24 He did not see Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1981), xxvi–xxvii, 344; Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (New York, 1966), 329. The rising suicide rate by Austro-Hungarian youth had become such a problem, just as TR arrived in Vienna, that Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Society called a meeting to discuss its subconscious causes. For an intellectual history describing the comet-haunted year of 1910 as “the year when all [Europe’s] scaffolds began to crack,” see Thomas Harrison, 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance (Berkeley, Calif., 1996).
25 All he knew On the same day that TR was entertained at Schönbrunn, a member of Serbia’s Black Hand terrorist group was arrested in Chiasso, Switzerland, on a charge of plotting to kill him. The New York Times, 17, 19 Mar. 1910.
26 Halfway through the banquet TR, Letters, 7.370.
27 Roosevelt was met TR, Letters, 7.372–73. Apponyi, surrounded by an official delegation, hailed TR as “one of the leading efficient forces for the moral improvement of the world.” (O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 111.) For the imperial-versus-royal paradox in the union of Austria and Hungary, see Andrew Wheatcroft, The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire (New York, 1995), 278–81.
28 He noticed TR, Letters, 7.372–73; KR diary (KRP); The Times, 19 Apr. 1910.
29 Multicultural himself Nicholas Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: The Man As I Knew Him (New York, 1967), 56; Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt”; TR, Letters, 7.374.
30 an extempore address TR, Letters, 7.374. TR, speaking from memory, wrongly attached the name of King Béla III, rather than Andrew II, to the Golden Bull. A sarcastic British correspondent, filing from Vienna, was thus able to report on the “fervor and inaccuracy” of his speech, as well as Apponyi’s “stage management” of the occasion. The Times, 20 Apr. 1910.
31 His carriage had to force The New York Times, 19 Apr. 1910; O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 114–15.
32 the most famous man in the world Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.” As late as the early years of World War I, a friend of TR’s found that he could travel “all over Europe” with no other credential than a letter from the Colonel. Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 400.
33 “When he appears” The Times, 16 Apr. 1910.
34 “Like the elder” TR to Robert Bacon, TR, Letters, 7.65. For TR’s previous relationship with Bacon, his Harvard classmate and former secretary of state, see James Brown Scott, Robert Bacon: Life and Letters (New York, 1923), passim, and Morris, Theodore Rex, 167–68, 456–57.
35 Both ambassadors Scott, Bacon, 136–43. The last-named Frenchmen were favorites of TR’s. He had been corresponding with them for years, and admired their mix of mind and action. Estournelles de Constant, author of La conciliation internationale, had just become a fellow winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Coubertin, author of many books on education, was the founder of the modern Olympic Games.
36 “Quand on parle” TR quoted in Journal des Débats Politiques et Littéraires, 24 Apr. 1910. Jusserand compared TR’s way of searching for the mot juste in French to that of someone grasping at “a slippery piece of soap” in the bath. Wister, Roosevelt, 166.
37 Shortly before three Journal des Débats, 24 Apr., and The Times, 25 Apr. 1910.
38 he proceeded to read The following quotations from TR’s Sorbonne address are taken from the version in TR, Works, 15, 349–76.
39 This touched on “To them [the French] the German menace is like a constant nightmare, which may perhaps be explained by the fact that most of the older men know what an invasion means.” British naval attaché report, 22 Jan. 1910, quoted in Kenneth Bourne, ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, pt. 1, ser. F, 13.100. (Hereafter Bourne, British Documents.)
40 Roosevelt bit off The Times, 25 Apr. 1910; Le Gaulois, quoted in Literary Digest, 21 May 1910.
41 It is not the critic TR, Works, 15.354. According to The Times, 25 Apr. 1910, TR won further ovations when he repeated one of his own paragraphs, a declaration that “property belongs to man and not man to property” in French. He resorted to antique French for a closing quote from Froissart: Le royaume de la France ne fut onques se déconfit qu’on n’y trouvât bien toujours á qui combattre (“The realm of France was never so stricken that there were not left men who would valiantly fight for it.”) For a modern reprint of his speech, see John Allen Gable, ed., The Man in the Arena: Speeches and Essays by Theodore Roosevelt (Oyster Bay, N.Y., 1991). It is available on many Internet websites, and remains one of TR’s most-quoted orations.
