands.”
⁶
Roosevelt appraised Grey as “one of the finest fellows I have ever met” and agreed with him on “both internal and external politics.” He also was very much in sympathy with the Radical domestic views of Grey’s Cabinet fellows David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and John Burns, president of the Local Government Board, and “took a real fancy to both.” Burns struck him as having “a saner judgment,” while Lloyd George, being a Welshman, was more emotional, but at the same time “the most powerful statesman I met in England, in fact
the
man of power.”
⁷

The odd man out among the Liberal leaders, in TR’s estimation, was Winston Churchill, whom he refused to see. As noted earlier, the two had first met a decade before in New York when the newly elected Member of Parliament was on a speaking tour in support of the British cause in the Boer War. Three years later, Churchill turned his party coat from Conservative to Liberal over the tariff reform/free trade fiscal controversy that still divided the country in 1910. Crossing the aisle in the Commons had gained Churchill office, lately the Presidency of the Board of Trade in the Asquith Government, but he was branded the second most hated man in politics after Joseph Chamberlain, the tariff reform champion. Ironically, in two years’ time TR would follow an even more maverick political course and garner a similar reputation.