The response was surprising and dismaying. Lowden had not expected the suggestion of the possibility of war to be especially popular, but neither had he anticipated the vehement reaction he received. There was a tremendous commotion from the public galleries, booing, hissing and shouts of “Peace!.. No!... No war!” and the like. A few of the Senators applauded, nodding their approval, but most, along with the vast majority of their colleagues from the House of Representatives, sat in stony silence or shook their heads to indicate their disagreement with the sentiments he had expressed.
As President Lowden brooded in his office, reviewing the hostile reaction to his speech, a side door hidden under the green wallpaper, an entrance reserved for use by only the President and his private secretary, swung open and Joseph McCormick entered the Oval Office. He was returning from two hours of mingling with the legislators to get some sense of how Lowden’s speech had been received by them. McCormick had been the junior Senator from Illinois before he joined his political fortunes to Lowden’s, and was expert at taking the political pulse of the senior chamber.
“So, how bad is it, Joseph?” the President asked, after McCormick had settled into a chair. “Should I stop worrying about whether I have enough support on the Hill for a declaration of war and start counting the votes I’ll need to beat impeachment?”
McCormick did not reply immediately to the question, which the President had intended facetiously. “Impeachment or trial?” he asked, gazing thoughtfully off into space for a moment, calculating. Then he shook his head, and said, “I wouldn’t worry about it, boss; not a conviction, anyway. There’s no way they could get 65 votes in the Senate.”
“I am inspired by your confidence, Joseph,” Lowden said dryly. “Now that my mind is relieved of that burden, I am free to devote my full attention to this Martinique situation. If push comes to shove, is anybody up on Capitol Hill prepared to vote for war with Germany?”
“You definitely can count on some votes from the conservative wing of our party,” McCormick replied. “Lodge…” (Henry Cabot Lodge, the senior Senator from Massachusetts) “… told me he had a dozen votes for war in his pocket, if and when you need them. And I think you can count on most of the Gulf Coast states. Somehow, Martinique doesn’t seem so far away when your state includes Key West or New Orleans. I talked to Park Trammel…” (the senior Senator from Florida) “…and he said you can rely on getting the vote of every Senator from a Gulf Coast state. He said to tell you, ‘The safety of the nation comes before party politics.’”
“It’s nice to know the southern Democrats and New England will support me, but they’re not enough, nowhere near enough,” the President said. “What are the members of what is theoretically our Party about the possibility of war?”
“The situation could be better,” McCormick admitted. “The Midwestern Senators are either pacifists or isolationists to a man, except for the ones who are both. Bob Lafollette…” (the senior Senator from Wisconsin) “…told me he that as far as he was concerned, Martinique wasn’t worth the life of a single American boy, and that furthermore, if the Kaiser wanted to snap up every island in the Caribbean, including Bermuda, and annex them to the German Empire, he was welcome to them.”
“Bermuda’s not anywhere near the Caribbean,” Lowden scowled. “It’s off North Carolina, unless they moved it while I wasn’t looking.”
The private secretary chose to ignore this irrelevancy, and pushed on. “Lafollette speaks for most of the Progressive wing, and even the Senators who don’t follow him will go along with him on the war issue. The Democrats aren’t much better. The Democrats’ populist Senators have no more interest in the Monroe Doctrine than our Progressives do. It’s just a matter of time until Bryan opens his mouth, and that’ll be the end of any chance to get any of the fence-sitting Demos from the West or Midwest. The farmers out there in Podunk still love the Boy Orator of the Platte, and everybody in his party is still afraid of crossing him.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t already released a statement to the press condemning my war-mongering,” the President said. “So to sum it up, the odds of getting Senate approval for a declaration of war are roughly equal to my chances of winning the National League batting title, is that about right?”
“You don’t necessarily need a formal declaration to act, you know,” McCormick pointed out. “As Commander in Chief you have considerable independent war powers under Article One, and plenty of recent precedents for it using them, too. Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson all committed either soldiers or sailors or both to foreign interventions, and none of them asked for Congressional approval.”
Lowden shook his head. “You know better than that, Joseph. Ordering the Navy’s battleships out to fight the German fleet is not the same thing as sending a few hundred Marines into Nicaragua, or even using a few thousand soldiers to chase bandits in Mexico. I cannot take a divided country into war, Joseph, I will not,” he said. He paused, and then he sighed heavily. “The truth of the matter is, if I was still in the Senate, I would probably agree with Lafollette.”
“I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying, boss. I was just reviewing all the options,” McCormick said. “Maybe the diplomats will handle it, and you won’t need to make that decision. What’s the latest German response to our offer to negotiate?”
The President glanced up at the ornate clock that hung over the main entrance to the office. “I asked General Wood to come over for a briefing on developments at 5:30. He should be here shortly.”
The two men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts, until the intercom on the President’s desk buzzed and the receptionist announced the arrival of the Secretary of State. After an abbreviated exchange of greetings, President Lowden immediately brought up the topic that was foremost in his mind.