42 one of his greatest rhetorical triumphs Journal des Débats, 24 Apr. 1910; Jules Jusserand to TR, 10 May 1910 (TRP); TR, Letters, 7.379–80; The New York Times, 25 Apr. 1910. After TR’s departure, an American military officer in Paris reported that the Briand government had suppressed a “monster” May Day demonstration by socialist and revolutionary groups. For the first time in fifteen years, policemen were allowed to use firearms in their own self-defense. This policy was “freely attributed in intelligent quarters” to TR’s morale-boosting speech. Abbott, Impressions of TR, 166.
43 Only two Literary Digest, 18 June 1910; TR, Works, 15.645; Jules Jusserand to TR, 10 May 1910 (TRP); TR, Letters, 7.77. “Never since Napoleon dawned on Europe, has such an impression been produced there as has been made by Theodore Roosevelt,” Le Temps commented.
44 He wanted to TR, Letters, 7.381. For an account of the Dreyfus case and its effect on French morale after 1906, see Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 171–226.
45 For two and a quarter hours The Times and The New York Times, 28 Apr. 1910. “The maneuver was necessarily too rapid,” TR told the military governor of Paris afterward. “You have made your men do in half an hour what should in reality take four hours.” The Times, 28 Apr. 1910.
46 two aides O’Laughlin continued to act as the semi-official chronicler of TR’s travels, in charge of a press contingent that grew to six by the time his tour reached Paris. Harper to Arthur Beaupré, 25 Apr. 1910 (TRP).
47 They traveled east ERD to Edwin Arlington Robinson, 28 Apr. 1910; TR, Letters, 7.382–83.
48 A sobering display TR could see from the bridge of his own ship the German imperial yacht Meteor, and a small launch named Alice Roosevelt in honor of his daughter. ARL had launched the Meteor from a New Jersey shipyard in 1902. There was some speculation that TR had been snubbed at Kiel by the no-show of a local resident, Prince Heinrich of Prussia. But a letter of profound apology from the prince (Wilhelm II’s brother), indicates that it was caused by a staff failure. Chicago Tribune, 3 May 1910; Sylvia Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 234–35; Heinrich (“Henry”) to TR, May 1910 (TRP).
49 signs of ominous enlargement The work of widening the Kaiser Wilhelm (now Kiel) Canal was completed by 1914.
50 King Frederick VIII TR, African and European Addresses, 138. Crown Princess Alexandra of Denmark was the daughter of Edward VII.
51 “as funny a kingdom” TR, Letters, 7.385–86. For an account of TR’s visit, and a discussion of the publicity his Nobel Prize brought to newly independent Norway, see Wayne Cole, Norway and the United States, 1905–1955: Two Democracies in Peace and War (Ames, Iowa, 1989).
52 The pesky little millionaire Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 931; TR, Letters, 7.47–49. For TR’s initial efforts to make the appeal seem to come from Elihu Root, see TR, Letters, 7.42, 55. For the presidential involvement with arms control (at the time of the Second Hague Peace Conference) that TR refers to, see Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs, 48.3 (1984), and Morris, Theodore Rex, 485, 726. For an amusing, recently discovered letter in which TR dismisses Carnegie as “a perfect goose” in public affairs, see Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, 30.3 (Summer 2009), 20–23.
53 Christiana was Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 934; Tuchman, The Proud Tow
er, 278.
54 Roosevelt’s oration Chicago Tribune, 6 May 1910; TR, Works, 18.410.
55 He gave conditional TR, Works, 18.414.
56 “international police power” Ibid., 18.415.
57 “There’s a trace of the savage” Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 935, 980. For the unexpectedly favorable reaction of an influential Norwegian commentator to TR’s speech, see American Review of Reviews, 42.3 (Aug. 1910).
58 Coughing and feverish EKR to TR.Jr., 8 May 1910 (TRJP); The New York Times, 9 May 1910. “I don’t like living in these palaces because you can’t ring your bell and complain of your room!” TR quoted in Abbott, Impressions of TR, 296.
