18 Then, picking Ibid.; Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 251.
19 Senate debate on Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 250–51.
20 Diners from Blythe reminiscence (HBP). Watson, As I Knew Them, 71, says TR’s speech was “very coldly received.” Blythe’s earlier account (“[He] sat down amid much applause”) is supported by a similar statement in The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907.
21 “The hour for” Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 249. [“I take” inferred from Foraker’s “He took.”] Less primary accounts have Blythe saying, “Now is the time to bridge the bloody chasm.” Weaver, Senator, 126.
22 (the next course) All accounts agree that everyone remained hungry through the evening, but memories differ as to which courses did not arrive. According to The Washington Post, 29 Jan. 1907, there were four. In that case, diners ate just oysters and clear turtle soup. TR’s speech prevented consumption of the shad, and Foraker forestalled the filet de boeuf à la Gotham. The terrapin à la Maryland, squab stuffed with truffles, tomato salad, frozen strawberry bombe, and assorted cakes were enjoyed in menu form only. Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
23 “all persons” Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, vol. 2, 251.
24 He noted that Ibid.
25 The noise subsided Ibid., 253. Champ Clark, writing thirteen years later, quotes TR as ranting in this rebuttal against the “bloody butchers” of Brownsville, who “ought to be hung” (My Quarter Century, vol. 2, 447). But he also recalls TR saying that “all talk on that subject was academic,” a remark that Foraker, in his letter of 29 Jan. 1907, ascribes to the President’s first speech. If TR had, at any point, used the language Clark quotes, Foraker would surely have noted it. Samuel Blythe states that TR’s tone during the latter part of the evening was “neither bellicose nor belligerent.” TR himself wrote on 27 Jan. that he had been “inclined to make a Berserker speech,” but had decided against it. Letters, vol. 5, 571.
26 “If the floor” Blythe reminiscence (HBP). See also Watson, As I Knew Them, 72–73.
27 “I call that” Lawrence, Memories of a Happy Life, 157–58.
28 a reluctant party Lane, Brownsville Affair, 141–42. Taft’s doughy receptivity to TR’s sharp-edged impress, mentioned elsewhere in the text, is indicated by a remark to his brother Charles on 1 Jan. 1907: “I am not responsible for the Brownsville order; but I think it entirely justified” (WHT).
29 By the time Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 281–88. Mrs. Foraker’s account of surveillance by the Secret Service, written in 1932, is unsupported by any other evidence, except that regarding Tillman in Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 92. It is, nevertheless, detailed enough to give any reader pause.
30 Roosevelt showed TR, Letters, vol. 5, 559–60.
31 A VISITOR TO Everett Colby in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 154. Colby does not give the date of his visit, except to say that the Japanese crisis had just “reached an acute stage.” The only recorded visit of both Taft and Root to the Executive Office at such a moment was on the morning of 13 Feb. 1907, at the height of the first war scare. Washington Evening Star, same date.
32 For the last Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 134–35. Chinese schoolchildren already had their own schools in San Francisco. The order of 11 Oct. 1906 had been followed by a white-inspired riot, and a Japanese bank president had been killed. There were immediate calls in Japan for an anti-American boycott.
33 Roosevelt sat Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 154–55.
34 “They don’t care” Qu. in Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow.”
35 Some of the most TR, Works, vol. 17, 452–53.
36 This last remark Ibid., 454–55; San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Dec. 1906; Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 127. Elihu Root cogently remarked to Ambassador Aoki that the antagonism of American laborers toward Japanese was not so much an assertion of superiority as an admission of inferiority. Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 7.
37 Senator Tillman The New York Times, 15 Jan. 1907.
38 Tokyo’s response Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 9. See also Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1879–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).
39 The result was Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 13, 15; Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 155–56. See also John R. Jenswold, “Leaving the Door Ajar: Politics and Prejudices in the Making of the 1907 Immigration Law,” Mid-America 67.1 (1985).
40 “Why should I” Phillip Dunne, ed., Mr. Dooley Remembers: The Informal Memoirs of Finley Peter Dunne (Boston, 1963), 201–2.
41 To win passage Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 15. “Yellow Peril” Cassandras tended to overlook the fact that many Japanese immigrants, having worked in the United States for a few years, returned home with their hard-earned dollars.
42 “in the way” Root to Ambassador Luke Wright, qu. in ibid., 13.
43 Schmitz, who Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 128–33, 143–44. The age scruple was not unreasonable, in that many of the immigrant “children” originally discriminated against had been twenty to thirty years old.
44 his first term Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs 8.3 (1984); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 35.
45 He had even Rebecca Kramer, “Theodore Roosevelt, Disarmament, and The Hague,” t.s. monograph (AC). See notes above for chaps. 22 and 25.
46 The idea of TR, Letters, vol. 5, 398–400.
Chronological Note: With TR’s encouragement, the United States at first pressed seriously for a general reduction in naval forces, insisting that the issue of arms limitation be discussed at The Hague. This proved to be an unpopular stance with Germany, which had its own strategic reasons for building up a larger navy. Britain was initially supportive of the United States, but then, in view of the Kaiser’s ardent militarism, declined to negotiate away its own armed advantage. Russia and Austria also opposed the idea of disarmament (Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 69; The New York Times, 16 June 1907; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 357).
