Colonel Roosevelt
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3 On its boards Alan Moorehead, The White Nile (New York, 1971), 339–41.
4 Rebuilt by Kitchener Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), 15.773; ERD to Edwin Arlington Robinson, 21 Mar. 1910 (ERDP); TR, Letters, 7.349–51.
5 the blood of General Gordon TR to EKR, quoted in Earle Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, Private Citizen (New York, 1932), 106.
6 Khartoum’s North Station AP report, Chicago Tribune, 15 Mar. 1910.
7 That evening, Roosevelt Ibid.; Walter Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt,” in American Review of Reviews, 41.5 (10 May 1910).
8 He was not unwilling O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 41–42.
9 However, another contender Abbott, Impressions of TR, 214–16. TR’s contract with The Outlook had been negotiated while he was still President. According to Abbott, he had “half a dozen editorial articles … ready for publication” within five days of quitting the White House. The first, an attack on socialism, ran in the magazine on 20 Mar. 1909. Another, on Tolstoy (15 May 1909), criticized the novelist for “foolish and fantastic” pacifism, not to mention “a dark streak … of moral perversion.” (TR, Works, 14.417.) It was reprinted in Russia, and came to the attention of its subject. “An article on me by Roosevelt,” Tolstoy noted on 20 May 1909. “The article is silly, but I was pleased. It aroused my vanity.” (R. F. Christian, trans., Tolstoy’s Diaries [London, 1985], 2.614.) For more of TR’s views on Tolstoy, see Abbott, Impressions of TR, 188–91.
10 Edith Kermit Roosevelt See Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 9–10.
11 In the event Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 1910.
12 They dismounted Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 1910; AP dispatch, 15 Mar., in ibid.; Morris, The Rise of TR, 685. Winston Churchill’s classic account of the Battle of Omdurman in his The River War: An Historical Account of the Recon-quest of the Soudan, 2 vols. (London, 1899).
13 Slatin certainly In a transcendent moment of tit for tat, years later, Slatin permitted the Mahdi’s skull to be handed over to Kitchener, who had to be persuaded not to use it as a drinking cup. Gordon Bank-Shepherd, Between Two Flags: The Life of Baron Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha, GCVO, KCMG, CB (New York, 1973); Chicago Tribune, 16 Mar. 1910.
14 His soul revolted TR, Works, 5.438; TR, Letters, 8.946. To TR’s sardonic amusement, the Marquis de Mores, his youthful rival from Badlands days and a supporter of Arab independence, had been killed in 1896, while attempting to enlist in the Mahdi’s service. A band of Tuaregs had not been “able to appreciate the fine frenzy of his altruism.” Ibid.
15 If that was what The importation of large quantities of terrorist arms into Egypt, beginning in Dec. 1909, was publicized by S. Verdad in The New Age, 5 May 1910.
16 Omdurman fascinated Chicago Tribune, 17 Mar. 1910.
17 One long, anguished letter Pinchot to TR, 31 Dec. 1909 (TRP); TR, Letters, 7.45–46; TR to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 21 Jan. 1910 (ARC).
18 “We have fallen” Pinchot to TR, 31 Dec. 1909 (TRP). See also William H. Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (rev. ed., New York, 1975), 361–62, 78. Having already successfully hosted national and North American conservation conferences in May 1908 and Feb. 1909, TR suggested on the eve of his departure from office “that all nations should be invited to join together in conference on the subject of world resources … their inventory, conservation and wise utilization.” His idea was that the forty-five participant powers in the Hague Peace Conference should form the nucleus of a world conservation movement. In the event, he sent out invitations to fifty-eight nations, calling upon them to meet in the fall of 1909. Taft withdrew the invitations, and the world conference was aborted. Michael J. Lacey, “The Mysteries of Earth-Making Dissolve: A Study of Washington’s Intellectual Community and the Origins of American Environmentalism in the Late Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1979), 401–3.
19 illegal coal claims Alaska’s Chugach National Forest had been expanded by TR on his last day in office. According to Pinchot, J. P. Morgan and the Guggenheim mining syndicate were involved in these fraudulent claims. (Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism [Washington, D.C., 2001], 209.) But as Pinchot himself made clear in testimony to Congress, the “central item” in his quarrel with Taft and Ballinger was their “reversals of water power policy” nationwide.
