Theodore Roosevelt Abroad

by J. Lee Thompson

  Roosevelt had a much higher opinion of the Austrian foreign minister, Count von Aehrenthal, whom he thought a man of strength and ability. Two years before, the Austrian government had been appreciative when the then president “cordially approved” of their annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which he considered more a “changing of the title, although not really the substance, of the Austrian occupation.” At some point he hoped the Balkan states might stand on their own but the example of Serbia was “not sufficient encouraging” to make him believe the two small states would make more progress alone than under Austria, whose rule was infinitely preferable to that of Turkey.24 Neighboring Serbia, however, and her friend Russia, looked upon the annexations with hostility and a fuse had been lit in 1908 which would explode with cataclysmic fury six years later.

  Carnegie had let it get into the newspapers that Roosevelt was to speak to Wilhelm II about his peace plans and this had alarmed the German Foreign Office and the Kaiser. Consequently, when he called in Vienna on the prime minister, Richard von Bienerth, the Austrian broached the subject for his German ally. TR informed von Biernerth that when he was president he had sounded all the powers to see if something might be done to limit the size of armaments, at least by limiting the size of ships, but he had found that England and Germany would not consent. He added that, though he had no proposal of his own, he did “wish that the German authorities would seriously consider whether it was worthwhile for them to keep on with a building programme which was the real cause why other nations were forced into the very great expense attendant upon modern naval preparation.” Two days later the Berlin papers revealed that Roosevelt wished to talk to the German Foreign Office about the subject of universal peace and disarmament, but they declared they did not believe for a moment that he would be “so lacking in the requirements of the situation” to take advantage of his friendly personal visit to “broach a subject which would be very distasteful and which the government authorities would have to refuse to discuss.”25

  In Vienna Roosevelt also had an audience with the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, who had been on the throne since the revolutions of 1848. The two chatted in French about hunting and politics. The Emperor struck Roosevelt as an interesting, although not very able, gentleman of good instincts who in his long reign had “witnessed the most extraordinary changes and vicissitudes.” He in return told TR that he had been particularly interested in seeing him “because he was the last representative of the old system, whereas I embodied the new” and that he had wished to “know for himself how the prominent exponent of that movement felt and thought.”26 Franz Joseph extended to Roosevelt the signal honor of hunting in the royal game preserves, should he wish. All were shocked when the Colonel, pleading that his overfull itinerary would not allow it, asked to be excused from the privilege, which had never before been offered to a commoner, much less turned down by one.

  When Roosevelt arrived at Budapest on the Danube at nine in the evening on 17 April there was, despite a driving rain, a crowd of thousands on hand at the train station. After a reception hosted by the Archduke Joseph at the palace the next day, Count Apponyi and a delegation representing the International Peace Union gave TR a formal welcome at the historic Parliament House. There he was presented with an illuminated address which recorded his achievements on behalf of human rights, human liberty and international justice. In his remarks, the gifted orator Apponyi called Roosevelt “one of the leading efficient forces for the moral improvement of the world.” The Colonel in return praised Hungary for the “tremendous influence it has exercised upon the world in beating back, by the dauntless courage of its warriors, the hordes of barbarians who sought to overwhelm Europe.”27

  At Budapest, Kermit and TR boarded the Orient Express for Paris, where the family was reunited on April 21. They stayed with their friends, the new U.S. ambassador, Robert Bacon, and his wife Martha. This luxury made the city “an oasis in a desert of hurry and confusion.” Roosevelt and Edith were able to get away to revisit several museums and art galleries, including the Louvre, where, he told Bacon, “I shall keep clear of the Rubens gallery, which I loathe, but there are some of the pictures which I must see.”28 The couple met the sculptor Rodin at his house and were able to see Manon and Samson and Delilah at the Opera and Oedipe Roi at the Comédie-Française, where they experienced another embarrassingly long ovation. TR made a much watched visit to Napoleon’s tomb, which set off a renewed avalanche of editorial cartoons showing him in Napoleonic garb returning from Elba, some with the dark cloud of Waterloo in the distance.

