Theodore Roosevelt Abroad Page 17

  The last destination in Denmark was Elsinore Castle, redolent of TR’s re-reading of Shakespeare in Africa. This visit afforded one clever cartoonist the opportunity to picture him as Hamlet, holding a scroll marked “1912” and followed by an anxious ghost ascribed “Third Term Taboo.” By this time, Roosevelt had come to a more clear-eyed view of the political situation at home, where, he told Lodge, Taft, Aldrich, Cannon and others had “totally misestimated the character of the movement which we now have to face in American life.” Since Taft’s election, the Colonel had not allowed himself to “think ill” of anything he did, but he finally had to admit that Taft had “gone wrong on certain points.” Now TR also had to admit to himself that “deep down underneath” he had known all along his successor was wrong, but that he had “tried to deceive myself, by loudly proclaiming to myself, that he was right.” He intended no longer to continue the self-deception.48 After Elsinore, Roosevelt and his family left for Norway to begin the next, pacific, leg of his journey.

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  Chapter 7

  Peace Emissary

  On May 4, 1910, Theodore, Edith, Ethel, and Kermit arrived at Christiana (the future Oslo), and were greeted by King Haakon VII and Queen Maud. Once again they stayed at the Royal Palace. TR reported to Lodge his continuing puzzlement about the “extraordinary” receptions he received in Norway and elsewhere. The royals vied with each other to entertain them and the popular displays were even more remarkable. In his opinion this was largely because to them he represented the American Republic, which stood to the average European as a “queer, attractive dream,” sometimes as a “golden utopia partially realized” and on others as a “field for wild adventure of a by no means necessarily moral type—in fact a kind of mixture of Bacon’s Utopia and Raleigh’s Spanish Main.” In addition, the former president appealed personally to their imaginations as a “leader whom they suppose to represent democracy, liberty, honesty and justice.” The combination of enormous popular demonstrations, and their being asked to stay in the royal palaces, left the diplomats he met “perfectly paralyzed.” It was all very interesting and amusing, but also fatiguing and irksome. As much as he dreaded getting back into the “confusion” of American politics, he longed “inexpressibly to be back at Sagamore Hill, in my own house, with my own books, and among my own friends.”1

  Haakon, a son of King Frederick VIII of Denmark, had been elected King of Norway only five years before, after a treaty of separation was reached with Sweden. It was as if Vermont, TR remarked, should try the “offhand experiment of having a king.” Norwegians he had talked to at home had been in favor of the creation of a constitutional kingdom, rather than a republic, but one in which the king would not interfere with the people’s complete self-government while at the same time lend an element of stability and credibility to the government, which would be respected by her monarchical neighbors.2 As president, Roosevelt had granted the new state official recognition and dispatched the first U.S. ambassador.

  Though he thought the system curious, Theodore and Edith found the royal family delightful. He commented that if Norway ever did decide to become a republic, they both would love to have them come live near Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt described the King as a “trump, privately and publicly” who took a keen and intelligent interest in every question affecting his people, and “treated them and was treated by them with a curiously simple democracy of attitude.” Queen Maud, the youngest daughter of Edward VII, was “dear; shy, good, kind, very much in love with her husband, devoted to her boy, anxious to do anything the people expected from her.” The marriage was a love match, unusual among European royals. The antics of their seven-year-old son Olav, who had been born in England, recalled TR to early days at the White House romping with his own small children. On the first afternoon, in the drawing room of the very informal palace, he gave Olav “various bits of bloodcurdling information about lions and elephants” and before long Ethel, Kermit and their father all joined the “dear little boy” in spirited play. Since Olav had no experience of such behavior with anyone else save his parents he “loudly bewailed” their departure.3

  The one serious duty Roosevelt was obliged to perform at Christiana was to deliver his Nobel Peace Prize Address. This he gave before the Nobel Committee, “at a huge ‘Banquet’ of the canonical—and unspeakably awful type.” Peace, the Colonel told his audience, was “generally good in itself,” but it was “never the highest good” unless it came as the “hand maiden of righteousness”; and it became a “very evil thing” if it served “merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy.” Nevertheless, he believed great advances could be made in the cause of international peace along several lines.

  First, there should be treaties of arbitration between the “really civilized communities.” The establishment of a sufficient number of these, Roosevelt argued, would go a long way towards “creating a world opinion which would finally find expression” in the provision of still needed methods to forbid or punish transgressors. A second line of advance could be made in the further development of The Hague Tribunal, particularly of the work of the conference and courts of The Hague. TR agreed with those who said that the first Hague Conference a decade before had framed a Magna Carta for the nations. The Second Conference in 1907 had made further progress and he thought the Third projected for 1914 should do more. The American government had more than once tentatively suggested methods for completing the Court of Arbitral Justice and the statesmen of the world would do well to use the U.S. Supreme Court as a model. In the third place, something should be done to check the growth of armaments, especially naval, by international agreement. In his opinion, granted sincerity of purpose, the Great Powers should find no insurmountable obstacle in reaching an agreement to end the present costly expenditures. Finally, it would be a master stroke if those same Great Powers honestly bent on international amity would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent by force if necessary, its being broken by others.