20 Taft, consequently, had had no choice For WHT’s own feeling, early in 1910, that “a complete break within the Republican party” was coming, see Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 272. For detailed accounts of the rivalry between Ballinger and Pinchot, 1909–1910, see Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Private and Public Forester (Urbana, Ill., 1970), 116–29, and Miller, Gifford Pinchot, 209–17.
21 Taft had endorsed George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (New York, 1946, 1960), 52, 63–64. For a detailed account of the 1909 tariff battle in Congress, see Kenneth W. Hechler, Insurgency: Personalities and Politics of the Taft Era (New York, 1964), 92–145.
22 “Honored Sir” J. Corry Baker to TR, 6 Jan. 1910 (TRP).
23 “I flatter myself” Butt, Taft and Roosevelt, 179.
24 “My political career” Abbott, Impressions of TR, 53. “Don’t lay down,” one GOP politician begged TR. “The people will fall over one another in due time to follow your leadership.” William Bradford Jones to TR, 7 Jan. 1910 (TRP).
25 one delicate encounter The Washington Post, 18 Mar. 1910. See also The Times, 18 Mar. 1910, and TR, Letters, 7.350–51.
26 He had not hesitated Morris, Theodore Rex, 323–38, 347–51, 440–42; Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New York, 2007), 309–16. Oren notes (316) that TR’s affirmation at the 1906 Algericas Conference of three key principles—minority rights, free U.S. trade, and support for the Anglo-French alliance—“would remain cornerstones of American diplomacy in the region for the next fifty years.”
27 On the morning KR diary, 18 Feb. 1910 (KRP); Abbott, Impressions of TR, 206–7. Frank Harper joined Abbott in Rome.
28 an ever-expanding grand tour See Wallace Irwin’s Homeric parody, The Teddysee (New York, 1910). This poem appeared first as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post.
29 Even the Calvinist Academy TR, Letters, 7.364–65.
30 I searched Abbott, Impressions of TR, 185. The work cited is W. E. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols. (New York, 1879). During this 22-hour journey, TR was also seen reading an account of Britain’s campaign against the Sudanese caliphate, and working on the text of his address to the University of Berlin. According to O’Laughlin, he toyed with the idea of delivering it in German. Chicago Tribune, 19 Mar. 1910.
31 Roosevelt was not new TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, 24 Aug. 1884, in Lodge, Selections, 1.9. “It was Lecky’s history of the Eighteenth Century that made me a Home Ruler,” he wrote John Morley in 1908. (TR, Letters, 7.) Lecky was an Irish Protestant, M.P. for Trinity College, Dublin, and one of the most distinguished scholars of the Victorian age. He merits rereading as the last great practitioner in English of history as literature. His Rationalism in Europe is available at Positive Atheism (http://www.positiveatheism.org).
32 two clerical provocations TR, Letters, 7.57; Abbott, Impressions of TR, 213–14.
33 “Moi-même, je suis libre-penseur” TR to Jules Cambon, quoted in Geneviève Tabouis, Jules Cambon par l’un des siens (Paris, 1938), 105.
34 He scoffed at theories For an extensive discussion of TR’s religious beliefs, see chap. 5, “The World of Spiritual Values” in Wagenknecht, The Seven Worlds of TR.
35 As President, he TR, Letters, 5.842–43. TR’s two main objections to “In God We Trust,” neither of which convinced Congress, were that “no legal warrant” justified engraving the pietism on American coins, and that doing so “cheapened” it by associating religion with commerce. For a detailed account, see Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of C
ontroversy: Episodes of the White House Years (Baton Rouge, La., 1970), 213–35.
36 the gospel he preached Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship (New York, 1930), 230; Marks, Velvet on Iron, chap. 3, “The Moral Quotient.”
37 Public works, for example Garstin and TR “exhaustively” discussed irrigation and Aswán on the last leg of the journey to Wadi Halfa. (Chicago Tribune, 19 Mar. 1910.) TR’s remark about the strategic value of Kitchener’s railroad is quoted in the same article.
