CHAPTER 24
The Best Herder of Emperors Since Napoleon
Thim was th’ modest days iv the raypublic, Hinnissy.
It’s different, now that we’ve become a wurruld power.
ROOSEVELT’S SOJOURN IN the mountains had understandably caught the attention of the popular press. Humorists such as the poet Wallace Irwin made the most of it—noting that Dr. Lambert had been invited along as much for his camera as for his company:
“Come hither, Court Photographer,”
The genial monarch saith,
“Be quick to snap your picture-trap
As I do yon Bear to death.”
“Dee-lighted!” cries the smiling Bear,
As he waits and holds his breath.
The fact that an urgent telegram had been delivered by William Loeb was also noted. But Roosevelt so adroitly concealed its content that the message was thought to be about further mischief-making by Cipriano Castro:
But as he speaks a messenger
Cries, “Sire, a telegraft!”
Which he opens fore and aft,
And reads, “The Venezuelan stew is boiling over—TAFT.”
Irwin did not doubt, therefore, that the President had decided to return home early to “spank” a Latin American republic, as lustily as he had done in 1903. This misperception suited Roosevelt’s purposes. The longer the press thought he was concerned only with Monroe Doctrine matters (Santo Domingo would prove to be the first test of his Corollary), the better he could secretly answer the biggest challenge of his career.
So backward, backward from the hunt
The monarch lopes once more.
The Constitution rides behind
And the Big Stick rides before
(Which was a rule of precedent
In the reign of Theodore).
THE BATTLE OF Tsu Shima on 27 May 1905 was the greatest naval engagement since Trafalgar. Russia’s Baltic Fleet was annihilated in a holocaust of two thousand shells per minute. Japan sank twenty-two Russian ships, including four new battleships, and captured seven others. She lost only three torpedo boats in the process, and killed four thousand men. Admiral Rozhdestvenski was taken prisoner. The Tsar’s humiliation was complete. Only his limitless supply of military manpower, and the nearly eight thousand miles separating Tokyo from St. Petersburg, served to protect the Romanoff dynasty from rout.
Roosevelt was awed by how decisively Japan had proved herself “a civilized, modern power”—civilization, to him, being synonymous with strength. Although he confessed to Cecil Spring Rice that he loathed the Tsarist form of government, he felt a deep sympathy for ordinary Russians and their culture, so much more congenial to him than that of Nippon. If this culture was to survive Tsu Shima, and not regress into some dark age of the Russian soul, Nicholas II must be coaxed at once into the peace process.
His cousin Wilhelm would seem the likeliest agent to prevail on him, except that the Kaiser, currently obsessing about France and Great Britain, was not averse to having Nicholas tied up in Manchuria a while longer. Ambassador Cassini did not seem to know what was going on in St. Petersburg, insofar as he could be trusted: “What I cannot understand about the Russian,” Roosevelt complained, “is the way he will lie when he knows perfectly well that you know he is lying.” Jusserand was both adorable and adoring, and certainly influential on the Quai d’Orsay—which in turn exerted great influence upon the Russian Foreign Ministry. But France, right now, was preoccupied with the frightening prospect of war with Germany over Morocco. Théophile Delcassé could hardly be expected to lean on a weak but friendly Emperor in the East when a strong and extremely hostile one was demanding his resignation in the West.
So the diplomatic whirlpool spun its rounds.
ROOSEVELT PUT ALL his hopes on George von Lengerke Meyer. Although the United States Ambassador had been in St. Petersburg only seven weeks, he was already irreplaceable, the kind of man Kipling envisaged as being able to “walk with kings.” The way Meyer bore himself had much to do with his effectiveness. No aristocratic American rode a horse better, with so straight a back and so poised a top hat. All the Brahmin airs—Beacon Hill, Harvard, Essex County, oars and polo, cigars and buckshot, severity and solemnity—emanated from his manly person. He had worked for the right shipping companies, married the right woman, and sat on the right committees in the Massachusetts Legislature. After four years as Ambassador to Italy, Meyer already had the desired “envoy” look: sleek fine brow, clipped mustache, a face at once open and noncommittal. Only the overlarge, long-fingered hands were strange, more suited to a cellist, or masseur. But cello-playing and massage arts were not incompatible with royal diplomacy. He was just old enough to have graduated one year ahead of Theodore Roosevelt, and just enough inferior, in whatever imponderables determine clubmanship, to have made the A.D., but not the Porcellian. Decent, discreet, comfortingly dull, he lacked the imagination to be afraid of anything except failure to do his duty.