  The “supreme difficulty” with developing the peace work of The Hague, TR went on, lay in the lack of any executive power. Until some form of international police power to enforce the decrees of the court was developed each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself. As things now stood, “such power to command peace throughout the world” could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desired peace and had “not thought themselves of committing aggressions.” At first this might only secure peace in certain definite limits and conditions; “but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.”4

  This speech constituted the strongest appeal for peace made by Roosevelt in Europe and the final sentiment represented an obvious plea to the German Kaiser—the man seen by Andrew Carnegie as the greatest hope for peace, and by many others as its greatest menace. Carnegie’s pursuit of Wilhelm had begun by correspondence many years before and the plutocrat peace advocate first met the German Emperor in June 1907 at the Kiel regatta. He explained to Dr. David Jayne Hill, one of the American delegates to the Second Hague Conference, also meeting that month, that at Kiel he hoped to “get my say, which is that I think he is the man responsible for war on earth.”5 He also hoped in his talks with the Kaiser to further “real progress” towards peace at the Hague Conference including the creation of a world council to enforce international arbitration.

  To be effective, Carnegie’s world council required a linked international police force and he suggested to Roosevelt that its creation should be another aim of the Hague Conference. He hoped the German Emperor would “rise to his destiny and stand with you favoring this” instead of wasting his time “chasing rainbows” in the form of a colonial empire which “he cannot get, and which would do Germany no good if he did.”6 Carnegie
told Charlemagne Tower, the American ambassador at Berlin, that Wilhelm had it “in his power to do the world the greatest service ever rendered by man.” If he were to propose an international police, Britain, America, France, and the other powers would follow. Carnegie concluded that the Kaiser and Roosevelt “would make a team if they were only hitched up in together for the great cause of peace.”7

  When Carnegie repeated this sentiment to the Kaiser six months later at Kiel aboard the royal yacht Hohenzollern, Wilhelm accused his guest of wanting “to drive us. Roosevelt will be in front and I behind.” Carnegie, who employed all his considerable gifts of good humor and salesmanship in their talks, replied that he knew better than to “drive such wild colts tandem.” No, he would “like to have you both in the shafts, holding you abreast.” The two men had three inter views in which the plutocrat was captivated by the Kaiser, who when he wished could be the epitome of charm itself. Carnegie also met with Chancellor von Bülow, who expressed sympathy for his desire to reduce the tensions between Germany and England by agreement on naval building.8

  Unfortunately for those interested in seeing real progress on arms limitations or arbitration, the 1907 Hague Conference turned out to be an almost complete failure. At the first Hague Conference in 1899 the czar had called for arms limitations, but after the Russo-Japanese War Nicholas II aimed to rebuild his country’s devastated and demoralized forces and took disarmament off the table. Meanwhile, Germany successfully opposed the idea of a compulsory court of arbitration, which left the matter to the discretion of the individual governments. Carnegie was deeply disappointed but continued doggedly to put his faith in the duo of the Kaiser and Roosevelt as the world’s best hopes for peace. The president, however, disillusioned by the Hague fiasco, and worried about the Japanese threat in the Far East, felt he had to go forward, in the two years that remained to him in office, with a building program for the U.S. fleet to match the other powers. On the other hand, over that same time, Elihu Root, as Secretary of State, negotiated more than twenty arbitration treaties with individual nations. With Germany and Russia, however, Root was able to make no progress.

  Though Germany balked at binding agreements, Wilhelm nevertheless attempted more personal approaches to Britain that proved, despite his misplaced good intentions, either heavy handed or inflammatory. The German emperor had an obsessive love/hate relationship with England, where he had spent much time as a child since his mother was Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter. He had been showered with British honors, including the most prestigious—a Garter knighthood. Unfortunately, Wilhelm’s high regard for his grandmother did not extend to his uncle Edward, whom he looked down upon as a weak womanizer. He saw himself as a much fitter heir to the moral leadership of Europe, if not, in his heart if hearts, the Crown of England itself. After Edward VII succeeded his mother in 1901, his “intrigues” with the French and Russians infuriated Wilhelm, whose own efforts to better relations were slighted, he believed, by his condescending uncle who refused to treat him with proper respect.

