Concha, on the other hand, remained agitated. Throughout the fall, he pestered Hay to make various changes to the Hay-Concha draft treaty. Hay listened patiently as Concha’s demands grew increasingly irrational. He granted one or two minor adjustments, but in the end, he was firm and clear: unless Colombia agreed to the treaty in time for its consideration by the Senate in December, the United States would be obliged to open negotiations with the Nicaraguans, who, he hastened to add, were now amenable to almost any terms offered them.
Behind Concha’s back, Colombian foreign minister Felipe Paúl advised Hay not to take Concha’s provocations seriously and then ordered Concha to sign the canal treaty. Concha refused. Distraught and discredited, he sailed for Colombia on December 13, reportedly wrapped in a straitjacket.
Hay, meanwhile, responded to the Concha calamity tactfully yet firmly. He sent a cable to Charles Hart in Bogotá, directing him to congratulate the Marroquín government on resolution of the civil war and to reiterate that the United States had “made all possible concessions to Colombia,” and that it was now incumbent on Colombia “to say promptly whether they want a canal or not.” For good measure, he added: “Nicaragua offers [a] perfectly satisfactory treaty.”
TOMÁS HERRÁN, WHO STEPPED into the post of acting minister with the title of chargé d’affaires, was far more cosmopolitan and reasonable than Concha. He had attended Georgetown University and spent most of his life abroad. He spoke four languages, one of them a fluent English. Serving under Martínez Silva and then Concha, he was familiar with every nuance of the canal negotiations. With the U.S. Congress in session and Senator Morgan insisting that a “reasonable time” had elapsed, the easiest thing would have been for Herrán to exercise his authority as agent for the Colombian government and sign the treaty. Instead, under fresh urging from Bogotá, he jacked up the price again: $10 million up front (instead of $7 million) and $600,000 annuity (instead of $100,000). Hay demurred.
He worried that the Senate might not stand for any more dilly-dallying from Colombia; the Spooner Act had passed by far less than the two-thirds margin that it would take to pass an essential canal treaty. Time was short, Hay warned Herrán. Morgan threatened; Nicaragua beckoned. He let Herrán know that Roosevelt had set January 5, 1903, as the new deadline. All the while, Herrán was hearing rumors that the United States might decide to build the canal even without a signed treaty. On January 3, William Cromwell, who now hovered over Herrán, met with Hay and finagled a few more days. On January 21, Hay made his final bid: $10 million with a $250,000 annuity. This time Herrán took the offer.
At five o’clock the following afternoon, Herrán and Cromwell arrived at Hay’s house on Lafayette Square, and with Cromwell as witness, the secretary of state and the Colombian chargé signed what thereafter would be known as the Hay-Herrán Treaty. Hay presented the pen to Cromwell, whose ink had been all over the document from the beginning. As a fitting endnote to the negotiations, three days after the treaty was completed, Marroquín cabled Herrán not to sign it until he received fresh instructions. But by the perverse chronology of the Panama drama, the cable had not arrived in time.
Three months later, on March 17, 1903, over stubborn objection from Senator Morgan, the Hay-Herrán Treaty was ratified, 73 to 5. It now moved southward for ratification by the Colombian Congress, which had not convened since 1898.
WITH THE COLOMBIANS, HAY’S perseverance had taken the trick, but he also had to acknowledge that it was Roosevelt’s lurking brinkmanship that had lent decisive gravity to the canal negotiation. There was one thing about the president that Hay was now certain: behind those thick glasses was a man who did not blink.
Back in December, while Hay was absorbed with Herrán, Roosevelt had delivered his own ultimatum, this one to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Either cease the German blockade of Venezuela and withdraw your navy within ten days, Roosevelt had demanded, or face war with the United States. To prove he meant business, Roosevelt had ordered fifty-three warships, the largest concentration of U.S. naval vessels ever assembled, to conduct “exercises” off the coast of Puerto Rico, and he had sent Admiral Dewey, the hero of Manila, to take command. One word from the White House would send the fleet steaming toward South America.
Here at last was one of the “big things” that Roosevelt did on his own. As Henry Adams had observed, there were times when Teddy was pure act.