Roosevelt had already spelled that duty out, in detail:
I want a man who will be able to keep us closely informed, on his own initiative, of everything we ought to know; who will be, as an Ambassador ought to be, our chief source of information about Japan and the war—about the Russian feeling as to the continuance of the war, as to the relations between Russia and Germany and France, as to the real meaning of the movement for so-called internal reforms, as to the condition of the army, as to what force can and will be used in Manchuria … and so forth.
In other words, the President wanted Meyer to look at the war through Russian eyes. He, Roosevelt, already had his own American take on it, communicated frankly enough to whiten Hay’s last gray whiskers:
I am not inclined to think that Tokyo will show itself a particle more altruistic than St. Petersburg, or for the matter of that, Berlin. I believe that the Japanese rulers recognize Russia as their most dangerous permanent enemy, but I am not sure that the Japanese people draw any distinctions between the Russians and other foreigners, including ourselves. I have no doubt that they include all white men as being people who, as a whole, they dislike, and whose past arrogance they resent; and doubtless they believe their own yellow civilisation to be better.…
For years Russia has pursued a policy of consistent opposition to us in the East, and of literally fathomless mendacity. She has felt a profound contempt for England and Japan and the United States, all three, separately and together. It has been impossible to trust to any promise she has made. On the other hand, Japan’s diplomatic statements have been made good. Yet Japan is an oriental nation, and the individual standard of truthfulness in Japan is low. No one can foretell her future attitude. We must, therefore, play our hand alone.… Germany and France for their own reasons are anxious to propitiate Russia, and of course care nothing whatever for our interests. England is inclined to be friendly to us and is inclined to support Japan against Russia, but she is pretty flabby and I am afraid to trust either the farsightedness or the tenacity of purpose of her statesmen; or indeed of her people.
After only two meetings with the Tsar, Meyer was unable to convey anything more “Russian” than the fact that nobody knew what His Majesty was going to do. This was not enough for Roosevelt. Tsu Shima afflicted him with a new sense of urgency in saving Russia from double collapse, abroad and at home. Even the Japanese seemed to be in a hurry, dropping their usual circumlocutions when they asked, on 31 May, if the President would “directly and entirely of his own motion and initiative … invite the two belligerents to come together for the purpose of direct negotiation.” Roosevelt guessed that Tokyo’s resources were depleted, after fifteen months of all-out war.
At all costs, Nicholas II must be prevailed upon before his generals divined the same thing. Moving with a secrecy so extreme that only Edith and William Loeb knew of Japan’s request, Roosevelt summoned Cassini. He told him to convey to the Tsar his frank opinion that the war was “absolutely hopeless for Russia.” If His Majesty would
agree to the idea of a peace conference, he thought he “would be able to get” the assent of Japan.
The move was pro forma, because he doubted that Cassini would have the courage to transmit such a message. His next step was to order Meyer to call on the Tsar “at once,” and express the same sentiments even more forcefully.
Count Lamsdorff, the Russian Foreign Minister, fussed when Meyer asked for an immediate audience with the Tsar. His Majesty was in the country, at Tsarsköe Selò; the royal family was about to celebrate Her Majesty’s birthday; His Majesty never received diplomats on such occasions; the imperial calendar for the next few days was full. Meyer then used the plainest possible language. The President of the United States had cabled him that morning with a proposition that only the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias could receive. And since Her Majesty’s birthday was not until tomorrow, 7 June, he, Meyer, was quite ready to take a train to Selò now.