  Roosevelt enjoyed the company of all the Frenchmen he met, including the premier Aristide Briand, the president Armand Fallières, and various other members of the government and the opposition. After Fallières gave him a dinner at the Élysée Palace, one French newspaper cartoon depicted a scene with the president in which the Colonel is giving his host an account of his life in Africa. Roosevelt says: “Of evenings I used to read the Pensées de Pascal aloud; and the first hippopotamus that dared yawn—Bang! In His Jaw!”29TR later put down to his “complacent Anglo-Saxon ignorance” the fact that he had previously considered French public men “people of marked levity.” During this visit he found them “just as solid characters as English and American public men” with the added “attractiveness” which to his mind made the “cultivated Frenchman really unique.” He came to realize that it was “not they who were guilty of levity,” but “the French nation, or rather the combination of the French national character with the English parliamentary system” instituted after the fall of Napoleon III. In his opinion the English system had not worked well “in a government by groups, where the people do not mind changing their leaders continually,” and were “so afraid of themselves that, unlike the English and Americans,” they did not trust “any one man with a temporary exercise of large power for fear they will be weak enough to let him assume it permanently.”30

  In Africa the Colonel had been notified of his election to the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, one of the five Academies forming the French “Insitute,” and he officially took his seat while in Paris. Jusserand reported to him that this was not simply an honorary achievement, his credentials had been seriously debated and that in the end “everybody agreed that if there was one man who should become a member as having devoted his life to politics and morals, never dividing the one from the other, it was you.”31 Roosevelt met a number of men of letters whom he greatly admired, including Victor Bérard, translator of The Odyssey, as well as a talented writer on contemporary politics. An enchanted TR gushed, “What a charming man a charming Frenchman is!” In return he was received warmly, in fact he captivated the normally blasé city for the entire eight day visit. Only the royalist press, being Catholic, was cold because of his trouble with the Vatican.32

  Before leaving America, Roosevelt had agreed to give a speech at the Sorbonne, which he praised to his audience as the “most famous university of mediaeval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover.” For his text TR chose individual citizenship. This was because, for republics such as France and the United States, “the question of the quality of the individual” was supreme. In the long run, success or failure depended upon the way the average man and woman did his or her duty as a citizen. To be a good citizen needed “a high standard of cultivation and scholarship,” underpinned by a sound body and mind, but above all stood character. This Roosevelt defined as “the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man’s force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor.” Education for all the people, beyond book learning, should also foster “the great solid qualities” such as self-restraint, self-mastery, common-sense, the power of accepting individual responsibility, and yet of acting in conjunction with others, courage and resolution. These were the qualities which “mark a masterful people.”33

  Roosevelt also praised the “commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues,�
�� including “the will and the power to work, to fight at need, and to have plenty of healthy children.” The average man must earn his own livelihood and the good man should be strong and brave, to be able to serve his country as a soldier. To the “well-meaning philosophers” who declared all war unrighteous, TR replied that war was a dreadful thing and an unjust war was a crime against humanity, but because it was unjust, not because it was a war. The question must be, Is the right to prevail? Every honorable effort should be made to avoid war, but no self-respecting nation, “can or ought to submit to wrong.” The greatest of all curses to Roosevelt was not war, but sterility. The “chief of blessings for any nation” was that it should “leave its seed to inherit the land.”34

  Another threat, which could not be overstated in the Colonel’s opinion, was the “deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system.” This would “spell sheer destruction; it would induce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality than any existing system.” However, this did not mean that “we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed” by some who happened to call themselves socialists. To be afraid to do so would be a “mark of weakness on our part.” He was a “strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance and conviction”; but it was only common sense to recognize that “the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.” But, he warned his audience, let us “not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium” until it had been subjected to “hard-headed examination.” If any idea seemed good, try it. If it proved good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There were plenty of men in his experience who called themselves socialists with whom it was quite possible to work.35