38 There, on 21 March O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 55–56. It is not clear how this warning was transmitted to TR. The Egyptian nationalists may have heard of a remark he had made about Boutros Pasha’s assassin, at a dinner in Khartoum attended by hundreds of tarbooshed servants: “I would sentence him to be taken out and shot.” Abbott, Impressions of TR, 155.
39 “Theodore, what” Cleveland Dodge in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 223.
40 One thing he had TR, Letters, 7.359; The New York Times, 23 Mar. 1910. If TR had not quite “summoned” Pinchot, he had certainly written, in response to the latter’s cri de coeur of 31 Jan. 1909, “I do wish I could see you. Is there any chance of you meeting me in Europe?” TR, Letters, 7.51.
41 Roosevelt remained mute TR, Letters, 7.63–64.
42 Remembering the squalor Ibid., 7.63, 351–52. See Karl K. Barbir, “Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, the Middle East, and the Twentieth Century,” The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies, 2.1 (Spring 2004). This useful article is marred by the inclusion of an alleged boast by TR that is so uncharacteristic in language and attitude that it cannot be credited without corroboration.
43 Roosevelt detected Lodge, Selections, 2.364. “I must say,” TR wrote Whitelaw Reid on 24 Mar., “I should greatly like to handle Egypt and India for a few months. At the end of that time I doubtless would be impeached by the House of Commons but I should have things moving in fine order first.” TR, Letters, 7.63.
44 But he saw TR, Letters, 7.351. In Power, Faith, and Fantasy, 258ff., Michael B. Oren makes clear the ambivalent attitude of most Americans toward Britain’s occupancy of Egypt in the last decades of the 19th century. TR’s contrasting sharp certainty in 1910 is seen as the consequence of his might-makes-right Middle Eastern policies as President. His Cairo speech, however, should also be related to his lifelong horror of terrorism, reawakened by his stay in General Gordon’s palace, and his tour of Omdurman in company with Slatin Pasha. See also TR’s 31 May 1910 Guildhall address, 72–74.
45 The real danger TR, Letters, 7.351.
46 Sir Eldon Gorst Ibid., 7.353.
47 Islamic fundamentalists Sheik Ali Youssuf in North American Review, June 1910; Abbott, Impressions of TR, 186–87.
48 Small and struggling Cairo University’s enrollment in 1910 was only 123 students, down disastrously from 403 in 1909. Egyptian State Information Service, winter 1998.
49 He tried not The word contempt was TR’s own. TR, Letters, 7.65.
50 Swinging into Theodore Roosevelt, African and European Addresses, Lawrence F. Abbott, ed. (New York, 1910), 26.
51 The tarboosh-wearers Sheik Ali Youssuf in North American Review, June 1910; O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 69. Abbott, a white Christian American in TR’s thrall, contradicts Youssuf’s account of derision among the Muslims.
52 All good men Abbott, Impressions of TR, 156–57.
53 Next day, comments The Times and The Washington Post, 30 Mar. 1910. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy (318) calls this “the first major anti-American demonstration ever in the Middle East.” Among the many outraged telegrams protesting TR’s speech was one reading (in French): “We see with sorrow that you have no accurate idea of the capacity of the Egyptians whom you have wounded in their feelings and their pride.” (Unsigned fragment, 29 Mar. 1910 [TRP].) Also preserved in TRP is a letter, 30 Mar. 1910, from the sirdar of the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate: “You have assisted us more than you can possibly imagine, and I am proportionally grateful.” For a presentist critique of TR’s performance in Egypt, see Barbir, “Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, the Middle East, and the Twentieth Century.”
54 When he embarked Sheik Ali Youssuf in North American Review, June 1910. About a year later, TR recalled that his “good advice” to the Egyptians had been received “with well-dissembled gratitude.” TR, Works, 6.455.
CHAPTER 2: THE MOST FAMOUS MAN IN THE WORLD
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 75.
2 as if he were still Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”
3 He saw less TR, Letters, 7.354.
4 Moving on Ibid., 7.354–59; John C. O’Laughlin memo, ca. Apr. 1910 (OL). In an open letter to The Outlook, TR made sure that Catholics and Protestants back home understood his scruples. “The more an American sees of other countries the more profound must be his feelings of gratitude that in his own land there is not merely complete toleration but the heartiest goodwill and sympathy between sincere and honest men of different faith.” TR, Letters, 7.358.