Lamsdorff did not like being hustled, but at two o’clock the following afternoon, Meyer found himself alone with Nicholas II. After thanking the gravely courteous monarch for receiving him “on such a day,” he presented an oral paraphrase of Roosevelt’s cable.
This was a mistake. The Tsar, with no formal language to react to, merely said that he needed time to “ascertain what his people really wanted.” He continued to laud the uma of Mother Russia as if unaware that the Empire’s revolutionary movement now included representatives of every social class. Meyer listened patiently, then asked, “Will Your Majesty allow me to read my instruction?”
Now it was the Tsar’s turn to listen, sentence by sentence, to Roosevelt’s actual words:
It is the judgment of all outsiders, including all of Russia’s most ardent friends, that the present contest is absolutely hopeless and that to continue it would only result in the loss of all of Russia’s possessions in East Asia. To avert trouble, and as he fears, what is otherwise inevitable disaster, the President most earnestly advises that an effort be made by … representatives of the two Powers to discuss the whole peace question themselves, rather than for any outside Power to do more than endeavor to arrange the meeting—that is, to ask both Powers whether they will not consent to meet.
As Meyer read on, stressing Roosevelt’s principal points—complete secrecy, an unprompted invitation, no outside participants—the Tsar listened in silence. From somewhere on an upper floor came the piping sounds of the Romanoff children playing. Outside in the palace gardens, lilacs bloomed in the full beauty of Russian spring.
If Russia will consent to such a meeting the President will try to get Japan’s consent, acting simply on his own initiative and not saying that Russia has consented …
Meyer was able to read this sentence with sincerity because he did not know, any more than Nicholas did, that the initiative had in fact already come from Japan.
… and the President believes he will succeed. Russia’s answer to this request will be kept strictly secret, as will all that has so far transpired, nothing being made public until Japan also agrees. The President will then openly ask each Power to agree to the meeting, which can thereupon be held. As to the place of the meeting, the President would suggest some place between Harbin and Mukden; but this is a mere suggestion. The President earnestly hopes for a speedy and favorable answer to avert bloodshed and calamity.
Meyer finished reading, but no answer came. Nicholas sat mute through a series of further appeals, improvised by the increasingly desperate Ambassador. He showed emotion only once, when Meyer remarked that if Japan proved obstinate or greedy at the conference table, Russians would unite behind their sovereign. At this, the Tsar made a half gesture, as if wanting to touch him.
“That is my belief, and I think you are absolutely right,” Nicholas said.
Meyer made much of his own friendship with Roosevelt, extending back to Harvard days, and said that the President was acting, as he always had, “from the highest motives.” He understood that it was agonizing for a Commander-in-Chief to put aside “pride and ambition” in a time of national adversity, but that the saving of “possibly hundreds of thousands of lives” would justify it, and win His Majesty world respect. The alternative was to go on fighting a horde of fanatic Orientals who, unlike “Christian” soldiers, had no fear of death—indeed, had an obsessive worship of it.
Protocol required that the Tsar, not Meyer, signal the end of the interview. Three o’clock approached, but Nicholas still made no move. At last he said, “If it will be absolutely secret as to my decision, should Japan decline, or until she gives her consent, I will now commit to your President’s plan.… Do you suppose,” he added, “that President Roosevelt knows, or could find out in the meantime and let us know, what Japan’s terms are?”
MEYER’S JOYFUL BOMBSHELL hit the White House the next day with no outside reverberation whatsoever. Not until 10 June, after both belligerents had accepted Roosevelt’s formal “invitation,” did the press get official word of what had been going on, and who was responsible for the sudden decrease in international tension. The London Morning Post hailed the emergence of a new world peacemaker:
Mr Roosevelt’s success has amazed everybody, not because he succeeded, but because of the manner by which he achieved success. He has displayed not only diplomatic abilities of the very highest order, but also great tact, great foresight, and finesse really extraordinary. Alone—absolutely without assistance or advice—he met every situation as it arose, shaped events to suit his purpose, and showed remarkable patience, caution, and moderation. As a diplomatist Mr Roosevelt is now entitled to take high rank.