TR himself was conflicted in his attitude. His letters on the subject earnestly contend that most arms-control proposals did not really apply to the United States, since “we have a small navy (and an army so much smaller as to seem infinitesimal) compared with the armed forces of the other great powers which in point of population, extent of territory, wealth and resources, can be put in the same category with us. Therefore we cannot ourselves reduce our forces” (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358).
Through most of 1906, however, he pushed for a “feasible and rational plan” of naval disarmament, declaring that limits on battleship size would reduce the rampant costs and dangers of an arms race. His proposal in Sept. 1906 that the Hague Conference should forbid the construction of any battleship larger than the Dreadnought was received unenthusiastically by the British and adamantly opposed by Wilhelm II. TR then wrote Sir Edward Grey in October, suggesting that an attempt should be made to limit the number of ships being built. But his temporary ardor for arms control was clearly flagging. By early 1907 he had essentially lost hope and interest in the Second Hague Conference, whose proceedings he did not even follow. It fell to Elihu Root to direct American delegates at the conference, establish the Drago Doctrine (still in force), and push for the strengthening of the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. This idea broke down when the countries could not agree on how the judges would be chosen. By the time the conference closed on 18 Oct. 1907, it was generally considered a failure. TR, Letters, vol. 5, 601; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 75–79, 82. See Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs 48.3 (1984).
47 In a letter TR, Letters, vol. 5, 528–29.
48 Three days later Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 161; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 600–601. For Root’s unenthusiastic handling of the arms-limitation issue at the Second Hague Confer
ence, see Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 71ff. By February 1907, British interest in the subject had also waned, the Liberal government being at least as wary of Germany’s rearmament as the Roosevelt Administration was of Japan’s.
Historical Note: TR’s comments on arms limitation in 1906 and early 1907 have an oddly prophetic ring. He cites, over and over again, his fear that if “free peoples” disarm too much, they will become vulnerable to “military depotisms and barbarisms” (see, e.g., TR, Letters, vol. 5, 366). Eighty years in advance of Ronald Reagan’s cautionary motto regarding arms-control pacts, “Trust, but verify,” TR was writing the British Foreign Secretary about the Hague agenda proposals, “In view of the marvelous ability certain nations have of concealing what they are doing, we would have no real idea whether or not they were keeping down their armaments even in the event of an agreement to do so.” Ibid., 601.
49 AS THE END Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 203; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 604.
50 Conservation, by itself J. Leonard Bates, “Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44.1 (1957); Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 386, 339.
Historiological Note: The date at which conservation acquired its modern, politicized meaning is as variously debated by historians as that for progressivism. Bates and Lacey agree that 1907 was when conservation became a social movement, as opposed to a complex of disciplines—and as contrasted with the sentimental preservation of John Muir and the Sierra Club. Bates directly links conservation to progressivism. Lacey stresses conservation’s scientific origins in the work of such pioneers as the explorer-geologist John Wesley Powell, the mammologist C. Hart Merriam, the forester-geographer Henry Gannett (bequeather of much data to Pinchot), and the prodigiously catholic WJ McGee. It was Gannett who first spoke of forest preservation as “almost a religion.”
51 Roosevelt had virtually Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 200; Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Public and Private Forester (Urbana, 1970), 75–78; Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 216–17.
52 There was something The word hypnotic is that of TR’s childhood friend Fanny Parsons, in a description that emphasized Pinchot’s extraordinary attraction for women (Parsons, Perchance Some Day, 127). See also Wister, Roosevelt, 174; Roosevelt vs. Newett, 196; James Garfield diary, 30 July 1904 (JRG).
53 “Pinchot truly” TR qu. in Butt, Letters of Archie Butt, 147.
54 A forced draft Mowry, Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 215.
55 Thus came into TR’s own “Memorandum on signing proclamations” appears in TR, Letters, vol. 5, 603–4. “Failure on my part to sign these proclamations would mean that immense tracts of valuable timber would fall into the hands of the lumber syndicates.… The creation of the reserves means that this timber will be kept … in such manner as to keep them unimpaired for the benefit of children now growing up to inherit the land.”
56 Only after the “The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath,” TR gleefully wrote in his Autobiography (419). The other major conservation measure of this session was TR’s creation of the Inland Waterways Commission on 14 Mar. 1907. See chap. 29, below.
57 ON 4 MARCH British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 171–72. For a short sketch of Ambassador Bryce, see Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”
58 the first Jew According to Straus, TR said when offering him the appointment, “I want to show Russia and some other countries what we think of Jews in this country.” Straus had assumed office on 17 Dec. 1906. Straus, Under Four Administrations, 210.
59 Cortelyou had been Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 509; Strouse, Morgan, 565–66.
60 “a demonstration” Klein, E. H. Harriman, 399; Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 44–50.