59 He sent a telegram TR, Letters, 7.390; New York Tribune, 8 May 1910.
60 It had shone Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (Boston, 1963), 269.
61 The first thing TR, Letters, 7.390; Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”
62 the foremost nation Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 291; Edward Grey, Twenty-five Years: 1892–1916 (New York, 1925), 2.22; TR, Letters, 7.391. Between 1900 and 1910, Germany’s steel production increased 1,355 percent to Britain’s 154 percent. For other statistics, see Giles MacDonogh, The Last Kaiser: The Life of Wilhelm II (New York, 2000), 321.
63 Germany’s fields and forests For a vivid picture of pre-war Germany, see Owen Wister, The Pentecost of Calamity (New York, 1917), 18–23. See also Modris Ecksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston,1989), 77–82.
64 There was a frenzied scurrying O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 148; EKR diary, 10 May 1910 (TRP).
65 Wilhelm II in 1910 TR, Letters, 7.393; John C. G. Röhl, ed., Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations—The Corfu Papers (Cambridge, UK, 1982), 3–10, 14–19; Ragnhild Fiebig von Hase, “The Uses of ‘Friendship’: The ‘Personal Regime’ of Wilhelm II and Theodore Roosevelt, 1901–1909,” in Annika Mombauer and Wilhelm Deist, eds., The Kaiser: New Research on Wilhelm II’s Role in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, UK, 2004), 143–94.
66 Two years earlier MacDonogh, The Last Kaiser, chap. 12; John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and His Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge, UK, 1996).
67 a fantasist of Münchausian dimensions Ecksteins, Rites of Spring, 87–88. TR had sensed the Kaiser’s reincarnation fantasy as long before as 1902. “He writes to me pretending that he is a [direct] descendant of Frederick the Great! I know better and feel inclined to tell him so.” See Morris, Theodore Rex, 185–86, and Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Time (New York, 1964, 1972), 85.
68 Were it not O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 148; Manchester Guardian, 20, 21 May 1910; James W. Gerard, Face to Face with Kaiserism (New York, 1918), 20.
69 They stood face-to-face Abbott, Impressions of TR, 252–53. Accounts vary as to how long this conversation lasted. TR remembered it as three hours, the New York Tribune reported “more than an hour,” and Stanley Shaw, in his William of Germany (London, 1913), wrote that “the shades of evening began to fall before it ended.” Abbott is precise in recalling that the party managed to catch its 4 p.m. train back to Berlin, but forgets that the Kaiser also escorted the Roosevelts on a tour of Sans Souci. Whatever the case, TR (who saw the Kaiser twice again) had plenty of time to take his measure, and write a perceptive portrait of him. TR, Letters, 7.394–99.
70 Reporting afterward TR, Letters, 7.395. For the epistolary relationship of TR and Trevelyan, see Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”
71 At least we agreed TR, Letters, 7.396.
72 Roosevelt asked Ibid., 7.398. At a meeting of the Navy League in Berlin on 22 May 1910, Admiral Hans von Köster noted that every naval power was currently trying “to reach the highest possible degree of readiness for war.” Bourne, British Documents, pt. 1, ser. F, 21.77–78.
73 This sounded reasonable TR, Letters, 7.399.
74 By the time EKR diary, 10 May 1910 (TRC); Chicago Tribune, 12 May 1910.
75 He cabled Chicago Tribune, 12 May 1910; Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft (New York, 1939), 542.
76 More vocal wear KR diary, 11 May 1910 (KRP); Chicago Tribune, 12 May 1910; O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 150–51. TR’s “suite” was also accredited with naval and military aides-de-camp. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1910, 528.
77 “Roosevelt, mein Freund” There are various versions of the Kaiser’s words, overheard by many listeners. This version was repeated by Henry White to Lawrence Abbott on the evening after the ceremony. The phrase mein Freund struck White as unusually intimate for Wilhelm II, on such a military occasion. Nevins, Henry White, 302.