“Has there been a German response to our new request for talks?” he asked. The expression on the Secretary of State’s face told him the answer before he replied.
“No sir, Mr. President,” Wood said. “They have not made any formal response through diplomatic channels. But they have answered indirectly.”
He opened his briefcase, and drew out a few pages of paper. He handed one to the President and another to McCormick. “This is a copy of an official communiqué from the Chancellor’s office that was released at noon today, Berlin time. You can see what they think of our proposals for talks over there.”
“ ‘The Naval Ministry is pleased to announce that construction of the new naval facility at La Trinitie, Martinique will be placed on a new, accelerated schedule. The future home of the Imperial Caribbean Fleet is now expected to ready to receive units of the Imperial Navy by October 1 of this year. The first shipments under the new schedule will commence with the shipment of additional construction materials and equipment from Hamburg tomorrow’,” the Secretary of State read aloud. “They didn’t name the ships that will be doing the hauling, but they haven’t made any secret of it either.”
He read from another sheet he extracted from his briefcase. “Both of them are out of Hamburg: the Orlanda, which will be loaded with cement, and the Ambria, with a cargo of bulldozers and heavy trucks. Both ships are bound for Martinique.”
“We seem to have our answer, then,” McCormick said. “We ask for talks, and they speed up the construction.”
“What the hell are they playing at over there?” Lowden demanded. “Does the Kaiser really want a war?”
“What I find particularly interesting about this communiqué is who issued it,” the Secretary of State said thoughtfully. “The announcement is by the Naval Ministry, but the statement came out of the Chancellor’s office.”
“Say, that’s right!” the President exclaimed. “What does that mean? Could it have something to do with the was a shake-up in Wilhelm’s cabinet over this Martinique business that you told me about?”
“Yes sir,” Wood replied. “Our people in Berlin say that the Naval Minister, Admiral Tirpitz, and the Colonial Secretary,
Jagow, are in hot water over this affair. They confirm the accuracy of the rumor that the La Trinitie project was secretly formulated by a faction in the Cabinet headed by them, completely without the Kaiser’s approval, and that he was hopping mad when he discovered it.”
“I still have a difficult time understanding why Wilhelm doesn’t climb down gracefully, instead of upping the ante,” Lowden said, shaking his head.
“I have never gotten the impression that the Kaiser is a great one for climbing down, gracefully or otherwise, especially since he won the last war,” McCormick answered for the Secretary of State.
Wood nodded in agreement. “Nobody likes to be publicly humiliated, Mr. President, and Kaiser Wilhelm likes it less than most. I would say that the Germans are not about to let us keep anything we aren’t strong enough to hold for ourselves. I can’t see them going to war over Martinique, but if we let them bluff us into backing down, they will be happy enough to take what we are unwilling to fight for.”
The President looked back and forth at his advisors. “You tell me that there’s not a chance in Hell that the Senate will support a declaration of war,” he said, pointing at his private secretary, “and you tell me that if we don’t at least make the Germans think we are ready to fight, they’ll just mop the floor with us,” he said to the Secretary of State. “So what am I supposed to do? The floor is open for suggestions.”
“I have been considering an approach that might meet the needs of the moment, Mr. President,” General Wood said. “It would involve the application of force, with a very small chance of it becoming lethal. We could effectively demonstrate the advantage of our position to the Germans, and bring the construction at La Trinitie to a halt at the same time. We would demonstrate to Germany and the world that we are strong and, best of all, the method is hallowed by custom and international law.”
“If your idea is all that,” Lowden said, nodding his head, “then yes, I think I might consider it,” he said with heavy-handed irony.
“He’s talking about a naval blockade of Martinique, sir,” Joseph McCormick told the President. “Isn’t that right, General Wood?”
“That is exactly right, Mr. McCormick,” the Secretary of State replied. “A blockade is precisely what I am suggesting.”
Lowden frowned. “I do not share your military background, General, so perhaps I have this wrong, but as I understand it, a blockade is an act of war and is only used between nations that are already at war. Would we not in effect be giving Germany a… what do you call it? A casus belli if we blockaded her colony in peacetime?”
“Actually, sir, we are on firm legal ground there,” Wood said. “Back in 1827, a combined British, French and Russian force blockaded the Turks during the Greek War of Independence, at a time when none of the three blockading powers was at war with the Ottoman Empire. It was called a ‘pacific’ blockade.”
“Unless I’m thinking about some other Greek War of Independence, that blockade did not end up peacefully,” McCormick said.
“Well, eventually the Turkish fleet attempted to break through, and was destroyed at the Battle of Navarino,” Wood admitted. “But the precedent is there. There was also the British blockade of New Granada in 1837, again in peacetime. That blockade resolved the dispute in that instance without a single drop of blood being shed. Since then, there have been more than a dozen such pacific blockades, none of which have resulted in a war. If the Germans want to declare war, the blockade will not constitute a legal casus belli. Of course,” Wood added, “that’s no guarantee that they won’t do it anyway.”