61 his native Germany Schiff was also rather deaf. An enduring joke in Rooseveltian circles was that the President, boasting at a dinner of New York notables about his appointment of Oscar Straus without any regard to ancestry or creed, turned to Schiff for corroboration (“Isn’t that so, Mr. Schiff?”) and got it: “Dot’s right, Mr. President, you came to me and said, Chake, who is der best Choo I can put in my Cabinet?”
62 “We are confronted” Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 44–45.
63 Roosevelt wrote back Klein, E. H. Harriman, 398; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 631. TR’s naïveté in financial matters is indicated not only by the remark he made about Harriman, but also in his disinclination to call what might have been an important conference. He had not hesitated, seven weeks before, to invite Mayor Schmidt and the entire San Francisco school board to Washington, at government expense.
64 “This has been” Klein, E. H. Harriman, 400.
65 “your stern and” Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, vol. 1, 47.
66 the macabre artifact The New York Times, 14 Apr. 1907.
67 More rational admirers Adams, Letters, vol. 6, 55–57; Bliss Perry, The Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (Boston, 1921), 361; TR, Letters to Kermit, 184.
68 Spring came TR, Letters to Kermit, 186, 189.
69 In early May James Bryce to Sir Edward Grey, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 203–4; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
70 It also revived Ibid., 204; TR, Letters to Kermit, 195.
71 second elective term Longworth, Crowded Hours, 148. “No one will ever know how much I wished, in the black depths of my heart, that ‘something would happen’ and that Father would be renominated.”
72 nine tenths of him TR made this admission on 10 Oct. 1908, long after the question of a third term had become academic. Butt, Letters, 125.
73 Having thus made TR, Letters to Kermit, 196.
74 HE SAW THEM TR to C. Hart Merriam, 23 May 1907 (TRP). Except where otherwise cited, the source for the following section is Alton A. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt the Last to See the Passenger Pigeon?” Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science for 1976 86 (1977). The authoritative work on TR as ornithologist and natural historian is Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt.
75 He had collected Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, 78.
76 “The passenger pigeon” Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?” notes that the last known surviving passenger pigeon died in captivity in Ohio, on 1 Sept. 1914.
77 the last bird William B. Mershon, The Passenger Pigeon (Deposit, N.Y., 1907), 223. A more recent authority cites a specimen shot in Fairfield County, Conn., in 1906. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?”
78 saw no evidence See also Alton A. Lindsey, “The Sighting at Pine Knot,” Natural History, Nov. 1977.
Historical Note: Only after TR got back to Washington did he ponder a remark about some “wild carrier pigeons” by Dick McDaniel, the foreman of a farm adjoining Pine Knot, and realize that he had a possible supporting witness. Subsequent interviews with McDaniel, whose reliability was vouched for, established that birds matching the ones TR described had been sighted on the farm six days earlier. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?” subjects TR’s claims to exhaustive scrutiny and concludes that he was indeed the last qualified observer of wild passenger pigeons. Nine years later, at the height of the Great War in Europe, TR wrote: “The extermination of the passenger pigeon means that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims.” TR, Works, vol. 4, 227.
CHAPTER 29: SUCH A FLEET AND SUCH A DAY
1 “D’ye think?” “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.
2 The agreeable James R. Reckner “ ‘I Had Great Confidence in the Fleet’: Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 383. Elihu Root remained TR’s principal foreign-policy adviser, but the multilingual, much-traveled Meyer was the Administration’s expert on the social aspects of diplomacy. On this date, Root was in Clinton, N.Y., recovering from illness. Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 23.
3 “Nothing during my” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 671–72.
4 calling for war Jes
sup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 23.
5 Elihu Root did Ibid.
6 Roosevelt was not so Ibid., 6–23; Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 83; TR, Letters, vol. 7, 393. See also Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 111; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 24.
7 The Office of Dorwart, Office of Naval Intelligence, 83.
8 He had asked Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 383–84.
9 COLONEL W. W. Ibid., 383.
10 Roosevelt said Ibid.; Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 220. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 729–30, and James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet (Annapolis, 1988).
11 The idea was Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 220; Dewey to TR, qu. in Jusserand, What Me Befell, 308. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 725–26, and Louis Morton, “Military and Naval Preparations for the Defense of the Philippines During the War Scare of 1907,” Military Affairs 13.2 (1949).
12 Wall Street’s stock Strouse, Morgan, 564–65; Adler, Jacob H. Schiff, 45.
13 He had private information TR, Autobiography, 564.
14 He issued Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 384.
15 When someone asked Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 221.
16 Metcalf was authorized Reckner, “ ‘I Had Great Confidence,’ ” 385, claims that TR bungled the announcement, first by allowing it to be leaked, then by issuing a series of conflicting statements about the fleet’s true destination. According to Francis B. Loomis, TR did have some initial qualms about the possibly inflammatory consequences of his order, not only on Japanese war sentiment but on the much more truculent “yellow” newspapers of the United States. In the event, Japanese reaction was encouragingly muted, and by late July TR’s resolve had hardened to a calm self-certainty. See Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 332 and esp. 543–44.
17 “a practice cruise” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 709.
18 twenty-nine million Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 497–98; Strouse, Morgan, 573–74. Rockefeller was right. The fine was canceled on appeal.
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