78 Roosevelt knew this Morris, Theodore Rex, 186; New York Tribune, 12 May 1910; O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 150.
79 Lifting his hat Chicago Tribune, 12 May 1910; Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 122–23.
Biographical Note: This paragraph represents the author’s interpretation of a curious passage that Looker wrote after interviewing EKR many years later. Since Looker had known all the Roosevelts intimately from his days as a member of the “White House Gang,” and since EKR endorsed his book with a personal letter (facsimile, 116), the passage deserves attention. In its entirety, it reads as follows: “In talks with his family he [TR] indicated that ‘the Kaiser most evidently showed, in company with some lesser sovereigns, a sort of double-barreled perspective as he went through this show. He was sitting on his horse seeing two different divisions of things happening about himself. One included his own observations of my own impressions of the pageant, the Staff’s impressions and his own as the various battle units passed by us all. The other was as if his mental ghost had spurred away from us, halted, faced about, and was now scrutinizing himself and all of us through foreign eyes in order to understand what the rest of the world would think. As if the rest of the world at this particular moment was the slightest bit interested or even amused! It was just the same dual thought that made it possible for him to look upon his own human acts in one way and upon such Imperial acts, as he selected from the point of view of his “divine right,” in another. He was actually, as far as I could discover, one of the last of those curious creatures who sincerely believed himself to be a demi-god.’ ”
80 When Edith saw Looker, Colonel Roosevelt, 129–30. In 1912, TR told a reporter, “I tried him with everything I knew, but the only subject on which I could strike fire was war. He knows military history and technique. He knows armies, and that is all. I couldn’t get a spark from him on anything else.” Oscar King Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1898–1918 (Boston, 1925), 92.
81 He recovered Chicago Tribune, 13 May 1910. The text of TR’s Berlin University address is in TR, Works, 14.258–83.
82 Wilhelm had never Chicago Tribune, 13 May 1910.
83 “the great house of Hohenzollern” TR, Works, 14.259. TR was privately tickled to discover, in conversations with Wilhelm II, that “his own knowledge of Hohenzollern history was more detailed and accurate than that of the Emperor.” Albert Shaw, “Reminiscences of Theodore Roosevelt,” ts. in SHA.
84 The case of the Jew TR, Works, 14.264.
85 He listed the main “Practically all the theories of world-development and so forth which Mr. Roosevelt was expounding had been based on the works of the very men he was addressing.” An eyewitness, quoted in The New Age, 26 May 1910.
86 genus Americanus egotisticus This phrase was applied to TR by the Kaiser’s good friend Poultney Bigelow in Seventy Summers (London, 1925), 273–74.
87 But it was a warm afternoon Chicago Tribune, 13 May 1910.
88 newspapers gave it scant attention Admiral Köster stated on 22 May 1910 that representatives of the German Navy League had listened “with the greatest interest” to TR’s speech. A few words in particular (“Woe to the nation … whose citizens have lost their courage for battle and their martial spirit”) had “
deeply implanted themselves in German hearts.” Bourne, British Documents, pt. 1, ser. F, 21.78.
89 substantive interviews O’Laughlin, From the Jungle Through Europe, 151–52.
90 a set of photographs For facsimiles, see Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 526–27. The original photographs are still on display at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.
91 “Oh, no” TR, Letters, 7.83; John J. Leary, Talks with T.R. (Boston 1920), 41.
CHAPTER 3: HONORABILEM THEODORUM
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 3.
2 Roosevelt emerged The New York Times, 17 May 1910.
3 Reid had won TR, Letters, 7.401–2; Viscount Lee of Fareham, A Good Innings (privately printed, London, 1939), 1.415–16. The relationship of TR and Arthur Lee is fully detailed in this two-volume work. For an abridged version, see “A Good Innings”: The Private Papers of Viscount Lee of Fareham, P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.B.E., Alan Clark, ed. (London, 1974). See also the section on Lee in Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.” For TR and Reid, see David R. Contosa and Jessica R. Hawthorne, “Rise to World Power: Selected Letters of Whitelaw Reid, 1895–1912,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 76.2 (1986).
Colonel Roosevelt Page 80