  The speech delighted French Republicans, in the Colonel’s opinion, because it came from a fellow “radical republican” and because they were “getting very uneasy over the Socialist propaganda, or at least over the mob work and general sinister destruction” in which it was “beginning to take practical form.” He felt the same kinship with many of the French Republicans that he did with many English Liberals and American progressives. Fundamentally, it was the “radical liberal” in all three countries with whom he sympathized. They were all at least “working towards the end” for which he thought “we should all of us strive.”36 Others credited the Sorbonne speech for the stiffened attitude of the Briand government which, with elections looming, banned a mass socialist demonstration planned for May 1, 1910 and authorized the police and troops for the first time in years to use their weapons in self-defense. At the very least the attack on doctrinaire socialism in the Sorbonne speech got Roosevelt back in the good books of the royalist press, while the pro-government Le Temps published 57,000 copies for distribution to the teachers of France. Thus, his friend Jusserand commented, TR’s words were “sure to reach the whole of the coming generation and it will do it an immense good.”37

  The Colonel’s friend, still the French Ambassador at Washington, came over to act as a companion and guide at Paris. Though he was very fond of him, TR commented that Jusserand seemed to think “he was not doing his duty if I had one hour to myself.” The Colonel had declined an invitation to review French troops, but Jusserand convinced him that, since everyone knew he was to do so with the Kaiser in Germany, it would be an insult to French Arms if he did not change his mind. This he agreed to do, watching a sham battle at Vincennes from horseback after borrowing a mount and riding breeches at the scene. Roosevelt was touched to receive a letter sent on behalf of the enlisted men of the squadron from which the horse was fetched, informing him they planned thereafter to take special care of the animal and to commemorate the event. He sent the men a signed photo, in his Rough Rider regalia, which they hung in a place of honor in their barracks.38

  From Paris, Roosevelt reported to Carnegie his doubts concerning the prospects of any peace initiative, “even along the cautious lines of conduct” which Root had suggested. He took for granted that Carnegie had seen the Berlin papers and that, consequently, his “anticipations of the difficulties came far short of the actual facts.” He felt Carnegie had been very wise in his suggestion about the Nobel speech, which Roosevelt now feared would “represent very nearly all that is efficient and useful that I can accomplish.” Nevertheless, as he wanted to see Carnegie before the Wrest Park meeting, he invited him to dine “alone and entirely informally with us” at Dorchester House, Ambassador Reid’s London home, on the first night he arrived in England.39

  After a week and a day in Paris, the travelers departed for Brussels, where they would spend only twenty-four hours. Roosevelt gave an address at the Brussels Exposition, in part to make amends for the rather embarrassing fact that the United States had not sent an exhibit. This was on account, in TR’s estimation at least, of the failure of the skinflint Congress to provide the paltry funds needed. The recently crowned Belgian King Albert was on hand and Roosevelt described him as “a huge fair young man, evidently a thoroughly good fellow, with excellent manners and not a touch of pretension.” Albert drove the Colonel through the streets in his carriage “as if he had been one of his own subjects,” and was “greeted by the people in cordial democratic fashion.” When they met later at the Laeken Palace for dinner, Queen Elizabeth “proved really delightful, really cultivated and intellectual.” Every evening, she told Roosevelt, she read aloud to Albert books “in which they were both interested” and in his opinion “altogether they led a thoroughly wholesome life.” Much in contrast, it may be said, to the behavior of the previous King, Albert’s uncle Leopold. In this brief visit to Belgium Roosevelt was very favorably impressed by all he met.40