Strangely, the President was nowhere to be seen at the time of the announcement. He had, in fact, left town the day before on a mysterious trip to Rapidan, Virginia, allegedly to spend the weekend with some friends. His real destination was a nearby dacha in dense forest that Edith Roosevelt had acquired as a hideaway for them both. The Tsar and Tsarina would have found it somewhat confining, since it consisted of one rough-cut, stone-chimneyed boarded box, with two smaller boxes upstairs. The pitched roof was overlong in front, creating a shaded “piazza” at mosquito level. Edith called the place Pine Knot, after the most noticeable feature of its interior decoration.
Here, as the news of the forthcoming peace conference reverberated through Europe and Asia, the President and his wife relaxed in solitude, hearing nothing but birdsong and the trickle of a spring. “It really is a perfectly delightful little place,” Roosevelt wrote Kermit. “Mother is a great deal more pleased with it than any child with any toy I ever saw, and is too cunning and pretty, and busy for anything.” Since Edith’s culinary industry extended mainly to boiling water for tea, he served a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, a dinner of two fried chickens with biscuits and cornbread, plus cherries and wild strawberries for dessert. The following morning, by way of variety, he fried eggs and beefsteak. Roosevelt noted, almost with surprise, that two such meals a day were “all we wanted,” and he worked off some of the effects by cutting down trees.
HIS UNCHARACTERISTIC CIRCUMSPECTION lasted after he returned to work on 12 June. “The President is usually a very outspoken personage, but for ten days he has been absolutely dumb,” complained George Smalley, the Washington correspondent of The Times of London. “The State Department has not known what is going on. The Cabinet does not know—Taft excepted.”
What was “going on” was a new phase of negotiations so delicate as to make the previous ones seem easy. Russia and Japan each felt that they had lost face in agreeing to talk peace, and each now sought to regain it by disagreeing as much as possible on all follow-up details, such as where to meet and when, and how to ensure equal negotiatory strength. Roosevelt was by no means “dumb” in his official communications with both foreign ministries, addressing them in a third-person style that nicely mixed courtesy and contempt for their posturing:
The President feels most strongly that the question of the powers of the plenipotentiaries is not in the least a vital questio
n, whereas it is vital that the meeting should take place if there is any purpose to get peace.… The President has urged Russia to clothe her plenipotentiaries with full powers, as Japan has indicated her intention of doing. But even if Russia does not adopt the President’s suggestion, the President does not feel that such failure to adopt it would give legitimate ground to Japan for refusing to do what the President has, with the prior assent of Japan, asked both Powers to do.
There was a world of sensitivity in his use of the words assent and asked. He did not want even to hint on paper that he considered the war to have been “the triumph of Asia over Europe.” But in plain speech to Cassini, he did not hesitate to state that he had not sympathized with Russia from the start of the war, and considered her entire military effort to have been “a failure.” She would lose no matter how long she kept on fighting, so she had better start making concessions now. To Takahira, he said that obstinacy over peace terms would prolong the war at least another year and cost Japan untold “blood and money.” Japan had already won so much, “the less she asked for in addition the better it would be.”
Smalley was wrong about Taft being well-informed on the President’s current diplomacy. Since coming back from Colorado, Roosevelt had confided only in members of his secret du roi: Edith, Henry Cabot Lodge, Speck von Sternburg, and Jules Jusserand. Even to such intimates, he told only what he wanted to tell. Like a mirror-speckled sphere at a prom, sending out spangles of light, he beamed fragmentary particulars at different dancers. They circled beneath him (or did he revolve above them?) in movements of accelerating, apparently random intricacy. The resultant sweep and blur was enough to make any bystander dizzy, because it looked centrifugal; Roosevelt, however, felt only a centripetal energy, directed inward.
Theodore Rex Page 51