5 He rejoiced TR, Letters, 7.359–60; KR diary, 4 Apr. 1910 (KRP); The New York Times, 5 Apr. 1910. Citations for the rest of this chapter frequently refer to TR’s two epistolary accounts of his European experiences, to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 1 Oct. 1911, and to David Gray, 5 Oct. 1911. (TR, Letters, 7.348–99, 401–15.) Enormously long and often very funny, these letters have been separately published in Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by Theodore Roosevelt, Elting E. Morison, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). More than any of TR’s other writings, they convey the full charm of his personality.
6 Roosevelt was unfazed TR, Letters, 7.362–63. Before leaving Rome on 7 Apr., TR lunched with the Italian historian Guglielmo Ferrero, whose works he had read, and learned from, as President. (Morris, Theodore Rex, 495–96; and Ferrero, “Theodore Roosevelt: A Characterization,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 9 [1910].) TR was determined to make his trip through Europe an intellectual as well as a political odyssey. “Cannot you arrange,” he typically wrote to the American ambassador in Sweden, “to have me see Sven Hedin, Nathorst, Colthorp, Nordenskiöld and Montelius? Cannot I see with the last-named the collection of Swedish antiquities, and I would also like to see the battle flags of Gustavus and Charles XII, and the tombs of the kings. Cannot I meet Professor and Mrs. Retzius?” TR to Charles H. Graves, 22 Apr. 1910 (TRP).
7 Edith’s unmarried younger sister See Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 350–51 and passim. There is a vignette of Emily Carow in O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 98: “She reminded me of a little humming bird as she flitted from side to side … pointing out the beauties of the landscape.”
8 Lanky, passionate Miller, Gifford Pinchot, prologue passim; Sullivan, Our Times, 4.386.
9 Roosevelt, in contrast Sullivan, Our Times, 4.486, describes Pinchot as one “whose eyes, as they pass through the world, instinctively look about for a hero, and for martyrdom in the hero’s service.” For a concise analysis of the relationship between Pinchot and TR, see Miller, Gifford Pinchot, 147–76.
10 “One of the best” Ibid., 233. A long political letter from TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, written this day, avoids any mention of Pinchot. TR, Letters, 7.69–74.
11 All warned Mowry, TR, 108, 125.
12 He was more Lodge, Selections, 2.367; TR, Letters, 7.336. See also Morris, Theodore Rex, 486–87.
13 Four days later EKR diary, 13 Apr. 1910 (TRC).
14 A familiar, courtly figure TR, Letters, 7.368; Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW).
15 the great comet Halley’s Comet was just beginning its 1910 passage past the sun. It was observed in perihelion at 5° Aquarius over Curaçao on 19 Apr.
16 After a reunion Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW); TR, Letters, 7.369.
17 He spoke in French Ibid.
18 Roosevelt had detected TR, Letters, 7.360–61. Tempora mutantur: “The times are changing.”
19 The
best that could TR, Letters, 7.369, 409. TR was both right and wrong about Franz Ferdinand. The archduke was reactionary in the sense that he wanted to strengthen and centralize Austria-Hungary’s power over its restive Balkan neighbors. But he was liberal in believing that the only way to do this was to allow Slavs more representation in the imperial government.
20 Meeting later TR, Letters, 7.366.
21 At the same time Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1: 1900–1933 (Toronto, 1997), 188. Germany’s former chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, used the phrase “Nibelungen loyalty” to describe this compulsion. Michael Stürmer, The German Empire, 1870–1918 (New York, 2000), xxviii.
22 Roosevelt repeated TR, Letters, 7.377–78.
23 For the next thirty-six O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 105; Henry White to Henry Cabot Lodge, 23 Apr. 1910 (HCLP). “They [Europeans] look on him as the greatest man in the world, and think it strange that with his youth and energy he should be in private life.” (Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”) For TR’s half-puzzled, half-tickled reaction to his celebrity, see TR, Letters, 7.81.