  The same could not be said, at least at the top, for Holland, Roosevelt’s ancestral home and the next stop on their journey. Lodge had exhorted TR to visit Holland, telling him he was one of “the half dozen great men whom that little country, or rather race, has given to the world.”41On their way to The Hague the family visited the Het Loo Palace for lunch with Queen Wilhelmina. She was the only royal for whom they had felt much sentiment in advance and she ended by being the only monarch they did not like at all. Roosevelt had supposed that the Queen, who had come to the throne as a child of ten in 1890, would be “a very nice attractive little woman in a difficult position” and had sympathized with “her apparent loneliness, and had been glad at the birth of her little daughter” only the previous year. However, instead of being “attractive, sweet-tempered and dignified,” they found her “excessively unattractive and commonplace” while “conceited and bad-tempered” to boot.42

  The “almost freezing hauteur” displayed by the bourgeois Wilhelmina led Roosevelt to tell Arthur Lee that he felt inclined to say to her, “If you ever come to my country, Madam, I should like to introduce you to the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of Oklahoma.” She reminded TR of nothing more than a “puffed up wife of some leading grocer” such as he had met in many American towns. He would not have minded her “lacking refinement and being both common and commonplace if only she had not been pretentious.” It was this trait in his estimation that made her ridiculous.43

  Aside from this clash of personalities with the royal family, Roosevelt thoroughly enjoyed his stay in Holland, both at Amsterdam, where he viewed the many Rembrandts at the Ryk’s Museum, and The Hague, where he found a surprising number of people spoke English. As elsewhere he was treated as if he were still president and at home in America. At Amsterdam the Colonel told an audience that it had been nearly three centuries since his people left Holland and now he was back with his son who represented the ninth generation in America. His family had taken part in the foundation of what was then the tiny trading post of New Amsterdam. He was “very sorry they ever changed the name” and his “forefathers had done what they could to stop it.” Roosevelt unfortunately did not speak Dutch but could recall a nursery rhyme he learned from his grandfather that he recited to the applause o
f the audience.44

  Before taking ship for Norway, where TR was scheduled to give his Nobel Peace Prize Address, the last country on the continent the family visited was Denmark. They traveled to Copenhagen by way of Kiel, where the German battle fleet honored the Colonel by manning the rails in salute. The Danish King Frederick VIII was absent in Southern Europe so that Crown Prince Christian and Crown Princess Alexandra of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, played host to them. When their train arrived at the Copenhagen station TR, preoccupied by the apparent loss of their baggage, emerged from the wrong car. The waiting Crown Prince, one of the tallest men in Europe, with the longest legs, loped down the platform to meet him, with the rest of the official party strewn behind. Maurice Egan, the American Minister, recalled that Roosevelt, dressed in an army coat and ancient sombrero, seemed “pleased beyond words to see us all.” After he was formally introduced to a bemused Prince Christian, TR declared, “Now I have lost my baggage. Let’s go look for it!”45

  Theodore and Edith caused something of a diplomatic uproar when they were assigned the chamber in the Christian VII Palace that the Czar had occupied the previous summer. As Roosevelt was “not even an Excellency” in the United States, the Russian Ambassador protested this unheard of state of affairs. However, the palace officials were duly impressed when Edith, their luggage delayed, agreed that she and her husband would attend a formal dinner in their gray flannel traveling clothes. The Baron in charge commented, “C’était vraiment royale!”46

  Denmark had a Liberal government with a Social Democratic opposition and over the previous decades had instituted an impressive number of reforms including old age pensions and homes, health insurance, aide for small farmers to buy their leaseholds and government promotion of cooperative farming. Roosevelt was particularly interested in the old age homes and cooperative farming, both of which he was able at least to catch a glimpse of during his visit. But he was “rather puzzled” that this growth of the “wise and democratic use of the power of State toward helping raise the individual standard of social and economic well-being had not made the people more contented.” In Copenhagen, as at Rome, the Colonel found himself seated next to a Jewish Socialist Mayor at a municipal dinner. He was rather surprised to find that the man was a banker, who told him bluntly that “as long as individualism persisted” he would be foolish not to be, but that he “hoped for the advent of Socialism in such a form as to destroy the very kind of individualistic business in which he was engaged.”47