* * *
* The Danish parliament later rejected the U.S. offer, not because of any misstep by White or Hay, and the sale was not consummated until 1917—at the inflated price of $25 million.
CHAPTER 18
Fair Warning
Hay and Roosevelt saw much to admire in Germany and much that alarmed. They knew and liked many Germans (with some reservations toward Democratic-voting German-Americans). Hay had been to Germany many times; Roosevelt had spent six months in Dresden as a boy. Both read and spoke German and held German philosophy, arts, science, and industry in high regard. What rankled was Germany’s militancy and hunger for expansion. Roosevelt had never forgiven Germany’s near interference with Admiral Dewey’s fleet at Manila. Hay, from his ambassador’s post in London during the Spanish-American War, had relayed warnings of Germany’s ongoing ambitions in the Philippines, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. “Voilà l’ennemi,” he wrote in July 1898 with his eye on Berlin. Two years later, he was disgusted by Germany’s vengefulness after the Boxer Rebellion and ridiculed a medal that Kaiser Wilhelm II had minted of “the German Eagle eviscerating the Black Dragon” of China—the suggestion being, Hay remarked to Roosevelt with acidic sarcasm, “that Germany was It, and the rest of the Universe nowhere.”
Like so many rivals, Germany and the United States had a great deal in common, in their pasts and in their prospects. Much has also been made of the similarities between Roosevelt and Wilhelm as exemplars of their respective countries. Both came from mixed lineage: Roosevelt of mostly Dutch and some German ancestry; Wilhelm’s grandmother was Queen Victoria. They were born within a hundred days of each other and overcame childhood afflictions—Roosevelt asthma, Wilhelm a withered left arm—and made themselves into scrappy athletes. Both were whip-smart and often hair-triggered. As young men and continuing into their roles as president and kaiser, Roosevelt and Wilhelm possessed a deep fixation on ships and navies—the satisfaction of owning them and the abiding urge to use them. As students of naval strategy and as seekers of greater renown for themselves and their countries, they imagined a day when they would test their might against each other. “Frankly I don’t know that I should be sorry to see a bit of a spar with Germany,” Roosevelt had written as early as 1889, as if contemplating a round or two of boxing on the foredeck of a man-of-war.
During the years that he served as assistant secretary of the navy and vice president, Roosevelt had called for greater American presence and preparedness on the world’s oceans; as president, he was at last in a position to bring his vision of American sea power to fulfillment—especially in the Western Hemisphere. At the same time that he was pushing ahead with legislation and treaties for an American-controlled canal, he was also busy expanding the Caribbean fleet. He established a naval base on Isla de Culebra, off Puerto Rico, “in case of sudden war,” and replaced his cautious and aging former boss, Navy Secretary John Long, with the more spry and responsive William Moody.
He also made a show of unfurling the Monroe Doctrine, originally issued in 1823 by President James Monroe’s secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. “The Monroe Doctrine is a declaration that there must be no territorial aggrandizement by any non-American power at the expense of any American power on American soil,” Roosevelt assured gently but emphatically in his 1901 address to Congress—“American” of course referring to both North and South America.
His words seemed aimed directly at Germany, which for the past several years had shown contempt for the Americans’ exclusionary impulse. Otto von Bismarck, the architect of modern Germany, had called the Monroe Doctrine “i
nsolent dogma,” and Wilhelm II, who had been kaiser since 1888, gave it hardly better credence.
By the turn of the century, several hundred thousand Germans were settled in Brazil and throughout Latin America, and German companies were heavily invested in mining, railroads, and trade there. Wilhelm mentioned to his military and ministers that he wished to be “the paramount power” in the Caribbean, and his government was actively looking for a suitable sphere of influence in the basin, similar to its toehold in China, or, at the very least, a naval base. Under consideration were Trinidad, one of the Dutch colonies, or the Jamaican port of Kingston. In the spring of 1901, a German warship was spotted mapping a harbor on Margarita Island, off the Venezuelan coast. From such a base the German admiralty was well within striking distance of both the Isthmus of Panama and the coastline of the United States.