Lowden nodded his head. “That’s true enough,” he agreed. “There are no guarantees of any kind in this business. You make the best decisions you can, and then you live with them. It’s not as if we’re talking about anything important, after all. It’s only a question of war or peace, just the lives of thousands of young men.” He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled gustily.
“Gentlemen,” the President said, “go get a cup of coffee, and return here…” he glanced up at the wall clock, “…at 7:00. I’ll have a decision then.”
Presidential address to Congress, 1923
Chapter Nine
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 6, 1923
Just before he rapped his knuckles on the frosted glass of the Managing Editor’s office door, Ray Swing remembered what John Curtis told him the day he accepted the post of Foreign Affairs editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“My door will always be open to you,” Curtis had promised. “You don’t need to knock. When you want to talk to me, just come on in.”
Swing shrugged and opened the door. The Managing Editor was on the phone. As Swing mumbled an apology for interrupting, Curtis shook his head and motioned vigorously for him to sit. Swing pulled up one of the battered wooden chairs in front of the editor’s desk and waited patiently for the call to conclude. As far as Swing could tell (and he was doing his best not to listen very carefully), the editor was doing his best to fend off the importunate demands of a bookie, to whom he seemed to owe a substantial sum of money.
“Of course I’m good for it. I absolutely guarantee you’ll have every cent by Thursday,” Curtis said before replacing the telephone handset on the receiver. He looked at Swing, and shook his head ruefully. “All the trouble in this world comes from lack of trust. Just because I owe the fellow a measly few hundred…” he broke off.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to trouble you with my personal problems, Ray,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
Swing laid two typed sheets of paper on the desk. “I’d like to run this on the editorial page tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll bet it’s about Lowden’s speech to Congress,” Curtis said, as he gathered in the papers and began to scan them. Before Swing could respond, he went on, “I wish gambling on the nags was this easy.”
“I told you when you came on board here as the Foreign Affairs Editor, you have carte blanche on international stories,” Curtis said, as he continued to read Swing’s piece, “and that includes access to the editorial page. I actually expected you to give me something yesterday, right after you got back from D.C. How was Lowden’s speech, by the way?”
“I thought he made as good a case as possible, under the circumstances,” Swing replied. “People don’t know exactly what the Monroe Doctrine is, but they vaguely remember it from school and it sounds important. He certainly wouldn’t have gotten very far explaining the real reasons we need to stand up to the Germans right now, even if it ends up in a war.”
Curtis lowered the editorial, and looked at Swing quizzically. “Could you just remind me what those real reasons are again, Ray?”
Swing slipped his round, rimless glasses off his nose, polished them briefly with a handkerchief he retrieved from the breast pocket of his jacket, then resettled them on his face before he responded. “The German Empire is big, John,” he said, leaning forward and speaking with great sincerity. “It is by all odds the greatest military power in the history of the world, and is more than capable of building a navy to match. The Kaiser ruled 80 million Germans in 1914, 80 million of the best educated, most productive people on the planet, and with the new territories Germany added in 1915 as a result of the war, the Empire now contains more than 130 million people. Germany dominates Europe today more thoroughly than any nation has since the days of Napoleon. And although she is quiet now, well, was quiet until this Martinique affair, Germany is not going to be content with what she has, John. She is still digesting the conquests in the Ukraine, Poland and on the Baltic, and welding those people into the Empire, but once that consolidation process is done, Germany will use that power. I was over there during the war, and I am convinced that the German government will never be satisfied with what it has; they will always want something more. You may have noticed how ruthlessly the Kaiser squeezed Emperor Charles on that so-called Free Trade Agreement, and Austria is his ally. It’s only a matter of time unt
il a new crisis comes up, and then…”
“O.K., O.K., you got me convinced, Ray,” Curtis said, holding up a hand in token of surrender. “The Kaiser is the greatest menace to world peace since Attila the Hun.” He looked at Swing shrewdly. “Still, you can’t be too happy about being on the same side as Hearst, the Chicago Tribune and company.”
Swing winced. “No, I’m not,” he admitted. “If we lost 100,000 men in a war, but they sold an extra million papers, Hearst would be as happy as a pig in shit. Whenever people like that agree with me about anything, that’s reason enough to reconsider my own position.”
“So?” Curtis encouraged him.
“So, I have reconsidered, and I still think we have to give Lowden all the support we can,” Swing said. “Just suppose we back down on Martinique. What happens when Wilhelm or his successor decides that he wants to add a few more islands to the German West Indies, say Curacao, or St. Thomas. Do you think the Dutch are going to say ‘no’ when big brother Germany asks to buy a colony or two from them? Or Denmark? Bismarck carved off a nice slice of territory from Denmark back in 1864, and I’m pretty sure the Danes haven’t forgotten it. They’ll be happy to give the Kaiser a few islands in the Caribbean, if that’s the price of keeping his armies at home instead of marching into Jutland.”
“So, you’re saying that if we give in to Germany now, the issue will not go away,” Curtis said.
Tidal Effects (Gray Tide In The East Book 2) Page 6