  Early in 1908 Wilhelm yet again proclaimed his friendship for England in an ill-advised correspondence directly with Lord Tweedmouth, the First Lord of the British Admiralty. This intemperate breech of protocol was hushed up, unlike an “interview” put together later that year by friends of the Emperor in Britain and approved by him. This was meant to ameliorate Anglo-German relations but when it was published in the London Daily Telegraph on 27 October, the rather tame article unfortunately had quite the opposite effect intended. Wilhelm declared his love for Britain, but revealed that his people did not share his sentiments, hardly a reassuring message in the charged atmosphere of late 1908. He also revealed the advice he had offered during the Boer War and appeared to take credit for directing the military hero Lord Roberts toward a winning strategy, which affronted many in Britain. The dumbfounded Emperor faced even more harsh criticism at home and, after he was admonished by the Reichstag, promised more discretion in future.9 Noting this humiliation, Roosevelt told his military aide Archie Butt that the Kaiser had “been riding for a fall for some time.” This did not make it “any the less pathetic” and TR feared it was “going to have a serious effect on monarchical Germany.”10

  Not long before the Daily Telegraph interview was published, Roosevelt had insisted that the New York Times suppress a much more incendiary interview with Wilhelm by Dr. William Bayard Hale, an American journalist who was also a clergymen, and to whom consequently the Kaiser had spoken in confidence. Like TR, Wilhelm was sometimes prone to shockingly frank and childlike outbursts, but his statements often went much further—across the line into paranoia and delusion. The Emperor’s three-hour talk with Hale was so unadulterated that the American felt it would be dangerous to repeat it. Wilhelm paced the room, was full of energy and “his eyes snapped when he spoke of England his bitterness was so intense.” The Kaiser claimed that Great Britain looked on Germany as her enemy because she was the dominant force on the continent and it had always been England’s way to attack the strongest power. Wilhelm appeared very bitter against his Uncle Edward and accused him of trying to set the other powers against Germany. His country was ready for war at any moment and, in the view of the Kaiser, the sooner it came, the better. He was aching for a fight, not for the sake of war, but as something that was unpleasant and inevitable and over the sooner the better.11

  Because of the degeneration of Great Britain and the “march of progress,” Wilhelm claimed to be friendly towards the United States and foresaw America and Germany as the two future dominant world forces. He also revealed to Hale a supposed deal between himself and Roosevelt “to divide the East against itself by becoming the recognized friends of China.” Within a few months, he said, a high-ranking Chinese official would visit both the United States and Germany to strike a bargain by which they would guarantee China’s integrity and the Open Door. Wilhelm also declared that the invitation that TR’s Great White Fleet had accepted to visit Australia and New Zealand was meant to serve notice on Britain that “those colonies were with the white man and not with a renegade mother country.” He in addition prophesied that within ten years Japan and the United States would be at war.

  Before leaving Germany, Hale shared the interview with the new U.S. ambassador at Berlin, David Jayne Hill, and with German Foreign Office officials who “nearly went though the roof.” After Hale brought the interview to the Times, its managing editor dispatched his Washington correspondent, Oscar King Davis, to share its contents with Roosevelt. After hardly more than a glance at the document, TR declared, “You must not print this!” Besides the fact that it would “jeopardize the peace of the world,” he also argued that if the paper published the interview the Kaiser would simply disavow it and everyone would think it was a fake. Davis reassured the president that his paper had no intention to do so, but only brought it to him because they thought it important.12

  After his initial shock that Wilhelm had talked so frankly for publication, TR declared the interview “the funniest thing I have ever known. That Jack of an Emperor talks as if what he happens to want is already an accomplished fact.” He freely admitted that the Kaiser had been at him for a year to come to a Chinese agreement, but he had explained in return that any treaty would have to be agreed to by the Senate. In any event the promised Chinese emissary had never appeared. Roosevelt also admitted that the American fleet had been sent to show Britain, he would not call her a “renegade mother country,” that Australia and New Zealand were white men’s countries. Concerning Japan, as long as the United States kept up its fleet he saw no danger of war.13

  It was well known, TR told Davis, that the Kaiser was “very jumpy and nervous,” but people said that about himself, whereas he never acted without careful deliberation. People also said he and Wilhelm were alike and “have great admiration for each other on that account.” Roosevelt admitted that both he and the Emperor seemed to be “particularly susceptible to being misinterpreted or misunderstood” and t
hat he admired Wilhelm, but only as he would “a grizzly bear.” He swore Davis to secrecy concerning the bulk of his remarks about the Kaiser.14

  In light of the Hale interview, TR drafted a letter of warning to his British friend Arthur Lee, who had for some time been worried about what he considered the German menace and as a Conservative MP was much concerned with defense matters. Roosevelt had been persistently telling his English correspondents that he believed they exaggerated the threat and it was unnecessary to arm against it; however, the Hale revelations gave him pause. He told Lee that he felt it “incumbent upon me now to say that I am by no means as confident as I was in this position.” In many away he had a real regard for Wilhelm’s “ability, his activity” and what TR believed was “his sincere purpose to do all he can for the greatness of his country.” However, the German Emperor had shown himself to be “very jumpy”; and more than once in the last seven years Roosevelt had had to “watch him hard and speak to him, with politeness, but with equal decision, in order to prevent his doing things I thought against the best interests of his country.” TR now told Lee that he believed it “barely possible” that some time Wilhelm would be “indiscreet enough to act on impulse in a way that would jeopardize the peace.” He asked his friend to show his letter only to Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, and Arthur Balfour, the opposition leader.15