Roosevelt saw the Germans coming from a long way off but chose at first to grant them the benefit of the doubt. He let it be known that he did not construe the Monroe Doctrine to exclude other nations from commercial dealings with Latin America. Nor did it preclude a foreign power from punishing a Latin American country for egregious conduct. “If any South American country misbehaves toward any European country, let the European country spank it,” he stated in 1901, while still vice president. But as he emphasized in his congressional address later in the year, such punishment must not take the form of acquisition of territory.
Venezuela, meanwhile, stood by, destitute and disheveled. Since midcentury, it had been invaded by Colombia more than twenty times and had undergone more than two dozen insurrections. In 1899, Cipriano Castro became the latest caudillo to seize power. By then the country was already hugely in debt to a phalanx of foreign banks and businesses, including American, Italian, and French, but in arrears to no one more egregiously than Great Britain and Germany. Castro had paid not a single centimo in interest, never mind the tens of millions of bolivars of principal, figuring that Venezuelan courts and the Monroe Doctrine would shield him from retribution. As a further measure of his malfeasance, he allowed Venezuelan nationals to hijack foreign cargoes and loot foreign-owned farms and businesses with impunity. The German minister to Caracas called Castro a “megalomaniac.” In a letter to Hay, Theodore Roosevelt, who putatively was Castro’s backyard protector, sized up the caudillo as “an unspeakably villainous little monkey.”
By the end of 1901, Germany and Great Britain had exhausted efforts to bring Venezuela to rational arbitration and now looked to military coercion as the last resort. On December 11, the German ambassador in Washington, Theodore von Holleben, alerted Hay that Germany intended to issue an ultimatum for settlement. If the ultimatum were not met, Germany would proceed to blockade the Venezuelan harbors of La Guaira and Puerto Cabello and begin levying duties on imports and exports. Mindful of the Monroe Doctrine, which Roosevelt had brandished in his congressional address only eight days earlier, von Holleben hastened to add that under no circumstances did Germany contemplate “the permanent occupation of Venezuelan territory.”
Hay responded promptly and formally, expressing his satisfaction that Germany had “no purpose or intention to make even the smallest acquisition of territory on the South American Continent or the islands adjacent.” Wilhelm, however, was not so easily seduced by Hay’s attempt at polite persuasion. When von Holleben informed Berlin of Hay and Roosevelt’s sentiments against a permanent German occupation, the kaiser was said to have snapped defiantly, “We will do whatever is necessary . . . even if it displeases the Yankees. Never fear!”
Germany waited almost a year to make its move, using the time to work out a plan with Britain to seize Venezuelan gunboats and apply a blockade. Hay never entirely understood why Great Britain decided to gang up with Germany, especially so soon after Britain had shown its respect for the Monroe Doctrine by way of the Hay-Paunceforte Treaty. Out of an underlying faith in their fellow English speakers, he and Roosevelt chose not to regard Britain’s pact with Germany and its play in Venezuela as anything more than what Britain purported it to be: a means to collect on a debt.
At the other extreme, Roosevelt and Hay ascribed Germany’s posture toward Venezuela to the most nefarious motives. They remained highly skeptical of Germany’s avowal that it sought no permanent settlement. Roosevelt would tell a reporter in 1909 that the blockade had been just “the initial step in a plan that had been worked out in Berlin, under the sponsorship of the Kaiser, to seize a Venezuelan port and then coerce the Castro government into leasing it to Germany for ninety-nine years. . . . Once this had been effected, the establishment of a powerful German naval base and the economic penetration of the hinterland would have followed automatically. It would have been only a matter of time before Venezuela became a German colony or protectorate.”
At the beginning of November 1902, Ambassador Michael Herbert advised Hay that a joint German and British blockade was imminent. Hay replied that the United States would not object to the two powers “taking steps to obtain redress for injuries suffered by their subjects,” provided that—again he underscored the condition on which the United States would not bend—“no acquisition of territory was contemplated.” Yet even as Hay was spelling out the ground rules, in hopes that Britain and Germany would comply, Roosevelt, as commander in chief, was putting the navy on high alert, figuring and possibly even hoping that Germany would not comply. Hay had pledged in his speech in New York a year earlier that the United States would not be afraid “to insult or defy a great power because it is strong, or even because it is friendly.” Roosevelt was now raring to do all of that.
FAIR PLAY CALLED FOR fair warning. On November 24, the president gave a small dinner at the White House, which was still undergoing renovation. His guests were the German diplomat Speck von Sternburg; John St. Loe Strachey, editor of the Spectator in London; and Admiral George Dewey, the victor of Manila, already canonized for his war-opening order, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.” Roosevelt led them through plaster dust and wet paint to the Executive Dining Room in the new West Wing. The point of the gathering was soon obvious to all.
Von Sternburg was not bearing full diplomatic credentials; Roosevelt had summoned him informally to make plain his objections and intentions with respect to the trouble brewing in Venezuela—trusting that “Specky,” who was married to an American and had known Roosevelt for fifteen years, would pass the word to the appropriate ministries when he returned home. The same went for Strachey, another old friend, who was similarly well connected in the halls of English government. Dewey, in his braid and medals, was on hand to impress and, ever so implicitly, to intimidate. Roosevelt wanted it known in London and Berlin that the first and only man ever to hold the rank of Admiral of the Navy was soon to command exercises of unprecedented scale within five hundred miles of the Venezuelan coast.
Hay was aware of the dinner and knew both of the European visitors almost as well as Roosevelt did, but he did not attend. To have made the meeting official by including the secretary of state or ambassadors von Holleben and Herbert would have drawn the attention of the press and likely would have escalated the rhetoric of the looming crisis.
On December 1, eight days after von Sternburg and Strachey sailed away, carrying their cautions to Europe, Roosevelt delivered his second annual message to Congress, in which he again let Berlin and London know that his gun was loaded and all but cocked. “There is not a cloud on the horizon,” he began. “There seems not the slightest chance of trouble with a foreign power. We most earnestly hope that this state of things may continue.” Then he added, his words weighted with both moral and martial gravity, “Fatuous self-complacency or vanity, or short-sightedness in refusing to prepare for danger, is both foolish and wicked in such a nation as ours.”
Hay took a more straightforward approach. On December 5, he cabled the American Embassy in Berlin that the president would be grateful if “an arrangement could be made as might obviate the necessity of any exhibition of force on the par
t of Germany and Great Britain” toward Venezuela. He sent a similar cable to London, where Henry White was talking quietly with Foreign Secretary Lansdowne and still trying to comprehend why England, which still held a grudge against the kaiser for siding with the Boers, would risk harming its relationship with America just to spank Venezuela.
To no avail. On December 7, Germany and Britain told Venezuela that they were closing their consulates in Caracas and soon would begin “measures” to gain recompense for the money owed them. Not entirely by coincidence, on the eighth, Dewey arrived at Culebra to take command of the American fleet. That same afternoon, when von Holleben appeared at the White House in the company of several German businessmen, Roosevelt took the opportunity to pull the ambassador aside and gave him a short course in geography and naval strategy.
The fullest version of their conversation was rendered by Roosevelt in August 1916, in a letter he wrote to John Hay’s first biographer, William Roscoe Thayer. Characteristically, Roosevelt cast himself in bronze. “I saw the Ambassador,” he recounted, “and explained that in view of the presence of the German Squadron on the Venezuelan coast I could not permit longer delay in answering my request for an arbitration, and that I could not acquiesce in any seizure of Venezuelan territory. The Ambassador responded that his Government could not agree to arbitrate, and that there was no intention to take ‘permanent’ possession of Venezuelan territory.”
This drew a sarcastic scoff from Roosevelt: “I answered that Kiauchau [the German treaty port of Kiaochow in China] was not a ‘permanent’ possession of Germany’s—that I understood that it was merely held by a ninety nine year lease; and that I did not intend to have another Kiauchau, held by similar tenure, on the approach to the Isthmian Canal.”
When von Holleben showed no sign of backing down, Roosevelt asked the ambassador “to inform his government that if no notification for arbitration came during the next ten days I would be obliged to order Dewey to take his fleet to the Venezuelan coast and see that the German forces did not take possession of any territory.”
All the Great Prizes Page 53
